Their work is prediction
H. G. Wells in The Discovery of the Future points out that the work of science is prediction: meteorology predicts weather; scientists in all fields seek repeatable tests. Science can reliably predict future events. In this sense, Stapledon’s Last and First Men, is showing us a repeating experiment: progress and war, community and calamity.
If that be so, then we ought expect and predict it, and converse then about ways to flow with and across it, perhaps surmount it. This is the human experiment, and experiments are designed to disprove repeatability, to test the edges of repeatability: if we change this then does it repeat, and if not, how not?
If we cannot converse across centuries, how not? That leaves something.
:- Doug.
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