Quotes About Progress

if humankind doesn't annihilate itself meanwhile – the Scientific Revolution might prove itself far greater than a mere historical revolution. It may turn out to be the most important biological revolution since the appearance of life on earth.

Why not go back to God's drawing board and design a better Sapiens?

The most likely answer is the very thing that makes the devate possible: Homo sapiens conquered the world thanks above all to its unique language

The system may prefer downgraded humans not because they would possess any superhuman knacks, but because they would lack some really disturbing human qualities that hamper the system and slow it down.

In 1700 the world was home to some 700 million humans. In 1800 there were 950 million of us. By 1900 we almost doubled our numbers to 1.6 billion. And by 2000 that quadrupled to 6 billion. Today there are just shy of 7 billion Sapiens

Si nuestra mente es la de los cazadores-recolectores, nuestra cocina es la de los antiguos agricultores.

The writing is on the wall: equality is out – immortality is in.

These forfeited food surpluses fuelled politics, wars, art and philosophy. They built palaces, forts, monuments and temples.

You want to argue that they in fact improved the conditions of their subjects with new medicines, better economic conditions and greater security? You could fill another encyclopedia with their achievements.

La consideración tradicional del mundo como un pastel de tamaño invariable presupone que solo hay dos tipos de recursos en el mundo: materias primas y energía. Pero en realidad hay tres tipos de recursos: materias primas, energía y conocimiento. Las materias primas y la energía pueden agotarse: cuanto más las usamos, menos tenemos. El conocimiento, en cambio, es un recurso en aumento: cuanto más lo usamos, más tenemos.

History is something that very few people have been doing while everyone else was ploughing fields and carrying water buckets. An

In particular, global child mortality is at an all-time low: less than 5 per cent of children die before reaching adulthood. In the developed world the rate is less than 1 per cent.11 This miracle is due to the unprecedented achievements of twentieth-century medicine, which has provided us with vaccinations, antibiotics, improved hygiene and a much better medical infrastructure.

Until the Scientific Revolution most human cultures did not believe in progress. They thought the golden age was in the past, and that the world was stagnant, if not deteriorating.

However, the Scientific Revolution freed humankind from this conviction. The greatest scientific discovery was the discovery of ignorance. Once humans realised how little they knew about the world, they suddenly had a very good reason to seek new knowledge, which opened up the scientific road to progress

In 1700 the world was home to some 700 million humans. In 1800 there were 950 million of us. By 1900 we almost doubled our numbers to 1.6 billion. And by 2000 that quadrupled to 6 billion. Today there are just shy of 7 billion Sapiens. Modern

Wheat did it by manipulating Homo sapiens to its advantage. This ape had been living a fairly comfortable life hunting and gathering until about 10,000 years ago, but then began to invest more and more effort in cultivating wheat. Within a couple of millennia, humans in many parts of the world were doing little from dawn to dusk other than taking care of wheat plants. It wasn't easy.

39. Brains as computers – computers as brains. Artificial intelligence is now poised to surpass human intelligence. 39. © VLADGRIN/Shutterstock.com.

what life was like in the millennia separating the Cognitive Revolution from the Agricultural Revolution.

In pursuit of health, happiness and power, humans will gradually change first one of their features and then another, and another, until they will no longer be human.

Like a government diverting money from defense to education, humans diverted energy from biceps to neurons.

What was the Sapiens' secret of success? How did we manage to settle so rapidly in so many distant and ecologically different habitats? How did we push all other human species into oblivion? Why couldn't even the strong, brainy, cold-proof Neanderthals survive our onslaught? The debate continues to rage.

The Human Brain Project,

Until a short time ago facial recognition was a favourite example of something that even babies accomplish easily but which escaped even the most powerful computers. Today facial-recognition programs are able to identify people far more efficiently and quickly than humans can.

The idea of progress is built on the notion that if we admit our ignorance and invest resources in research, things can improve. This idea was soon translated into economic terms.