The Flip Side

That undefined time, place and space where friends shall meet once more...

Saturday, March 19, 2005

Greatest Human Achievement

Sometimes you just wonder about "Greatest" Something ... whether scientist, discovery, sports person etc. Years ago I wondered about what was the greatest human achievement. Naturally you have the ones like putting a man on the moon, various engineering feats, philosphical aspects of love and so forth.

Then one day it occured to me, it was probably the ability to write and create language ... or more simply, the ability to think 'abstractly'. It is something that we kinda take for granted today, much like the true 'axioms' behind how math fundamently works. It just happens and we don't give it a 2nd thought.

But one day we are running around as monkeys and beyond, and then decide to give a 'representation' to the grunts we'd used to communicate with one another - what a leap forward. If you were asked to define 'love', what would your answer be? Things to describe how it is displayed, a bond between people but fundamentaly it isn't really tangible ... abstract, yet we all know what it is.

Yesterday when the British Museum closed early, I wasn't able to see the Rosetta Stone so decided to head back for this specifically. There are 3 versions of the same story on the stone (basically about how wonderful a particular king had been). The top 2 are ancient egyptain in like an upper case version, then a lower case version. The bottom is Greek.



Up until the 1800s, we hadn't worked out egyptian symbols, thus a lot of there culture remained a mystery. So when this stone was found, we knew Greek and 25 years later, people were able to decipher it. Thus we were able to unlock the structure of it and only became a matter of time before all other egyptain texts could be translated - providing valuable insight and knowledge into the past.

So this block, an example of that step forward in the ability to abstract to represent something, and unlocking thousands of years of knowledge - pretty cool.

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