The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
What sentence holds the most information in the fewest words? “I believe,” said Feynman, “it is the atomic hypothesis . . . that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another.”
Lewis Dartnell • The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
It was never intended for anything like this purpose, and lacks practical details and the organization for guiding progression from rudimentary science and technology to more advanced applications.
Lewis Dartnell • The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
Since the Enlightenment our understanding of the world has increased exponentially, and the task of compiling a complete compendium of human knowledge would be orders of magnitude harder today.
Lewis Dartnell • The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
The most profound problem facing survivors is that human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population.
Lewis Dartnell • The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
Denis Diderot explicitly regarded his Encyclopédie, published between 1751 and 1772, as a safe repository of human knowledge, preserving it for posterity in case of a cataclysm that snuffs our civilization as the ancient cultures of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had all been lost, leaving behind only random surviving fragments of their writing.
Lewis Dartnell • The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
The sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke said in 1961 that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.
Lewis Dartnell • The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
This point is made very eloquently in Leonard E. Read’s 1958 essay written from the perspective of one of our most basic tools, “I, Pencil.” The astounding conclusion is that because the sourcing of raw materials and the methods of production are so dispersed, there is not a single person on the face of the Earth who knows how to make even this sim... See more
Lewis Dartnell • The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
The most profound problem facing survivors is that human knowledge is collective, distributed across the population. No one individual knows enough to keep the vital processes of society going. Even if a skilled technician from a steel foundry survived, he would only know the details of his job, not the subsets of knowledge possessed by other worke... See more
Lewis Dartnell • The Knowledge: How to Rebuild Civilization in the Aftermath of a Cataclysm
If you suddenly found yourself without a working example, could you explain how to build an internal combustion engine, or a clock, or a microscope? Or, even more basic, how to successfully cultivate crops and make clothes? The apocalyptic scenarios I’m presenting here are also the starting point for a thought experiment: they are a vehicle for exa... See more