I’d say it’s barbed wire. Tamed the West.
I see a lot of people posting that the think the scientific method is the best discovery. It’s not really a discovery, most scientists followed (roughly) the same method for thousands of years, some guy just one day decided to name it something. Big deal.
More importantly, toilet paper. If you have ever had to do without it you know what I mean.
The photocopier!
Just Call Me Tech-Mex wrote:
It tamed the trenches of World War I, too.
(Well, that, and the machine gun.)
Sir Dirx wrote:
gasp You don’t know about phlogiston?! :eek:
Well, ya see, back in the Good Old Days before Boyle and Lavoisier invented modern chemistry, all matter in the universe was composed of four elements: air, earth, fire, and water. Thing was, just saying something was made of “earth” wasn’t descriptive enough. So, eventually, somebody decided to classify “earth” into three separate categories, one of which was “vitreous earth” or phlogiston. Sulfur was the purest form of phlogiston, but all combustible substances contained phlogiston in some quantity or other. When you burned something, phlogiston was given off into the air, and calx was left behind, and … um …
Oh, heck, just read this webpage on phlogiston theory that I found with Hotbot: http://www.mcn.net/~jimloy/phlogstn.html.
the g spot, or the g area, or whatever…
Ohh, Father Cecil did one of his columns on that. ::nods:: Yes, if Cecil said it was important, than it must be good. But then that’s not really an invention, more of a discovery- and besides, I’m sure women knew about it years before men even dreamed about it. 
What about this: What do you think will be an important invention in the next fifty years?? definately the use of quantum physics for different things, such as teleporters, which would totally eliminate the need for any other type of transportation (thus end the need for fuel). but what does everyone else think?
A CURE FOR THE COMMON COLD!!
At one point or another in history this inventions have proven beyond any doubts their importance to humanity:
The condom: don’t get in bed without it!
Beer: football games wouldn’t be the same without it, would they?
Chastity belt: ah! Virginity, so precious yet so difficult to preserve.
Sunglasses: gotta look Kool!
Remote control: with it you are the master of the universe, without it you are obliged to watch whatever piece of crap the tube is showing.
Fart suit: total isolation between you and your farts. Now, what could be more heavenly and awe inspiring than that?
that’s a toughie… all you brainy people here should at least qualify what “most important” means…
I mean… I could argue that learning to smash bones with rocks opened us up to a new source of protein that provided us with sufficient extra energy to support the growthof the brain that came up with all subsequent innovations…
or I could argue that its a futile question, since for any BIG discovery, you can point to precedent discoveries that enabled that particular discovery. And <b>That</b> gets problematic, since scientific advancement is not a linear process, which raises the question of what is meant by <b>precendent</b>
saying the <b>Scientific Method</b> is a discovery begs the question, since that is an alternate term for <b>Peer review</b>, which has been with us forever…
MY vote? The most important discovery was the discovery that we could make use of external resources such as rocks and sticks, which thus took us out of nature’s loop of responding to environmental influences, and took us into the loop of <b>modifying</b> our environment to suit us better…
Thomas Kuhn’s.
I am amazed no one has mentioned agriculture. The ability to create our own food and stay in one place, instead of spending all day looking for food, that is what allows civilization to exist.
I agree. There’s a difference between science (a method of discovery & understanding) & technology (cool inventions).
The Theory of Cow Tipping
Someone did.
Peer review is just one part of the overall scientific method.
“Scientific”? I don’t know…but important discoveries:
1.The plow
2.Gun powder
3.Germs/bacteria
Popular to say the wheel, but not the impact you would expect.
::shrieks:: GOOD thing?! Not on my body it ain’t!!
ummm… Religion. Before the flaming begins:
I think that for as long as man has been on this earth we have wanted explanations. Thousands of years ago, we killed a sheep/virgin/beer and the volcano didn’t erupt, and a new belief was born of what was a feeble attempt at science. The experiment could even be reproduced: we killed a virgin again the next year and, hey presto, the volcano failed to erupt AGAIN! God/Thor/Phil was Just!
Every major religion has made an attempt at answering the unknown. As the millenia pass, of course, the older religions look stupid because science has come up with better answers since then. Gods interevened on behalf of the harvest in Mesopotamia then, and the high school football team today.
I’m not a big fan of organized religion, mind you, but its impact on the history of man cannot be overstated.
I think you’re exaggerating the extent to which religious - superstitious beliefs were ever accepted as rational theories. Religion is primarily philosophical and metaphysical- WHY things happen, not how. The struggle between the two worldviews goes back at least as far as the following:
Ancient Egyptian #1: “Hey, did you see the shitload of gold they buried with Pharaoh? Maybe we could break in and steal some!”
Ancient Egyptian #2: “But wouldn’t the curse of the gods be upon us?”
Ancient Egyptian #1: “F**k that; I’m gonna get rich!”
Yeah but i doubt people needed religion to survive. It explained things temporarily, but if you think about it, it did make things worse almost. Divine right monarchs, for example, convinced people that a leader’s power came from god- is it really a good thing for one person to have that much power? Also its a way of keeping the masses down almost, you know, it’s god’s will that you do this. It makes things too rigid. Without religion, people would have been much more free to creatively express themselves, IMO.