Ignorance and Humility Cure Death
The Scientific Revolution
3 words changed the course of history forever
“I don’t know”
The Scientific Revolution is the first time in history that humans have, on a large scale, admitted ignorance. But not just any type of ignorance. Ignorance of important things.
There used to be two types of ignorance:
Individual. A specific person is ignorant but he can ask his local priest and he’ll receive the answer.
Unimportant. Any question not answered by a holy book or prophet is unimportant and doesn’t need to be known.
Ignorance could be summed up as - if you don’t know, ask your priest, if they don’t know, it doesn’t matter.
If I, as a king, believed this, why would I ever invest resources into scientific discovery. Anything we found would be unimportant. That means there was no money put behind scientific discovery, and few scientific discoveries were made… for thousands of years.
The Speed of Innovation
If you took someone from 1000 years ago and dropped them in their same city 500 years later, just before the Scientific Revolution, they would be able to blend in pretty quickly. If you took someone living in London 500 years ago and brought him to London today, he would think he was in heaven or hell or just stuck in a crazy dream.
Since the day we admitted ignorance of important questions 500 years ago, society’s rate of change has been historically unprecedented. Even I, a 23 year old, remember the world of my childhood as being very different from today’s. Before the Scientific Revolution, most people would go their entire lives with little change in society.
Why Science is Important and Good
It’s easy to think science and technology are the root of all evil. We see the increasing rates of depression, kids with no social skills addicted to their iPads and an obesity epidemic and point fingers at science and technology. It’s easy, but it’s not fair. That leaves out a huge part of the story.
Science keeps us safe. It keeps your loved ones alive. It helps you not die from the flu or from stepping on a rusty nail.
The Black Death
…was a plague that killed 30-60% of Europe’s population between 1347 and 1351. Over a four year period, millions were killed by the invisible disease. There were no scientists with petri dishes looking for cures or preventions. What stopped the plague was a combination of a dwindling population, public sanitation (AKA maybe don’t have rats in your house) and general god-given immunity of the surviving population.
The Black Death still exists today. It was never eradicated. During an outbreak in Hong Kong in 1894, a scientist identified the deadly bacteria using modern scientific techniques. Today, it is easily preventable and curable. All because we could admit ignorance and believed we could make important discoveries ourselves.
Explanations
At the time of the plague, nobody had good explanations for what was happening. Nobody knew about disease chemistry and biology. The most common explanations were:
Divine punishment
Astrology
Jews poisoned the water
These would never be considered seriously today (except probably, sadly the third one).
The Scientific Revolution marked the Beginning of Infinity (another fantastic book), meaning the only limits we have now are the laws of physics. We keep innovating and inventing at an ever-increasing rate. We’ll never invent and discover as slowly as we do today. Soon enough we will achieve anything physically possible.
The only question now is WHEN.
Question of The Day
Have you ever had a flesh wound? Thank science you’re alive and able-bodied.
Your Friend,
Noah “BigNerd” Sochaczevski