X-Message-Number: 14467 From: "john grigg" <> Subject: what propels technological growth and what could have been? Date: Wed, 13 Sep 2000 23:04:00 GMT John de Rivaz wrote: Another point is the fact that if humanity had single mindedly created our present technological society, instead of fighting inter tribal wars, then how many thousands of years ago would we be at our present level? (end) I have to disagree with you. I think the "inter-tribal wars" have in fact been a major factor in our development of technology. Whether you are talking the ancient world, medieval, or especially the modern age, improved technology gave the upper-hand in warfare and so the incentive was there to seek advancement. European culture's dominance of the rest of the world came in large part to what was learned by these "inter-tribal wars." China for awhile did have the technological lead, but Europeans(for better or worse) had the social aggressiveness to use advanced technology to dominate resources and peoples worldwide. World war two certainly brought about so many advances in areas such as(to name a few things) rocketry, electronics and even medicine. I don't think advances would have come nearly as fast without that war which mobilized huge resources for scientific research. I remember Carl Sagan writing in Cosmos that if only the Persian empire had not taken over the little Greek Ionian colonies, that we might be around five centuries more technologically advanced then we are. That is because supposedly the scientific method and accompanying research spawned by it was being developed there. The Persians squashed this creative spark and the world is less for it now. But is it? Alternative reality fantasy novels are very popular for obivious reasons. What if we had this level of technology in the fifteenth century? That might not be a good thing. Of course, the fifteenth century we know of might never had been if science had taken a leap forward with the Ionian Greeks. Perhaps a form of Greek or Roman culture would still straddle the earth... I still think that we ourselves have barely had the maturity to handle the powerful technologies at our command. Our ethical development as a species has been a slow one until fairly recently. The ways of ancient or medieval man with advanced technology could have easily destroyed them. But, we only have our world's time stream to know of, at least for now.... John Grigg _________________________________________________________________________ Get Your Private, Free E-mail from MSN Hotmail at http://www.hotmail.com. Share information about yourself, create your own public profile at http://profiles.msn.com. Rate This Message: http://www.cryonet.org/cgi-bin/rate.cgi?msg=14467