Long News: Ideas of the 2nd Millennium

The Encyclopedia Foundation recently posted a list of the top five inventions of the 2nd millennia. But we made mention in that article that a list of the top five ideas would have merit as well.

And like the inventions, we are not going to list out every cool, important, or even ground shaking idea, but rather the large and broad ideas that had many ramifications and from which other ideas could come about. One could speak of the ideas of 1,000 different religious opinions, several dozen of which were even ground shaking. Or one could speak on the granddaddy idea that one is allowed religious opinions. While the Encyclopedia Foundation listed the most important invention as “Number One” in another article, those inventions were not necessarily listed in order past that.

In this list, we will tentatively list the first one as the number one idea. However, while both ideas three and five are derived from it, we suspect that idea five, derived as it is, will become increasingly important within a century or so. More so than the idea it sprang from.

Ideas:

1. The re-introduction and refinement of the Scientific Method in the 11th, 12th and 16th century. There are many contenders as to the “name” of the person, from Alhazen and Aquinas to Roger Bacon and Renee Descartes. But the importance of the idea is unquestioned. Our technological culture depends upon the continued gathering and systemizing the data we can gather from our observations of our universe. And applying it to increase our mastery over the environment, and to develop better and cheaper technologies. (The Encyclopedia Foundation notes that it was not until the printing press that the idea stayed around and was spread far and wide.)

2. A man may know and commune with his Creator directly, 15th century through 20th century. We could credit Martin Luther or Thomas Jefferson, in truth many contributed to this idea. That one could personally have a religion and a relation with a god but not be subservient to a religious hierarchy was an important breakthrough with several large ramifications. By acknowledging that how a man worshipped was his business, it led to the acceptance of those who chose not to worship any god at all. By separating religion from governmental control or societal pressure, it gave rise to the idea that a law superior to governmental edicts or cultural mores was possible. Competition was thus introduced to the way we establish rules, and Earthly governments and social movements were forced to compete with mankind’s various conceptions of “heavenly justice”. Freedom from a specific worship, and freedom not to worship also opened up more scientific inquiry, and more scientists felt free to publish findings that in other times would have got them killed. It also had an effect on the religions themselves, as with many competing types the message had to be one of peace and light, not hellfire and brimstone, so as to attract “customers” who could now attend or not as they liked.
3. Measurements from the 13th century to the 20th century. From the clock measuring time, to the French developing the Metric system, to various international bodies of scientists adopting uniform measurements of every phenomena, this has made possible a far more rapid advance of science than would otherwise have taken place. Not to mention making a global economy possible. It also made things more rigorous and precise, which means that the words and symbols we use to describe reality more closely resemble that which they are describing. None of these measurements caught on quickly, all had opposition, but they all were regarded as good afterwards. Regrettably the trend toward standardization petered out before various languages, alphabets and number system could be done.

4. Re-introduction of Rule of Law. In the sense of the law applying to all, even the leader, this was a long lost concept. Credit is generally given to the Magna Carta of the 13th century. Not always followed, slow to catch on even in England where it originated, it had many far reaching effects. One was that eventually almost every nation on Earth would adopt an official “charter” or “constitution” which – at least in theory – would demark the limits of governmental authority. It may be noted that such boundaries are routinely ignored, however, the mere existence of boundaries does tend to slow any current generation of leaders inclined to go too far.

5. The assembly line of the 16th, 18th, 19th, and 20th centuries AND the interchangeability of parts. Not reaching peak until the 20th century, this idea has had a profound effect on how we do business, how we work, and how we think about things. One large effect is that it was able to drop the unit price of almost any manufactured good to the point where the vast majority of any given market could afford it. It also allowed the employment of vast numbers of unskilled laborers who could be easily trained to perform one simple repetitive task, thus transforming a “peasant” into an integral part of the assembly line itself. Indeed, a chief complaint was that it dehumanized the workers in such an environment (they were the first “interchangeable parts”), and no small part of various corporation’s push for robotics is to remove the human from the assembly line so as to smooth out persistent “differences”. The assembly line (which actually subsumes interchangeability) as an idea was also incorporated into all aspects of corporate life, streamlining, refining and then laying out definitive “hand books” and “manual of procedures” for how all aspects of running a business would be done. This standardizing of every work environment there is, from factories to farms to offices is made possible in part by increased advances in robotics and computers. But most of all, it is the idea alone that does it, not the machines themselves.

Example: A loan officer for a bank 100 years ago – or even 50 years ago – was a position of great responsibility. But also of high intelligence and intuition. Now they are line office workers, who still need to be responsible, but no longer need be highly intelligent or intuitive. Their job has been standardized, they accept the loan application, plug the numbers into the computer, and the policy book (on the computer) will tell them “yes” or “no” and “how much”. They are “interchangeable” in that any one of a given level of education and social class can do it. So much so that those who hire them have their own procedures to follow, and the interview is simply choosing amongst the pool that the manual permits them to employ.

Currently, the complaint is no longer that it “dehumanizes” those involved. The complaint is increasingly that there are less and less people involved. A corporation used to have many tiers from the Board of Directors, the Executives, the Middle Managers, the Office Staff and the Line Workers. Now they are more likely to have a board, fewer executives, even fewer middle managers, plenty of office staff following policy manuals and far less line workers (but far more robots and machines and computers). Where that ultimately leads, time will tell. It is notable that the only thing not fully “standardized” in our machine culture is the people. Yet.