experimental-history.com
Submission statement: Adam Mastroianni examines why scientific discovery seemingly avoided low-hanging fruit for so long.
For example, why did the Ancient Egyptians know how to calculate the volume of a truncated pyramid 4,000 years ago, but medieval European thought that meat transformed into maggots until 1668? Why were ancient people able to make significant mathematical discoveries, while still demonstrating ignorance about basic real-life processes?
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Notes -
I’ll rephrase the toilet illustration in general: people tend to mistake knowledge of interface for knowledge of function.
I know how to drive my car. I know the four main liquids to feed it, because the under-hood interface is designed to be serviced by me. I know the anatomy of internal combustion engines about as well as I know the anatomy of my own heart. But I couldn’t fix it with all the tools in a well-stocked commercial garage. I am not a power-user or a mechanic.
This leads me to my first conclusion: that discoveries of function are probably discovered by people who are not familiarized with an interface. Japan could miniaturize all of the electronics that America invented, because they were more focused on understanding function than familiarity with form. I, as a person born with autism, do not have a natural social interface, so my discoveries in philosophy and psychology are based more on observation and manipulation of function then on once-described and redescribed and propounded ideas which have propagated over the eras.
In other words, my hypothesis is that the naïve may be better at discovering new things than the expert.
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