Everyday,
technology and science move forward at a rapid pace. We are always disproving
statements that were formerly thought of as completely factual.
We look
back at history and scoff at those who believed that the sun revolved around
the Earth. We laugh at those who believed that the earth was flat. We find it
ridiculous that people used to cure most illness with leeches or by drilling a
hole in the skull to “let the bad spirits out.”
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| "Trepanning" aka drilling holes in the skull. Credit: Wikimedia Commons |
This
pattern of laughing at the past will likely continue. Many of our current assumptions
about science are probably false. Three hundred years from now, everyone will
probably laugh at the largely held beliefs of the early 21st
century.
Perhaps we should observe history more humbly, rather than assuming that
everything we believe is right. We are more similar to our predecessors than we
think.
All
this begs the question, where will the future lead? What else can we possibly discover and
create? The invention of the television would have been completely unthinkable
for people living a mere century before its invention. A laptop or an iPhone are
nowhere near anything they could have even possibly conceived of. The idea of
this blog itself would have baffled the minds of those of the 19th
century. What kind of advances will have been made two hundred years from now?
It’s impossible to imagine.
Very interesting perspective. I like that you are looking at historiography - the study of how we learn about and recount the past. Your call for a more humble view of history is an important and too often forgotten point. Well done! The other question that occurs to me is what secure knowledge today will be laughed at in the future.
ReplyDeleteI totally agree with this and have had similar thoughts myself. It would have been nice if you had some specific examples of things we now know are false and talked about why people believed in them at the time, but otherwise well done.
ReplyDeleteI think this is interesting as well. In some ways this is a philosophy of thought that began in the enlightenment era. People had a new attitude that worshipped progress and scoffed at conservative ideas.
ReplyDeleteI remember an article we all read for science last year about degrees of "correctness." We have moved from thinking our world was flat, to round, and finally to an oblong spheriod. Each degree is more correct than the last. To some extent, I think the idea of "scoffing at history" derives from degrees of correctness. We don't laugh at those who thought it was round, even though that was wrong, but we do laugh at those who thought it was flat. As we humans advance, we also exponentially advance our understanding of things. Given this, I find your call for humility a bit confusing, for certainly our current view is more correct. Perhaps we shouldn't "scoff" at our ancestors, but when we look back it's probably a good thing that we keep our modern ideas and prejudices with us, so we can look upon a debate such as the shape of our world with more insight than those at the time could.
ReplyDeleteI think this is a really interesting post, and I completely agree with it. However, at the same time, I wonder if the people in the future will be more "correct" when they ridicule our science and practices. Will they have a wider scope of knowledge, a higher understanding of the world, more advanced technology and science? Will their innovations be more "accurate"? They may certainly look towards previous generations and scoff at them, but will they truly be the "right" ones?
ReplyDelete