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Walter Kistler’s Reflections on Life is a view into a life lived by the scientific credo. For more than 60 years (since 1939), Kistler has captured his observations, comprehensions, and conclusions in a series of diaries, seeking always to move from kennen, mere knowledge of facts, to wissen, true understanding of the explanatory processes and resulting ramifications. In Reflections, we observe a scientifically trained mind seeking wissen, not only in his chosen fields of physics, astronomy, chemistry, and biology, but also in the experiences of day-to-day life. Asserting that basic, implacable laws govern matters of the mind in exactly the way basic, implacable laws govern the field of physics, Kistler details three laws, beginning with the balance of pleasure and pain in any human life. Deploring the blurring of boundaries between politics, science, and religion, Kistler reflects on the problems inherent in a requirement that a statement be considered ethically good in order to be accepted as scientifically true. With insight and authority, and unhampered by concerns for political correctness, Kistler asks hard questions about the mission of the soft sciences, the role of religion, and whose business it is to “manage” the truth. Kistler’s intellectual life has been guided by one inexorable Golden Rule: We must always seek the truth, the whole truth, and only the truth. The Reflections journey of truth-seeking examines the meaning of success, addresses the question of the existence of mass-energy before the Big Bang, considers the possibility of a Theory of Everything, explains why Darwin’s law is best grasped as a process of creative destruction, evaluates the traits that build and those that undermine a good society, and faces our modern dilemma: Where does humanity go from here? Reflections on Life presents the compelling findings of an extraordinary man’s lifelong search for truth. A visionary with the resources and discipline to drive his vision into reality is an individual who can make a difference in the future of the world. Such a visionary is Walter Kistler, a physicist and inventor who for years kept alive his vision of endowing a foundation focused on increasing and diffusing knowledge about the long-term future of humanity. This is the story of the unfolding of that vision. Walter Kistler was born in Biel, Switzerland, in 1918, the third of three children born to Hermann Kistler, a lawyer, and Marguerite Jeanneret, a nurse. Even as a boy Walter was interested in rocketry and space mechanics – an interest that has continued into his 80s. He studied sciences at the University of Geneva and earned a Master’s degree in physics from the Federal Institute of Technology in Zurich. In 1944, at age 26, Walter went to work for the Swiss Locomotive and Machine Works, Winterthur, and subsequently spent several years as the head of its Instrumentation Lab. During this time, he pioneered a new measurement technology using Piezo-electric quartz crystals as the transduction element in accelerometers, load cells, and pressure gauges. What made this new technology possible was Walter’s own invention of a charge amplifier that could handle the very high impedance signals obtained from such sensors. In 1983 he received the prestigious Albert F. Sperry Award from the Instrument Society of America (ISA) for these achievements. In 1951 Walter moved to the United States, where he joined Bell Aerosystems, Buffalo, New York. At Bell, he invented and developed a pulse constraint servo-accelerometer that was later used in the guidance of the Agena space rocket. For this work, he received the 1968 Aerospace Pioneer Award from the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) recognizing “his pioneering effort in the development of high-performance aerospace instrumentation.” Wishing to further pursue his work in quartz instrumentation, Walter founded Kistler Instrument Corporation in 1957. This company became a world leader in the development of quartz sensors. One of the major innovations under his supervision was the invention and development of the Piezotron, a semiconductor module that made a high-impedance quartz sensor to a low-impedance instrument. Several accelerometers of this type were used in the Apollo manned spaceflight project. Through these inventions, Kistler Instrument Corporation acquired a worldwide reputation. Following the sale of Kistler Instrument Corporation in 1970, Walter moved to Seattle, Washington, and, with his partner, Charles Morse, founded Kistler-Morse Corporation. In a development effort spanning several years, Kistler-Morse created the new technology of bolton weighing, based on Walter’s invention of the Microcell, an extremely sensitive semiconductor strain sensor. Walter subsequently designed and developed a number of additional load cells: load stands, load blocks, and load discs for monitoring the contents of vessels through direct weighing, based on the same innovation. In 1982 he was named an ISA Fellow for his contributions in the field of sensor development. He also became a member of the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) committee that established standards for testing acceleration sensors. In the 1960s, Walter developed a writing system that he called Steno, derived from German shorthand and adapted to the English language. Having perfected Steno in the subsequent years, Walter initiated a project called The Steno Trust in 1997 to teach the system for applications in education, industry, and law. The most useful application, in Walter’s view, is writing diaries. Over the years, Walter has played a key role in the startup of several high-technology companies either as a Director or as Chairman. These companies include Kistler Products, SRS, ICI, Interpoint, Paroscientific, and SPACEHAB, Inc. In 1993 he co-founded Kistler Aerospace Corporation (Kirkland, WA) to pursue his lifelong dream of designing and building a totally reusable space vehicle. The company is developing the world’s first reusable launch vehicles to reduce the cost of access to space by 80 to 90 percent. The reusable system will be capable of launching Earth satellites into low Earth orbit, medium Earth orbit, geosynchronous orbit, and even on escape trajectories to the moon and the planets. But despite all this technical activity and intense interest in space, there was always in the back of Walter’s mind a concern about where humanity was headed. “When I consider what has happened in the years since I was a boy,” he said, “we have deciphered the genetic code and are now able to study the innermost structure of a human being. We have invented the transistor and have developed a computer-based civilization replete with computer games and interactive television. We have even conquered space and humans have walked on the moon. However, few people are aware of the most drastic development that has taken place in humanity’s condition, a development of portentous consequences. From the status of a child or teenager, humanity suddenly became an adult in the 20th century. Science and technology have given us so much power that we now control our own destiny. A position of control has its consequences. It entails great responsibility. Unfortunately, we humans don’t seem to be aware of this.” This question – how to make people more aware that decisions made by our species now will have binding repercussions on future generations – is the basis of Walter’s long-held dream of endowing a foundation that would focus on the very long-term future of the human species. In 1996, the dream took physical form with the establishment of the Foundation For the Future, a private, nonprofit foundation dedicated to the purpose of promoting scholarly research to better understand the factors that may have a major impact on the quality of human life during coming millennia. To put it in Walter’s own words: “My feeling is that humanity is like a blind man running around in a dark cave. He is very likely to hit a hard wall and be seriously damaged. The purpose of this foundation is to bring some light into the dark cave and some vision to the blind person in the cave, so that humanity really sees and understands its surroundings, its own essence. Only after there is full understanding and agreement, only then should any action be taken.” Walter Kistler is a life member of the Swiss Physical Society and a member of AIAA and ISA, which presented him the Life Achievement Award in 2000. He is listed in American Men of Science, Who’s Who in Aviation, Who’s Who in Finance and Industry, and Who’s Who in the World. He is the owner of more than fifty US and foreign patents and the author of a number of papers published in scientific and trade journals. |