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0 sats \ 2 replies \ @Undisciplined 4h \ on: Could Philosophy be the future of humanity? AskSN
That's an interesting thought. It makes me wonder if there are cycles to our relationship with truth: i.e
Having a sense of absolute truth is valuable, but we're often going to be wrong in our beliefs. Once some threshold is reached, the culture changes to one of more exploration and experimentation to discover what we were missing. But, when some critical mass of new truths are revealed we cease experimenting and try to live in accord with the new truths.
Cycles sounds likely. We are definitely in a post-truth moment. But we may have reached a nadir and are now recovering a desire for truth.
I have read some social commentary about how the early 20th century was like a high point for "truth", and there were many dreams of scientific utopianism... and probably communism itself sprang from that kind of thinking. But the devastation of the two world wars turned society in the other direction. We saw the dangers of such absolutism and turned against it. But now we've become too relativistic.
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The lack of major scientific advancements is probably taking some of the luster off.
Most of the field-defining advancements came in or before the early 20th century: genetics, relativity, tectonics, quantum mechanics, marginal utility theory, natural selection, chemistry.
Since then, we've mostly been tinkering around the edges.
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