Task 1 Flashcards
Preliterate society
- knowledge transferred by speaking
- fluidity: knowledge dies out after a few generations and local differences, unreliable
- myths and animism to explain phenomena
- mainly practical know how
Knowledge in preliterate society is limited by:
- perception: observe with 5 senses directly only (speed+resolution)
- storage capacity: what is remembered?
- habitat
What is the first invention, first example of instrumentality? When? What is instrumentality? How did it help?
The mastery of fire, 100.000 BCE
Means-end knowledge
Helped with cooking, heat, guarding from predators. Survival, gathering in groups. Fire transforms: one sees one can influence the environment
3 issues related to the mastery of fire
- ignition (how to start use at the time where/when you want it)
- efficiency
- extending range of use
How did fire form the basis for further technological advances?
- fire
- pottery: containers (by means of ovens, 5000BCE, Middle East) and agriculture
- ore melting into metals: new materials (alloys) and new properties
- chemistry: is reactive and crystalline
- conduction of electricity and heat
- manipulation of many materials
When was writing invented?
First forms: 3000 BCE, Irak
Orthographic system
Orthography = norms for spelling
An orthographic writing system is one that uses graphemes (smallest writing unit) that correspond only to spelling, so that anyone can use it regardless of language.
Things the brain developed to do:
- master and influence environment
- create new tools and instruments
- write and communicate
- reasoning to find out about truth
- use logic to find new knowledge
When did the Latin alphabet emerge
1000 BCE, Byzantium
How does written language aid science
- accumulation of knowledge
- diffusion of knowledge to others
- development: less errors, colloboration with identical copies
What was the earliest way of education and who did it
Scholastic method: memorizing unquestionable facts
by the Church
What was Socrates view on writing
Thought it would make students forgetful, bad.
When were Arabic numerals created and what is special
500 CE
place coding
Why were the first counting systems created, characteristics, why did it evolve to better systems
Tallying to count possessions
Then, perception limits (tally of 5)
-> Roman system, not optimal
-> discovered place coding
Establishment of measurement units
- scale problem (minute or days?)
- local differences, need for standardization
- > metric system around 1800
Plato and his views
Cave allegory: what we observe is the shadow of the ideal world forms and not real. innate knowledge of the perfect realm is discovered via reasoning only. the soul has 3 parts, the mind can gain knowledge from the cosmos soul. In a way, he already viewed the mind and body as split.
Aristotle and his views
384 BCE
Built on Plato to describe deduction: syllogisms contain axioms (major and minor premises/fundamental principles), from which you can conclude real stuff.
Some more room for observation but worth less
The worldview:
geocentric, 5 elements, all with their place in the world. Sublunar region with fire earth water air and outside is aether. In sublunar, everything moves to their place. Change in nature driven by God.
How does religiion influence history
- Determines what may be studied (punishment)
- Determines what is educated (controls education)
- Determines what is important ( if science is meh then not much progress, the smart people will study theology and look for God)
Catholic Church: No active opposition but disinterest and no support of critical thinking.
Reformation (1516): better after Protestants, more critical education
Revival of learning?
Renaissance
- universities
- independent teachers that could teach anywhere
- inclusion of Greek Arabic texts
How does writing influence history
Limits:
Person centered:
- Matthew effect: say its only one person, when it is many, bc credit is given to the person already established
- ethnocentrism
- hindsight bias: tendency to think they knew more than they did
- summaries of summaries
- interpretation effects
- winners portrayed more and they write the histories
- only preservation of what literate subculture thought important
- zeitgeist is most important for intellectual discovery, not the persons
What did Dunbar have to say about neocortex size ratio and its relation to group size?
Distal evolutionary limits of environment on neocortex size. Ratio higher for humans than for monkeys (4.1, 30% higher), which places cognitive (proximate) limits on group size. Group sizes for humans are ideal at 150according to the prediction by neocortex size. Brain size was already the same 250.000 years ago. Thus when looking at group sizes, we look at those people (hunter gatherers). THen we find indeed group sizes of 150 (villages), also bands (small) and tribes(large)
What does Dunbar have to say about human group sizes compared to monkey group sizes and the relation to social contact/language?
The human group size is too big to be sustained by grooming alone, it would take too much time. Language could have evolved because of this (social intelligence hypothesis). Instead of the information exchange (about hunting, prey)
What is a further argument he uses for the social intelligence hypothesis and the use of langauge for social contact and group cohesion?
Language is more efficient than grooming with the exact predicted number: 2.8 times more efficient as ideal conversation group size is 3.8
What are critiques against dunbar
- large CI
- natural differences in group size
- he shows only a correlation
Socratic questioning
A form of looking for the turth and gaining knowledge, but also teaching, by asking questions. One is the teacher and the other the learner, the teacher asks the learner questions so that the learner will gain knowledge by his reasoning.
Socrates
470 BE, mentor of Plato
Ptolemy
Was first to say earth is center universe.
