JD Bernal’s book, " The World, the Flesh and the Devil " came in the mail today.
“He imagines the future conquest of nature as a conquest of space: we will live, Bernal claims, in small globes among the planets, bounding through open space across low-gravity plains. As for the human body, it will extend its life as a brain in a cylinder connected to the world by various wired and wireless mechanisms; not only that, but it will join itself to collective brains, which will change our perception of what it is to have a self since they will persist in some ineffable quiddity even as constituent parts join up or die off.” J. D. Bernal, The World, the Flesh, and the Devil – John Pistelli
@jenlake I presume he’s in your files somewhere @Stephers (graphite) also WWII associate with Solly Zuckerberg who spearheaded Climate Research Centre in Norwich at the end of his life @leo.
“In 1924 he determined the structure of graphite (the Bernal stacking describes the registry of two graphite planes) and also did work on the crystal structure of bronze.[17] His strength was in analysis as much as experimental method, and his mathematical and practical treatment of determining crystal structure was widely studied, but he also developed an X-ray spectro-goniometer.[18”
He also worked on the structure of liquid water, showing the boomerang shape of its molecule (1933).
"At Cambridge, he also became known as “Sage”, a nickname given to him about 1920 by a young woman working in Charles Kay Ogden’s Bookshop at the corner of Bridge Street.[16]
“With the outbreak of World War II in 1939, Bernal joined the Ministry of Home Security, where he brought in Solly Zuckerman to carry out the first proper analyses of the effects of enemy bombing and of explosions on animals and people.”
“In the early 1960s, Bernal returned to the subject of the origin of life, analysing meteorites for evidence of complex molecules, and to the topic of the structure of liquids, which he talked about in his Bakerian lecture in 1962.[[22]]”(J. D. Bernal - Wikipedia)
" His 1929 work The World, the Flesh and the Devil has been called “the most brilliant attempt at scientific prediction ever made” by Arthur C. Clarke.[34] It is famous for having been the first to propose the so-called Bernal sphere, a type of space habitat intended for permanent residence. The second chapter explores radical changes to human bodies and intelligence and the third discusses the impact of these on society."