societal advances smackdown (0-1750 AD vs 1751 AD- present)

[SteveDallas]

I need to think about this one, but I'm not ready to hand it to the post-1750 period.

Originally Posted by lumberjim

i was thinking that the leaps we've made in manufacturing, genetics, medicine, transportation, and especially the dissemination of information have been more than exponentially. Whereas given the amount of progress made in the 30,000 years prior to 1750, it seems almost stagnant.

I don't know about that... it's clear that we here typing on this board identify most heavily with post-industrial revolution developments for obvious reasons. That makes it hard for us to judge the accomplishments of past civilizations, to say nothing of European civilization pre-1750.

Originally Posted by Beestie

The discoveries of and in electricity, bacteria and subatomic physics pretty much blow everything before 1750 out of the water.

I a certain sense that's true. Would any of those discoveries have been made without Euclidean geometry? Trigonometry? Calculus? Again, it's hard for people who can whip out pocket calculators (or better yet phones with pocket calculators) to judge the historical impact of, say, logarithms.


I mean, let's look at Johannes Kepler (1571-1630). The man developed the first accurate descriptions of planetary orbits and their mathematical basis. He was basically working with data that involved holding up a ruler and measuring distances in the sky. But he was starting from practically nothing by comparison to today. Given that we now know Kepler's laws, and all the other stuff that's been discovered since, what would a corresponding leap forward in scientific knowledge be now? How many of our professional astronomers would do as well without the knowledge from their astronomy books and their computer-controlled space telescopes?

If I wanted to be a smartass (perish the thought) I would point out that the "dawn of time" would include the evolution of Homo sapiens . . . .