The truth is, of course, that history is not completed in modern commerce any more than philosophy is perfected in political economy. In other words, there is nothing timeless or God-given about filling stations and penicillin and plastic bags.
Of all the failed technologies that litter the onward march of science – steam carriages, zeppelins, armoured trains – none has been so catastrophic to prosperity as the last century’s attempt to generate electricity from nuclear fission.