"Things haven't changed much"

Yesterday I attended a talk on the history of horticultural science and technology. The speaker, a well respected geneticist and plant breeder, used art to show how horticulture has changed over the thousands of years of human history. One phrase was repeated frequently: "Things haven't changed much." It was an ironic phrase to be speaking in front of an audience of plant scientists, whose life work revolves around developing new technologies and discovering the new of science.

In a recent class, taught by one of the scientists from that audience, also gave a brief history of science and technology - but his history began only 200 years ago, with Charles Darwin. I suppose it is accurate to say that modern science did begin around the time of the so called "Enlightenment", but the tendency (among scientists especially) is to think that people knew nothing but myths and fables prior to modern science - as if science were the only realm in which knowledge could be discovered. After all, human history prior to the Enlightenment was a history of ignorance right - the "dark age"? Indeed, science has answered a lot of questions in the last 200 years, but science is only one category in the pie - only the green wedge in our trivial pursuit to understand life:) I am a scientist, and I believe my work as such is meaningful - meaningful but limited. I can only ask questions that can be answered in a laboratory with measurements and observation. Anyone who knows me, knows that I ask a lot of questions - and I can assure you that most of them cannot be answered by experiment in a laboratory. There is so much more to know - things that only art, music, literature, history, language, religion etc. is suited to answer. Questions from those categories have been being answered since the beginning of human history. And the reality is - things haven't changed much. Modern science has given us a new lens, a microscope lens, with which to understand our world, and the view is fascinating! but it is the same world that was being seen and understood thousands of years ago by men and women no less human and intelligent than us today.