DARK AGES 2.0

 

Humanity’s incredible advances largely resulted from the benefits of Specialization and, much later, the Scientific Method.  Especially in the US, a growing rejection of both threatens society.

Members of the first primitive Homo species of Eastern Africa some two million years ago (Homo rudolfensis) would likely have had no way to comprehend the lifestyles of their later kin Homo heidelbergensis.  By approximately 300,000 years ago, our ancestors such as H. heidelbergensis had mastered the use of fire and advanced hunting tools to increase their caloric intake and improve their chances of survival.  Larger brain sizes were one result, and they led to evidence of complex thinking such as art, religion, and language in succeeding millennia. 

H. heidelbergensis and its descendants Homo neandertalensis and Homo sapiens famously lived by hunting and gathering; hunting both small and the largest land animals of the time, and gathering a wide variety of berries, tubers, grasses, and nuts. Men, women, and children participated equally in these activities, as well as the preparation of food and (later) crafting clothes for protection from the cold.  But at some widely argued time – as far back as a million years, or perhaps only about 15,000 years ago – most Homo societies practiced the first version of Specialization: one based on gender.  Generally larger and more powerful males did the majority of hunting dangerous animals, while child-rearing females stayed closer to home and engaged in the safer gathering of foods from plants, along with food preparation.  Human populations, along with their ability to challenge Nature, consequently expanded because each sex was relatively more productive at their given roles. 

Fast forward to 10,000 years ago, with H. heidelbergensis and H. neandertalensis long gone and Homo sapiens literally the last man (and woman) standing.  By this time the domestication of both plants and animals was in full swing.  Hunting and gathering foods was gradually replaced by farming and herding animals, likely beginning in Anatolia (modern Turkey).  The need to move around in search of food declined, stable communities developed, and early civilization as we define it soon followed.  Egypt and Sumeria are credited as having the first advanced civilizations, complete with cities, pharaohs/kings, class divisions, and a much wider variety of Specialization.  Most people were farmers, but there were also builders, merchants, craftspeople, administrators, soldiers, priests, nobles, teachers, and others.  As in the earlier version, Specialization increased efficiency and the amount of goods available.  

It also increased knowledge and the free time to develop new and better ways of doing things.  Writing systems, inventions, and scientific discoveries ensued over the centuries in the Middle East and Egypt, but also in India and China, and later – in the Americas.  Civilizations overall became more impressive, life became more complex, and material wealth grew, though the benefits accrued mostly to a small majority: the ruling classes and priests. Progress ebbed and flowed for millennia, three steps forward, two steps back-wise, until the19th century, when Specialization took a big leap forward thanks in part to Adam Smith’s observations on the topic in 1776’s The Wealth of Nations.  The American system of manufacturing linked Smith’s division of labor with interchangeable parts and mechanization, causing production to sky-rocket and birthing modern consumerism.  

But hold up; we’ve bypassed the second great source of societal gains – the Scientific Method. 

Arising in Europe in the 17^th century, its roots actually go back as far as the earliest civilizations in Egypt and the Middle East, thousands of years earlier.  Discoveries and advancements in mathematics, astrology/astronomy, medicine, science, engineering, and government were passed onto, and improved upon, century after century by the Greeks and then the Romans.  Until the fall of the Rome’s Western Empire and centuries of intellectual regression.    

During Europe’s Dark Ages starting about 500 A.D., learning and functional government collapsed; former knowledge was forgotten.  In the former province of Britannia, Anglo-Saxons marveled at Rome’s ability to build paved roads and formidable stone forts that still stood centuries later, but which they themselves had no idea how to replicate. The ability to read and write disappeared, save for the nobility and priestly classes.  Science and logic faded into the mists of ignorance, with societies now guided by myths, superstitions, and whatever priests told them.  In Europe, at least. 

In the Middle East and N. Africa, Rome’s Eastern (or Byzantine) Empire lived on, knowledge intact and progress still possible.  Contact with Asian civilizations continued via the Silk Road between China and the Middle East, as it had since early Roman times.  The interchange of information and ideas naturally increased knowledge in those places, even as Europe backslid.  Islam’s conquests of the 7^th and 8^th centuries accelerated the area’s search for enlightenment and reputation for wisdom; Arab schools, scientists, and mathematicians became arguably the best in the world even while Europe flopped about as an intellectual backwater.  

The first big crack in Europe’s wall of ignorance came in the year 1095, when Pope Urban II called for a Crusade to support the Byzantine Empire’s fight against Islamic forces.  Knights and assorted supporters from across Europe responded en masse, seeking glory and papal indulgences to exculpate their sins.  Upon crossing from Constantinople (modern Istanbul) into Anatolia, and then down into the Levant, Western warriors encountered their first Muslim resistance – and exposure to the advanced state of the Islamic world and the luxury products available there.  Those that survived the journeys and battles returned home and spread the word.  Subsequent Crusades, lasting until the late-13^th century, added to Europeans’ awareness of wonders of the East, and the benefits of learning, open-mindedness, and trading.  

Nicolo and Maffeo Polo were among the merchants who became wealthy from accommodating new European tastes by trading with Middle Eastern Muslims.  That led to the famed travels of their son/nephew Marco Polo along the arduous Silk Road between 1271 and 1295.  Word returned with Polo about the riches of China and nations along the Road, sparking dreams of easier, cheaper ways to access Asian treasures.  Constantinople finally fell to the (Muslim) Ottoman Empire in 1453, which ended Europe’s access to key trade routes, and sparking an Age of Exploration to find alternatives.  Its initial objective was to find oceanic routes to Asia, but of course voyages such as those by Bartolomeu Dias, Christopher Columbus, and Ferdinand Magellan ultimately resulted in additional consequences that changed the world forever.   

Besides exposure to Asian knowledge in the 12th, 13th, and 14th centuries, other caused added to  the rebirth of art, learning, and an overall renewal of interest in the world around Europeans that arose in the 15^th century: The Renaissance. This rebirth was centered in Italy, where wealthy families that succeeded Venice’s Polos - such as the Medici, Visconti, and Sforza - funded great artworks and supported centers of learning such as the University of Pisa, where Galileo Galilei eventually studied.  Greek and Roman philosophy and scholarship were again the guiding lights, as critical thinking replaced the model of sheep following the blind.  The mechanical clock, microscope, and telescope were invented, Earth was disproven as the center of the universe, as growing knowledge spread aided by eyeglasses and the printing press – to name a few of the age’s new contributions. 

Building on the early work of those such as Persia’s Abu Rayhan Muhammad ibn Ahmad al-Biruni, England’s Roger Bacon had already set the foundation for what became known as the Scientific Method in the 13^th century.  It guided a better understanding of the world through 1) scientific inquiry based on 2) rigorous skepticism of assumptions, then 3) creating a hypothesis through inductive reasoning, 4) testing it through experiments and statistical analysis, based on facts and logic, and finally 5) adjusting or discarding the hypothesis based on the results.  Former false beliefs were disproven, replaced by new natural laws and verified truths, creating a new Scientific Revolution in Europe.  Francis Bacon (no relation to Roger Bacon), Galileo, and Isaac Newton were in the forefront of this movement, which gained momentum as the 1500s led into the 17th century. 

The Church and royal authority were the losers, as their word alone was no longer enough to establish truth, leading to the Enlightenment, or Age of Reason.  This Enlightenment period featured an intellectual and philosophical movement focused on a range of social ideas based on knowledge learned by rational thought and empiricism. 

It basically applied the questioning and attempts to prove/disprove ideas in much the same way as the Scientific Method had been applied to physical constructs.  Political ideals such as liberty, progress, toleration, and the separation of church and state were its primary bailiwick.  The publication of René Descartes’ famous maxim, Cogito, ergo sum ("I think, therefore I am") of 1637, and Isaac Newton's Principia Mathematica of 1687 are often credited as kicking off this new Age, inspiring the thoughts and writings of those such as John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau on the rights of men and the best forms of government. 

The new United States of America was built on those ideas, as was the French Revolution a few years later and countless other rejections of the absolute power of kings and colonialism throughout Europe and Latin America in the 19^th century.  An Industrial Revolution evolved out of the Scientific Revolution, as steam power drove factories and then railroads and steamships.  Internal combustion powered by gasoline engines followed, expanding possibilities even further. In the United States, blessed with immense territory and resources thanks to Manifest Destiny, the heady mix of the freedoms from an Enlightened government and the Industrial Revolution drove production and prosperity to unimaginable heights.  The US ended up with the world’s largest economy by the turn of the 20^th century, and was soon to usher in the Age of Consumerism.  American men and women, educated and specializing in distinct fields, continued to innovate using the Scientific Method, producing marvels one after another: automobiles, radios, televisions, computers, the Internet, time-saving and leisure products beyond count – all affordable for virtually everyone – along with weaponry to protect the homeland and American democracy.  These all existed side by side with the highest standard of living ever known. 

Scientists argue that we are now living in the Anthropocene Epoch.  Most believe that it started in 1945, with the first use of atomic power, or 1950, with the start of a dramatic increase in human activity affecting the planet (a.k.a. the Great Acceleration).  https://education.nationalgeographic.org

The televisions, computers, Internet, and cell phones of our current Information Age are a key subset of this Epoch.  For better and for worse, we live in this world thanks to centuries of advances provided by critical thinking, science, Enlightenment ideas, and specialization. 

SOURCES OF AMERICA’S GREATNESS

A belief in education to produce citizens who could make intelligent decisions, and experts who could be relied on in specialized fields. 

A belief in science and the Scientific Method to guide personal decisions and the nation’s path. 

Adhering to the Constitution, with its three equal branches and separation of church and state. 

Rule by the majority, with protections for minorities. 

A belief in social progress, away from outdated ideas and toward a fuller realization of the Constitution, where ALL men (and women) are equal; not just white landowning men, or just white men, or just men, or just straight men and women. 

 

America’s foundation is fraying, however, endangering the country, its people, and its place in history.

•  The highly-educated are being devalued, mocked and sometimes threatened.  Book bans are back.
•  The opinions of trained scientists and other specialists are brushed aside, some even being made illegal to express.  (Think: Climate change in Florida)
•  The ability to think critically and make sound decisions is being replaced by relying on deceptive social media and public figures who spread irrational claims and proven falsehoods.  We are told to believe a pathological liar rather than what we see or read, and 100 million Americans do.
•  All three branches of government are being attacked: Congress has become polarized and ineffective; the Supreme Court is unabashedly partisan as never before; a President fights the peaceful transfer of power, and three short years later is poised to be voted in again - this time as basically a dictator. 
• Hard-earned progress on individual freedoms is reversed, e.g. reproductive and civil rights.  One of two major political parties seeks to create an unconstitutional “White Christian-Nationalist”  government, and meanwhile threatens revenge on, and even violence against, opponents.
•  Minority views on a variety of critical issues are imposed on the majority, via wrongfully appointed judges and unconstitutional restrictions of voting rights. 

All of the above are more than partisan claims.  All can be fully documented using proven facts and proper logic – pillars of the Scientific Method that took the West out of the Dark Ages and eventually into the modern world.  Similarly, those with specialized knowledge in crucial fields are being ignored if not outright attacked, rather than being heeded.  These assaults, if not sufficiently countered, threaten to reverse social structures that trace back to our Enlightenment roots, and undermine the benefits of principles that initiated the Scientific Revolution.  Enlightenment-spawned principles of government, key freedoms and rights, defenses against deadly diseases, and the ability to minimize the catastrophic consequences of Climate Change – these are among the catastrophes we face. As a result of rejecting what made the West and our country great, America risks backtracking into something akin to a Dark Ages 2.0.