What's the most significant advance in the history of science?

[Samson]

But hunter-gatherer may be a good way to accomplish this.

Do you have an estimate for the population of humans this earth could support as hunter gatherers?

 

[Kozmos]

I was wondering, maybe far far into the future could we code all the knowledge of humanity and write it into DNA, so theoretically every human would know how every technology works and how to build it. It would IMO be a big help in case a worldwide disaster.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

What's the most significant advance in the history of science?

The taming of fire.

 

[Kal'thzar]

Being lazy.

Whats lazier? Walking 10 Km, or Driving it? Whats lazier working out those maths problems with a calculater or writing it all out on paper, heck what about just counting your toes?

Lazieness has propelled society to where it is today.

 

[Marshy]

The most important scientific advance has to be mass sanitation though.

I strongly agree. I would guess that it has saved more lives than every other live saving measure (such as use of medications etc.) combined.

I've heard it said that the washing machine is the invention that had the greatest impact on the last century.

 

[Bozo Erectus]

Without fire, no subsequent advances, no matter how important they may be, would have ever taken place.

 

[warpus]

agriculture.

My vote goes for agriculture as well.

 

[3 EMS]

Writing, and the written language, as they allowed us to create permanent and (ideally) unchanging records of observations, discoveries, ideas, stories, etc. Overcoming the inevitable innacuracies that came from oral traditions caused by unreliable human memories.

I think Yuri is on the right track here. But to me it goes back even further. It was the development of the ability to communucate. To trade ideas. Once this occured a person could learn something and then pass that idea to someone else.

 

[Masquerouge]

I'd say fire and writing. Everything else is a luxury.

 

[classical_hero]

I say the Printing Press. No other invention has changed lives like this invention. Without it free expression of ideas would not have been possible like it is right now. We owe a great deal of gratitude to this machine.

 

[Birdjaguar]

Without fire, no subsequent advances, no matter how important they may be, would have ever taken place.

the problem with fire is that it, like language, is so universal and so old, that it cannot be linked to specific progress. Lots of cultures that had fire (and language) never got out of the stone age. Even though fire may be needed for science, having fire does not mean the culture will actually earn a place in history. All the cultures that developed writing became significant and shaped the downstream historical record in important ways.

 

[thetrooper]

The introduction of 0.

 

[tomsnowman123]

Do you have an estimate for the population of humans this earth could support as hunter gatherers?

Nope (besides the fact that population would decrease), which is why I am not expecting it to come about.

 

[The Great Apple]

Quite a few people have claimed engineering to be science. While it could be argued to be a science, I'm pretty sure it's not what the OP had in mind. Mass sanitation isn't science, it's engieering! A few other ones on this thread; the internal combustion engine - IIRC when the first one was produced the science behind it wasn't fully understood, roads, printing press? It's all engineering.

I would say the most significant advance in the history of science would have to be the scientifc method. Before it science as we know it didn't exist - it was all a bunch of idle speculation.

 

[Sahkuhnder]

I say the Printing Press. No other invention has changed lives like this invention. Without it free expression of ideas would not have been possible like it is right now. We owe a great deal of gratitude to this machine.

I agree with your analysis of the importance of the printing press.

Just for fun didn't the church try to prevent the printing of the bible for the masses?

ITEM #1 POPE INNOCENT III

Pope Innocent III stated in 1199:

... to be reproved are those who translate into French the Gospels, the letters of Paul, the psalter, etc. They are moved by a certain love of Scripture in order to explain them clandestinely and to preach them to one another. The mysteries of the faith are not to explained rashly to anyone. Usually in fact, they cannot be understood by everyone but only by those who are qualified to understand them with informed intelligence. The depth of the divine Scriptures is such that not only the illiterate and uninitiated have difficulty understanding them, but also the educated and the gifted (Denzinger-Schönmetzer, Enchiridion Symbolorum 770-771)

Source: Bridging the Gap - Lectio Divina, Religious Education, and the Have-not's by Father John Belmonte, S.J.

ITEM #2 COUNCIL OF TOULOUSE - 1229 A.D.

The Council of Toulouse, which met in November of 1229, about the time of the crusade against the Albigensians, set up a special ecclesiastical tribunal, or court, known as the Inquisition (Lat. inquisitio, an inquiry), to search out and try heretics. Twenty of the forty-five articles decreed by the Council dealt with heretics and heresy. It ruled in part:

Canon 1. We appoint, therefore, that the archbishops and bishops shall swear in one priest, and two or three laymen of good report, or more if they think fit, in every parish, both in and out of cities, who shall diligently, faithfully, and frequently seek out the heretics in those parishes, by searching all houses and subterranean chambers which lie under suspicion. And looking out for appendages or outbuildings, in the roofs themselves, or any other kind of hiding places, all which we direct to be destroyed.

Canon 6. Directs that the house in which any heretic shall be found shall be destroyed.

Canon 14. We prohibit also that the laity should be permitted to have the books of the Old or New Testament; unless anyone from motive of devotion should wish to have the Psalter or the Breviary for divine offices or the hours of the blessed Virgin; but we most strictly forbid their having any translation of these books.

Link.

 

[Eukaryote]

harnessing the power of fire lead to great things!

 

[Sidhe]

Physics is responsible for us knowing how microchips work, but engineering is responsible for the microchip being made. Engineering is basically applying science.

That's better than your original statement just don't forget that without physics engineering is trial and error, physics supplys the magic you build it it's a wonderfully fulfilling arrangement

 

[.Shane.]

Germ theory.

 

[The Great Apple]

That's better than your original statement just don't forget that without physics engineering is trial and error, physics supplys the magic you build it it's a wonderfully fulfilling arrangement

Engineers do research too. While many of the fundamentals can be understood through physics, they are sometimes not applicable to larger scale problems, where approximations have to come in. Alot of engineering is trial and error because of this. Physics is certainly not a replacement for a good olde physical model, else wind tunnels would not exist.

 

[Sidhe]

The Scientific Method, the realization of what actually brings out advances!

Agreed but it's actually a child of philosophy and mathematics, logic and deductive reasoning were condusive to invention long before scientific method came on the scene.

Just as a side thought I wonder what came first symbolism in the form of signs and cyhphers or language, It seems to me writing or at least a primitive form must have come first, then speech made signs pertinent to language and truly expressive writing evolved.

It's very hard to pick any one seminal moment in humand advancement, but for relevance to modern socitety I'd have to say in all bias quantum mechanics, computers and cosmology may well save an ultimately doomed planet. But you'd have to really look forward to see what I mean.