What caused modern civilization to start taking shape all of a sudden around middle of last millennium? Things had barely changed for several thousands of years until then and civilization was in a kind of steady state. New discoveries have been made throughout human history but the rate of change had been extremely slow until about 1400s.
A related question is why these changes happened in Europe but nowhere else. Africa, middle-east, india and china were much older civilizations that do not seem to have come out of their steady states until very recently and even now it can be debated as to whether these places are really pushing the state of human knowledge.
I grew up in India and have experienced the culture when it comes to knowledge. In ancient times, reading and writing were exclusive privileges of a select few who had this right by birth. Knowledge was zealously guarded by families as a kind of secret and passed down the generations as memorized poetry.
Memorization of knowledge had its roots in time before writing or paper existed but even when writing became feasible the knowledge elites seemed to spend their lifetimes memorizing texts and look down upon those memorized less. While knowledge was being accumulated as centuries passed, this kind of elitism seems to have thwarted open sharing of knowledge and ideas to a wider section of population.
Intellect and curiosity know no birth, family or religious bounds. As a result knowledge did not always reach those who could have used and added to it. Those who found new things were not always able to pass the information widely. Sometimes there was a deliberate attempt at secrecy.
Even in modern times, India lacks a strong culture of sharing ideas. Book industry is non-existent, except for text books and cheap fiction (there are exceptions but exceptions is what they are.). Public libraries are in the same state as British left them. Writing is looked down upon as a profession. Most people do not write unless they have to.
Ancient Rome was probably better placed to make technological and cultural breakthroughs than Europe in middle ages. They had a diverse population which came from far regions of the world and mixing of ideas such as the world had not seen before. Indeed, they made great strides in engineering and arts. So why did the world have to wait 1500 years? One can only imagine what the world would look like today with sciences 1500 years into the future.
Could it have been the printing revolution? Let us look at the timeline of scientific revolution and Renaissance.
For sake of simplicity in the above diagram I have assumed that dates for people are birth year + 25 years.
When i started plotting the above diagram, I was not sure what to expect. We were all probably taught in school that invention of printing press was great, allowed publishing of books blah blah blah. I really did not know just how important this invention was and how it may have been the one force that single-handedly led to creation of the modern civilization.
It makes sense. Mass production of publications made it possible for people to convey their ideas to masses in no time. Newspapers enabled societies to know of events as they happened. Journals allowed scientists and intellectuals to share ideas and build on each other's work. Published text led to standardization of languages and spellings. Standardized languages led to harder national boundaries and the rise of nationalism. Increasing availability of books, newspapers and journals led to higher literacy rates. Increasing awareness in people led to revolutions and democracies.
In effect by facilitating the flow of information between minds, printing press may have created the first global mega-brain. A giant neural network whose components are individual human brains and whose synapses are books. That was a revolution in human evolution. The mother of all developments. Against this mega-brain, individuals and disconnected societies stand no chance. And that is exactly what happened. There are no indications that publishing industry or culture of sharing information at a wide scale caught on in other parts of the world until much later. Enter colonial era.
Internet has taken the speed of sharing and communication to a whole new level. It has greased up the synapses of the global "mega-brain" and made it more powerful than ever before. We only have to look at the past to understand what future has in hold for us. What French Revolution was to printing press, Egyptian and British revolutions may be to Internet. I am expecting to see new forms of governments, democracy and society emerge in my lifetime.
A related question is why these changes happened in Europe but nowhere else. Africa, middle-east, india and china were much older civilizations that do not seem to have come out of their steady states until very recently and even now it can be debated as to whether these places are really pushing the state of human knowledge.
I grew up in India and have experienced the culture when it comes to knowledge. In ancient times, reading and writing were exclusive privileges of a select few who had this right by birth. Knowledge was zealously guarded by families as a kind of secret and passed down the generations as memorized poetry.
Memorization of knowledge had its roots in time before writing or paper existed but even when writing became feasible the knowledge elites seemed to spend their lifetimes memorizing texts and look down upon those memorized less. While knowledge was being accumulated as centuries passed, this kind of elitism seems to have thwarted open sharing of knowledge and ideas to a wider section of population.
Intellect and curiosity know no birth, family or religious bounds. As a result knowledge did not always reach those who could have used and added to it. Those who found new things were not always able to pass the information widely. Sometimes there was a deliberate attempt at secrecy.
Even in modern times, India lacks a strong culture of sharing ideas. Book industry is non-existent, except for text books and cheap fiction (there are exceptions but exceptions is what they are.). Public libraries are in the same state as British left them. Writing is looked down upon as a profession. Most people do not write unless they have to.
Ancient Rome was probably better placed to make technological and cultural breakthroughs than Europe in middle ages. They had a diverse population which came from far regions of the world and mixing of ideas such as the world had not seen before. Indeed, they made great strides in engineering and arts. So why did the world have to wait 1500 years? One can only imagine what the world would look like today with sciences 1500 years into the future.
Could it have been the printing revolution? Let us look at the timeline of scientific revolution and Renaissance.
For sake of simplicity in the above diagram I have assumed that dates for people are birth year + 25 years.
When i started plotting the above diagram, I was not sure what to expect. We were all probably taught in school that invention of printing press was great, allowed publishing of books blah blah blah. I really did not know just how important this invention was and how it may have been the one force that single-handedly led to creation of the modern civilization.
It makes sense. Mass production of publications made it possible for people to convey their ideas to masses in no time. Newspapers enabled societies to know of events as they happened. Journals allowed scientists and intellectuals to share ideas and build on each other's work. Published text led to standardization of languages and spellings. Standardized languages led to harder national boundaries and the rise of nationalism. Increasing availability of books, newspapers and journals led to higher literacy rates. Increasing awareness in people led to revolutions and democracies.
In effect by facilitating the flow of information between minds, printing press may have created the first global mega-brain. A giant neural network whose components are individual human brains and whose synapses are books. That was a revolution in human evolution. The mother of all developments. Against this mega-brain, individuals and disconnected societies stand no chance. And that is exactly what happened. There are no indications that publishing industry or culture of sharing information at a wide scale caught on in other parts of the world until much later. Enter colonial era.
Internet has taken the speed of sharing and communication to a whole new level. It has greased up the synapses of the global "mega-brain" and made it more powerful than ever before. We only have to look at the past to understand what future has in hold for us. What French Revolution was to printing press, Egyptian and British revolutions may be to Internet. I am expecting to see new forms of governments, democracy and society emerge in my lifetime.