There seems to be an unstated assumption where anything useful that can be invented, will be invented. Or at least, if we invent something at some point that could have been invented much sooner, we should expect it to have been invented much sooner.
I’m a bit confused about this, but I’m curious if other people agree or disagree with the assumption, and why?
I think it’s a really good assumption to be exposed. The author cites Joel Mokyr as an (the?) inspiration his project, with Mokyr having the thesis that Progress Isn’t Natural.
How and why did the modern world and its unprecedented prosperity begin? Many bookshelves are full of learned tomes by historians, economists, political philosophers and other erudite scholars with endless explanations. One way of looking at the question is by examining something basic, and arguably essential: the emergence of a belief in the usefulness of progress.
Such a belief may seem self-evident today, but most people in the more-remote past believed that history moved in some kind of cycle or followed a path that was determined by higher powers. The idea that humans should and could work consciously to make the world a better place for themselves and for generations to come is by and large one that emerged in the two centuries between Christopher Columbus and Isaac Newton. Of course, just believing that progress could be brought about is not enough—one must bring it about. The modern world began when people resolved to do so.
Why might people in the past have been hesitant to embrace the idea of progress? The main argument against it was that it implies a disrespect of previous generations. As the historian Carl Becker noted in a classic work written in the early 1930s, “a Philosopher could not grasp the modern idea of progress … until he was willing to abandon ancestor worship, until he analyzed away his inferiority complex toward the past, and realized that his own generation was superior to any yet known.” With the great voyages and the Reformation, Europeans increasingly began to doubt the great classical writings on geography, medicine, astronomy, and physics that had been the main source of wisdom in medieval times. With those doubts came a sense that their own generation knew more and was wiser than those of previous eras.
″ willing to abandon ancestor worship, ” this phrase in particular makes me wonder if the question here and the one about why China didn’t invent science don’t share much in the analytical domain space.
There seems to be an unstated assumption where anything useful that can be invented, will be invented. Or at least, if we invent something at some point that could have been invented much sooner, we should expect it to have been invented much sooner.
I’m a bit confused about this, but I’m curious if other people agree or disagree with the assumption, and why?
I think it’s a really good assumption to be exposed. The author cites Joel Mokyr as an (the?) inspiration his project, with Mokyr having the thesis that Progress Isn’t Natural.
″ willing to abandon ancestor worship, ” this phrase in particular makes me wonder if the question here and the one about why China didn’t invent science don’t share much in the analytical domain space.