If all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed what would you pass on? | Hacker News Reader

If all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed what would you pass on?

seedmagazine.com

12 pointsbootload11 comments

The list in the article is terrible. Mostly evolution or biosphere mumbo-jumbo that says more about our time today than helping humanity start over.

I'd pass along the idea of the scientific method, that through observation, hypothesis, and testing we can advance knowledge in a cumulative way.

"... You can make sense of anything that changes smoothly in space or time, no matter how wild and complicated it may appear, by reimagining it as an infinite series of infinitesimal changes, each proceeding at a constant (and hence much simpler) rate, and then adding all those simple little changes back together to reconstitute the original whole. ..."

Ever heard of the Watts/Strogatz model? ~ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Watts_and_Strogatz_model

Several of these seem to be "a clever thing about my field" rather than a Reboot Keyphrase such as the one Feynman provided.

I particularly enjoyed Steven Strogatz's phrase which attempts to encapsulate calculus and thus impart the mathematical underpinnings that Newton did--thus providing for the first time that leap in predictive powers of human-created models that spurred the belief in our ability to truly understand the world around us.

That is, it's one of the few phrases that I think would generate the impetus for further study, rather than relying on that drive to be there.

The proposed nuggets of information seem too complex and abstract to survive after the "reboot".

In that environment, the seed phrase would essentially be a message from supernatural beings. It would need to be simple enough not to get distorted beyond recognition when it is orally transferred by nomadic tribes in the desert who are likely to be more interested in instructions concerning circumcision and goat-slaughter than the details of double-helix molecules (think Bible, Quran).

Boil water prior to drinking it.

Skepticism and the importance of rigor and the scientific method.

A shopping list: 'Pound pastrami, can kraut, six bagels - bring home for Emma'

That should be just sufficient... ;-)

Diseases spread by viruses and such, wash your hands.

Godel's incompleteness theorem.

I would pass a description, how to make a Gutenberg Press. Everything else will come up afterwards.

The printing press may not be all that useful on its own, if the culture doesn't have a framework for thought development that printing could accelerate.

The Chinese had printing technology long before Gutenberg, but it did not spread to Europe, nor the Middle East where the Islamic culture was intellectually advanced. It was only after the Renaissance that the cultural and political atmosphere was ripe for mass distribution of accumulated knowledge and dissenting opinion.

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