Natural philosophy includes dividing ideas into empirical, rational, and irrational as well as understanding their philosophical context. Philosophical context includes understanding the timing of discoveries and rediscoveries as well as the philosophers behind them and their publications.
The groundbreaking discovery that humans were making bread 14,000 years ago, before the advent of agriculture, was published in 2018. Since grain is easy to grow, does this suggest agriculture might have started a few thousand years earlier? Under study, but the discovery of bread-making from around 14,000 years ago indeed suggests that humans were experimenting […]
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Since grain is easy to grow, does this suggest agriculture might have started a few thousand years earlier? Under study, but the discovery of bread-making from around 14,000 years ago indeed suggests that humans were experimenting with grains before the widespread adoption of agriculture, which is traditionally dated to about 12,000 years ago with the
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In what is now the United States, the Clovis culture, named after distinctive stone tools found near Clovis, New Mexico, represents one of the earliest known sophisticated societies in the Americas. Dating back to around 13,000 BCE, the Clovis people are believed to be among the first inhabitants of the continent, crossing the Bering Land
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In the lush, fertile lands of the Yangtze River Valley in ancient China, early inhabitants achieved a milestone that would revolutionize human society: the domestication of rice. Around 8,000 BCE, these innovative communities began to cultivate wild rice, laying the groundwork for sedentary agriculture and complex civilizations. This agricultural breakthrough not only provided a stable
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30 Phil, Chapter 1 Touchstone 1 of 80: Big Bang. Immediately following the state of the singularity, the universe entered a phase of rapid expansion and cooling, known as the Big Bang Expansion. This critical period signifies not an explosion in space but the very expansion of space itself, from an incomprehensibly dense point known
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All life today are either Prokaryote or Eukaryote. Around 2 billion years ago, Eukaryotes evolved from Prokaryotes. The evolutionary leap to eukaryotes introduced cells with a nucleus and membrane-bound organelles, a complex architecture derived from prokaryotic predecessors through endosymbiosis. This process, crucial for eukaryotic evolution, involved the incorporation of prokaryotic cells into the cytoplasm of
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30 Phil, Chapter 17, Alhazen, Touchstone 42: Senses. How we perceive an external world starts to become clear about 1020 CE. Since Alhazen and his pioneering work around 1020 CE, we have made significant advancements in understanding our senses. Our direct impressions of the world. Prior to Alhazen, most people on Earth believed in strange
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It’s clear: neanderthals created art. The discovery of cave paintings in Spain, dated to over 64,000 years ago, marked a profound shift in our understanding of Neanderthals. This corrected the longstanding perception that Neanderthals lacked symbolic thought and artistic expression. To learn more, check out Beyond Human Bias: Reassessing Neanderthal Intelligence.
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Most scientists treat Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo sapiens as separate species that interbred, but the debate remains open.
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Invented by Newton in the 1660s (pub. 1687) and independently by Leibniz in the 1680s (pub. 1684). Both built on Galileo’s popularizing the idea of the infinitesimal. Calculus, the mathematical study of continuous change, introduced the concepts of differentiation and integration, providing tools to model and analyze motion, growth, and the infinitesimal. Newton, working primarily
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In the vibrant intellectual climate of Ancient Greece, the 6th century BCE marks the embryonic stage of formal logic, attributed to the philosopher Thales of Miletus (around 624-546 BCE). Thales, recognized as the first of the Seven Sages of Greece, embarked on a quest that laid the foundational stones of logical thought. He shifted the
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In 1975, Italian archaeologist Paolo Matthiae and his team unearthed the remarkable Library of Ebla at Tell Mardikh, Syria, revealing a trove of around 20,000 clay tablets and fragments. This discovery dramatically expanded our understanding of ancient Near Eastern civilizations, introducing Eblaite as a previously unknown Semitic language and providing unprecedented insights into the culture,
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The Earth and the other planets formed 4.5 billion years ago from the same cosmic cloud—the primordial material which gave birth to the Sun. The dust and comets—the rocks—were composed largely of hydrogen, ice, carbon, and nitrogen.
4.6 billion years ago, a cloud of gas and dust collapsed under the force of its own gravity to form our solar system.With the Sun at its center, glowing, the planets had not yet formed. The Sun, a G-type Population 1 star, shines brightly with a surface temperature of about 9,400 degrees, 5,500 Kelvin, and
Legacy: First 26 elements of the periodic table of elements. After a few hundred million years, gravity continued to play its part, drawing atoms into an intimate collapse, giving birth to the very first stars and galaxies. These first stars, known as Population III stars, were stellar giants: massive, hot, and short-lived; they burned for
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The image of the early universe that we see in the CMB reveals a time shrouded in darkness. During this era, the 17 known particles first started to combine to form the universe’s first atoms. Electrons, protons, and neutrons came together to create neutral hydrogen atoms, a process that allowed photons—or light—to traverse the cosmos
Hourglasses, also known as sandglasses or sand timers, were first used in the 14th century, although it is unclear exactly when they were invented. The earliest written reference to an hourglass dates back to the early 14th century in Europe, but they may have been used earlier in other parts of the world. Hourglasses were
A good legal system slows judgment so claims can be tested fairly. Think well by asking not just what was ruled, but how the claim was tested.
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13 Generations Ago 30 Phil, Chapter 26: Voltaire and Modern Journalism Voltaire was a French Enlightenment philosopher born François-Marie Arouet. He was an advocate of civil liberties and satirized intolerance, and religious dogma in a time one was punished with censorship, jail, banishment, or worse. Some of my favorite Voltaire quotes translated from French: Those
12 Generations Ago 30 Phil, Chapter 27: Hume and Skeptical Empiricism The Scottish Enlightenment philosopher and historian Hume was a leading exponent of empiricism. The belief that all human knowledge derives solely from experience. Some of my favorite Hume quotes: “A wise man proportions his belief to the evidence.” -A Treatise of Human Nature, 1739
