[jjbrr]

TylerE, on 2014-February-17, 10:51, said:

I'm really surprised by a lot of these responses. For me, CLEARLY the most important even of at least the last 200 years was the assassination of Franz Ferdinand of Austria in 1914. If that doesn't happen WWI doesn't happen, which has the knock on effect of not decimating Germany with the armistice so the Nazis and thus WWII and thus the cold war never happen.

This is obviously flat out wrong. Tensions had been growing forever and war was inevitable.

Otto von Bismarck said in 1888 “One day the great European War will come out of some damned foolish thing in the Balkans.”

[mike777]

"What events for which humans were responsible has had (is having, will have) the most profound effect on world history?"



All good posts.

Over the course of history whether you talk about science events(computers, splitting the atom) or men trying to act like gods(Hitler/Lenin/ Alexander) the tension between our material and spiritual selves has always been there embedded in history by the legacies of Plato and Aristotle. The irreconcilable contradiction between Plato's God and Aristotle's Prime Mover.

History may not repeat itself but ideas do. Alexander the Great, Aristotle's most famous pupil said the end result of consensus, of all thinking with one mind, is stagnation or worse.

The intellectual adventure that Plato and Aristotle set the world on still continues today. Plato to a more spiritual truth, emerging from the cave out of darkness and material existence to the light or Aristotle to explain how the real world works and how we can find our place in it.

The above posts in this thread show the profound impact their lives have had on history and the continuing adventure.

[onoway]

Cyberyeti, on 2014-February-17, 08:39, said:

Columbus and America would have happened anyway, but I suppose what I really mean was the discovery of America by the white man, and Columbus is the single event that symbolises that.

It's pretty much established that the Norse were in what is now eastern Canada long long before Columbus. According to Wiki

Quote

The earliest known documented European exploration of Canada is described in the Icelandic Sagas, which recount the attempted Norse colonization of the Americas.[31][32] According to the Sagas, the first European to see Canada was Bjarni Herjólfsson, who was blown off course en route from Iceland to Greenland in the summer of 985 or 986 CE.[33] Around the year 1001 CE, the Sagas then refer to Leif Ericson's landing in three places to the west,[34] the first two being Helluland (possibly Baffin Island) and Markland (possibly Labrador).[32][35] Leif's third landing was at a place he called Vinland (possibly Newfoundland).[36] Norsemen (often referred to as Vikings) attempted to colonize the new land; they were driven out by the local climate and harassment by the Indigenous populace.[33] Archaeological evidence of a short-lived Norse settlement was found in L'Anse aux Meadows, Newfoundland (carbon dating estimate 990 - 1050 CE).

[onoway]

mike777, on 2014-February-17, 14:16, said:

"What events for which humans were responsible has had (is having, will have) the most profound effect on world history?"



All good posts.

Over the course of history whether you talk about science events(computers, splitting the atom) or men trying to act like gods(Hitler/Lenin/ Alexander) the tension between our material and spiritual selves has always been there embedded in history by the legacies of Plato and Aristotle. The irreconcilable contradiction between Plato's God and Aristotle's Prime Mover.

History may not repeat itself but ideas do. Alexander the Great, Aristotle's most famous pupil said the end result of consensus, of all thinking with one mind, is stagnation or worse.

The intellectual adventure that Plato and Aristotle set the world on still continues today. Plato to a more spiritual truth, emerging from the cave out of darkness and material existence to the light or Aristotle to explain how the real world works and how we can find our place in it.

The above posts in this thread show the profound impact their lives have had on history and the continuing adventure.

Perhaps the development of science has not been so much how to find our place in it as how to make it do what we want. There is little evidence of cooperation by choice between man and the natural world through the ages and the sense that we have no need to cooperate has gained momentum over the last couple of hundred years. It seems as though cooperation with natural systems is now mostly promoted as a primitive and unscientific way of looking at things by people who are "afraid of science."

One thing nobody has mentioned that is most decidedly on my list is the allowing of patents on living GMOs. It's an insidious thing which is already having a profound (and unfortunately in the short term apparently positive but in the long run highly detrimental) impact on agriculture, both the quality of the food we eat and the environment. It's leading into a future for which we are not only absolutely unprepared but which may be impossible to repair.

The unrestricted development and use of GMOs was once designated - justifiably - at a TED talk as one of 10 things which might bring about the end of human existence, certainly of civilisation as we know it.

[mike777]

Onoway as always your posts are interesting.

1) I would only add that if you accept evolution then mankind is nature a living important part of nature and evolution in the fullest sense of the word.


2) Nature is the universe ...not just planet earth....nature kills... nature destroys, it evolves.



3) at some point homo sapien or even planet earth is not the issue if nature is your god.

[blackshoe]

Every one here has a Western view of this question. I wonder if there isn't anything in the rest of the world that qualifies.

[mike777]

blackshoe, on 2014-February-17, 21:49, said:

Every one here has a Western view of this question. I wonder if there isn't anything in the rest of the world that qualifies.

I wondered how long some one would mention this.

fwiw Plato at the very least influenced karl marx who impacted eastern Russian....china....korea...and others.

Plato for those of us who may forget preferred Sparta over Athens.....think Japan and many others over 2000 years./

Athens...democracy killed his mentor.


You raise a good point.

[kenberg]

blackshoe, on 2014-February-17, 21:49, said:

Every one here has a Western view of this question. I wonder if there isn't anything in the rest of the world that qualifies.

Nah.

[32519]

onoway, on 2014-February-17, 21:28, said:

One thing nobody has mentioned that is most decidedly on my list is the allowing of patents on living GMOs. It's an insidious thing which is already having a profound (and unfortunately in the short term apparently positive but in the long run highly detrimental) impact on agriculture, both the quality of the food we eat and the environment. It's leading into a future for which we are not only absolutely unprepared but which may be impossible to repair.

The unrestricted development and use of GMOs was once designated - justifiably - at a TED talk as one of 10 things which might bring about the end of human existence, certainly of civilisation as we know it.

Nigeria found an alternative, Nigeria shuts down restaurant serving human meat.

[mike777]

32519, on 2014-February-17, 23:16, said:

Nigeria found an alternative, Nigeria shuts down restaurant serving human meat.

I note the customers or market place did not shut it down.

[onoway]

Maybe the owners had seen Sweeney Todd and thought it was a pretty good business model.

[mikeh]

I think the concept is interesting, in that even trying to answer it gives rise to so many possibilities as to bring home how impossible it is. Reading the answers, on the other hand, shows how limited some of us are. The notion that 9/11 is one of the 3 most important events in history is laughable if it wasn't so revealing. On a slightly broader canvas, the idea that the WWI was one of the 3 most important events in human history isn't much better.

I'd give you 9/11 and WWI combined and argue that the Punic Wars had infinitely more significance in terms of how the modern world is today.

But one could easily go back a little further into history and argue that the wars in the middle east that gave rise to the independence of Carthage from its Phoenician origins led to the punic wars, so maybe we need to name those wars instead.

Except, those wars arose themselves out of earlier and still earlier conflicts. Where do we draw the line?

As for the industrial revolution, it wasn't an event even within the fuzzy definition that allows one to call a war an 'event'. It was an era: an era marked by a series of gradual inventions and improvements. The steam locomotive or the steam power plant for factories weren't invented out of nothing: those engines were the result of decades of tinkering seeking to improve and render more versatile a device developed to pump water from mines. Agriculture was probably also a (very) gradual evolving sort of concept (see Jared Diamond) rather than an event, as was urbanization and nation building.

If I had to name an event as pivotal, I suggest the first time that someone thought of the idea of using some form of visible mark to connote information....probably a number but maybe a name or initial. Of course, that invention may have died away only to be re-invented by some other person with no notion that it had been done before.

As a second choice, the invention or discovery of the notion of zero. Again, who knows how many times that happened before it 'took'?

Now, maybe these don't fit the OP, since these events happened in pre-history

Inventions of things or even ideas are problematic since, as Richard observes, most ideas will arise many times, and that may be true for my suggestions as well. Liebnitz invented calculus at almost the same time as Newton, and arguably slightly before. Wallace thought of evolution operating through the winnowing effect of natural selection years after Darwin but before Darwin had published, The Wright brothers flew a powered flight for the first time, but others around the world were actively working on the problem and would have solved it within a year or two at the outside. The same is true for nuclear power, spaceflight and many other 'firsts'.

The more one thinks about it, the more one is driven to realize that maybe there really are very few 'new' things under the sun, or very few 'events' as opposed to processes that unfold over years, through the usually unco-ordinated actions of many people, few if any of whom have any idea of what their efforts will bring forth.

[mike777]

Mikeh..not sure what you mean...

but you come across saying the most important function=time.

everything else =zero.

you may not mean that but that is the msg you send.

that is the msg other posters send.

If philosophy does not create then it is useless.

[mikeh]

mike777, on 2014-February-18, 01:16, said:

Mikeh..not sure what you mean...

but you come across saying the most important function=time.

everything else =zero.

you may not mean that but that is the msg you send.

only to you, I suspect. I confess, I often have real trouble understanding your posts. I was referring to the idea of the symbol for zero in numbering. The romans, for example, didn't have that concept and it really foreclosed the possibility of there ever being any development of mathematics as we understand the term....I pause to note that I am almost the antithesis of a mathematician so I will stop here before revealing yet more of my profound ignorance on that field of study.

[akwoo]

I agree with Constantine converting to Pauline Christianity - there were surely a lot of various mystery cults in the Near East and one of them might very well have taken off (and, if not, Islam would have anyway) - but I don't think any of them would have given the same kind of inspiration to the anti-slavery movement of the late 18th/early 19th century, or genocidal anti-semitism in the 20th (which is not to say that Pauline Christianity is responsible for either - just very influential).

I think Thucyclides - and the idea that events of the recent, documentable, past can be woven into a story, and more particularly a story with a point - is rather unique. Outside of Western traditions, there is mythology - stories of events in a mythical past that have a point - and chronology - record-keeping of events in a documentable past - but history seems to be uniquely of Greek origin.

The idea of applying some variant of democracy over a region larger than a city-state is really a Enlightenment notion - but I don't know that it happens without Plato and Thucyclides (who ironically were both arguably against democracy). Maybe it does as soon as transportation and communication become good enough, but communication was as good in China for many periods of Chinese history as it was in 18th century Europe and America. Or perhaps it is really the influence of Pauline Christianity again, with the relatively democratic institutions of Geneva (in both church and state) - supported in part by Calvin's interpretation of Paul - inspiring a more democratic interpretation of traditional English institutions during and after the English Civil War.

The transplantation of potatoes to Europe from America was rather important. They provide a high-yield food source that cannot be stored over long periods and hence is resistant to plunder (by invading armies, et c). The Napoleonic Wars would have wiped out a lot more German peasants if not for potatoes.

[mike777]

If your one and only main point was zero...(math)ok.....but really you came across discussing time.

I hope posters understand my main point is the debate event between Plato and Aristotle...that point in time and how it impacted:


the greek world
\the roman world\
the middle ages
the reformation
the renaissance


from erathoshenes and eudoxus and Euclid to newton and karl popper.

From Hegal and Hume to Nietzeche

[mike777]

"....The idea of applying some variant of democracy over a region larger than a city-state is really a Enlightenment notion - but I don't know that it happens without Plato and Thucyclides (who ironically were both arguably against democracy). Maybe it does as soon as transportation and communication become good enough, but communication was as good in China for many periods of Chinese history as it was in 18th century Europe and America. Or perhaps it is really the influence of Pauline Christianity again, with the relatively democratic institutions of Geneva (in both church and state) - supported in part by Calvin's interpretation of Paul - inspiring a more democratic interpretation of traditional English institutions during and after the English Civil War....."


You really hit on the key point of city state in your first sentence.


This is really the key point of discussion.

I hope you will continue.

[Fluffy]

Cyberyeti, on 2014-February-17, 08:39, said:

Columbus and America would have happened anyway, but I suppose what I really mean was the discovery of America by the white man, and Columbus is the single event that symbolises that.

I think you overestimate the impact of this event, for 99% of the people who lived in the country in europe it didn't make much of a difference. For people in Asia and other continents it didn't change much either. The most significant part of discovering amrica was sending virus to america and killing zounds of natives.

[mike777]

"The most significant part of discovering amrica was sending virus to america and killing zounds of natives."


this says it all...fluffy makes his point.


Europe kills Native Americans...
Spain kills Americans

[Cyberyeti]

Fluffy, on 2014-February-18, 02:00, said:

I think you overestimate the impact of this event, for 99% of the people who lived in the country in europe it didn't make much of a difference. For people in Asia and other continents it didn't change much either. The most significant part of discovering amrica was sending virus to america and killing zounds of natives.

How would the world have been without the US as a great world power with (initially) European values ? I suspect pretty different, not commenting on better or worse.

As to the human meat restaurant, they'd probably watched "Eat the rich".