History and Our Predecessors
History and Our Predecessors
Why were those great predecessors, philosophers, and scientists so remarkable?
- Civilization develops in stages. The problems solved by different great figures at each stage are based on the achievements of their predecessors. This is one of the core reasons why humanity needs continuous development and inheritance.
For example, it was the philosophical and rational thinking of predecessors like Socrates and Aristotle that laid the foundation for the entire logical framework, upon which subsequent science is built.
I believe that humanity, regardless of the generation, contemplates several fundamental questions:
a. Who am I? An exploration of self-awareness.
b. Who are we together? An exploration of social organization and relationships.
c. What is the universe? An exploration of the world, from astrophysics to microscopic particles—all encompassing.
I believe that thinking methods can be trained and have top-level principles that conform to first principles. Cognition requires accumulation. With different eras—ancient times, the Stone Age, the mechanical age, the electrical age, the information age—the problems discovered or solved are constantly advanced based on the then-current technological productivity.
Individuals placed within the torrent of human development will inevitably produce great figures; they are products of their environment. But why are they considered great while we are not? I still believe it is a combination of the technological dividends of the era and the cognitive awakening of top-level thinking methods. I recently reread Einstein’s The World As I See It and am also trying to contemplate what they were doing in their time and why they thought the way they did.
I particularly like Einstein’s quote: “The world is comprehensible.”
We still have many problems to solve, and many scientists are constantly researching and exploring to understand the essence of this world.