Did the ancient Greeks even have a concept of humans as varying over time? Certainly they didn’t have a single machine which did anything even remotely like thinking.
I quite clearly remember growing up in a universe which was static. People even talked about mechanisms to create hyrdrogen in deep space in order to keep the density constant in light of the Hubble expansion. I REMEMBER seeing the big bang theory (not the TV show!) and just marveling at the audacity. How could the universe have started? What was here before?
And quite similarly I remember thinking there is “history” and there is “now.” History had things like WWII and the bubonic plague in it, now had civil rights, the Soviet Union, and the Vietnam War. I was probably in my 30s when I finally realized that 1) we ARE in hisotry and 2) it ain’t slowing down, if anything its speeding up.
When I put myself in the place of the greeks, humans would seem static, human culture would seem largely static, machines would seem darn near irrelevant to anything.
I can’t imagine I could look forward to an intelligence explosion until I had some sense that looking backward there had been an intelligence explosion. Even now you can talk to Rabbis who will argue with you about evolution by asking you if you really believe you are descended from a monkey. Did ANYONE in ancient greece have any idea that we had any other relation to monkeys or horses or dogs other than sharing the planet with them?
Yes, the atomists did believe that the world changed, that the time of humans was a transient epoch in the history of the universe. Lucretius talked specifically about this. We don’t have any direct access to Greek atomists, but Lucretius seems to be copying Greek sources.
Did the ancient Greeks even have a concept of humans as varying over time? Certainly they didn’t have a single machine which did anything even remotely like thinking.
I quite clearly remember growing up in a universe which was static. People even talked about mechanisms to create hyrdrogen in deep space in order to keep the density constant in light of the Hubble expansion. I REMEMBER seeing the big bang theory (not the TV show!) and just marveling at the audacity. How could the universe have started? What was here before?
And quite similarly I remember thinking there is “history” and there is “now.” History had things like WWII and the bubonic plague in it, now had civil rights, the Soviet Union, and the Vietnam War. I was probably in my 30s when I finally realized that 1) we ARE in hisotry and 2) it ain’t slowing down, if anything its speeding up.
When I put myself in the place of the greeks, humans would seem static, human culture would seem largely static, machines would seem darn near irrelevant to anything.
I can’t imagine I could look forward to an intelligence explosion until I had some sense that looking backward there had been an intelligence explosion. Even now you can talk to Rabbis who will argue with you about evolution by asking you if you really believe you are descended from a monkey. Did ANYONE in ancient greece have any idea that we had any other relation to monkeys or horses or dogs other than sharing the planet with them?
Yes, the atomists did believe that the world changed, that the time of humans was a transient epoch in the history of the universe. Lucretius talked specifically about this. We don’t have any direct access to Greek atomists, but Lucretius seems to be copying Greek sources.