A Serious Blog (I promise not to do this often!)
In class today, Dr. Kupershmidt mentioned that there were a great many 19th century mathematicians and scientists who made incredible discoveries and died in their 20's and early 30's. He said that if they had the medical care and knowledge that we have today, we'd be living on the moon and Mars by now.
That whole thing made me think, why was there such a concentration of intelligence at that point in history? What else would these great minds have discovered if they lived into their 70's or 80's? Why, with people living so long now, are we not having the same volume of technological advances that occured in the 19th century? Why aren't we living on the moon and Mars by now?
Perhaps the time period was such that knowledge at that time naturally led to a great many discoveries, like when one new thing is happened upon and it naturally leads to many many new concepts to explore. Maybe there was emphasis on math and science advancement. Maybe government played a larger role in advancing science and pushed for new discoveries and theorems. Perhaps society viewed a mathematician as one of the most revered occupations, like a doctor or lawyer is today.
The scariest thought is that we've made all these advances in science and medicine at the cost of knowledge. We've discovered television, video games, internet dating, movies, and other ways to pass our time, and we no longer spend our time reading, learning and proving. Perhaps we can now live into our 80's or 90's but we can still only acheive what past men achieved in only 20 years. Or what if we're achieving less?
There are so many ways to pass time these days, and I enjoy them all, playing computer games, watching tv and movies, blogging (haha). I just hope that as a society we keep advancing in all areas, including math and science, and don't limit ourselves to entertainmnt and medicine (not that they're not important). I saw an episode of Outer Limit (maybe Seaquest?) once where a man and woman, both early 20's, were the only people left in their world, and both had spent most of their lives playing an interactive video game. Their people had built this huge game that you sit in and play, and everyone had stopped doing anything else and just played and died.
Anyway, I hope for society's sake, that we're still advancing in mathematics, and I think we are. On a more positive note, tomorrow is Sammy Day!!
P.S. I opened up comments if anyone wants to post a nugget of wisdom...
posted by Amy at 9:20 PM
2 Comments:
Dr. Kuperschmidt's conjecture has some basis, I think. But on the other hand, consider the horror and devestation that jet engines, rockets, and nuclear weapons would have had if they had been discovered before WWII or even WWI. I think the potential for disaster would have been greater than that of success.
Call me a cynic or a pessimist, or whatnot, but I think we're probably better off for not advancing any faster than we did. I think humanity is shown a little bit more of the universe at a time, and its usually all that mankind can handle.
As for all the distractions, I'm not too worried about humanity wasting its potential. We may have hit an intellectual plateau, but I don't think we've altogether stopped. There are still plenty of people out there, trying to solve life's mysteries.
100 years ago, scientists believed that they'd pretty much figured everything out. And then Einstien rocked the boat. We're kind of in the same place now, but I think we're about due for another boat-rocking.
9:58 PM
There is also something to be said for the time to assimilate the new ideas into a single, coherent mathematics and to educate people on it. Everything seems slower when viewed in its own frame of reference. We can look back a hundred years and say, "wow, that theorem really came in handy when we . . .," but it's harder to know what's being developed now that might be that important later on. How many ideas were immediately accepted, put to use, and became absolutes within a decade of first being developed?
Beyond that, the 19th century was really the first time any type of significant class of people could afford to sit around all day thinking. We had the Renaissance, which was the beginning of it, give those ideas some time to gel, and you get the Industrial Revolution, which produces these great thinkers. Economically, all these people with all the great ideas wouldn't have been able to afford school, they would all be plowing the land to get enough food to survive. Why fewer since? Maybe the ideas they found were the obvious answers, the things that could be done by hand, and these guys weren't so great, just persistent. Key parts of Einstein's relativity weren't demonstrated until this past year.
Evolution is marked by periods of rapid changes spaced with periods of almost no change. It's possible these guys mopped up what was left from the previous evolution of thought, leaving us in a dry spell until a new idea sets us spinning again. As Lee says, we're about due for another Einstein to come along - someone who will completely change our thinking and set us off on a new path.
10:19 PM
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