29 MAR 2011 by ideonexus

 We Have No Book That Captures the Basic, Most Important R...

As individuals, we are amazingly ignorant and incapable. How many of us, alone in a wilderness, could make a flint knife? Is there anyone now alive who knows even a tenth of everything there is to know in science? How many of those employed in the electricity industry could make any of its components, such as wires or switches? The important difference that separates us from the social insects is that they carry the instructions for nest building in their genes. We have no permanent ubiquitou...
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If civilization were to collapse, we would have no book by which to rebuild our scientific knowledge and how we came to it.