The vanity of mankind

[desiderata]

I was talking to my wife about how people were and their beliefs in years past. How women were accused of practicing witchcraft in the U.S. How the earth was once thought to be the center of the universe. And there are many more examples of our misconceptions and ignorance throughout the ages. That led me to think of where we are now. What is acceptable, what is taboo? That in turn, got me thinking how we think we have almost figured out the origin of the universe, or so we believe. Our advances in medicine, the workings of the human mind, social behavior, and so on. And at this moment most of us believe where we are and what we do to be true.

My belief is that to some degree we question everything. Don't question to the point where you have no footing or point of view, but have a healthy curiosity about what we've learned and how much more we to have to learn. It's the process, not the end result that we can grow from. Too many people figure most of the questions have been answered and don't feel the need to question the big answers any more. To me, that is vanity.

 

[Darkside]

I agree, but I think there has been vanity like that in every age. We cannot begin to imagine what mankind will discover over the next 100 years and the rate of change, and the accumulation of knowledge, is constantly accelerating.

But I also believe that the degree of complexity increases as our knowledge increases which makes mastery of any area like physics or chemistry almost impossible. So we develop specialties and sub-specialties. Would Einstein achieve the same notoriety if he were living today or would his theories and proofs simply be obscured as part of some larger school of study?