Open access
PERPETUUM MOBILE: FROM COPERNICUS AND THE CYCLIC MAYAN CALENDAR TO THE COSMIC COMMUNICATION (AND SO ON)
Radosław SAJNA1
Methodological Inquiries
Publication language: Polish
Journal article
Transformations No. 1-2 (68-69) 2011, Publication date: 12 May 2011
Abstract Although the theories about globalization are relatively new, the process could be hardly considered as new. After Columbus’s famous journeys, that finally united two hemispheres, another famous person, a Polish scientist N. Copernicus, “moved the Earth" (and “stopped the Sun"). One can say that the globalization process has begun, and that now it is difficult to imagine its end. Globalization is like a perpetuum mobile, a “machine" that is moving by itself. Everybody, however, can perceive it by other ways, like some centuries ago one could describe a horse looking at his own horse, in accordance to the rule of the first Polish author of an Encyclopedia, who wrote: “A horse is like you can see it". Naturally, there are many faces of globalization, but one of the most important factors of this perpetuum mobile is communication. Gutenberg and his typography, the telegraphy, radio and television, the satellites, the Internet and so on are the inventions that have accelerated the process of communication, and finally they have accelerated globalization. Nowadays human civilization is able to communicate to/from Cosmos, considering new journeys, like a “Cosmos Columbus", to discover new spaces. And the human development is difficult to stop, although the cyclic Mayan calendar, appropriate for the quantum physic theory (that dominates now in the world), previews an end of the cycles for the October 28, 2011. Could this be the end of the perpetuum mobile? Rather not, it would be an absurdity.
Zakład Socjologii Polityki i Komunikowania Społecznego, Instytut Nauk Politycznych, Wydział Humanistyczny Uniwersytetu Kazimierza Wielkiego w Bydgoszczy
E-mail: rs-epp@post.pl