The competition among the European powers centered as much on technology as it did on conquest, and soon the skills and knowledge of Europe surpassed those of the rest of the world. Discoveries followed rapidly: In 1610, Galileo worked a few laws of motion using, for the first time, experiments and numerical measurement. In 1687, Newton published the Principia which provided us with the tools (calculus among them) to predict the behavior of the planets and control the motion of cannon balls.
In 1769, James Watt perfected the steam engine. In 1789, Antoine Lavoisier revolutionized Chemistry. In 1831, Michael Faraday discovered electromagnetic induction, the principle behind electric motors and generators. In 1859, Charles Darwin explained why we are here when he published On the Origin of Species. And in 1905, on the American coast settled by Britain only three centuries before, Albert Einstein developed the equation E = mc2, which accurately predicted the ferocious power unleashed by an atomic bomb.
We pause our story at the threshold of the twentieth century, the most remarkable century in our history, to look back at where we started. The agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago unleashed two irresistible forces. The first was the increasing power of technology that enabled our competitive human need to amass wealth, power, and status. The second was the system of ideas that tempered and guided the first. But as the power of technology increased exponentially, the temptation to use that power for conquest and control outstripped the guiding force of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.
We pause our story at the threshold of the twentieth century, the most remarkable century in our history, to look back at where we started. The agricultural revolution 12,000 years ago unleashed two irresistible forces. The first was the increasing power of technology that enabled our competitive human need to amass wealth, power, and status. The second was the system of ideas that tempered and guided the first. But as the power of technology increased exponentially, the temptation to use that power for conquest and control outstripped the guiding force of democracy, the rule of law, and human rights.
These powers increased so fast and furiously that the deeds and weapons that burned the twentieth century would have been imaginable to the first Fertile Crescent farmers only as visions of Hell. In the end, the power of ideas was just as great as the power of technology. The world was truly small now, and everyone could see how the rest of the world lived.
It all started in a very different world. The warmth and abundance of those African savannahs seem now like a paradise lost. We are uncomfortable now, in our mechanized and technological society. But we are a young and promising species and we should not give up hope. The peace and balance of the natural world appears so only because we live our lives in an instant of geologic time. Over a long enough time, species rise and fall, battling with each other to populate the world with their descendants. Life defies balance because it always struggles to be better than it is.
And so it is with us. Our history is filled with terror, death, treachery, and cruelty, but we are always struggling to be better than we are. Which is not to say that there are no problems. We no longer live in fear of nuclear annihilation, but we (rightly) worry about environmental collapse, global pandemics, and persistent economic inequalities. But the future will be better than the past as long as the men and women of the present struggle to make it so. That at least has never changed.
Author and Credits: George Moromisato