Because this universe had to be studied from the basis of what? It had to be studied from the basis of MEST1. What’s MEST? And how does it get mixed up with life? Now it, in other words, had to be hit from the level of everything we knew in the physical sciences. And until we had a good, solid subject called physics, until the boys in the laboratories had scared up an enormous amount of data concerning the identity of MEST, what it was basically matter, energy, space-we couldn’t solve that experience known as time or what life was doing in this universe.
So it took first things first. All due respect to Sigmund Freud, he had no more chance of solving the problem of life than he had of jumping off the top of the Empire State Building and landing unscathed. No chance whatsoever. Neither could Plato nor Aristotle have done more than have built upon the foundation of what was known at that time about the MEST universe. Therefore, it’s not any too great a compliment–it’s rather indicative of something or other–it’s not even too great a compliment to me that this problem is solved.
As a matter of fact, I was one of the first nuclear physicists in the United States. Now, people in the United States today, they refer to me as a science fiction writer and all that sort of thing. They said about nuclear physicists twenty years ago in the same tone, they said, “Huh. One of the Buck Rogers boys. Talking about atomic fission. Imagine! Talking about atom bombs! These guys are crazy!”
No, the world didn’t have any room in it for nuclear physicists and so there wasn’t anything to do in nuclear physics because nobody had written a three-billion-dollar check yet. And it took a lot of equipment to monkey around with nuclear physics but it didn’t take any equipment to monkey around with the human mind, so having all that background in the MEST universe I went ahead and solved the human mind. Hasn’t been much of a problem, really. 2
