Pushing the Envelope
/We can fly faster to new discoveries because of the written word.
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Pushing the envelope is a phrase originally used by 1950’s test pilots to describe their passion to fly higher and faster than the known limits of the plane they were testing. Those who managed it without dying were said to have, the Right Stuff.
On October 14, 1947, Chuck Yeager, flying at 45,000 feet, pushed the experimental Bell X-1 past the sound-barrier. Breaking the sound-barrier assured his permanent enthronement in the Pantheon of the Right Stuff.
Since Yeager’s historic flight Pushing the Envelope has been used to dramatically describe any advance beyond whatever limit existed before.
The envelope imagined in Pushing the Envelope is a chart showing the limits of X vertically and Y horizontally. Such charts are rectangularly proportioned in the general shape of a #10 envelope. Any extension of the norm pushes the envelope higher or wider.
These days the envelope pushed could be anything from a new computer chip, scientific discovery, or a breakthrough in extending the shelf-life of bananas.
The phrase could be used to describe any innovation in any age.
Imagine a small anthropoid ape from the Pliocene era as she bangs a fistful of grasses on a nearby stone to separate the seeds from the stalks. Many seeds fall off. She contents herself with eating the seeds that stay on the rock. The technique is faulty but an improvement over scraping the stalks through her teeth.
Her daughter watches and imitates.
In time the rest of the band does the same. Generations later another ape unthinkingly bangs the grasses on the rock with another rock. This works better. Years later another ape notices that seeds pounded on flat stones don’t fall off on the ground. They all start looking for wide flat stones.
After several lifetimes of pounding on the same wide stone, a cavity forms. This is better yet. If it rains the powdery residue of the pounded seeds becomes a tasty paste.
Millennia later humans universally use mortar & pestle to grind grain into dough.
Many innovations came from similar serendipitous discovery and application.
Individual animals regularly discover and learn. Their newfound knowledge usually dies with the individual, or within the next generation. Animals lack the transforming power of language. They have no means to pass their discoveries on to others, except by observed, direct example.
How different that might be if animals had the advantage of language.
Language is the most powerful innovation ever made. Language allows past success to be preserved for future generations. Some say it is language that separates humans from animals. That’s not altogether right. Many species have repeated voicings with specific meanings, though that’s not the same as speech because the animals don’t put their voicings into meaningful sentences.
It’s not so much words as it is syntax that makes language possible.
Language makes history possible.
History makes progress possible - from millennia ago to the present and beyond.
Archimedes identified six basic machines: lever/fulcrum; wedge; pulley; screw; inclined plane; and wheel/axle. He didn’t invent any of them, but his thoughtful assessment of basics aided future inventers by eliminating the need to reinvent fundamental parts already known.
Mortar and pestle were reinvented many times over before orally preserved histories made reinvention pointless. Written history would have saved even more time. Archimedes’ useful thinking was preserved through the ages by the written word as was every other advance of civilization.
We can fly higher than ever because we are launched from a lofty platform of books. We can fly faster to new discoveries because we are propelled by the power of words.
Nothing has pushed the envelope higher or faster than the written word.
By K. L. Shipley
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