Human Innovation and Ingenuity and whether it has changed - Split from How Newton ....

[Dekan]

 

Newtonian gravity includes, predicts and explains elliptical orbits, your assertion that it doesn't remains false. In you pdf I see no maths, therefore there can be no predictions. It is not a theory.

 

Humans hare evolved in very specific circumstances, why would the humanbrain therefore be capable of intuitive thought about concepts so remote from its everyday experiences?

 

 

It must be some kind of cultural thing? I mean, the ancient Romans had the same brains as we have today. But they never invented steam engines or started an Industrial Revolution.

 

Also, and this seems quite startling, in 1902 humans didn't know how to make heavier than air machines. Yet just 38 years later.... look what was going on! Spitfires, Me-109's, B-17's, jet-fighter prototypes under test ... and by 1959, the US B-70 "Valkyrie" intercontinental strategic bomber - flying at 2,000 mph, 70,000 feet high, to drop a 20 MT H-bomb anywhere in the Soviet Union!

 

Can all that amazing progress have been merely genetic? It seems a bit incredible!

[Klaynos]

I think this is probably worthy of it's own thread, as opposed to dicussing it here.

[cladking]

I find it fascinating that Newton studied the Great Pyramid ostensibly to find the diameter of the earth for his theory of gravitation but it's hardly noted that he apparently learned Syriac so he could translate the Emerald Tablets of Hermes. I believe if his translation were better he would have even discovered one of his laws of motion in this source!

 

Translation of Issac Newton c. 1680.

8) It ascends from ye earth to ye heaven again it desends to ye earth and receives ye force of things superior inferior.

 

A proper translation based on the literal meaning of the Pyramid Texts (12th century Latin);

 

8) With great capacity it ascends from earth to heaven. Again it descends to earth, and takes back the power of the above and the below.

 

This concerns the storage of kinetic energy as potential energy and its release.

 

http://www.the-book-of-thoth.com/content-157.html

 

The ancients knew much more about such things than Newton. It's difficult to know how this ancient knowledge was preserved but the Emerald Tablets have been traced back no further than the Caliphate Al Mamuum who perhaps not coincidentally, was the first person to break into the Great Pyramid. There is speculation he removed the granite lid of the so called sarcophagus. Perhaps it was engraved here and he had a means to translate it though there's no good evidence anyone could translate ancient Egyptian much earlier. Even Horapollo (four centuries earlier) in the 5th century AD was completely unable to translate.

[imatfaal]

Split from original topic. And lets not concentrate on pyramids too much please

 

1. The ancient europeans did use steam power to a small extent - but also had very cheap man-power (slaves) which meant a search for easy and affordable power was not that important

 

2. The romans did have an industrial revolutions - but as it was so closely tied in with their military we tend to subsume it into the study of their conquests.

 

The capacity for abstract though in the ancient greek philosophers has been barely equalled in all the subsequent ages.

[Przemyslaw.Gruchala]

It must be some kind of cultural thing? I mean, the ancient Romans had the same brains as we have today. But they never invented steam engines or started an Industrial Revolution.

 

To make invention there is (usually) required 'need' for it.

 

f.e. some nation is living on island, separated from other lands, at some time of their history they will need to invent boat. Like Greeks and Great Britain people.

 

At modern times we usually have financial need to optimize something.

More automation means less people working on some task,

less money needed to hire them, and higher income for owners of business.

 

Romans had cheap slaves.

If they would have to pay for their work,

inventions and optimizations would appear quicker.

[Klaynos]

Most people seem confident with technologies that they've grown up with. So yes, there must be some cultural influence there but modern science contains lots of counterintuitive results that you cannot grow up observing because they do not occur in our every day world. They are the ones that still tend to cause people problems, understandable so.