Theory

I have a new historical theory on scientific development, wanna hear it?

Neah, I figured you didn't, but since you are reading my blog you obviously have nothing to do right now, so screeeeeew you (pronounced in a Little Britain way).

Anyway, as I was studying for my last bachelor exam this weekend I realized something that I thought was rather interesting. The exam, in fact an oral exam, which trust me in real life has nothing of the light eroticism of the words, was about science in ancient Greece. What makes that period (a couple of hundred years) so interesting is that, appareantly out of nowhere, a bunch of Greek guys suddenly started asking very interesting scientific and philosophical questions. Questions about the cause of things like lightning but also, for instance, the existence of gods, the shape of the earth, what 'things' exist of, etcetera etcetera.

What makes that even more interesting, is that we have no idea why they were the ones to start. For some reason scientists in other civilized societies (Egypt, India) did not ask those questions but a bunch of beardy guys in Meletus did. Odd.

Just as odd is why the scientific progress stopped at a certain point. Although the exact point is arguable, some say 300 BC, others go for a 100 BC, it is clear that progress somehow stops and is replaced by looking back at their achievements; instead of writing new works and investigating new questions scientists spent their time checking the work of their predecessors. Part of it is blamed on Christendom, which indeed isn't the most science-friendly club at times (or the most anything-other-than-Christians-friendly club for all that matters), but studying history for over 3 years has taught me that the Christians weren't that popular in 300 BC (I know and this isn't even the theory yet!).

Another possible reason are the Romans. Unlike what most people seem to think, the Romans were not really a smart people. They imported most of their knowledge (and in certain cases actual scientists) from the Greeks and hardly added anything themselves. Basically, the best way to look at the Romans is to compare them to those guys you see in football stadiums; in their pre-beerbelly years some of them are pretty attrective, but the odds of them curing cancer are pretty low (however, the odds of them wishing cancer upon the people supporting the other party are enormous).

Which brings me to my theory; people were just sick of scientific discovery. This may sound weird if you wander through the Forum Romanum and think "Oooookaay, so this was civilization??" (or as the American woman screamed "OH MY GOSH! This is the place where they shot Caesar!") but the Greeks made a huge leap forward in just a few years. Case in point; in Homers time a ship could carry 50 people at the most, 600 years later a ship was reported that could carry 7.250 people (!). What's the use then in making ships that can fit 10.000 people? It's not like you even have enough soldiers (or more importantly rowers) to fill the freaking thing!

Also, and maybe even more so, they were probably out of ideas. After the Greek period of science, a long period of nothing follows. This nothing we sometimes refer to as the middle ages. Some people adore that period and like to dress up in obvious fake clothes and call othother "ye". These people should die. Possibly today. But getting back to the point; the reason why hardly any scientific discoveries were made in those years was that people thought that they already knew everything. Hell, Aristotle lived from 384 to 322 BC and in 1450 his books were the only ones used in all (!!!) courses taught at most universities.

Again, this may sound weird and pretty darn pathetic with our current technology, but my idea is that we're currently moving towards that exact same scenario in our world. Example; the music industry. For years all we had were LP's, then suddenly tape was introduced. A shockwave! Then the CD was introduced. Huuuuge news. Then the minidisc, but everybody ignored that. And now MP3. I remember not too long ago that it took an hour to download a song from Napster and then you still could only listen to it on your computer. Now we have Ipods with more GBs than the average computer.

Which brings me to my point; if you can buy an Mp3 player that has more GBs on it then there is music in the world (and I believe you can), whats the use in technological progress from now on? Who needs more space if you can't fill the one you already have? Who needs smaller machinese when the player you have is already smaller than your wallet? The same point could be made with examples of photocameras. However, talking for more than 5 minutes about photography is excruciatingly boring and rather sad.

Anyhoo, we have come to a point where, in certain fields, we think we know everything. Which means we might very soon be done for a few centuries.

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Ok, so the theory is crap but I got an 8 (out of 10) for my exam, so who cares!