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Greatest invention man created throughout history?

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  • #61
    Originally posted by subba View Post
    Thats why these 'civilizations' never progressed technologically. They still remained basic agricultaral or expansionist entities.
    You're seriously joking me. The pyramids. The Great Wall of China. The arc. Pythagoras Theorem. Gunpowder. Roman Road building. Soong bridges. Gunpowder. Pi.

    Even if I agree that those civilizations were expansionistic, which I don't, then even in the field of military technologies, they excel tremendously, even past India ... without the use of "10."

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    • #62
      The pyramids. The Great Wall of China. The arc. Pythagoras Theorem. Gunpowder. Roman Road building. Soong bridges. Gunpowder. Pi.

      Even if I agree that those civilizations were expansionistic, which I don't, then even in the field of military technologies, they excel tremendously, even past India ... without the use of "10."
      Wonders yes. But they were built on slave labour than some great technology inputs. What technological relevance does the Great wall have or for that matter the Great Pyramids, except one trying to ward off invaders and the other serving as a tomb.

      Yes i acknowledged that great architecture existed all over the world. Even the Dolmen stonehenge in UK or the statues in Easter Island are great 'technological' feats.

      But would THAT have enabled those civilizations to come to space age civilization? The answer OOE Sir is a resounding NO!

      So key question here is what was it (that key invention) that enabled base level civilizations (base level implying ones that have language, fire, wheel, agriculture) to advance into what is 'modern day civilization'.

      As for the comparison with India goes, I'm not going to be baited on to that on this topic OOE Sir. ;)
      Last edited by subba; 24 Feb 07,, 18:01.

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      • #63
        not the greatest invention ... but perhapes the greatest realisation and that was the humans becoming self-aware of their own existance ... like the terminators in T3


        another greatest invention beside wheel-fire (realisation) is the simple means to defend and spill blood using cold weapons

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        • #64
          Originally posted by glyn View Post
          We know the ancients moved heavy stones into position by placing the stones on rollers made of tree trunks (as in Stonehenge). The rollers may therefore be considered the basis for the wheel. It does not take an enormous leap of intellect to develop the wheel from the roller. I expect this would have happened in many lands at much the same time period.
          It is my contention that the ability to make fire was the first invention of man. Once he could achieve that he was able to break free from the hunter/gatherer existance and start agriculture. Tools were the next invention, allowing him to make the plough. After that there were incremental advances in many spheres. In summary, fire then tools were necessary for mans progress to civilisation.
          Fire is important.But I was concentrating more on the actual question which asks about the greatest "invention".I would consider fire as more of a "discovery".Before humans got the ability to "make" fire,they probably used fire from natural resources..say forest fires.

          Anyway,the three things I listed have to come in the list.

          1.Wheel-though you can say it doesnt take much to develop the wheel from the roller,it can be said conversely that the roller is an early form of the wheel.Tools you pointed out.Even tools need wheels in one form or the other,also needed to make them.

          2.Penicillin-Probably the invention which has had the greatest impact out of the three.One can argue that before penicillin(or antibiotics) people used to live and die.But we should consider the magnitude of the impact,which is very huge.

          3.Computers-The greatest impact in a very short period of time.And eventually may turn out to be the greatest invention of all time.

          Added later:Okay..I realised one could consider penicilin as a discovery.Although if we are talking about anti-biotics in general,it would probably have to be considered as an invention.

          Electricity could be considered another of them.
          Last edited by MarquezRazor; 24 Feb 07,, 18:10.

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          • #65
            Originally posted by subba View Post
            But would THAT have enabled those civilizations to come to space age civilization? The answer OOE Sir is a resounding NO!
            The answer to that one is the cumulation of all knowledge. The Indians added the 10, the Chinese added the rocket, the Greeks added trigonometry and Pi. Without anyone of these, then space science would not have been possible. To state the "10" alone is responsible for all these is ludicrous in the extreme.

            India certainly was not a space faring civilization and I dare say that without the Chinese and Greek contributions, all done without the "10," India (for that matter, everyone) would not be doing any space faring today.

            And let's face it, up until the Industrial Revolution, ALL civilizations were agricultural based. There was no "scientific" or "mathematical" civilizations when all were dependent on the next harvest.

            As far as military technology goes, it only goes to show that India alone is not responsible for all the world's technology. Nothing wrong with admitting that.

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            • #66
              the Chinese added the rocket, the Greeks added trigonometry and Pi. Without anyone of these, then space science would not have been possible.
              The Chinese Rocket of yore affected the V2 or modern day Rocket development as much as Tipu's 2.5 km rockets fired in South India against British Armies in the 18th century. Trigonometry of the Greeks was'nt something that they alone solely developed. It was highly developed in India too, the oldest proofs for Pythagoras for instance are in India, 5 centuries before Pythagoras was born. Pi was approximated as a fraction by the Greeks, but it was too by Indians too and in decimals pretty much independent of Greeks.

              But OOE Sir, we're not talking one civilization vs another. But the single most important 'invention' that propelled base civilization to modern civilization.

              And let's face it, up until the Industrial Revolution, ALL civilizations were agricultural based.
              Right. Yes they were. So whats the big change that led to this industrial revolution? rennaissance is not an invention, neither is rebellion against the Vatican. Since you've raised this up..

              Tobias Dantzig had this to say in Number:

              "This long period of nearly five thousand years saw the rise and fall of many a civilization, each leaving behind it a heritage of literature, art, philosophy, and religion. But what was the net achievement in the field of reckoning, the earliest art practiced by man? An inflexible numeration so crude as to make progress well nigh impossible, and a calculating device so limited in scope that even elementary calculations called for the services of an expert [...] Man used these devices for thousands of years without contributing a single important idea to the system [...] Even when compared with the slow growth of ideas during the dark ages, the history of reckoning presents a peculiar picture of desolate stagnation. When viewed in this light, the achievements of the unknown Hindu, who some time in the first centuries of our era discovered the principle of position, assumes the importance of a world event."

              This is certainly not about reckoning one civilization above another. Or even a reckoning like all contributed equal equal..it's about a single invention, that could be considered as the spark that kindled mankinds progress to modern civilization.

              I'm considering this thread in that vein and not one comparing civilizations, OOE sir.

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              • #67
                And all you have done is to prove my point - the written language.

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                • #68
                  Originally posted by subba View Post
                  OOE Sir (hope you don't mind me shortening your name..too long for me to type ;) )



                  Yes and no regards mathematical advances made by these civilizations. Thats why these 'civilizations' never progressed technologically. They still remained basic agricultaral or expansionist entities. Even the aborgines, polynesians, Marshall island folks had pretty 'advanced' ways of figuring how to process physical data using stick charts or body tally systems. Yet each lacked a place holding notational system that hindered development.

                  Yet if any of these civilizations were to progress beyond that into what we call 'modern civilization' they would have had to ONLY change the way they kept count. That would only happen with visualizing the concept of the modern numeral system. That would require conceptualizing zero as well as figuring as place holder a zero for the tenth digit. Something we take so much for granted. These civilizations would have remained exactly like that or worse for 50,000 years if they had not absorbed the modern numeral system.

                  IMO i think that is the fundamental break to civilization as we know of today.
                  The Mayan Zero
                  Many historians believe that the greatest advance in mathematics was the development of the number zero. Zero not only represents “nothing,” but it is also used as a placeholder. For example, the zero in the number 205 shows that there are no groups of ten in this value.

                  The development of this number is now known to have occurred in many cultures independently around the world – not just in Western mathematics. This includes the Mayan people of Central America.

                  They developed a counting system that used dots, lines, and a drawing of a shell. Each dot represented one, a line represented five, and the shell represented zero. These symbols were grouped together to form a base 20 number system. The system appears more complicated than the decimal system, and also has a strong link to astronomy.

                  Some of the Mayan people were keen astronomers, and the number system they developed helped them
                  to track the movement of the sun, the moon, and the planet Venus. Using their mathematical skills, they developed some of the most accurate calendars that we know of.
                  Next
                  In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

                  Leibniz

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                  • #69
                    Originally posted by Parihaka View Post
                    Next
                    THE MEN'S ROOM! I don't think single guys will ever understand this though.

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                    • #70
                      OOE sir on Indian mathematics have a look, its from university of scotland about indian mathematics after the vedas,

                      the Vedas/upanishads and various other south indian books are other unexplored areas.

                      The pythagoras you mentioned was conceptulated in the indo-gagentic plane before....

                      Indian mathematics Index
                      (from scotland university)


                      anyways, the greatest discovery cannot be termed in absolute words, but they are in form of books,
                      chinese (name of the book i dont know something like :in china ?)
                      persian avestas
                      indo-gagentic books
                      dravidian books
                      inka

                      then it got passed on to latter empires for further innovation.

                      so essentially where humanity is today is of a assimilated thing.

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                      • #71
                        about Zero check this,
                        this is a research article,

                        Zero

                        samer from scotland univrsity of mathematics.

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                        • #72
                          folks,
                          you can say what is the greatest innovation of centurie which is MUCH easier to conceptulate. or innovation of a period!

                          means say the 1800 to 2000 period etc etc...

                          so far from 2001 to 2007 my vote goes to raptor ;)

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                          • #73
                            Originally posted by Officer of Engineers View Post
                            THE MEN'S ROOM! I don't think single guys will ever understand this though.
                            LOL, can't disagree on that
                            In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

                            Leibniz

                            Comment


                            • #74
                              I have Laplace to back my views up..;)

                              The significance of the development of the positional number system is probably best described by the French mathematician Pierre Simon Laplace (1749 - 1827) who wrote:

                              "It is India that gave us the ingenious method of expressing all numbers by the means of ten symbols, each symbol receiving a value of position, as well as an absolute value; a profound and important idea which appears so simple to us now that we ignore its true merit, but its very simplicity, the great ease which it has lent to all computations, puts our arithmetic in the first rank of useful inventions, and we shall appreciate the grandeur of this achievement when we remember that it escaped the genius of Archimedes and Apollonius, two of the greatest minds produced by antiquity."

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                              • #75
                                And before anyone pops up with more about Math
                                mathematics

                                Science of structure, order, and relation that has evolved from counting, measuring, and describing the shapes of objects. It deals with logical reasoning and quantitative calculation. Since the 17th century it has been an indispensable adjunct to the physical sciences and technology, to the extent that it is considered the underlying language of science. Among the principal branches of mathematics are algebra, analysis, arithmetic, combinatorics, Euclidean and non-Euclidean geometries, game theory, number theory, numerical analysis, optimization, probability, set theory, statistics, topology, and trigonometry.
                                Britannica
                                In the realm of spirit, seek clarity; in the material world, seek utility.

                                Leibniz

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