Adam Blatner

A friend, Dr. John Christie-Casson in England wrote, in response to my saying that I considered him a pioneer in his researches into the actual authorship of Shakespeare’s plays, “…the fact is I have only travelled on from where others had previously gone.” I appreciated his modesty, but it occurred to me that most pioneering is based on previous exploration, to some varying degree. Columbus’ efforts built on earlier explorers who amplified pioneering technologies in ship-building and navigation to venture down the west coast of Africa, for example.

Might it be appropriate to credit the status of pioneer to the third and fourth level of exploration, or perhaps anyone who generates a substantial re-thinking of the earlier efforts? I wonder if I’ve been a pioneer in a very limited fashion? It matters only a little bit, credit given where credit due. The great Everything Becoming is sweeping innumerable pioneering efforts forward, testing them, combining them, all within that ambiguous category known as “progress.”