Historical Perspective on Developmental Deviations

Abstract

Almost invariably, people devoting the major part of their professional lives to some specific offshoot of science have been known to round up their careers by looking back to the origins, sproutings, and ramifications of such offshoots. They find themselves fascinated by the historical aspects of something that they had experienced as an ongoing contemporaneous concern. This cannot be done without a degree of biographic self-involvement. Haunting questions arise: What was the shape of things when my generation came of age? What has been done since then? Can it be said that, as a result, we have arrived at some resting points of satisfaction? If so, what are they? What can be put down by now as reliable underpinnings to support a solid edifice? What, indeed, can be gleaned from retrospect?