RIP Michael Crichton.

Thank You for the Memories.

Shocking news indeed.

I don't read fiction very much, but I did like his books a lot.

Well that was my point - you could read his books as simple "actioners," but if you happen to have a mind, he raised very good questions in each book (and very carefully pointed right to them, so his meaning could not be mistaken.)

One might read Jurassic Park as simply about dinosaurs running amok - but look how densely packed (and very pertinent) are the ideas here:

"We are talking about Western attitudes that are five hundred years old. ... The basic idea of science — that there was a new way to look at reality, that it was objective, that it did not depend on your beliefs or your nationality, that it was rational — that idea was fresh and exciting back then. It ... swept away the old medieval system, which was hundreds of years old. ... [But] this was because the medieval world didn't really work any more. ... But now science is the belief system that is hundreds of years old. And, like the medieval system before it, science is starting not to fit the world any more. Science has attained so much
power that its practical limits begin to be apparent. ... Science cannot help us decide what to do with the world, or how to live. Science can make a nuclear reactor, but it cannot tell us not to build it. Science can make pesticide, but cannot tell us not to use it. And our world starts to seem polluted in fundamental ways — air, and water, and land — because of ungovernable science. This much is obvious to everyone.

"... Ever since Newton and Descartes, science has explicitly offered us the vision of total control. Science has claimed the power to eventually control everything, through its understanding of natural laws. But in the twentieth century, that claim has been shattered beyond repair. First, Heisenberg's uncertainty principle set limits on what we can know about the subatomic world. Oh well, we say. None of us lives in a subatomic world. It doesn't make any practical difference as we go through our lives. Then Godel's theorem set similar limits to mathematics, the formal language of science. Mathematicians used to think that their language had some special inherent trueness that derived from the laws of logic. Now we know that what we call 'reason' is just an arbitrary game. It's not special, in the way we thought it was. And now chaos theory proves that unpredictability is built into our daily lives. ... And so the grand vision of science, hundreds of years old — the dream of total control — has died, in our century. And with it much of the justification, the rationale, for science to do what it does. And for us to listen to it. Science has always said that it may not know everything now but it will know, eventually. But now we see that isn't true. It is an idle boast. As foolish, and misguided, as the child who jumps off a building because he believes he can fly. We are witnessing the end of the scientific era. Science, like other outmoded systems, is destroying itself. As it gains in power, it proves itself incapable of handling the power.

"Because things are going very fast now. Fifty years ago, everyone was gaga over the atomic bomb. That was power. No one could imagine anything more. Yet, a bare
decade after the bomb, we began to have genetic power. And genetic power is far more potent that atomic power. And it will be in everyone's hands. It will be in kits for backyard gardeners. Experiments for schoolchildren. Cheap labs for terrorists and dictators. And that will force everyone to ask the same question — What should I do with my power? — which is the very question science says it cannot answer.

"'So what will happen?' Ellie said.

"Malcolm shrugged. 'A change.'

"'What kind of change?'

"'All major changes are like death ... you can't see to the other side until
you are there.'"

------------------

-A message for our times.

I have to say the same thing. "Congo" for example.

Crichton's statement, as quoted by RossMacrae above, reminded me of one of the original Battlestar Galactica episodes, "Gun on Ice Planet Zero" when apollo confronts the scientist who made the weapon for the Cylons. The scientist says "I have no control over the use of my creations...No responsibility!" To which Apollo responds "Then who does?"

J. Robert Oppenheimer understood the enormous responsibility of what he had helped create when, after the Trinity bomb went off, he stated "Now, I am become Death, destroyer of worlds!"

And he spoke the truth. 100,000-150,000 people killed in the blink of an eye...

Crichton was named to the list of the "Fifty Most Beautiful People" by People magazine, 1992. While in medical school, he wrote novels under the pen names John Lange and Jeffery Hudson. His two pen names were created as a play on his above-average height. According to his own words, he was about 2.06 meters (6 feet 9 inches) tall in 1997.[6] Lange is a surname in Germany, meaning "tall one" and Sir Jeffrey Hudson was a famous 17th century dwarf in the court of Queen Consort Henrietta Maria of England.

I'm a big fan of Crichton's books and spent the last few years tracking them down. Very sad about the news. I just need his very first book from 1966 and his latest/last one scheduled to be released next year (May 2009 from what I read).

That's right. Crichton was a giant! He towered head and shoulders over most of the people in this world.