"If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied."
I think it may be more important to tell them about bacteria. But in reality, I think passing down a single sentence is almost completely useless. If that's all that's passed down, they will have to make the exact same discoveries we made, although we may be able to lead them towards these discoveries.
Also, expecting all of future human kind -- more developed than we are now -- to value some sentence passed down by their oh-so-knowledgeable ancestors (us) seems a bit self-centered to me. A more intelligent future mankind will make their own discoveries, and not care much about any single sentence, regardless of who wrote it.
I think in that event, teaching them how to fish would be more important than giving them a fish.
My suggestion would be something that would promote free thought. "All men are equal and thought, ideas, and speech should never be punished" or something along these lines.
If we only have one sentence, we'd best make sure we cram as much information into that sentence as possible.
Finally those years of studying Latin are paying off.
> "Emotions take much longer to change than thoughts." or something like that. (for communication: "Emotional messages need repeating to sink in.")
If a future generation could start off being able to distinguish between their primal brain-functions and their thoughts, they might progress much faster than we do.
What would you do with that knowledge, without also knowing the scientific method? Whereas the scientific method allowed us to discover the atomic hypothesis, and so is more powerful.
I hoped it has to do something with math, not just "it's atoms". We already know hard key points in our scientific history — next generations could use these initially obscure fragments to prevent spending time on already invalidated methods and theories.
I just read two books that I thought would be unrelated, but ended up being very related in a way that was fascinating to read the two in tandem — The Swerve by Stephen Greenblatt, and The Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes.
The Swerve is about Epicurus and Lucretius — who both helped popularize atomism 2000+ years ago. I never thought much of the philosophical implications of the world being made of up small, somewhat interchangeable parts — but this idea was at the core of Epicureanism, and had many implications.
If you're interested in learning more about the history of atomic theory, I'd highly recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
It goes through the general history of science from the 1890s to the 1950s. There are brief biographies of people who played an important role — Ernest Rutherford, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein (to name a few). Those were exciting times to be a physicist.
A very, very good book. Also, mention should be made of Leo Szilard who was the first person that we know of to be aware of the nuclear chain reaction.
Atomism assumes unchanging building blocks which antimatter disproves. Which is really the problem when trying to link philosophical ideas with physics the real world is very odd and nobody actually came close.
Even just from a chemistry standpoint atoms don't fit atomism unless you treat electrons and the nucleus as separate things. The name was copied before we really understood what was going on.
The general principle that any problem you face, no matter how big, can be broken down into smaller and easier to solve problems, recursively, is the most important idea in human history.
Atomic theory is just a special case of this insight.
What is special about atomic theory is the supposition that there is an endpoint to recursive reduction. That at some point you cannot find anything simpler.
Microorganisms as a source of disease seems a pretty important concept; we take it for granted now, but ignorance of this was a huge deal up until about 150 years ago.
I think you're right. I think that _is_ a more important concept.
Why?
Because it does many things at once.
1) Establishes natural biological causes for the transmission of diseases, thereby supplanting all sorts of other theories like hex-casting, bad omens, malevolent deities, and so on and so on
2) It says that there are things that can't be seen with the naked eye that share our biology, which opens the door to atomism anyway
3) It says that biology shares a common substrate which is a useful concept in itself
4) And practically speaking, if the information that microorganisms are disease vectors is coupled with the knowledge that certain routines such as cleaning and washing prevent said transmission and that other substances act as anti-bacterial agents then human and animal welfare is promoted and suffering is reduced allowing for more rapid societal progress
That is a very important idea, but it was atomism that lead to it.
For thousands of years, people explained natural phenomena like disease through alleged supernatural causes. Then Greek science-philosophers attempted to explain them through thoroughly natural causes. They tried various ideas like everything is fire, but it was atomism that was successful, and it lead to modern science in general.
Especially vaccines. It's such a counterintuitive concept : injecting yourself with a small doses of a disease to prevent that disease. Do you want some polio, it's good for you? Er, no, go away you freak! Contrast that with atomic theory: nearly everybody can grasp the concept that bigger parts are made of smaller parts.
> That the world is not solid but made up of tiny particles
I'm not sure that's how most people understand it. "Tiny particles" still maintains the notion for most of us of a physical / materialist world when things truly exist, with some kind of an inner essence or structure or core, which we would associate to these "particles".
Se we think that a tree, or a car, is a bunch of those particles. And that we too are a bunch of particles. It doesn't shake the notion of physical existence so it has no profound impact on the way we see ourselves and the world and the way we behave.
It's very hard to let go of this view though. A very healthy and middle step that I wish was taught everywhere is to start looking at the world as an interdependent system, including us, and understand nothing truly exists in isolation.
More important, I think, is the concept of objective, empirical, peer-reviewed science. Democritus made up the concept of atoms, but it took 2,000 years before science made them real in Einstein's paper on the Brownian motion.
I doubt anything will beat property ownership, agriculture, and money, in that order. I reckon if you remove those these three things and wait a year and the human race will be unrecognizable from a cultural point of view.
I think property ownership is an instinctive trait. Just like you don't have to tell a cat to piss against all the trees to assert ownership, you probably don't need to tell people about property.
I guess we could tell them "communism is bad" but that's a bit too cold war even for me.
Ah, but can any of those things actually be removed? Each is not just an idea, but a representation of the one constant limitation to human economy: resource scarcity. The particulars might change, but the basic idea--some means of distributing resources--will arise to limit and shape whatever civilization might follow. We don't have to tell them anything; it'll instinctively develop on its own.
David Graeber does a good job of debunking the theory of currency as a replacement for barter in his book _Debt_ (if that's what you're getting at with the ordering).
I am a physicist by education and value the subject highly but let's not take things for granted. Where would we be without toilets? In the middle of a pile of ...
Durable information storage. Mass distribution of information. Universal literacy.
Too little of what was written in antiquity was accessible to the vast majority of people, and too much of it was lost.
We're left with fragments of early mathematical, literary, and historical works and our attempts to figure out what ordinary people were up to are almost stuck with just graffiti on the few hard surfaces that have survived.
For all the greatness of Democrites in so many ways, I'm always a bit wary of reading too much in classic thinkers predating what we now know about the physical sciences. Without experiments, introducing the concept of atoms was speculative. Conversely, even today an improved understanding of how matter actually behaves at very small scales, still doesn't make the case for atheism or materialism.
" Atoms are indivisible; they are the elementary grains of reality, which cannot be further subdivided, and everything is made of them"
Well, it would be ironic, if human kind wipes itself out in a nuclear holocaust (which means dividing too much "undividable" atoms) and future life finds about our fate and our "most important idea"...
An (maybe) interesting fact is, that in Germany the notion „scientific method“, to my knowledge, is largely unknown. For example, there is no link in the english wikipedia entry you have given to the german wikipedia. When I studied physics in Germany no one ever used that term.
Indeed! This principle enables a civilization to discover all important things they need, on their own, in a reasonable speed.
Having said that, I see two areas in science where we have serious issues.
1) In some sciences, strict application of scientific method is not possible in large scale, due to unhealthy influence from the outside.
The classic example from the middle age is the research on astronomy and physics being suppressed and/or heavily influenced by the church and political leaders.
Today, one of the best examples is research on economy. That is heavily influenced (and sometimes even paid) by various types of financially strong bodies. This leads to heavily biased results. Also, suddenly results become acceptable even though they are based on almost comically far-fetched assumptions.
2) In some sciences, the scientific method cannot be applied in all rigor, due to the nature of the topic of research.
For example, complex psychological tests cannot be done with a huge amount of people, because you won't find enough people doing so volutarily. Also, you can't simply repeat an experiment on the same human being, because are are influenced from and learned from the previous experiment, so will react differently than an "unused" human being.
> Is atomic theory the most important idea in human history?
One might ask if the theory is a correct one though. If you look for something hard enough, chances are you will find it. Perhaps a more realistic model for the universe is as a continuous blob of stuff, with some more condensed clumps that we now call atoms.
Given the presumed goal to convey as much as possible in as few words as possible, to me it's a tie between atomic theory and evolution. Maybe we could cram both into a carefully worded sentence.
What an awful article, elementary school quality stuff drawn from mediocre school texts. It is littered with historical inaccuracies, caricatures of philosophical positions, and maudlin sentiments and hagiographic bromides that contradict the very atomism that it celebrates (such at the addled paeans to Epicurus or delusional hymns to some incoherent New Age-y "unity"). Democritus himself was not blind to at least a couple of the problems with his atomism. Why is there no mention of his own objections or the objections of others? Furthermore, materialism and rationalism are a highly problematic positions with serious objections against them. Quoting philosophical ignoramuses (and that's putting it nicely) is doing this author no favors.
Atomism is NOT the most important idea in history. Try getting a real education, dear author. You make a mockery of yourself.
[+] [-] imranq|9 years ago|reply
- RP Feynman, Vol I FLP
[+] [-] runeks|9 years ago|reply
Also, expecting all of future human kind -- more developed than we are now -- to value some sentence passed down by their oh-so-knowledgeable ancestors (us) seems a bit self-centered to me. A more intelligent future mankind will make their own discoveries, and not care much about any single sentence, regardless of who wrote it.
[+] [-] sfilargi|9 years ago|reply
My suggestion would be something that would promote free thought. "All men are equal and thought, ideas, and speech should never be punished" or something along these lines.
[+] [-] kahrkunne|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cel1ne|9 years ago|reply
If a future generation could start off being able to distinguish between their primal brain-functions and their thoughts, they might progress much faster than we do.
[+] [-] taneq|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wruza|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] austinl|9 years ago|reply
The Swerve is about Epicurus and Lucretius — who both helped popularize atomism 2000+ years ago. I never thought much of the philosophical implications of the world being made of up small, somewhat interchangeable parts — but this idea was at the core of Epicureanism, and had many implications.
If you're interested in learning more about the history of atomic theory, I'd highly recommend The Making of the Atomic Bomb.
It goes through the general history of science from the 1890s to the 1950s. There are brief biographies of people who played an important role — Ernest Rutherford, Enrico Fermi, Niels Bohr, and Albert Einstein (to name a few). Those were exciting times to be a physicist.
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/13707734-the-swerve
https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16884.The_Making_of_the_...
[+] [-] stcredzero|9 years ago|reply
A very, very good book. Also, mention should be made of Leo Szilard who was the first person that we know of to be aware of the nuclear chain reaction.
[+] [-] Retric|9 years ago|reply
Even just from a chemistry standpoint atoms don't fit atomism unless you treat electrons and the nucleus as separate things. The name was copied before we really understood what was going on.
[+] [-] rahelzer|9 years ago|reply
Atomic theory is just a special case of this insight.
[+] [-] drtillberg|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Slackwise|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reductionism#Theory_reductioni...
[+] [-] digi_owl|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kabdib|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] igravious|9 years ago|reply
Why?
Because it does many things at once.
1) Establishes natural biological causes for the transmission of diseases, thereby supplanting all sorts of other theories like hex-casting, bad omens, malevolent deities, and so on and so on
2) It says that there are things that can't be seen with the naked eye that share our biology, which opens the door to atomism anyway
3) It says that biology shares a common substrate which is a useful concept in itself
4) And practically speaking, if the information that microorganisms are disease vectors is coupled with the knowledge that certain routines such as cleaning and washing prevent said transmission and that other substances act as anti-bacterial agents then human and animal welfare is promoted and suffering is reduced allowing for more rapid societal progress
Therefore, I agree with you.
[+] [-] woodandsteel|9 years ago|reply
For thousands of years, people explained natural phenomena like disease through alleged supernatural causes. Then Greek science-philosophers attempted to explain them through thoroughly natural causes. They tried various ideas like everything is fire, but it was atomism that was successful, and it lead to modern science in general.
[+] [-] yabatopia|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] johndoe4589|9 years ago|reply
I'm not sure that's how most people understand it. "Tiny particles" still maintains the notion for most of us of a physical / materialist world when things truly exist, with some kind of an inner essence or structure or core, which we would associate to these "particles".
Se we think that a tree, or a car, is a bunch of those particles. And that we too are a bunch of particles. It doesn't shake the notion of physical existence so it has no profound impact on the way we see ourselves and the world and the way we behave.
It's very hard to let go of this view though. A very healthy and middle step that I wish was taught everywhere is to start looking at the world as an interdependent system, including us, and understand nothing truly exists in isolation.
[+] [-] pklausler|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] _m8fo|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] kahrkunne|9 years ago|reply
I guess we could tell them "communism is bad" but that's a bit too cold war even for me.
[+] [-] Bluestrike2|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Mizza|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] crottypeter|9 years ago|reply
I am a physicist by education and value the subject highly but let's not take things for granted. Where would we be without toilets? In the middle of a pile of ...
[+] [-] babyrainbow|9 years ago|reply
Please give me back my Indian closet. Why o Why did this abomination of an idea that is the european closet become so popular?
Is it just out of a need to feel "civilized" by sitting instead of squatting, while taking a shit?
[+] [-] tawayway|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] raattgift|9 years ago|reply
Too little of what was written in antiquity was accessible to the vast majority of people, and too much of it was lost.
We're left with fragments of early mathematical, literary, and historical works and our attempts to figure out what ordinary people were up to are almost stuck with just graffiti on the few hard surfaces that have survived.
[+] [-] unknown_apostle|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hutzlibu|9 years ago|reply
Well, it would be ironic, if human kind wipes itself out in a nuclear holocaust (which means dividing too much "undividable" atoms) and future life finds about our fate and our "most important idea"...
I would vote for Relativism instead.
[+] [-] WalterBright|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scientific_method
[+] [-] timnic|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] warrenpj|9 years ago|reply
What about the motto of the Royal Society: Nullius in verba; Take nobody's word for it.
[+] [-] vacri|9 years ago|reply
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_rule
[+] [-] vog|9 years ago|reply
Having said that, I see two areas in science where we have serious issues.
1) In some sciences, strict application of scientific method is not possible in large scale, due to unhealthy influence from the outside.
The classic example from the middle age is the research on astronomy and physics being suppressed and/or heavily influenced by the church and political leaders.
Today, one of the best examples is research on economy. That is heavily influenced (and sometimes even paid) by various types of financially strong bodies. This leads to heavily biased results. Also, suddenly results become acceptable even though they are based on almost comically far-fetched assumptions.
2) In some sciences, the scientific method cannot be applied in all rigor, due to the nature of the topic of research.
For example, complex psychological tests cannot be done with a huge amount of people, because you won't find enough people doing so volutarily. Also, you can't simply repeat an experiment on the same human being, because are are influenced from and learned from the previous experiment, so will react differently than an "unused" human being.
[+] [-] NotSammyHagar|9 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] fn1|9 years ago|reply
- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Betteridge's_law_of_headlines
[+] [-] amelius|9 years ago|reply
One might ask if the theory is a correct one though. If you look for something hard enough, chances are you will find it. Perhaps a more realistic model for the universe is as a continuous blob of stuff, with some more condensed clumps that we now call atoms.
[+] [-] lutusp|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] garyrob|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] sauronlord|9 years ago|reply
If it weren't for them, we wouldn't be here to ask the question.
[+] [-] lngnmn|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bobthechef|9 years ago|reply
Atomism is NOT the most important idea in history. Try getting a real education, dear author. You make a mockery of yourself.
[+] [-] sunstone|9 years ago|reply
[+] [-] posterboy|9 years ago|reply