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23.5 Degrees: Burnt by the Sun
By Professor W
November 15, 2008
Icarus before the fall
© Photomedia
Yesterday, while I was watching Robert Downey Jr. soar through the skies in his titanium carapace, I started thinking about superheroes who’ve developed their own equipment to help them fly. You can strike out Superman and Wonder Woman, because they were born with the ability to fly. They don’t count. Batman and Spiderman use ropes and gossamer to bound from building to building, but they’re not really flying. So, they’re out. Iron Man alone has developed the technology for him to be able to fly.
Eons ago on an island in the Mediterranean, Daedalus was trapped with his son, Icarus, in a labyrinth built by the King of Crete – with only a hungry, menacing Minotaur for company. So, Daedalus, being a brilliant engineer (before anyone had thought up the word!), built two pairs of wings made out of wax and feathers, one pair for Icarus and one for himself. On the day of the test-flight before they both take to the air, the anxious father’s only instruction to his son was to avoid flying too close to the sun in case the wax in his wings melted. In a scene reminiscent of Iron Man trying out his jet boots for the first time, Icarus forgets his father’s advice, flies too close to the sun and learns about gravity the hard way. He plummets into the sea, or what Buzz Lightyear, another superhero with a flying suit, would call “falling with style”.
Several hundred years later, the great English scientist, philosopher and alchemist, Roger Bacon, had a vision along similar lines: “[In the future] … flying machines might be made in the middle of which a man might sit, turning a certain mechanism whereby artfully built wings might beat the air, in the manner of a bird in flight…”
Well, amazingly, Bacon wrote those words in the middle of the thirteenth century. Today, seven hundred and fifty years later, we don’t know if this alchemist was able to see into the future or whether he was using a spiritual metaphor to describe Man freeing himself from the ties that hold him to this world. Bacon is widely held to be the first scientist, a man who carried out what today we would call scientific experiments in astronomy and optics. He preferred to find out for himself why things are as they are and how the natural, the physical, world really operates. Not for Bacon to follow established doctrines. He was a man of action. However, his unorthodox views really upset the Establishment and, sadly, he suffered imprisonment and exile for his revolutionary studies. No-one likes a smart-ass!
Each generation throws up thinkers who see beyond the everyday. They ask questions that literally nobody has ever asked before. These revolutionary thinkers, through their inventiveness, either see new ways of making everyone’s lives easier by means of technology (if we can afford them!), or, through their insights and wisdom, they enable the rest of us to find new ways to attain higher ground (if we choose to). It all starts with a dream, a vision…
Caution is what holds most of us back from taking the risk and “flying”. Seeing others try and fail doesn’t make us any braver. Most of us would run for cover if we saw a Greek teenager, covered in feathers and wax, falling from the sky towards us, screaming, “Sorry, Dad, I think I flew too close to the… [splash]”.
Anyway, fortunately for us, the real visionaries don’t give up. They take the risks and they either fly or they fail trying. If they don’t drown, then they try something different.
Next year, Robert Downey Jr. will squeeze back into his titanium armor to start work on another adventure. Iron Man will again encounter adversity, as he did this year, but we know that in 2010 Tony Stark will again prevail. I guess that’s the sort of message we’ll all be thinking about a lot over the coming months and years: if you take a risk, you might fly just too close to the sun and the wax in your wings will melt. But, if you give it a try and take your courage in both hands, this time you might just stay up in the air. They say nothing beats the buzz of trying something new, the exhilaration of flying unaided. And, who knows, maybe this time Icarus might conceivably keep his distance from the sun and beat gravity. Now that would make a change - something really special to see: Daedalus, looking proudly across at Icarus, shouting through tears to the people below: “Hey Cretans, that’s my boy, the high-flier!”
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I love the vertical "secret code", W! ;-)