The Stone Age Did Not End Because We Ran Out Stones
A Short Thought on Scientific Optimism and Human Resourcefulness
Uranium. We know it’s immensely valuable today. As a fuel and sadly also as a weapon. But no one had any idea it even existed before 1789. Uranium oxide was just an anonymous yellow rock that could be made into yellow powder for colouring ceramics. Heck, we didn’t even know it was radioactive before 1896 (to be honest, we didn’t know what radioactive was before that year, either). And even then, for decades more, it was just a rock that had interesting properties and could make us sick in large quantities.
But one day a certain someone called Enrico Fermi came upon the idea of nuclear fission and maybe, just maybe, thought we could use it to make water into steam and thus electricity. And the rest is history.
Yet for most of humankind’s time here on Earth, Uranium just stood there, in the ground, doing nothing.
What changed? Knowledge.
New knowledge was created that made a resource out of something that was either useless or even downright dangerous before.
The same has happened numerous times before in human history. The Stone Age didn’t end because we ran out of stones. It ended because we found something better: bronze. The Bronze Age did not end because we ran out of bronze. It ended because we found something better yet: iron. And the list goes on.
We are desperately in need of a massive shift, perhaps we’re already even late for one, but if history is anything to go by, it’s not a question of if, but when we will get there. We are the the definition of resourceful. (In this case, literally.)
Now I know there are a lot of reasons to not be very optimistic. When we look at the numbers concerning climate change and fossil fuels, it’s scary. But we should take care not to fall into a Malthusian trap.
It’s a term named after Thomas Malthus who ran the numbers in 1798 and came to the conclusion that there would be an inescapable worldwide famine coming in 1850, because food production growth was linear, but population growth was exponential. As you might have noticed, that catastrophic worldwide famine did not take place and we’re still growing, because Malthus failed to take into account humanity’s resourcefulness and the power of innovation.
The point I am trying to make is this: we do not know what the next bronze, iron or even uranium might be. But we have reason to believe that we will find it. Because that’s what humans do. We create new knowledge. And knowledge is what creates new resources, drives innovation and saves our asses.
And that is a comforting perspective indeed. An optimistic one, yes, but one that has been proved by mankind over and over. And also one of the few perspectives that considers the massive population growth we’ve undergone as a net positive for sustainability: more people, more ideas, more knowledge, more innovation.
Let’s keep our fingers crossed that we manage to think our way out of this before we drown ourselves (or cook ourselves alive, depending on where one lives).
So here’s hoping that humankind continues on it’s path of resourcefulness for millennia to come!
Further reading:
Naval Ravikant has an excellent interview with David Deutsch about knowledge creation and the human race.
David Deutsch has a great book about knowledge creation called “The Beginning of Infinity”