To the editor:

David Penny and his May 19 observations on academia’s lack of evidence for providing “any significant advances to society” deserves our serious consideration — particularly in the area of “producing society’s technical advances.” David will appreciate concrete examples.

1. In about 1650, Abraham Wood departed Jamestown, Va., to explore the interior of what would become the United States. He returned several years later. His westward trek had taken him to a great river, probably the Mississippi. He said a squirrel could run from Virginia to that river in the great forest and never touch the ground. Thanks to “technical advances,” those great forests were replaced by great smokestacks that belched out tons of various carcinogenic gases that harm health and environment.

2. Virginia and Maryland prospered for the next 125 years through “significant advances to society.” In 1775, before our birth as a nation, old Indian trader James Adair published “The History of the American Indians” in London. In his advice to British statesmen, he wrote: “As the lands in Virginia and Maryland are greatly exhausted by raising that impoverishing weed, tobacco, Great Britain may expect to feel a gradual decay in that valuable branch of trade … unless new colonies are settled on the Mississippi.” Westward ho. Hello Indians, hello Civil War — all under the banner of “manifest destiny.”

I count it money well spent if academia can educate those born yesterday with a knowledge of fact-based details of the history of those who brought them forth. Thus armed, I think they will find a way to make this a better place.