I just finished Stephen Hawking's book, A Brief History of Time, which was heavily recommended by my mom, who has read it several times and sparked a lifelong interest in astrophysics.

Towards the beginning of the book, I found a quote from Richard Feynman quite powerful:
"We are lucky to live in an age in which we are still making discoveries… the age in which we live in is the age in which we are discovering the fundamental laws of nature."

I would like to think this is true, that collectively, we are steady in a quest to continue exploring the fundamental laws that govern ourselves and our surroundings. Yet, it is easy to take for granted the truths that we have uncovered, especially those that have been absorbed into our collective consciousness, and not continue nurturing a curious drive.

If you lived in the 1600s, you thought the Sun revolved around you. You thought your blood was made fresh each day and consumed by your body. You thought disease came from bad smells “miasmas”.

For personal interest, and to see clearly how far we have come, I wanted to map out a historical timeline that puts our development in perspective, outlining important acts of exploration, what they revealed, and some of the innovations that can be attributed to them.

To clarify my verbiage, innovation is generative in nature and relies on builds on what we know. Discovery or exploration is about revealing what has always existed but remained hidden from our understanding. As we will see in the timeline, innovation and exploration are mutually reinforcing: innovations enable the act of exploration, and exploration reveals new possibilities and spaces for innovation.

The Timeline

Below is a condensed version of the timeline. You can find the full timeline here.

Some observations:

Partial truths and wrong turns. Many acts of exploration uncovered only partial truths, and some mixed insight with error.
Often there are delays between discovery and application. Although this seems to compress overtime. Eratosthenes calculated Earth's circumference around 240 BCE, yet it took until the 1500s for explorers to chart the globe.
Complex technologies emerge from combinations. No single discovery created the modern world.

What drives this exploration?

These truths didn't become apparent naturally, rather through the conscious exploration and curiosity of great people.

A world where exploration continues to drive humanity forward is, indeed, pretty cool.

SINGULARITY

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