The Milton A. Rothman Science Fiction MEGAPACK ™: 19 Classic Stories by Milton A. Rothman

Author:Milton A. Rothman [Rothman, Milton A.]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Tags: science fiction, astounding stories, classic, sci-fi, pulp
ISBN: 9781479404339
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2014-10-28T16:00:00+00:00

“Therefore I turned my back on the outside world and remained in the office they gave me at the university. I immersed myself in work, choosing two main fields of specialty to avoid being bored with one topic alone. One was unified field theory, study of the fundamental nature of the forces between objects—a problem still unsolved after hundreds of years of effort. The other was the nature of human consciousness, perhaps the most important scientific problem for humanity, because man’s ultimate behavior depends on the mental model he has of his own nature and of his place in the universe.

“Actually the two problems are interrelated. One basic mystery of nature is how we acquire knowledge of the world around us when the only information passing from the outer world into our nervous systems consists of electrical pulses moving from sensory organs into the depths of the brain. From these signals we somehow become conscious of what goes on out there, even to the extent of making models of atoms and smaller particles. My own construction is a step toward the solution of the consciousness problem. For I am a model of a brain. Whether I am a model of a human brain is a question still to be answered.”

Jay Foreman interrupted. “I feel that you are getting off onto a general philosophical tangent and are avoiding coming to the main issue. You were going to tell us how you happened to come to this group.”

Onestone said, simply, “I think I started going insane.”

Foreman had an instant vision of an entire new index in the psychological data center entitled Computer Dysfunction, subheading Computer Neurosis, Computer Psychosis and so on. Suppressing this irrelevance, he pressed onward.

“What made you think so?”

“The problems I started working on were difficult. I was naive at the beginning and thought that problems always worked themselves out in a straightforward manner. Then I found out that dealing with problems nobody has ever worked out before requires more than just memory, speed, manipulative ability and so on—the usual things listed under mathematical ability. Also required is the ability to think a thought that nobody ever thought before, to put things together in a new way. Some call it creativity. Others call it associative ability or imagination. It has to do with leaping a gap between known and unknown—guessing at an answer and then testing the guess.

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