Edit: We survived an ice age and we’re very highly adaptable. Plus, we will hold on to some percentage of technical knowledge that will help us adapt faster.

  • crapwittyname@feddit.uk
    11·
    29 days ago

    If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis 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.

    Richard Feynman

    So, if, during the apocalypse, you have access to a means of passing on a message to the poor bastards who have to live in the New World, it should be this:

    “Everything is made of atoms”

    • gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
      4·
      29 days ago

      nah, the idea that everything is made from atoms is not very useful for most practical applications. you can even build fully-functional wind turbines, lightning bulbs and probably even telegraph networks without ever understanding anything about atoms.

    • TempermentalAnomaly@lemmy.world
      4·
      29 days ago

      Atomism existed for millenia before we investigated this possibilty to such a degree that we were able leverage that concept to change the world. Its goes back to the 8th century BCE in India and the 5th century BCE in Greece. In both cases, people engaged in it imaginatively and thinking was applied. But its reach was small and only effected a small group who weren’t able to make a large societal impact.

      Even in the 17th century, when there was a revival of interest in epicurean atomism, it was actively competing with corpulism. Hell, Mendelev, creator of the periodic table, didn’t believe in atoms. That’s sort of crazy to me!

      Dalton, whose atomic weight was leveraged by Mendeleev and the rest rejected, posited what later became the basis of modern atomic theory. Einstein further developed this with Brownian motion describing how atoms effected the seemingly random movements of pollen. Perrin later verifies this experimentally in 1908.

      So more than just the idea, it’s the culture of inquiry, debate, skepticism, investigation, and, eventually, experimentation that is important. Not just the idea. I guess, if I were to preserve anything, it would be that culture. No sentence can do that. But people’s radiance can.

      * Disclaimer: this is a quick gloss of a long timeframe. A lot of details were omitted.