Transcript
John Gartside: Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Debatable Discussions podcast. Today we've got another exciting episode on history, but also sort of combined with an element of science as we'll try and encounter and sort of almost perhaps combat this almost never-ending question similar to one we discussed a few weeks ago, Diane, of which technological invention has had the greatest impact on human history.
df: Yeah.
df: Yeah, John, exactly as you've said, it is a never ending question. There's, uh, you know, millions and millions and millions of things people can say and people will say, and all of them are, uh, valid, all of them are valid inventions, you know, whether the wheel or the first antibiotic or the first vaccine,
John Gartside: Yeah.
df: Or even things that some people classify as discoveries, but we're going to include them in, such as the discovery of how to make a fire.
John Gartside: Yeah.
df: Invention of farming as result of the agricultural revolution of 10,000 BC. There's never-ending list of things that have completely shaped the way of history and that have completely shaped the way we live our lives now.
df: So how should we start this, John? How about we go from... So the prehistoric times and try and go as much into the future as we can.
John Gartside: yeah let's see that day and I think we as you said that we will obviously miss uh 99 of things but we'll just try and encounter a few which just come to mind to us as being particularly significant
df: Yes, so obviously think one that is very heavily named the most important invention of all time is the wheel. The wheel being...
df: essential for transportation, allowed humans to be able to move things that are much larger distance in a much easier way, requiring much less energy than actually having to carry an object.
John Gartside: Yeah.
df: You can now just roll it around. but I feel like, of course the wheel is huge and without the wheel, it probably wouldn't be where we are.
df: We wouldn't have cars. We wouldn't have airplanes. We wouldn't have, uh,
df: you know, we wouldn't have any method of trade and transportation, basically.
John Gartside: It's sense emotion. Yeah.
df: Yeah. But I feel like its importance is so large that we almost can't grasp it. It's almost as if I say very large number, like 5,345,000. You don't actually understand what that is. Your brain doesn't have the capacity to understand what that And I feel like the wheel has this similar...
df: outlook on it because a lot of people say it's just a wheel but without the wheel as you've said have any motion and without motion you can't have trade and without trade you can't have the sort of modern economy that we we have today and that we're reliant upon
John Gartside: And Dan, another one you mentioned that you're particularly keen on, sort of carrying on with these early inventions, was the discovery of fire.
df: indeed yeah
John Gartside: Perhaps elaborate on that as this sort of, essentially discovery of how to produce fire, I suppose.
df: I think fire for me, actually, would be my number one invention.
John Gartside: Yeah.
John Gartside: Yeah.
df: And that comes for many reasons. Number one, I think there's a cultural aspect of fire that's really interesting. A lot of sort founding myths, but a lot of just myths in many different cultures, whether the Greeks, the Romans, or, you know, Indian myths, Chinese, indigenous tribes in the Americas, they've all had a sort of similar fire myth.
John Gartside: Yeah.
John Gartside: Yeah.
df: The fire has always had a very important place in our mythology and has always had this character of being a bit forbidden, being... of a greater power.
df: And think that mimics actually the importance that fire has because fire for cooking.
John Gartside: Okay.
df: And now I'm going to very much anger every single sort of TikTok influencer who preaches a raw diet. If you look at the data, us eating cooked food,
df: And our brain size increasing, they are exponentially the same. So the moment we started cooking, our brain size massively increased for couple reasons. When you cook food, get rid of the water in it. So it's more calorie dense, it's more nutrient rich. You can eat more of it because there's less water in it. As anyone knows, when you cook food, it loses some mass because the water evaporates.
John Gartside: Yeah. Yeah.
df: A tribe was about 60 or 70 people. And cities were even larger. You had to have quite a large network around you.
df: And that requires energy, social interaction, remembering things, being able to work in a city-like structure. Even in the early times, definitely was hugely energy-reliant.
df: And perhaps without us having discovered fire, we would still be living in sort of five, ten people, groups of families, because we wouldn't have the energy and the brain power to be able to adapt to our new way of life.
John Gartside: Yeah, and suppose that was a very early discovery fire, sort of hundreds, thousands of years ago.
df: Definitely, yeah.
John Gartside: Then the wheel, I think it around 3000 BCE, that was discovered. And then, interestingly, I was looking at this question a while ago, to sort of go forward a bit in time,
John Gartside: I found that what people largely regard as being the most influential scientific technological intervention was Johannes Gutenberg in, I think, 1453, or the 1450s, who discovered the printing press.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: A hugely influential invention. Many actually do believe that it was invented in China earlier. But nonetheless, Gutenberg revolutionized the medium in which human interaction occurs.
John Gartside: Now one could print, literally print on paper. It led to this easier sort of dispersion and almost engagement with ideas on a level never seen before.
John Gartside: It allowed religion to spread.
df: Yeah. Yeah.
John Gartside: So I think that's really interesting. parallel with Gutenberg, in my opinion, is the internet. created in the 60s and 70s, that's almost internet revolution that was across the world, was similarly about changing the medium in which humans communicate.
John Gartside: Like Gutenberg's discovery, the printing press in the 1440s
John Gartside: the internet revolutionized human understanding. It changed all the different almost patterns of history, political history, military history, economic history, because it changed the medium and the basis of human interaction, which completely revolutionized human society.
John Gartside: So think that for me is a sort of early modern human invention, which is hugely significant, the printing press. As I said, it's largely regarded as perhaps being the most influential just because paper until perhaps the mid-19th century was the basis of human interaction, the basis almost of human society other than the spoken language. Now one can say the internet has replaced that.
df: Yeah, I think definitely huge impact.
John Gartside: But yeah.
df: I mean, the printing press, life and as you said knowledge and the way we interact with ideas and with things would have definitely been different I think different sort invention is the vaccine the first vaccine Edward Jenner in 1796 against sort of cowpox
John Gartside: Yes.
df: And very controversial topic nowadays, vaccines. We've seen RFK, the health secretary in the United States, make it non-mentary for their state army troopers to be flu vaccinated. That's a threat outbreak on a military base.
df: But overall, vaccines have been quintessential to human survival. We've managed to eradicate diseases such as
John Gartside: Yeah.
df: know in some parts of the world even we've managed to eradicate diseases such as hpv uh you receive an hpv vaccine and we're working towards that but definitely uh you know meningitis uh and other sort of diseases are simply just grotesque i mean you you wouldn't you definitely would not want to contract meningitis or
John Gartside: Yeah.
df: or typhoid fever, yellow fever. And I think the vaccines have been huge in that, especially at the Jenna.
df: Of course, polio, it would be the big one. managed to eradicate polio in most parts of the world, thankfully. But
df: It's very interesting to look at how the world will look like, especially with the COVID pandemic and the impact that the vaccine has had on that period in time, actually managing to restart the economy. But another concept that's in the health-related sphere as well,
John Gartside: Yeah.
df: antibiotics discovered by John Fleming at Imperial College in one of the hospitals. Penicillin actually being the first antibiotic discovered from a fungus that naturally produced and then they've managed to isolate it and produce it on scale. But without antibiotics, it would be a very different world.
df: We would have a vast number of diseases that now are quite mild or not necessarily mild, but very treatable and not worth a panic that previously, not even that long ago, sort hundred years ago would have been fatal to a very large amount of the population.
John Gartside: Yeah.
John Gartside: Well, Diane, I'll offer a, perhaps an even bolder claim, but related to that, I think developments in human medicine have had some of the biggest impacts, on military history.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: So if you go back to the 19th century, wars like the Burr war had more people died from illness, than they did from actual combats.
df: Wow.
John Gartside: Similarly in world war one, so many, large cause, I think it about a third of deaths in the war came from illness.
John Gartside: Then after there was the Spanish influenza, which killed more people than World War I itself.
John Gartside: If you follow that almost through to the Second World War, a huge priority of, I think it was Douglas MacArthur's campaign in the Pacific, was actually to make sure that his soldiers didn't die of illness rather than battle because,
df: Yeah.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: Is it chloroquine, which was the artificial synthetic development of quinine to combat malaria?
df: Malaria, yeah.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: These were huge inventions for World War II, which enabled the Allied forces to fight effectively.
df: Yeah,
John Gartside: really important because as I said before in the 19th century a huge cause of illness and war a huge cause of death and conflict sorry that was illness so that's yeah
John Gartside: yeah
df: But you're definitely right. And I think if we look back at sort medieval conflicts, definitely they had massive problem in the fact that they simply...
df: We're not sure of the numbers they would have a given day for battle. And even something like a flu or even a sort of common cold could prove fatal.
John Gartside: Yes.
df: But perhaps to move to something in the realm of technology.
df: And a lot of people say artificial intelligence is the invention of definitely of our lifetimes. But perhaps of the whole history of humanity, perhaps this is a sort of final invention we can actually have, which is artificial intelligence before the artificial intelligence will start inventing new things.
John Gartside: Yeah, I don't know. be honest, I actually do think that artificial intelligence is a huge invention, but it's definitely superseded by the internet, in my opinion. think the easiest way of just showing that is artificial intelligence only exists because of the internet.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: The internet is the platform which enables so many other inventions.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: The internet, in my opinion, the internet was probably the biggest actually invention in human history because it completely revolutionized human society in a way that no war, no economic theory, no philosophical political theory has ever done.
John Gartside: And the internet, so I do think the internet definitely supersedes AI, hence how it led to it. It actually means that AI can exist only because the internet exists.
John Gartside: But I think AI is hugely profound change in the internet. It's going to sort of change largely the human workforce.
John Gartside: There's been a huge concern about it. And I think it really... I think a big thing about AI for me, when I think of it is that it's really going to challenge how we value human nature, how we value things like human creativity or a human interaction, for example.
df: Yes.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: Now, you call, let's say a help desk is sometimes an AI bot.
df: Yeah.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: are we going to start valuing human voice?
df: Yeah,
John Gartside: And I think we should over a robot's voice. So I think that's a really, yeah.
df: definitely. Definitely. Yeah, I think, I think, uh, AI, we'll see how it goes and we'll see how far we can develop it. until maybe it will start thinking for himself, for themselves, rather than being a sort large language model, chat GBT and the other one is on a day, but another invention going back is farming.
John Gartside: Yes.
df: Perhaps, you know, one of the most important inventions as well, together with fire, for me, is farming as a result of the agricultural evolution of 10,000 BC, which changed the way humans operate from being hunter-gatherers to living in a sort of modern city-like structure. Obviously much smaller, but in a stable structure that...
df: What's different to the hunter-gatherers the sense that you would always come back to the same place. A hunter-gatherer would move and would camp and would sleep wherever as long as there was food available. Meanwhile, after this agricultural revolution, we've started settling down on places with good soil so that we can create our own food and we can not be so reliant upon catching animals. What do you think, John, about the impact of this?
John Gartside: I think the impact of the agricultural revolution was huge, but I actually think largely the history of farming has had an immense impact on human society.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: You mentioned the agricultural revolution there, Diane, which had a sort of structural effect on society. Before the episode was recorded as well, I was talking to Diane about ammonia.
John Gartside: Diane, you do A-level chemistry, so you knew about this Haber process, which you can create ammonia, which is the basis of fertilizers.
df: Yes.
John Gartside: Before the 20th century, I suppose, how to fertilise food and farming were a huge concern.
John Gartside: There was a limit to the extent you could farm a field with soil erosion and the limit of the nutrients in the soil.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: And it led to, I think it's very well known, but the Malthus theory. in which human product agricultural production just wouldn't be able to support growing population because people viewed that as being a natural limit to food production however invention of artificial super artificial fertilizers completely revolutionized it because it means that the population can continue to grow without agricultural food production being a worry simply because you can just create more and more fertilizers
df: Yes.
John Gartside: to enrich in all this soil. And that really, I suppose, helps population growth in a huge way. It does lead me to think, Diane, that I do believe that chemists have fundamentally changed human history.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: It's things like fertilizer we mentioned there, or the invention of penicillin, for example,
df: Yes.
John Gartside: or chloroquine to combat malaria are huge inventions.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: Another one which fundamentally changed human life, human society after World War II was plastic.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: These were one of the things that were synthesized during the Second World War and became really commonplace after. I think the plastic industry hugely grew post the war.
John Gartside: That was a scientific chemical discovery. Another one I'll finish on, which I think is hugely influential and I reading about it recently, is the discovery of synthetic rubber in the USA during and leading up to World War So rubber was a huge concern for the US.
John Gartside: They believed that their rubber supply from Southeast Asia would be cut off during war, the Japanese occupation.
df: Yeah.
John Gartside: And rubber is essential really for human life in many ways. Transport pretty much all involves rubber, cars, planes, boats, as well as so many other things that we rely on.
John Gartside: However, in the US, they synthetically managed to produce rubber, which cuts this dependence on uh on southeast asia it meant that the japanese occupation of these places in 1941 was less worrying because they didn't now need to depend on their natural resources it also largely just being able to synthesize chemicals and produce things like plastic it interestingly meant that the whole notion of of colonization and colonies really changed after world war ii
df: Yes.
John Gartside: Now colonies were needed less for natural resources. The only one that remained important was oil, I suppose. But now things like having colonies for rubber just didn't become needed because you could synthetically produce it.
John Gartside: Another one is before the Haber process in the early 20th century, the US colonized lots of islands in the Pacific for guano, which is bird poo, which was used as fertilizer.
df: right right
John Gartside: So, Diane, I do think, as a chemist yourself, I do think that chemists have changed human history.
df: yeah definitely and uh i was actually i was having a conversation very recently about chemists sort of being frankly a bit a bit crazy because uh in order for us to get to the point we are today you've had people you know sucking hydrochloric acid with their mouths because there was no no other way of getting it and uh playing with some very dangerous chemicals without any sort of precautions and uh
John Gartside: Yeah.
df: you know like uh chemicals you wouldn't want to touch without a fume cupboard or gloves they would just they would just do it and uh i think human history has needed
John Gartside: Yeah.
df: a bit of that in order to progress to where it is today. Obviously, we're now a lot more careful, but you've still had people very recently, had in the last 25 years, you had a Nobel Prize laureate in medicine who decided to test his theory on himself.
df: and ingest the bacterial that was a pathogenic bacteria and then cured himself and got no price for it. So I think we need that.
df: We need that sort of cutting edge, maverick style people who are happy put themselves at risk for the progress of science, for the progress of humanity.
John Gartside: Yeah.
John Gartside: Yeah.
John Gartside: Another, similar to that, actually, early aviators were the same. Aviation fundamentally changed human history.
df: Yes.
John Gartside: Globalisation, because of it, we're now so interconnected with the world. But even just trade,
df: Yeah. Yeah.
John Gartside: Things like colonies, especially in the 19th and 18th century, were not only important, as I said, for natural resources, but strategic trade positions were vital. The British, for example, in India, South Africa, the Suez Canal, Hong Kong, these were essential places as trade for trade ports.
df: Hong Kong.
John Gartside: Maritime trade is still vital, but aviation has meant that actually having these colonies is less important because you can fly it from any airport straight to that country.
df: yeah
df: indeed and on this note if you've enjoyed this episode do give us a review do let us know in the comments and as always go back and listen to a different episode we've had a very similar one on which city had the greatest importance in world history.
John Gartside: Yeah.
df: It's a very hypothetical history-based question again, which people seem to have liked. So go on to listen to that. And we will be back soon, hoping with some guests.
df: And we'll see you in a couple of weeks.
John Gartside: We'll see you then.
