• Question: If you could go back to any era to teach the people of that time basic science which would it be and why would it help our everyday life for the better?

    Asked by Shadowy Stranger to Frank, Ian, Isabel, Jared, Zena on 11 Mar 2015.
    • Photo: Isabel Pires

      Isabel Pires answered on 11 Mar 2015:

      I would probably go back as far as I could and teach people about antibiotics. that would mean people would not die from simple cuts and wounds, or from simple infections during and after child birth. However, people might have though I was a witch, going on about how mushed up fungi can kill these things called bacteria they can’t even see! 🙂

      I can see myself more going back in history as a student rather than a teacher though. Wouldn’t it be great to be taught by Socrates, Aristotle, Hypatia, Galileo, Newton, Lavoisier, Rosalind Franklin, etc?

    • Photo: Frank Longford

      Frank Longford answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      I guess the earlier you go back in time, the more effective whatever you teach people will be, but then the more likely that no one will believe you and maybe you’ll be branded a witch! Much of what people thought hundreds of years ago was magic is now explained by science and in many cases it takes a long time to convince enough people to make something a “fact”. Also there’s been plenty of scientific advances in the world that have just been forgotten over time. What European historians refer to as the “Dark Ages” was actually a golden era for Islamic science and a lot of it could have been lost when the Mongols invaded the middle east in the 13th century. Archimedes, one of the greatest scientists of the ancient world, was also famously killed by a Roman soldier because he was in the middle of solving a mathematical problem and wouldn’t listen to what the soldier was saying.

      So I guess it would be fun to see what the Greeks would have made of atomic theory, since many philosophers at the time were already thinking about the world in these ways, but then whether this would survive through to the modern day would be anyone’s guess. Maybe the best thing to do would be to go back in time and tell everyone to write down as much of their work as possible, don’t disturb mathematicians when they’re in the middle of something and be considerate when a soldier asks you a question – especially if he has a very sharp sword…

    • Photo: Zena Hadjivasiliou

      Zena Hadjivasiliou answered on 12 Mar 2015:

      I think that this would be quite tricky! The progress of scientific knowledge and thought is a complicated matter, and I think that it is more about the process that leads to us knowing and not knowing the fact itself that is important. So we need to have a real and solid understanding of a fact to say that we know it and this takes a lot of time and thinking and cannot be taught without first going through all the little steps and work that led there!

      Like Isabel and Frank are saying, people would probably find it hard to trust us if we tried to teach them about science that is way beyond their time.

      This makes me wonder how having known a scientific fact at a different time in the history of science would have affected the progress of science from there on! Hmmm I think this could make a good science fiction film 😉

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