The Pill and the birth of invention
THE contraceptive Pill, classical music and hay rank among the most important inventions of the past two millennia, according to a survey of influential scientists and mathematicians published today.
Nobel laureate Prof Philip Anderson, philosopher Prof Daniel Dennett, biologist Prof Richard Dawkins and Sir John Maddox are among the 100 or so contributors who have nominated inventions ranging from the atomic bomb and board games to the Internet, Hindu-Arabic number system and anaesthesia.
The survey was conducted on the worldwide web by John Brockman, a New York based literary agent and writer.
Edge (http://www.edge.org) is his "digital salon" in which Mr Brockman stimulates on-line discussions and debate among scientists, science writers and the "digerati", writers who discourse on digital technologies.
"Some of the most memorable conversations I've had over the years are concerned with invention, including technological innovations as well as conceptual realisations," said Brockman.
"There was Lynn T White's book about the effects of technological innovation on medieval Europe, where a key invention was the stirrup," he said. "Then Gregory Bateson believed 'the cybernetic idea' was the most important invention since Christ."
Some of the responses to his question - what is the most important invention in the past 2,000 years? - were as follows:
Prof Colin Blakemore: The Pill
The Pill did indeed fertilise the sexual liberation of the Sixties, did stimulate feminism and the consequent erosion of conventional family structure in Western society. But, arguably the important sequel of the Pill is the growing conception that our bodies are servants of our minds, rather than vice versa.
This relatively low-tech invention has contributed to our ability to accept organ transplantation, machine intelligence, gene therapy and eventually germ-line genetic manipulation. It has shifted the quest of humans from controlling their physical environment to controlling themselves, their bodies and hence their physical destinies.
* Colin Blakemore is Waynflete professor of physiology at Oxford; director, Oxford Centre for Cognitive Neuroscience; president of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, 1997-8.
Prof Joseph Traub: Scientific method
The Greeks believed we could understand the world rationally. But the scientific method requires that we ask questions of nature by experimentation. This has led to the technology that has transformed the world.
* Joseph Traub is Edwin Howard Armstrong professor of computer science at Columbia University and external professor at the Santa Fe Institute.
Philip W Anderson: Quantum theory
The quantum theory forces a revision of our mode of thinking which is far more profound than Newtonian mechanics or the Copernican revolution or Einstein's relativity. It tells us that we are made up of anonymous identical quanta of various quantum fields, so that only the whole has any identity or integrity. It tells us that we really know the rules of the game which all these particles and quanta are playing so that, if we are clever enough, we can understand everything about ourselves and our world.
* Philip Anderson is Nobel laureate physicist at Princeton and a theorist on superconductivity.
Howard Gardner: Classical music
My, perhaps, eccentric but nonetheless heartfelt nomination is Western classical music as epitomised in the compositions of Bach, Beethoven, Brahms and, above all, Mozart. Music is a free invention of the human spirit, less dependent on physical or physiological inventions than most other contrivances. Musical compositions represent an incredible cerebral achievement, one that is not only appreciated but also imitated or elaborated upon wherever it travels.
Most inventions - from nuclear energy to antibiotics - can be used for good or ill. Classical music has probably given more pleasure to more individuals, with less negative fallout, than any other human artefact.
Finally, while no one can compose like Mozart and few can play like Heifetz or Casals, anyone can perform in a credible way and, courtesy of software, even those unable to play an instrument or create a score can add fragments to an ever expanding canon.
* Howard Gardner is professor of education at Harvard.
Daniel Dennett: The battery
The modest battery (and its fuel cell descendants), by providing energy for autonomous, unplugged artefacts of dazzling variety, is triggering a revolutionary cascade of developments. Politically, the transistor radio and cell phone are proving to be the most potent weapons against totalitarianism ever invented, since they destroy all hope of centralised control of information.
The explosion of science and technology that may permit us to colonise space (or save Earth from a fatal collision) depends on our ability to store and extract electrical power ubiquitously.
* Daniel Dennett, a philosopher, is director of the Centre for Cognitive Studies, and distinguished arts and sciences professor at Tufts University.
Freeman Dyson: Hay
In the classical world of Greece and Rome and in all earlier times, there was no hay. Civilisation could exist only in warm climates where horses could stay alive through the winter by grazing.
Without grass in winter you could not have horses and without horses you could not have urban civilisation. Some time during the so-called Dark Ages, some unknown genius invented hay; forests were turned into meadows, hay was reaped and stored and civilisation moved north over the Alps.
So hay gave birth to Vienna and Paris and London and Berlin, and later to Moscow and New York.
* Freeman Dyson is professor of physics at the Institute for Advanced Study, Princeton.
David Haig: Computers
The computer extends the capacities of the human mind for accurately performing large numbers of calculations and for keeping track of and accessing vast bodies of data. As with any great invention, these enhanced abilities have a light and a dark side.
As a scientist I am now able to answer questions that could not be answered prior to the computer. On the dark side is the loss of privacy and the enhanced potential for social control made possible by the ability to manipulate large databases of personal information.
* David Haig is a member of the department of organismic and evolutionary biology, Harvard.
Clifford Pickover: Paper
In 105 AD, Ts'ai Lun reported the invention of paper to the Chinese emperor. Ts'ai Lun was an official to the Chinese imperial court and I consider his early form of paper to be humanity's most important invention and progenitor of the Internet. Both paper and the Internet break the barriers of time and distance and permit unprecedented growth and opportunity. In the next decade, communities formed by ideas will be as strong as those formed by geography. The Internet will dissolve away nations as we know them today. Humanity becomes a single hive mind, with a group intelligence, as geography becomes putty in the hands of the Internet sculptor.
* Clifford Pickover is a research staff member at the IBM T J Watson Research Centre.
Margaret Wertheim: Electrification
One of my most vivid childhood memories is of my mother spending endless hours washing nappies and clothes by hand.
The electric washing machine and other electric home gadgets (vacuum cleaners, fridges, food processors, etc) have freed billions of women from the endless drudgery of heavy-duty housework. By bringing us light and heat and power on tap, electricity has truly transformed life. Far more than Einstein and Bohr, Faraday and Maxwell are the true "heroes" of the modern technological world.
* Margaret Wertheim is a research associate of the American Museum of Natural History.
Richard Dawkins: Spectroscope
The telescope resolves light from very far away. The spectroscope analyses and diagnoses it. It is through spectroscopy that we know what the stars are made of. The spectroscope shows us the universe is expanding and the galaxies receding; that time had a beginning and when; that other stars are like the Sun in having planets where life might evolve.
* Richard Dawkins is Charles Simonyi professor for the understanding of science at Oxford.
Daniel Hillis: The clock
The clock is the embodiment of objectivity. It converted time from a personal experience into a reality independent of perception. It gave us a framework in which the laws of nature could be observed and quantified.
The mechanism of the clock gave us a metaphor for self-governed operation of natural law. (The computer, with its mechanistic playing out of predetermined rules, is the direct descendant of the clock.) Once we were able to imagine the solar system as a clockwork automaton, the generalisation to other aspects of nature was almost inevitable, and the process of Science began.
* W Daniel Hillis is a physicist and computer scientist; vice- president of research and development at the Walt Disney Company and a Disney Fellow; co founder and chief scientist of Thinking Machines Corporation.
Michael Nesmith: Copernican theory
Copernican theory placed the Sun, not the Earth, at the centre of the solar system.
Generally, it was a counter-intuitive idea and it ran opposite to the interpretation of senses (not to mention the Church). I mean, one could "see" the Sun going across the sky. It took a lot of intellectual courage and taught us more than just what it said.
* Michael Nesmith is an artist, writer, and businessman; former member of The Monkees.