What 20th Century innovations will people still be talking about in AD 2200?

It's a fraught question and perhaps it's too early to tell. Who in AD 707 would have predicted that a previous century Arabian warlord would still be an important influence 1300 years later? Islam was unquestionably the most far reaching innovation of the 7th Century.

My vote for the most consequential innovation of the 19th Century is evolution through natural selection. Charles Darwin will still be a name to conjure with in AD 2200.

Runners up for most influential innovation of the 19th century would be:

--The second law of thermodynamics (usually attributed to Sadi Carnot)

--Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism

We'll still be talking about the second law in AD 2200 and engineers will still be using Maxwell's equations.

But what about the 20th Century. It's tempting to mention general relativity (Einstein) or the quantum theory (Planck, Einstein, Bohr, Schrodinger, Heisenberg and many others). These were not merely scientific advances; they influenced the way we think.

Another possibility is Einstein's E = mc squared. If you live in Hiroshima or Nagasaki you have no doubt about the importance of what Stephen Hawking called the world's most famous equation.

But my vote goes to the start of the biotech revolution. I cannot think of any 20th Century innovation that will have more far reaching consequences. Names like Watson & Crick or Craig Venter will still be known to educated people in AD 2200.

Anyone else have any other ideas?

It's tempting to mention Hitler as an important influence. However, tragic as his advent was for those involved, he was at the end of the day a minor Teutonic warlord.

What was the most influential innovation of the 20th Century?

For that matter does anyone here dispute my nomination of Darwinian evolution as the most important innovation of the 19th Century?

What do OO readers think?

Perhaps by AD 2200 the bizarre cult of a serial killer called Che Guevara will have blossomed into a full-blown religion to rival Islam.

I await the 'resurrection' sightings of Che... along with Elvis.. and the glazed eyed "Revolutionaries" who, like social lemmings just caste themselves off the cliff of History and reason... plunging into a hopeless oblivion.. never to be remembered.

They fail to learn from Lenin... who discovered to his shock and disillusionment that 'the workers' were not that interested in revolution..so he decided to GIVE them one anyway...for their own good. 20,000,000 or so corpses later...(after all, he wasn't going to let all that internal exile, imprisonment and reading of revlutionary literature go to waste now was he)

In the wasteland of hopelessness, people reach out to the ever increasingly embellished memory of Che Guavera..the santized legend...

Perhaps those of us who know Christ, will be saying "Remember when that Steven wrote about what we might be thinking in 2200...back then in 2007" and look around at the glory of Heaven, the Light of the world and the good Shepherd

stevenlmeyer,

Thank you for raising a very interesting topic.

You mention Hitler and he obviously can't be denied. Hitler's contribution was to halt all ideas of a scientific utopia that had been held prior to WWII. This is discussed in Ernst Van Alphen "Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art, Literature, and Theory" - a scholarly work, extremely well researched and documented.

Perhaps we should also add "the Pill" - especially for those women in third world countries, whose life expectancy has now risen.

Thus, we cannot omit Carl Djerassi, emeritus professor of chemistry at Stanford University, and awarded the National Medal of Science for the first synthesis of a steroid oral contraceptive - “the Pill”. A member of the US National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences as well as many foreign academies. Djerassi also received some six other awards for different work and also the Priestly Medal.

A true renaissance man.

Apart from these achievements he has written works of “science in fiction” exploring such issues as personal conflicts faced by scientists in their quest for scientific knowledge - to date he has written five novels and six plays which have been produced in a number of countries. His work has been translated into ten languages.
Djerassi founded Djerassi Resident Artists Program near Woodside, California, of residences for artists in visual arts, literature, choreography and performing arts, and music, with over 1500 artists from this program.
www.djerassi.com

Quite a number of scientists not only write novels, but also plays, which have been produced. The use of serious theatre and science topics to not only inform the public but to raise issues such as science and technology’s impact on the modern world, debate and exploration of ethics has proven both important and popular overseas. Universities, such as CUNY’s “Science and the Arts”, and elsewhere in the US, Europe and the UK have established graduate centres facilitating this; indeed not only universities, but also academies, and theatre organisations themselves.

cont ...

Unfortunately, for those who have tried to introduce this into Australia, it lays dead in the water ...

I would certainly think that Norman Borlaug's legacy would vastly outweigh most others. Whether he will be more famous then than now is a mystery of course, but then many people are more noted well after their deaths when it realised what they have done for the world.

Not a hope of Charlie Darwin being remembered in 2200. Mankind will well and truly be involved in Christs Millenium Kingdom by then. Look...at the signs of the times. A great increase in wars, earthquakes, famines and diseases just before The Lord gets back (Luke chpater 21). A great increase in crime just before Jesus gets back (2 Timothy 3). A microchip ID system for the right hand or forehead (Revelation 13:16-18/14:9-11) before Jesus gets back. The microchip propaganda is loose on the earth right now! I believe Charlie Darwin was once a born-again christian who later went off, through someone elses back advice. A monkeys uncle be Charlie.

Bad advice that was. Not back advice.

What about the mathematician, Paul Erdos, who founded the field of discrete mathematics, which is used in computer science. His work has enabled deeper research into many fields of enquiry.

I also agree that Charles Darwin is a particularly significant figure.

It never fails to amaze me that creationists cannot see that evolution is much grander and a more "divine" theory, than their "puppetry" beliefs.

For/from the 19th Century -Karl Marx:
He had major input into the experiments in the Soviet Union , China , Kampuchea ( & all the results there from) but he had an even more long -lasting input into Western & Third World academic & political thinking . He probably did more than anyone else to repackage failure & envy as positive foibles. After Marx if some individual, class or nation had more than another, they could only have gained it by ‘exploitation‘. In the 20th –21st Century world, it became the norm when assessing those less-well-off to see them as victims, with no responsibility for their plight. Leading political, religious & academic figures who espoused causes far from Marxism, regularly used Marxist arguments & terminology.

For the 20th Century -Henry Ford:
Apart from making speedy & cheap transport accessible to the masses -and influencing their business & social activities/opportunities. Consider his influence indirectly, via the need to sustain reliable oil sources & how it has shaped world policies & developments.

Also for the 20th Century-Bill Gates :
He did for computers, what Henry Ford did for motor vehicles.

But my prize goes to the inventors of the internet -Vinton Cerf, Robert Khan & those who did most to popularise it Larry Page Sergey Brin etc etc.
They set in motion currents which I believe will see humanity ultimately redefining itself. Following on from their activities we will need to reassess what it means to be conscious -what it means to be human.

Danielle,

I completely agree with you about creationists. The real story is so much more magnificent, awe-inspiring really, than the junk science they propagate.

Modern discrete mathematics actually traces its roots to Leopold Kronecker – 1823 - 1891. He made the famous remark:

God created the integers, all else is the work of man.

See:

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Kronecker.html

However the ancient Greeks hated what they called "incommensurables" – numbers that could not be expressed as the ratio of two integers. The square root of 2 REALLY upset them.

Perhaps people will still remember Andrew Wiles who cracked Fermat's last theorem. See:

http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Biographies/Wiles.html

Bugsy,

I fear that Norman Borlaug's achievements, great as they were, will be eclipsed by biotech. My guess is that before the middle of this century we shall be creating plants that are able to tolerate drought and poor soils, that can make use of the extra CO2* in the atmosphere and that require no pesticides and much less fertiliser.

*Most modern photosynthesising plants cannot make use of additional atmospheric CO2. But some, like certain strains of South African corn, can. Attempts are under way to genetically engineer other crops such as rice to take advantage of rising CO2 levels. This raises yields while slowing the rise of CO2.

Horus,

I agree that the internet is one of the 20th Century innovations people will still be talking about in AD 2200.

Marx?

Perhaps he will join the league of villains – like Muhammed and Guevarra – that foolish humans worship.

Personally I think that Nietzsche will outlast Marx. For what its worth I googled charles darwin, friedrich nietzsche and karl marx. Darwin and Nietzche were almost level pegging at about 3.2 million hits. Marx was below the 3 million mark.

Anybody else got any suggestions?

What about the invention of the transistor (Brattain, Bardeen & Shockley) that made cheap computing and the internet possible?

See:

http://www.pbs.org/transistor/background1/events/miraclemo.html

Who was the greatest thinker of the millennium that ended in AD 2000? My vote to Darwin but, perhaps, Galileo? It's tempting to vote for Newton but I think Galileo is ahead.

stevenlmeyer,

Thank you for correcting me regarding discrete mathematics - and especially for the link. I confess that science is not my field of expertise; however, I believe it extremely important that modern society be knowledgeable about science as it becomes increasingly pertinent to our future.

None could contest your “biotech”.

I again agree with you about Nietzsche outlasting Marx. Being so misrepresented and adopted by the Nazis, he has left many suspicious of his philosophy - yet he was so utterly opposed to National Socialism and all it stood for. It is indeniable that his philosophy influenced other great thinkers.

Unfortunately his work loses something from being translated from German into English; as in other languages, some subtleties are not easily translated into English. Unfortunately I do not read German.

Nietzsche’s philosophy obviously failed him during his disastrous love affair with Lou Andreas-Salome: “When thou goest to woman, take thy whip.” But certainly, he wasn’t the first great man where such has happened.

As you have introduced Ancient Greeks, perhaps we can go back to the Pre-Socratic period (7th - 5th century BCE). The Ionian school of natural philosophy founded by Thales of Miletus, considered to be the first school of science. Then there were the Pythagorean Brotherhood founded by Pythagoras of Samos and the Atomists school.

Democritus (470-380 B.C.) expanded the concept of atoms that was introduced by his teacher Leucippus and showed that atoms are the basis of all form of matter.

The Eleatic school produced, among many philosophers, Parmenides the father of pure ontology