So, there were more than 20 clusters of related discoveries in the 19th century? What were they?
Well, electricity is one area where there were easily at least 20. Volta made the eponymous pile, Ohm discovers his law, Faraday discovers induction, Maxwell discovers his laws (and notes that the speed of propagation of an electromagnetic field is the observed speed of light), Faraday invented the first generators, Siemens refined it, Seebeck discovered the thermoelectric effect, Edison made a practical lightbulb, Edison made large scale electric grids, Hertz transmitted radio waves, Marconi used them to transmit signals, Daniell makes the first practical batteries (later improved to gravity cells), lead acid batteries also occur in this time period. Etc.
But this is missing part of the primary point: Discoveries help out even in not directly related areas. Better communication helps all areas. Thus for example, the ease of modern transportation and communication helped make the late 19th century transits of Venus to be observed with far more careful coordination than previous transits. And Darwin and other 19th century naturalists were able to do much of their work because sea travel had become substantially faster and more reliable in the 19th century than earlier. This is part of a general pattern: technologies and developments beget more technologies and insights even to areas that aren’t directly connected.
If fire and composting each count as one cluster, then electricity, electromagnetic radiation, and the relationship between the two are each one cluster. Also, I think that both Newtonian physics and Aristotelian physics count equally much as major developments, along with a very large number of developments that have been completely abandoned and forgotten. Combined with the developments that ‘everybody knows’ now (e.g. how to create and extinguish fires, till soil, make plants edible), I think that the rate of new discoveries has remained roughly proportional to the number of people alive and the degree by which they exceed subsistence living.
Granted, that is a huge increase in absolute rate, but it isn’t strictly linked to an increase in intelligence or reasoning abilities.
Even if it is an increase proportional to the population, that still means that a model where increased technology (which allows a larger population) is responsible for further increases. So the upshot is still the same, which is that it is highly plausible in that context that other species had enough intelligence to make civilization but never got the first few lucky technologies.
A dolphin’s ability to invent novel behaviours was put to the test in a famous experiment by the renowned dolphin expert Karen Pryor. Two rough-toothed dolphins were rewarded whenever they came up with a new behaviour. It took just a few trials for both dolphins to realise what was required. A similar trial was set up with humans. The humans took about as long to realise what they were being trained to do as did the dolphins. For both the dolphins and the humans, there was a period of frustration (even anger, in the humans) before they “caught on”. Once they figured it out, the humans expressed great relief, whereas the dolphins raced around the tank excitedly, displaying more and more novel behaviours.
I have to wonder how much dolphin anatomy factors into their apparent lack of civilization-building. Then again, I haven’t read anything about dolphins developing anything like agriculture (whereas some social insects seem to manage some impressive achievements, such as ants domesticating other insects, farming fungi, and building vast inter-connected colonies). Yet it seems pretty clear that social insects are nothing like intelligent in the way that primates and dolphins are.
Well, electricity is one area where there were easily at least 20. Volta made the eponymous pile, Ohm discovers his law, Faraday discovers induction, Maxwell discovers his laws (and notes that the speed of propagation of an electromagnetic field is the observed speed of light), Faraday invented the first generators, Siemens refined it, Seebeck discovered the thermoelectric effect, Edison made a practical lightbulb, Edison made large scale electric grids, Hertz transmitted radio waves, Marconi used them to transmit signals, Daniell makes the first practical batteries (later improved to gravity cells), lead acid batteries also occur in this time period. Etc.
But this is missing part of the primary point: Discoveries help out even in not directly related areas. Better communication helps all areas. Thus for example, the ease of modern transportation and communication helped make the late 19th century transits of Venus to be observed with far more careful coordination than previous transits. And Darwin and other 19th century naturalists were able to do much of their work because sea travel had become substantially faster and more reliable in the 19th century than earlier. This is part of a general pattern: technologies and developments beget more technologies and insights even to areas that aren’t directly connected.
If fire and composting each count as one cluster, then electricity, electromagnetic radiation, and the relationship between the two are each one cluster. Also, I think that both Newtonian physics and Aristotelian physics count equally much as major developments, along with a very large number of developments that have been completely abandoned and forgotten. Combined with the developments that ‘everybody knows’ now (e.g. how to create and extinguish fires, till soil, make plants edible), I think that the rate of new discoveries has remained roughly proportional to the number of people alive and the degree by which they exceed subsistence living.
Granted, that is a huge increase in absolute rate, but it isn’t strictly linked to an increase in intelligence or reasoning abilities.
Even if it is an increase proportional to the population, that still means that a model where increased technology (which allows a larger population) is responsible for further increases. So the upshot is still the same, which is that it is highly plausible in that context that other species had enough intelligence to make civilization but never got the first few lucky technologies.
source
And cue the Douglas Adams reference.
I have to wonder how much dolphin anatomy factors into their apparent lack of civilization-building. Then again, I haven’t read anything about dolphins developing anything like agriculture (whereas some social insects seem to manage some impressive achievements, such as ants domesticating other insects, farming fungi, and building vast inter-connected colonies). Yet it seems pretty clear that social insects are nothing like intelligent in the way that primates and dolphins are.
Well, there is the complex hunting behavior, and indications of limited tool use. Why is agriculture special?