"When I was born in 1895, reality
was everything you could see, smell, touch and hear. The world was thought to
be absolutely self-evident. When I was three years old, the electron was
discovered. That was the first invisible. It didn't get in any of the newspapers;
(nobody though that would be important!) Today 99.99 percent of
everything that affects our lives cannot be detected by human senses. We live
in a world of invisibles. The fact that...humanity does not understand nature
is the prime reason for humanities failure to exercise its option to attain
universally sustainable physical success on this planet ... I am confident that
humanity's survival depends on all our willingness to comprehend feelingly the
way nature works.