How To Jump Start Society
Contents
Structure of book
- Things in the order that we need them, like Age of Empires
- History of science - pre-literate culture
- Curriculum - Are you smarter than a 5th grader
- Things we might have done differently. Historical implications of early humanity interacting with environment of 100,000 years ago
- The lessons we wouldn't have learned given this knowledge
- Should include how to make each invention, and provide experiments to prove facts
- 50 greatest inventions since the wheel
General Science
Ideas
- The experiment - scientific method, empiricism, data
- Gravitation - galileo, the moon and the tides
- The Earth rotates. Proof Foucault's Pendulum
- The Earth is round
- The Earth travels around the sun
- Atoms and molecules
- The periodic table
- Light is a wave
- electricity
Inventions
- Wheel
- Pulley
- Lever - torque
- glass
- Prism
- The lens
- The telescope
- The microscope
- The mirror
Math and statistics
- Arabic numerals
- The concept of zero
- Pi - the circumference of a circle
- geometry, for surveying
- bell curve, normal distribution, standard deviation
- differential equation
Earth Science and Weather
- Need to be able to explain natural phenomena
- Tectonic plates, volcanoes
- Storms
- density of air
- Pottery
- The compass
- Bernoulli effect - for sailboats and airplane wings
- paper money
- hot air balloon
Engineering
- Bronze
- Trip hammer
- Bessemer process for steel refining
- Combustion engine
Nutrition/Agriculture
- Development of agriculture allows for a surplus of food
Health/Medicine
- Soap
- Evolution - fossils. needed to domesticate animals
- Germ theory
- DNA
Communication
- Printing press
Military
- Gundowder
- Firearm - for hunting
Philosophy, Culture
- Primary/secondary quality distinction
- The Drum
- Bowed instrument
- The Blues
Things not included
- Things that we're still figuring out yet
- Political institutions like democracy, winston churchill quote about it being the worst except for all the rest