•December 7, 2016•

By Jim Nowlan
NP Guest Columnist

For most of human history, there has been no change from generation to generation. Peasants tilled their fields across the centuries with the same primitive tools. Their masters carried on “economic development” (warfare) unabated.

The rate of change over time was flat, scraping along the bottom of the chart.

Real change began in the Golden Age of 5th Century BC Greece, I would say, followed in the 700s AD or so with Islamic and Tang Dynasty China scientific advances. Then followed the 14th Century Renaissance and later the Scientific Method and Industrial Revolution.

The 20th Century saw the rate of change catapult sharply upward. Yet the change we have seen in recent years in artificial intelligence, cyber communication and genetic manipulation have been at a breath-taking, exhilarating and sobering, almost incomprehensible rate that has the line on the chart headed almost straight up.

In the 19th Century, Mendel’s path-breaking experiments with the inheritance of characteristics languished in obscurity for decades before being recognized; Darwin delayed publication of his work on evolution for many years.     Login or Subscribe to read the rest of this story.