THE GREATEST INVENTIONS OF THE PAST 2000 YEARS

This collection of short essays (or assays) edited by John Brockman is one of my favourite books. A casual browse will provoke agreement, disagreement, thought provocation, incredulity. (How could anyone name the Gatling Gun as the greatest invention of the last two millennia?) Some will say this sort of question can’t be answered. Of course it can be answered! The whole point is the variety of answers proffered. And everyone attempting an answer - with a few exceptions – is either a professional scientist or academic, or author of substance, several of them world famous in their field. No bloggers, thank God.

The only major quibble is why cut the survey short at the start of the common era (as it now called). This chronological imitation cuts out the axeled wheel, harnessing of fire, crop cultivation, primitive weapons (eg club, spear,  bow and arrow), canals and waterways, dramatic production, plus the alphabet and language itself. Arguably, the alphabet and language are the greatest inventions in the whole of human history. In the 2000 years timeframe stipulated the necessary omission of either the alphabet or language prompts the naming of printing either of the Chinese kind or the Gutenberg kind. Printing is one of the major candidates, receiving six nominations.

Before moving to consider the extraordinary range of answers, let us consider what an invention is. When I was about eight years old I became interested - even enthralled - to discover the difference between an invention (eg the aeroplane) and a discovery which was usually a previously unknown place or country - New Zealand, for example. An invention customarily implies some form of technology, a machine or mechanical contrivance. However, some of the answers in Brockman’s book ingeniously include concepts that benefit humanity or extend its powers without being in the usual sense an invention. Some of them are philosophical principles (let it be noted that language involved no technological devices). Non-technological answers include: social structures that enable inventions, the information economy, philosophical scepticism, Christianity and Islam, the interrogative sentence, free will, the idea that all people are created equal, the idea of an idea, the human ego. In my view, none of these concepts are inventions in the usual understanding of that term. If you are of a religious mind, religion is neither invention nor discovery but a matter of revelation. Les Murray, considered Australia’s leading poet (his reputation is less affirmed in New Zealand), has written:

Religions are poems. They concert
our daylight and dreaming mind, our
emotions, instinct, breath and native gesture

into the only whole thinking: poetry.

Murray is a Catholic so his contention that religions are poems is a positive one. Another poet (whose name eludes memory) made the same point but in counter reaction to the idea that religions are in some sense objective and true.

Okay. Before we get into the obvious “heavies” – printing, electricity, varieties of mathematics, computers (all strong candidates), and science itself which all get between 5 and 8 votes let us consider some of the more offbeat answers. Biologist Jeremy Cherfas chose the basket without which, “You cannot have a gathering society... no home and hearth, no division of labour, no humanity.” I don’t agree it’s the greatest invention of our era but it’s an intriguingly non-typical answer. Starts off okay, then moves to hyperbole.

Other unconventional answers include, reading glasses the flag, board games, Thermos bottle, Gatling gun, the eraser, and chairs and stairs. While there is a case for reading glasses (assistance to short-sighted Middle Ages monks carrying the burden of western culture), the others seem, quite frankly, either implausible, inadequate, inaccurate, trivial, or perverse.  Nicholas Humphrey, a theoretical psychologist says that reading glasses “prevented the world from being ruled by people under forty.” This last witticism is fatuous because many of the world leaders were illiterate, regardless of age. The flag was picked by Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi (did his parents invent the name?), a professor of management, because it is was a “symbol of belonging which millions will follow to ruins or victory,” His choice is fallacious for people do not go to war because of a flag but because they were persuaded to, told to, ordered to, recruited or volunteer to fight for either money or patriotism. Board games sounds lightweight but the case for them (that is, western Chess and eastern Go) is named because they are the basis for mathematical models and the refutation of our destinies being at the mercy of whimsical gods (less convincing) are well argued by John Henry Holland, a professor of computer science.

Leon Lederman, who won the Nobel Prize for physics, picked printing first then the Thermos bottle but gave no reasons for the latter. I cannot think of any reason that would justify such a trivial choice. (Tongue in cheek?) The Gatling Gun was picked by Bob Rafaelson, a highly gifted film director (Five Easy Pieces, the King of Marvin Gardens). Why not the cannon? For hundreds of years prior to the Gatling gun, it lay behind military dominance. (And, by the way, the atomic bomb was picked twice.) In any event, the sense of the term/question “greatest” would surely not include the eraser. We all know what a mistake is – you don’t need an eraser to deal with it - you can ignore it or cross it out. Chairs and Stairs were selected by Karl Sabbagh, a science writer and television producer. He is aware that these were invented before 2000 years ago but felt annoyed that other obvious choices had already been made – the Indo-Arabic number system, computers, contraceptive pill. Sabbagh argues that stairs allows for a more objective view and that chairs enables eyes, arms and hands to be free to do additional tasks. A more impressive choice than I initially thought but alas outside the stipulated time period. How about the axeled wheel, the alphabet and writing?

A couple of additional seemingly odd choices – the identification of the sense of smell and the mirror. Marvin Minsky, a mathematician and computer scientist says, ‘that the smell of a chemical was not  necessarily a property of that chemical but some related chemical in the form of a gas, which therefore could reach the nose of the observer.’ He speculates that this insight transformed the incoherent field of chemistry into the great science of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. I fail to understand the logic of this conclusion and therefore am not inclined to accept it. The mirror? Can he be serious? Tor Norretranders, a science writer, argues that the mirror allows of viewing oneself as a daily habit. And more importantly – the invention of the mirror is closely related to the problem of free will and the invention of the modern human ego. Excuse me? He argues more shrewdly that the mirror enabled the viewing of oneself through the eyes of others. Hang on a minute – does not the mirror allow the viewing of oneself? If you don’t have servants to make yourself up - valets etc - you could then check your own makeup. Clearly the mirror caused the French revolution for it enabled everyone to think they were able to be democratically viewed by others (joke). I’m sure the impact of the mirror on the common person was less important. If you work the land all day is your appearance that important?  In any case how about the camera and the cinema as ways of being viewed by others?

Another significant group were technological developments that assisted travel - the caravel, the rudder, flying machines, space travel. Several choices centred on science centrally - organised science, science, the idea of continued scientific and technological progress, the evolution of technology, the scientific method, (twice). Or education: the university, universal schooling.

An interesting divide was between the modernists who picked something very recent – the computer, the contraceptive pill, genetic engineering, the atomic bomb, the green revolution, and the majority who picked something more historical – prior to the twentieth century. Anything prefixed by tele- is a good bet – television (twice), telescope, telecommunications. I’m surprised no one picked the telegraph which enabled communication at a distance with rapidity (smoke signals etc did it more slowly). A system was developed in France during the Napoleonic era which allowed of semaphore communication from hill to hill by a series of metal towers – smoke signalling without the fire. This elaborate system of metal towers became instantly obsolete with the invention of the telegraph. The telegraph also inspired the development of the modern newspaper’s capacity to tell us the news with greater alacrity rather than tardiness. Imagine how long it would take Cook’s discoveries to be relayed back to England prior to the telegraph!

Printing was my initial choice (and the immediate choice of several mature aged friends that I asked).  After all I am a writer, and relatively few books existed prior to Gutenberg. Philip Campbell, editor of Nature since 1995, who chose printing, writes: “After all the World Wide Web is just a printing press with electronic or photonic elaborations.” My guess is this sentence will shock some people who are infatuated with this contemporary electronic toy. Post Gutenberg, printing enabled the mass production of books and therefore the widespread promulgation of ideas, both religious and secular. One of the key differences between styles of government considered democratic and those considered tyrannical, autocratic, communist or just horribly corrupt, is that democratic regimes allow a much greater freedom in print (or other media). Freedom of the press is a keynote of the American way of life and governments throughout history have controlled print in order to make sure their power is not threatened.  But after reading this book, my opinion shifted from print. I’ll reveal my choice in a moment.

Just as the alphabet (plus necessarily, writing) was an extension of oral language and printing an extension of writing, so too was the telephone (Edison invented Hello) a handy extension of letter writing or talking. It would be hard - even for the late Pavarroti to shout in New Zealand and be heard in America, and a letter used to take several days. Now the telephone makes communication almost instantaneous! Also no one picked the telephone which is like the telegraph on steroids.

If you ask a mathematician what’s the greatest invention generally the answer well be some form of mathematics – quantum theory, the Indo-Arab counting system (three times),the Infinitesimal calculus, mathematical representation, the calculus (twice). Fair enough. However, I am a print person rather than mathematics person so for me print is more important even though mathematics underlies all science.

A notable division is between those who choose very recent inventions such as the atomic bomb (twice), but I’m not buying that), and the computer or internet (seven choices)

So what is my choice? The harnessing of electricity – a relatively new invention, traceable variously to Edison who made it available to New York in 1882 or Tesla who initially co-operated with Edison but having quarrelled about a broken financial promise to pay him $50,000 for re-designing his direct current generators went on to develop Alternating Current and supply Chicago with electricity in 1893. Without electricity, very little of today’s technology would work – think of a world minus electric light, radio, television, computers, refrigerators, ovens, aeroplanes, factories, offices, smart phones etc etc. The electricity choices were as follows : the harnessing of electricity, the electric motor, the battery, the electric light, Volta’s electric battery and Otto Von Guericke’s static electricity machine.

Other candidates that weren’t mentioned were radio waves, the cinema, photography, heavier than air flight, mass media and social media.

In the future, if the development of artificial intelligence continues (alas, it will), we might have to praise one of these diabolical devices if it can think for itself (presumably de rigueur) and produces a way to travel to the stars or diverts an asteroid from destroying planet earth. On the other hand, it might get ideas into its head (eg mind) to run the world better than we do.

Until then, I’m sticking with electricity.