Why is humanity developing rapidly only in the last 300 years?
9 Answers
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I also agree: about 350 years ago, a scientific method was formulated, and discoveries are made faster with it.
But in general – humanity is constantly accelerating, since the moment Australopithecus got down from the tree. And in recent years, it has also accelerated: in the 20th century, changes are greater than in the 19th, and the difference between 2000 and 2020 is greater than between 1980 and 2000.
As long as there is life on earth , its development is continuously accelerating.
Where does everything go? Take a look at the wikipedia article.
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On the one hand, everything is simple: only in modern times was the algorithm of rational scientific thinking calculated. It was after his appearance that the breakthrough occurred.
On the other hand… There have been times in history before when something like this has happened. “Axial time” in Antiquity, and even before, it seems that something like this sometimes happened. So – there is no guarantee that the transition to rapid development is so irreversible.
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The last 300 years are an illusion. We live in a world of figuratively changing systems (conditions). The great tool of creation and destruction is interpretation and speculation.
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Three hundred years ago, the modern scientific method was formed and the world scientific community began to form.
Random shifts in knowledge and technology have been replaced by scientific and technological progress. This also led to social transformations.
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The simple answer is: because humanity needed to develop rapidly only in the last 300 years:) and it has the opportunity to do so.
Well, actually, judge for yourself. Here you live in 15th-century Europe, where 99% of the population lives and works in rural areas (and even more – illiterate), where navigation is limited to the Baltic and the Mediterranean, where the elite is concerned only with military exploits… well, what is the development here?
Economically-for” rapid development ” (both on the micro and macro scale), capital investments are necessary. Simply put, a lot of extra money. Where did they come from in 15th-century Europe? It is necessary either to sharply increase the profitability of its economy (in the conditions of Europe – yield), or to find new sources of income (and in 1492 they found it!).
If you look back to the appearance of the first Homo, the rapid development began much earlier. As soon as humanity “grew up” not to consume the earth's resource, but to reproduce the earth's resource (agriculture), and began to do this systematically (the first states, class society), it already began to develop rapidly compared to the previous hundreds of thousands and even millions of years of primitiveness.
Just compare: if we assume that the first man is Homo erectus, then his oldest remains are 2 million years old.
And if we assume that the oldest state is Egypt, then it appeared 5 thousand years BC (i.e. 7 thousand years ago).
Mathematically, the entire development of mankind, in principle, looks like a geometric progression, starting with a very small value.
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humanity has developed before, but in other areas. we can see this from the ancient buildings. But I think that the current digital development is not our merit, but someone bigger and smarter!
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my personal opinion is that printing began about 500 years ago-Gutenberg, Fedorov, etc. – that is, books began to become quite popular. Accordingly, the information accumulated in the books (a) was not lost in disasters, but was preserved, and (b) was widely distributed.
And when over the next 100-200 years, somewhere around the XVIII century, a lot of information accumulated and it spread quite widely-technical progress began.�Well, by convention, Newton got acquainted with the printed works of physicists from other countries and came up with the idea of universal gravitation. He himself said to himself that ” he stands on the shoulders of titans.” That's how a lot of people watched the falling apples before him.
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Pitirim Sorokin-a well-known sociologist believed that there are only three cultural super-systems, according to which human society is built in one way or another, and these cultural systems can be in dynamics with each other and replace one another.�
The first type of culture is sacred culture ( ideational), in which supersensible, spiritual values, worship of some Absolute, God or Idea, i.e. “the truth of faith” and the truth of self-denial, spread and prevail in society. Everything earthly in such a society is considered perishable, low ( the body was represented as a prison of the soul, a haven of sin).
The second type of culture: idealistic culture. There is a certain revaluation of values, a change in the hierarchy of meanings and aspirations. Such a culture is a synthesis of the material and spiritual in a harmonious union, the earthly is not declared cursed, but on the contrary becomes the sphere of interest that needs to be transformed. This culture is associated with such a direction in the worldview as positivism – the belief in earthly existence.
The third type: purely material, sensual: here a purely sensual empirical perception of life and an assessment of reality prevail, mainly from a utilitarian and hedonistic point of view, that is, the truth of feelings and the truth of pleasure prevail, everything that cannot be touched is dismissed as nonexistent.�
All three systems can replace one another, and there are also laws of paradigm shift, which the scientist also spoke about.�
So, for thousands of years, the dominant Roman civilization, which continued to live through the Western church consciousness, through Byzantium, and then through Eastern Christianity (mainly Rus'), lived for a long time according to an ideational, sacred culture, where religious thinking was dominant and regulated everything. Within this culture, the contradictions of this system accumulated, but thanks to various forces, it was all suppressed, destroyed, and crushed. However, as they say, you can't stifle this song, you can't kill it – unresolved contradictions only accumulated and one day broke out by turning this super system upside down or better to say changing it to another – the dynamics of development was so powerful because it was accumulated for a long time. According to the law of the pendulum, if the pendulum is strongly moved to one side, then after a while it will swing to the other with the same force only by the force of counteraction.�
Faith in science, in a positive change in the world, has become a new faith of humanity, and therefore an extremely large amount of resources – human, mental, financial, etc. – have been invested in it.
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In many aspects, modern humans are little different from those people who lived 300 years ago. The main motives of a person's activity are the desire for power and money, was is and will be! But, we see a significant difference in technological development. And perhaps this is the most obvious and significant change that should be explained.
I will express not the most obvious point of view, about the connection between the decline of faith and technological development. I have already given an answer to a similar question, and the citizens are confident that they will be able to answer it. However, there were no reasoned refutations.
So, if we take, for comparison, the times of the Middle Ages, we will see that there are people who are engaged in science. They conduct experiments, collect some mineral rocks, herbs, conduct some calculations, try to get gold, build some incomprehensible devices. Who do the church think these people are? The alchemists. Sorcerers. Magicians. The Holy Inquisition, on behalf of the Church, took measures to eliminate these people and the knowledge that they received. No scientists – no progress!�
Over time, the situation began to change. The power of the clergy was weakening, due to the weakening of people's faith in God. But, as you know, a holy place is never empty. If there is no God, He comes…Belphegor
“In demonology, Belphegor is a demon who helps people make discoveries….. he can bestow wealth, discoveries, and ingenious inventions. His diabolical role was to sow discord among people and entice them to do evil by distributing wealth.”
Now, technology in general has turned into an analogue of religion. People worship technological progress, and for some reason they expect all sorts of “nyashkas” from it for themselves. More convenient life, more advanced gadgets, cheaper goods. But this is a consequence of the false idea instilled in citizens, making them short-sighted, not understanding where they are being led. And the direction is one-the centralization of world power, passing into domination, in the hands of a single ruler. And in this world, people become slaves to the very high-tech system that they worshipped all the way.
Now a few words about science itself. People who want power and money use it as a tool to gain superiority. Scientists themselves are often blind and passionate about their discoveries, not their practical implementation. Great power opens up great opportunities. But humanity, I repeat, suffers from all the same diseases as yesterday, 1000 years ago, and earlier. “Bad” (because of their imperfection) – people rush to power, get breakthrough technologies, organize wars, plunging the world into ruins, in the name of some of their own goals.
Thus, technology is good and evil rolled into one. It depends on whose hands they are in. As in the movie “Sphere”, 1998, where people received alien technology in the form of a sphere that implements any fantasies, desires, but realized that they were too imperfect, and this could ruin everyone, they preferred to get rid of it and forget about what happened.�
Few scientists are able to understand this. One of these great people is Blaise Pascal. At a certain stage of his life, he almost completely stopped his scientific activities, after a certain spiritual revelation (those who wish can independently get acquainted with his biography).
Answering the question: a significant weakening of faith caused a weakening of the power of the clergy, which hindered the development of science and technology, on the one hand, and the strengthening of the “demonic influence of Belphegor” – on the other hand, with the constant ” human essence – the thirst for power and profit, led to a leap-like technological development. The consequence is progress, multiple wars, and huge sacrifices. Yes, humanity, as a bonus, received many military technologies in civilian life. No one disputes this.�
But here are some thoughts that follow from all this: there were 2 main development options:
1 If it were not for the decline in faith and the weakening of the power of the clergy, which inhibit technological development, we would not have followed the path of the development of man-made civilization. Yes, we would still not use computers, fly into space, ride horses, and do not know what GMOs and islands made of plastic garbage are.
2 And if faith and religion did not exist, there is a possibility that humanity would have created nuclear weapons several centuries earlier, which it then used, ending the existence of life on planet Earth.
We've gone somewhere between these two options, but now we're getting closer and closer to the latter. How close is it? For clarity:
Doomsday Clock� 23: 58
I also agree: about 350 years ago, a scientific method was formulated, and discoveries are made faster with it.
But in general – humanity is constantly accelerating, since the moment Australopithecus got down from the tree. And in recent years, it has also accelerated: in the 20th century, changes are greater than in the 19th, and the difference between 2000 and 2020 is greater than between 1980 and 2000.
As long as there is life on earth , its development is continuously accelerating.
Where does everything go? Take a look at the wikipedia article.
On the one hand, everything is simple: only in modern times was the algorithm of rational scientific thinking calculated. It was after his appearance that the breakthrough occurred.
On the other hand… There have been times in history before when something like this has happened. “Axial time” in Antiquity, and even before, it seems that something like this sometimes happened. So – there is no guarantee that the transition to rapid development is so irreversible.
The last 300 years are an illusion. We live in a world of figuratively changing systems (conditions). The great tool of creation and destruction is interpretation and speculation.
Three hundred years ago, the modern scientific method was formed and the world scientific community began to form.
Random shifts in knowledge and technology have been replaced by scientific and technological progress. This also led to social transformations.
The simple answer is: because humanity needed to develop rapidly only in the last 300 years:) and it has the opportunity to do so.
Well, actually, judge for yourself. Here you live in 15th-century Europe, where 99% of the population lives and works in rural areas (and even more – illiterate), where navigation is limited to the Baltic and the Mediterranean, where the elite is concerned only with military exploits… well, what is the development here?
Economically-for” rapid development ” (both on the micro and macro scale), capital investments are necessary. Simply put, a lot of extra money. Where did they come from in 15th-century Europe? It is necessary either to sharply increase the profitability of its economy (in the conditions of Europe – yield), or to find new sources of income (and in 1492 they found it!).
If you look back to the appearance of the first Homo, the rapid development began much earlier. As soon as humanity “grew up” not to consume the earth's resource, but to reproduce the earth's resource (agriculture), and began to do this systematically (the first states, class society), it already began to develop rapidly compared to the previous hundreds of thousands and even millions of years of primitiveness.
Just compare: if we assume that the first man is Homo erectus, then his oldest remains are 2 million years old.
And if we assume that the oldest state is Egypt, then it appeared 5 thousand years BC (i.e. 7 thousand years ago).
Mathematically, the entire development of mankind, in principle, looks like a geometric progression, starting with a very small value.
humanity has developed before, but in other areas. we can see this from the ancient buildings. But I think that the current digital development is not our merit, but someone bigger and smarter!
my personal opinion is that printing began about 500 years ago-Gutenberg, Fedorov, etc. – that is, books began to become quite popular. Accordingly, the information accumulated in the books (a) was not lost in disasters, but was preserved, and (b) was widely distributed.
And when over the next 100-200 years, somewhere around the XVIII century, a lot of information accumulated and it spread quite widely-technical progress began.�
Well, by convention, Newton got acquainted with the printed works of physicists from other countries and came up with the idea of universal gravitation. He himself said to himself that ” he stands on the shoulders of titans.” That's how a lot of people watched the falling apples before him.
Pitirim Sorokin-a well-known sociologist believed that there are only three cultural super-systems, according to which human society is built in one way or another, and these cultural systems can be in dynamics with each other and replace one another.�
The first type of culture is sacred culture ( ideational), in which supersensible, spiritual values, worship of some Absolute, God or Idea, i.e. “the truth of faith” and the truth of self-denial, spread and prevail in society. Everything earthly in such a society is considered perishable, low ( the body was represented as a prison of the soul, a haven of sin).
The second type of culture: idealistic culture. There is a certain revaluation of values, a change in the hierarchy of meanings and aspirations. Such a culture is a synthesis of the material and spiritual in a harmonious union, the earthly is not declared cursed, but on the contrary becomes the sphere of interest that needs to be transformed. This culture is associated with such a direction in the worldview as positivism – the belief in earthly existence.
The third type: purely material, sensual: here a purely sensual empirical perception of life and an assessment of reality prevail, mainly from a utilitarian and hedonistic point of view, that is, the truth of feelings and the truth of pleasure prevail, everything that cannot be touched is dismissed as nonexistent.�
All three systems can replace one another, and there are also laws of paradigm shift, which the scientist also spoke about.�
So, for thousands of years, the dominant Roman civilization, which continued to live through the Western church consciousness, through Byzantium, and then through Eastern Christianity (mainly Rus'), lived for a long time according to an ideational, sacred culture, where religious thinking was dominant and regulated everything. Within this culture, the contradictions of this system accumulated, but thanks to various forces, it was all suppressed, destroyed, and crushed. However, as they say, you can't stifle this song, you can't kill it – unresolved contradictions only accumulated and one day broke out by turning this super system upside down or better to say changing it to another – the dynamics of development was so powerful because it was accumulated for a long time. According to the law of the pendulum, if the pendulum is strongly moved to one side, then after a while it will swing to the other with the same force only by the force of counteraction.�
Faith in science, in a positive change in the world, has become a new faith of humanity, and therefore an extremely large amount of resources – human, mental, financial, etc. – have been invested in it.
In many aspects, modern humans are little different from those people who lived 300 years ago. The main motives of a person's activity are the desire for power and money, was is and will be! But, we see a significant difference in technological development. And perhaps this is the most obvious and significant change that should be explained.
I will express not the most obvious point of view, about the connection between the decline of faith and technological development. I have already given an answer to a similar question, and the citizens are confident that they will be able to answer it. However, there were no reasoned refutations.
So, if we take, for comparison, the times of the Middle Ages, we will see that there are people who are engaged in science. They conduct experiments, collect some mineral rocks, herbs, conduct some calculations, try to get gold, build some incomprehensible devices. Who do the church think these people are? The alchemists. Sorcerers. Magicians. The Holy Inquisition, on behalf of the Church, took measures to eliminate these people and the knowledge that they received. No scientists – no progress!�
Over time, the situation began to change. The power of the clergy was weakening, due to the weakening of people's faith in God. But, as you know, a holy place is never empty. If there is no God, He comes…Belphegor
Now, technology in general has turned into an analogue of religion. People worship technological progress, and for some reason they expect all sorts of “nyashkas” from it for themselves. More convenient life, more advanced gadgets, cheaper goods. But this is a consequence of the false idea instilled in citizens, making them short-sighted, not understanding where they are being led. And the direction is one-the centralization of world power, passing into domination, in the hands of a single ruler. And in this world, people become slaves to the very high-tech system that they worshipped all the way.
Now a few words about science itself. People who want power and money use it as a tool to gain superiority. Scientists themselves are often blind and passionate about their discoveries, not their practical implementation. Great power opens up great opportunities. But humanity, I repeat, suffers from all the same diseases as yesterday, 1000 years ago, and earlier. “Bad” (because of their imperfection) – people rush to power, get breakthrough technologies, organize wars, plunging the world into ruins, in the name of some of their own goals.
Thus, technology is good and evil rolled into one. It depends on whose hands they are in. As in the movie “Sphere”, 1998, where people received alien technology in the form of a sphere that implements any fantasies, desires, but realized that they were too imperfect, and this could ruin everyone, they preferred to get rid of it and forget about what happened.�
Few scientists are able to understand this. One of these great people is Blaise Pascal. At a certain stage of his life, he almost completely stopped his scientific activities, after a certain spiritual revelation (those who wish can independently get acquainted with his biography).
Answering the question: a significant weakening of faith caused a weakening of the power of the clergy, which hindered the development of science and technology, on the one hand, and the strengthening of the “demonic influence of Belphegor” – on the other hand, with the constant ” human essence – the thirst for power and profit, led to a leap-like technological development. The consequence is progress, multiple wars, and huge sacrifices. Yes, humanity, as a bonus, received many military technologies in civilian life. No one disputes this.�
But here are some thoughts that follow from all this: there were 2 main development options:
1 If it were not for the decline in faith and the weakening of the power of the clergy, which inhibit technological development, we would not have followed the path of the development of man-made civilization. Yes, we would still not use computers, fly into space, ride horses, and do not know what GMOs and islands made of plastic garbage are.
2 And if faith and religion did not exist, there is a possibility that humanity would have created nuclear weapons several centuries earlier, which it then used, ending the existence of life on planet Earth.
We've gone somewhere between these two options, but now we're getting closer and closer to the latter. How close is it? For clarity:
Doomsday Clock� 23: 58