I've run into articles that lament that most fundamental principles and inventions have already been discovered, and Newton, Kepler, Copernicus, Galileo were fortunate to live during fertile centuries that shaped a golden era of human discovery.
Some state if Edison hadn’t discovered the light bulb, and Einstein relativity, someone else would have stumbled on to it sooner or later.
I keep thinking while there is some truth to that, it’s of value to consider the order in which discoveries occur. For each invention has its own cascade of subsequent developments that distract us from other sequences. For example, if electricity had not been nurtured when it was, perhaps we’d be using some chemical reaction as our main source of artificial light, or complex arrangements of mirrors, and other discoveries and inventions would have branched out from there. If the compass and the mathematics for triangulation hadn’t surfaced, maybe we would have focused more on intuitive forms of navigation still used by societies that were bypassed by industrialization, utilizing parts of the brain that are currently dormant in western society. The combustion engine won out on the wings of chance over electric vehicles – at least for the last century.
Are there basic principles not visible to us because we have built so much upon one set of fundamental laws, our structures would not stand upon other equally valid truths? The path of discoveries have lead us to our way of life in 2010. There may be variant operating systems that are very big, yet to be discovered, conceptually foreign to how we currently function day to day.
2 comments:
I often find myself thinking the same thing. Once we discover something it not only leads to other related discoveries, but it puts blinders on other paths of inquiry.
For me, I think about this whenever I read about SETI and the search for alien life. By looking for radio waves, SETI is making one of these blinder assumption. Why would another sentient species decide to transmit messages by radio waves? Maybe there's better technologies to transmit messages across the cosmos.
Maybe those same species would view all the radio noise emanating from Earth as just a bunch of curious pollution and not a sign of inteeligent life.
Interesting thoughts. I guess we both gain and lose something by embracing one path. Going through one door closes others. Perhaps ideally we do both, like in the experience of meditating, to both focus on a single process and be in touch with the big picture.
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