RE: The Cognitive Revolution
February 19, 2016 at 8:44 am
(This post was last modified: February 19, 2016 at 8:47 am by Thumpalumpacus.)
(February 19, 2016 at 1:29 am)Heat Wrote: So in summary: There always comes a time in history, where even if something isn't being invented, someone comes along to point out "Hey that's inefficient", or "Hey wouldn't this make the process faster?", but what confuses me is that for 60,000 years or so a species with relatively the same cognitive capabilities as modern-day humans didn't once have someone come along to say "Hey this is inefficient, we should do it like this" to spur some sort of progress.
Alex's pointing to Guns, Germs, and Steel is a great recommendation (and it's very readable, Diamond has an engaging style of writing). But to address this particular point, I think it's important to realize the interreliance our inventions have upon each other -- and the corollary, that each invention broadens the inventive palette.
Technological advancement is a synergistic process -- look at the nexus between aerodynamics, metallurgy, and microelectronics, for instance: each of those technologies benefited from advancements in the other fields, resulting in advances that would not have happened without each other. This pattern suffuses most human endeavors. The upshot is that each invention feeds the next invention.
The other thing to remember is that 60,000 ya, communications were nonexistent, essentially. The development of writing meant that knowledge could be more truly preserved and shared, without the distortions brought on by oral transmission, or extirpation brought on by the death of the person(s). It took longer to share information, such sharing was probably much less accurate, and almost certainly much less useful.
