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Where does our knowledge come from? TEXT
Stefanie Hardick
What we know has changed over the millennia, as have the ways we acquire our knowledge. Even today, we are still benefiting from the insights of our ancestors, many of them obtained by risking life and limb. But time and again in the history of humankind, knowledge has been lost to future generations. We can only shake our heads in disbelief at some purported certainties from the past, while other issues may perplex us until the end of our days. A brief history of knowledge and its acquisition. Age-old conundrums: Where do the stars lead us? Humans have always been fascinated by the stars. And very early on, people who once stared in awe at the heavens began to discern patterns. The trajectories of the stars seemed to repeat. Archaeological finds suggest that Stone Age people already hoped to understand this recurring cycle. Most likely, they already knew the difference between north, south, east and west. Then they began charting the phases of the moon, solstices and constellations. Later, humankind’s first farmers began scanning the skies for signs that told them when to sow and harvest their crops. In many cultures, this task was attributed to the star cluster known as the Seven Sisters. It disappears below the horizon at the beginning of spring and re-emerges at harvest time. Finds such as the Nebra sky disk from the Bronze Age indicate that humans recorded their insights for posterity. Because knowledge was valuable. Astronomy was inextricably linked to astrology, religion and cult worship. People believed that the movements of the stars were a kind of divine script: the ability to read them could help avert calamities on earth. Astrologers exerted considerable influence over political life. And because the powerful have always had a penchant for planning, observations of celestial phenomena were factored into their calcula tions no later than in the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Astronomy, the oldest of the sciences, is a cornerstone of our civilization and the starting point for countless other types of knowledge. Astronomical calendars allowed humans to produce surpluses and trade with them. On land,
transporting goods was arduous. The sea was faster, but navigation based on trial and error was likely to take a fatal turn. Some peoples, however, used basic tools to develop a system of celestial navigation, also known as astro navigation. The Phoenicians – who inhabited the area around present-day Lebanon and Syria – were probably the first to use the stars at sea. On the other side of the world, Polynesian children were already studying 178 stars and constellations, and combining them with observations of currents, wind, sea swell and bird flight. This allowed them to explore Pacific islands thousands of kilometers from the mainland. Many discoveries, however, may also have been the result of poor navigation. The legends of the Vikings tell of voyages through storms and fog, in which a knowledge of the sun’s position and North Star was of little help – but which nonetheless saw them arrive at modern-day Canada’s eastern seaboard. Over the centuries, inventions such as the Jacob’s Staff, compass and sextant made astro navigation increasingly accurate. The science gained such precision, in fact, that humans relied on it to land on the moon. Even today, in the era of GPS , it is a fixture in the training of mariners: satellites can be hacked, the Internet and radio transmissions can fail, but a view of the sky is as reliable a source of orientation as ever. Astronomy shows that technological progress does not render ancient knowledge redundant. Drawing the wrong conclusions: What makes us sick? Hippocrates, who lived on the Greek island of Kos from about 460 to 370 BC , was likely the first physician to systematically observe the progression of different diseases. His theory: in a healthy person, the four body fluids – blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile – are precisely balanced. If this equilibrium is disrupted by external factors, people get sick. Hippocrates was convinced that polluted air was the main cause of disease. Pre sumably he had seen how people became prone to illness if they lived in overcrowded accommo dation, or near swamps or cesspits. He con cluded that such places emit miasma: noxious and toxic fumes. And that epidemics were spread by the wind and the exhaled breath of the afflicted.
