Can humanity evolve backwards ?

[Ophiolite]

Physicists 1 : Pedants 0

[Sayonara]

Have you tried to buy an 8-track player lately?

If you're going to tell me that the fact I haven't tried to buy an 8-track means that nothing recorded on 8-track is retrievable, nor ever will be, then you ought to sober up.

[Sayonara]

Physicists 1 : Pedants 0

http://search.ebay.co.uk/8-track-player_W0QQfromZR40QQsatitleZ8Q2dtrackQ20playerQQsojsZ1

 

If those were all bought up by Doctor Mad, and thrown into the depths of his volcano lair, content on 8-track media would still be accessible. Because we KNOW HOW TO MAKE MORE.

[reverse]

There may have been a geological reason for the dark ages.

"during this year a most dread portent took place. For the sun gave forth its light without brightness ...

"The sun became dim ...

Michael the Syrian says ...

"the sun became dark

Rampino[2] et al quotes a report from Cassiodorus stating ...

 

"The sun ... seems to have lost its wonted light' date='

The plague.[/quote']

 

 

I will buy that,

 

As long as there was more light about in the age of enlightenment .

and a medium amount of evil about in the medieval times.

 

but seriously, very interesting to hear those reports. thanks.

[reverse]

Data ---> Information ---> Knowledge ---> Wisdom

 

Data ---> Information ---> Knowledge ---> cleverness.

 

wisdom is something else.

[Ophiolite]

If those were all bought up by Doctor Mad, and thrown into the depths of his volcano lair, content on 8-track media would still be accessible. Because we KNOW HOW TO MAKE MORE.

But we don't know how to make a Saturn V. The dies were destroyed. The 'Lessons Learned' were not retained. We do have the capacity for external loss of memory.

[Plus the 'score' was just to keep the pot stirred. I like reading about 8-tracks]

[Deathby]

Just one bit of nit-picking. Don't use the word evolved ffs, because you can't evolve backwards. Whales returning to the ocean isn't evolving backwards, they produced dolphins after all which are universally accepted amongst the top 5 most intelligent animals on earth.

 

Well perhaps if Doctor Mad had thought of buying up all the 8 track record players, then trading them slowly for the actual records themselves, don't you think he could destroy the knowledge? There are numerous possible ways for humanity to "forget" everything. An asteroid could hit earth and a lone colony ship heading towards the stars survives. Fundamentalist Evangelists could take over the world (another spur for the dark ages). There have also been past events- the fall of the great empires each triggered a loss of some knowledge, the loss over time of oral tradition (the inventor of fire and the wheel)

 

In China there were periods of information suppression by the emporers, something similar happening in modern day Earth is much more difficult. There might only be a hundred thousand or even a million books in Imperial China and some still survived. There might be a hundred thousand books in my suburb alone. It would be impossible to wipe out all information. Although not all books contain the information you talk about (indeed not even Britannica woul have the equations needed for rocket science), but that would only wipe out the most difficult stuff.

 

We would retain the basics such as gravity -the foundations that took so long to build. The most important thing in my mind is the process of scientific investigation. If we forgot that, then we'd eventually forget everything else through entropy.

[Ophiolite]

Just one bit of nit-picking. Don't use the word evolved ffs, because you can't evolve backwards.

It's not really nit-picking, since it speaks directly to the heart of the matter.

First, nameta9 implies that evolution=progress, and so backward evolution on this definition is possible.

Second, he is clearly talking about cultural/technological evolution, so that again backward evolution is possible (though not probable).

I suppose we could call it devolution, but since we Scot's recently experienced this I should prefer another term.

[Newtonian]

I think people here are getting confused,and dont understand the processes of evolution or its meaning.CO-Oping the word evolution to infer progression or superiority is not what evolution is all about.

Losing/gaining technological know how or data is not relevent to evolution.Organisms adapt to environment or die.

Now if the OP is asking could we return to swinging in the trees and eating bananas.Well if environmental change meant our species had to return to forests,im sure our coccix would evolve into a tail,our feet become more handlike and we would be swinging with the best of them.There is no forwards or backwards only evolution.

[Skye]

One of the meanings of the word evolution is simply a gradual progression however, and this thread appears to be using the word in that sense.

[coquina]

Can humanity slowly evolve backwards until it reaches the dark ages again forgetting all its science and technology ? As it is now there are really very few people in the world who understand the hardest parts of technology science and its mathematical procedures. Actually everyone knows just a very small part of our technology. It would not be hard to imagine an evolution where fewer and fewer people know the details until a point reaches where we actually start forgetting crucial parts. Who can make a microprocessor at home? Who knows all the steps necessary? Even the best scientists have to rely on hundreds of other technicians for all the details. Isn't this a very fragile system? If we slowly forget how to do things I think humanity could evolve backwards towards the dark ages, (no wonder religions are becoming popular).

 

I expect that the word that should have been used is regression.

a trend or shift toward a lower or less perfect state: as a : progressive decline of a manifestation of disease b (1) : gradual loss of differentiation and function by a body part especially as a physiological change accompanying aging (2) : gradual loss of memories and acquired skills c : reversion to an earlier mental or behavioral level

 

I do not think regression would occur unless there was a global catastrophic event, which destroyed all repositories of knowledge.

 

As a matter of fact, one great repository of knowledge, the Great Library at Alexandria, Egypt, was destroyed, and a great amount of knowledge was lost.

 

Here's a Wikipedia article about it:

 

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria

 

If you read the article, you will see that several possible dates are given for the destruction of the library - however, I found this quote especially informative:

As noted above, it is generally accepted that the Museum of Alexandria existed until c. AD 400, and if the Museum and the Library are considered to be largely identical or attached to one another, earlier accounts of destruction could only concern a small number of books stored elsewhere.

 

The final destruction of the library seems to have occurred only about 100 years prior to the advent of the dark ages.

 

If the dark ages was caused by a comet, or perhaps a huge volcanic eruption it must have happened in a remote area of the world, or there would have been some direct reference to it. At any rate, had the library not been destroyed, it would have been a lot easier for knowledge to have been relearned.

 

I wonder if the worlds modern governments have great libraries encased in hardened concrete buried in a mountain somewhere - It would seem like a smart thing to do. Of course, enough people would have to know where it was so that it could be found again.

 

Regardless - people may become more specialized, but they still have their brains. If they have to learn things all over again, they'll figure it out, even if it takes a while.

[Aardvark]

I wonder if the worlds modern governments have great libraries encased in hardened concrete buried in a mountain somewhere - It would seem like a smart thing to do. Of course' date=' enough people would have to know where it was so that it could be found again.[/quote']

 

That is what the internet was originally developed for. The military designed it as a system to protect information and communication in the event of a nuclear war or other catastrophe.

 

However, i do like your idea of library bunkers.

 

I can imagine the ragged descendants of the survivors of some terrible global disaster. Malnourished, poverty stricken, ignorant. Scrabbling a living in a nuclear winter.

 

And then they find a library bunker. Wandering around with a mixture of awe and fear they would gaze blankly at the records of the entirety of human civilisation, all the achievements of culture and science, the accumulated philosophy of the world.

 

Illiterate and uncomprehending.The entirety of civilisation at their fingertips, yet as meaningless to them as a pocket calculator to a chimpanzee.

 

Now that is an amusing scenario.

[Sayonara]

That is what the internet was originally developed for. The military designed it as a system to protect information and communication in the event of a nuclear war or other catastrophe.

That's not exactly true.

 

The survivable distributed network concept was conceived by Paul Baran while he was working for RAND (a thinktank for American nuclear planners) at the end of the Fifties. The design was put together for the US Air Force, who paid a grant to RAND, for command and control of nuclear assets.

 

That was actually a completely different system from ARPANET and had no IMPs, gateways or TCP/IP protocol.

 

The two people most responsible for the actual creation of the internet as we know it were Vinton Cerf and Robert E. Kahn, who literally wrote the book on Packet Network Interconnection in 1974 (although the idea originated with Donald Davies in the late Sixties, kind of). The system was fundamentally different to Baran's distributed network, but ironically it depended entirely on the packet-switching idea he devised for it.

[Sayonara]

But we don't know how to make a Saturn V. The dies were destroyed. The 'Lessons Learned' were not retained. We do have the capacity for external loss of memory.

[Plus the 'score' was just to keep the pot stirred. I like reading about 8-tracks]

You're suggesting we are not capable of re-learning tasks. Is that as a society' date=' or as individuals? I didn't realise just how severe this "de-evolution" was meant to be.

 

My points about obsolete media are these:

 

1) We don't need an 8-track player to retrive the information (leaving aside for the moment the inconvenient fact of the short media lifespan). We have the capacity to analyse and solve problems,

 

2) The media could easily have been backed up,

 

3) The fact that 8-track [for example'] is obsolete is a product of market forces and developing technology. It has sod all to do with our evolutionary status (and I realise that wasn't your point, but you will go and take exception when I am refuting things).