Consilience : the unity of knowledge(Wilson, Edward Osborne)

 1. Science is a religion that has sustained humanity.

Unlike existing religions, science has solid grounds and support that have endured numerous trials. In this sense, science is a liberated and expanded religion.

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In the past, humans prayed and made sacrifices to change the natural environment or to eliminate abundance and diseases through totemism, shamanism, etc.

However, thanks to the development of science, humans today can create artificial rainfall in places with severe droughts, and with the development of fertilizers and genetic manipulation, they have harvested a lot of crops and are not starving, and with the development of medical technology, they are able to prevent and treat diseases to some extent.

In addition, personal hygiene has been strengthened due to soap, and life expectancy has increased significantly.

In this way, science has helped humanity continue to live in abundance and safety in many ways, and it is still in progress.

I personally believe in science and hope that it will develop further. If nuclear fusion technology is developed, we will now be able to live without paying much electricity bills, and the technology will expand and enrich our lives in many areas.

Although AI is still in its early stages, it has made great progress and has language development models such as Chat GPT and Gemini, which are widely used in various fields (writing, coding, information search, etc.).

The fully autonomous cars used in the US and China, the smartphones that most people have, etc. are all achievements made possible by the advancement of science.

Humanity can continue to develop through science and solve various problems of humanity.

That is why I believe in science and hope that humanity can live more convenient and affluent lives through further advancement.

2. Humans are still ignorant.

We only know what is necessary for survival, and the rest of the world is a world of mystery.

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There are countless types of dinosaurs that humans have discovered, but in fact, compared to those at the time, they are very few. The animals, plants, insects, and bacteria that we know are very few compared to the entire Earth.

Humans only know a part of the things that are necessary for survival or things that we are curious about from a human perspective, but there are still many unknown species on the entire Earth.

For example, just as there is not much that has been discovered about deep-sea creatures, we should not be under the illusion that we know everything.

Of course, there may be errors in what we know.

If we expand further and go into space, we are even more ignorant creatures.

The Earth is just a tiny dot that cannot be seen compared to the vast universe, and we are just creatures living on that dot.

Therefore, although humans are currently conquerors of the Earth, there is still much to learn, and we must admit that we are still ignorant.

Even if we conquer the Earth, if the bee species disappears, we could go extinct.

If plants cannot reproduce properly because of bees or insects, the effects will eventually come to us.

We also know a little about humans, but we still do not know much. There is still much we need to know about how living things coexist on Earth, what bacteria are doing, and how tens of millions of species of bacteria, insects, and animals on the mountain next to us are creating the environment.

3. What developed humans was writing, books, and knowledge.

People learn, then soon forget, and die. Even the most powerful institutions they created eventually disappear. However, knowledge continues to expand globally, passing from one generation to the next.

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Humanity began to appear about 6 million years ago, and while the average lifespan is now about 80 years, it was probably about 40 years in the past.

Of course, it could be less than that.

If humans had died without leaving anything behind during their short lives in the past, they would not be living in the advanced society we have today.

In other words, we have learned the technologies of the past through writing, pictures, and books, and have further developed new technologies based on them.

We use all the products that we use conveniently now without knowing how to make them.

However, someone knows the manufacturing methods, drawings, materials, and technologies of these products, and they are all developed further by following the technologies of the past. As such, it is all thanks to writing and books that humans can live the most advanced life on Earth.

That is why we must learn from the past and develop for the future, and we must not stop reading and learning books that only humans can use.

4. Become a wise person.

Although we are immersed in a sea of ​​information, we are struggling in a poverty of wisdom. Therefore, the world will be run by people who can collect appropriate information in the right place, think critically, and make important choices wisely.

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We currently live in a world of countless information, but it is difficult to clearly understand what is true.

That is why people can commit the error of generalization when they only see fragmentary information.

The error of generalization is like thinking that Korea has a high crime rate after seeing a certain crime on the news.

Korea has a very low crime rate compared to the rest of the world.

In this way, when we receive information, we should not unconditionally believe it, but think about it objectively, look up the data, and then judge that it is true. If you simply believe everything based on some information, you will only become one of the foolish crowd. I hope you live your life wisely.