# Does intellectual evolution take place simultaneously? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [September 18, 2015, 6:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-intellectual-evolution-take-place-simultaneously/731650 "2015-09-18T06:38:46Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Sherrerd](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sherrerd/32/8_2.png) [@Sherrerd](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sherrerd)\ **Post date:** [September 19, 2015, 8:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-intellectual-evolution-take-place-simultaneously/731650/21 "2015-09-19T20:53:44Z")
> [@buckgully](#): > > Are we talking about [morphic fields](http://www.sheldrake.org/Articles&Papers/papers/morphic/morphic_intro.html) here? > Because if we are, then answer is no. Morphic fields are pseudo-scientific claptrap. I would guess–and Blackstock will correct me if this guess is inaccurate–that the thrust of Blackstock’s premise is that some supernatural agency must be behind human intellectual evolution. From the first post: > [@Blackstock](#): > > … My premise is that intellectual evolution takes place simultaneously. … > Moving on across time and different civilizations, you’ll notice that certain political, economic and scientific concepts have evolved simultaneously in different places with no proven connection or evidence that a painter in Renaissance Europe saw the work of another painter who lived in the same time but in a different place. … Again, I may be wrong, but to me the flavor of this is along the lines of \*‘there’s no way this could be happening without the intervention of a Higher Force’ \*or the like. ---
**Author:** ![Smeghead](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/f1d935/32.png) [@Smeghead](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Smeghead)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-intellectual-evolution-take-place-simultaneously/731650/22 "2015-09-20T03:01:01Z")
> [@Blackstock](#): > > I have clearly stated above that such event - if true - would only take place between societies that have reached a certain level of scientific, cultural and intellectual progress. Your text is impressive, in terms of literature, but you didn’t add anything new to the first comment on the thread. Thanks. Ah, so you’re arbitrarily eliminating any possible testing of the theory by looking at historical events. That’s handy. “My theory is totally true! Unless you’re looking at it. But trust me, it’s really really true!” ---
**Author:** ![drad\_dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/aeb1de/32.png) [@drad\_dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/drad_dog)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 3:11am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-intellectual-evolution-take-place-simultaneously/731650/23 "2015-09-20T03:11:58Z")
> [@Blackstock](#): > > I have clearly stated above that such event - if true - would only take place between societies that have reached a certain level of scientific, cultural and intellectual progress. Your text is impressive, in terms of literature, but you didn’t add anything new to the first comment on the thread. Thanks. Your theory in the OP is that intellectual progress occurs simultaneously. But here you specify only if we are talking about cultures that have reached a certain level of intellectual progress? Where did the conditions come from? You are going in circles. ---
**Author:** ![Wesley\_Clark](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/wesley_clark/32/20581_2.png) [@Wesley\_Clark](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Wesley_Clark)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 2:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-intellectual-evolution-take-place-simultaneously/731650/24 "2015-09-20T14:10:36Z")
> **[Multiple discovery](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Multiple_discovery)** > > The concept of multiple discovery (also known as simultaneous invention)\[self-published source\] is the hypothesis that most scientific discoveries and inventions are made independently and more or less simultaneously by multiple scientists and inventors.\[page needed\] The concept of multiple discovery opposes a traditional view—the "heroic theory" of invention and discovery.\[not verified in body\] Multiple discovery is analogous to convergent evolution in biological evolution.\[clarification When ... People like Ray Kurzweil claim that scientific discoveries are just built on existing discoveries, and occur (generally speaking) in a predictable fashion. For example about 10-20 years ago he was predicting that we would start having the ability to manufacture items on small scale around this time. That sounded absurd in the 90s, but now 3D printing is making it happen (but to be fair, he messed up the mechanism he felt it would be nanomachines, not 3D printers that did it). Part of me wonders if ‘sci fi’ technology is just tech that is 2-3+ steps removed from what we have now. If you went to someone in the 13th century and said ‘some day we will all have black rectangles in our homes and in our pockets that let us communicate with almost anyone and answer most questions’ that would seem sci fi. But the core technologies to make that possible didn’t even remotely exist back then. We needed computers before we could have smartphones or the internet. A person can look at a desktop and say ‘one day these will be miniaturized and able to communicate’ but going from something even more basic along the tech timeline would make it harder to predict something like this. ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [September 20, 2015, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-intellectual-evolution-take-place-simultaneously/731650/25 "2015-09-20T20:33:36Z")
Agreement: sci-fi preditions tend to obey Clarke’s Law…and eschew “magic.” SF writers tend not to make predictions about tech that is so advanced that they can’t even begin to comprehend the underlying principles. (There are, of course, noteworthy exceptions!) SF tends to operate on the principle of extrapolation: “If this goes on…” What’s kind of sad is that real technology sometimes works by wholly unexpected breakthroughs. No one, in the 1950’s, foresaw integrated circuits and a runaway trend toward miniaturization (which is a really hard word to spell.) Fifties’ SF still (by and large) envisioned computers as room-sized devices tended by teams of support engineers. (Credit to Jules Verne, in “Paris in the Twentieth Century,” who saw them reduced to the size of pianos, and tended by single operators. Fascinating book! It breaks quite a number of “rules” of the genre!) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/does-intellectual-evolution-take-place-simultaneously/731650.md?page=1)