17th April 2005, 6:36 PM
DJ, you seem to think that most people in the past thought scientifically. They most definitely did not. The person is the very rare exception like Leonardo Da Vinci... he might not look at modern technology and say "magic". But virtually everyone else on earth in the years he was alive would have done exactly that. Without any other explanation, magic is to blame. Think about it for a second! Would an oh so logical society believe in witch trials ("if you die, you were probably innocent. If you live, you lived because of your magic and are guilty as a witch and will be killed.")
As for greek fire, that's exactly the kind of thing that a lot of people in that time would have called magic. There's no other explanation, right? Certainly none they could think of! Water does not burn.
As for sci-fi... that didn't really exist before the 1800s in a form we would recongize... people cannot concieve of what comes in the future. They can only guess based on what they know in the present. So people could not guess about future technology without having a basis for that... this is still true, we just know more now (look at the history of scifi -- H. G. Wells or Jules Verne in the 1800s (people opening the windows in their spaceship during their voyage to the moon in a ship shot out of a giant cannon) to 1930s-50s rocket ships (powered by nuclear power, in the '50s... also, stories like ones about people living on Venus (and not under domes), etc...) and giant computers to now... we can't really know what will come. So can anyone blame a medieval person for having absolutely no conception of modern technology?
To get someone in the middle ages to understand a DVD player you cannot just explain the DVD player. You'd first have to explain the concept of electrical power, power generation methods, power lines, AC/DC current, lights, plastic, the television, the laser, the concept of being able to encode something onto a disk by burning invisible holes onto a "plastic" disc (this one might take a while!), etc... and even then, lots of people will be stubborn and continue to say "magic" because that's human nature (like how it's harder for older people to understand newer technology).
A few people would be able to understand. The human race now is the same genetically, after all. But the majority of the people... no way. Especially once you consider that before the past 100, 150 years almost no one below the top few percent of the population got an education...
As for greek fire, that's exactly the kind of thing that a lot of people in that time would have called magic. There's no other explanation, right? Certainly none they could think of! Water does not burn.
As for sci-fi... that didn't really exist before the 1800s in a form we would recongize... people cannot concieve of what comes in the future. They can only guess based on what they know in the present. So people could not guess about future technology without having a basis for that... this is still true, we just know more now (look at the history of scifi -- H. G. Wells or Jules Verne in the 1800s (people opening the windows in their spaceship during their voyage to the moon in a ship shot out of a giant cannon) to 1930s-50s rocket ships (powered by nuclear power, in the '50s... also, stories like ones about people living on Venus (and not under domes), etc...) and giant computers to now... we can't really know what will come. So can anyone blame a medieval person for having absolutely no conception of modern technology?
To get someone in the middle ages to understand a DVD player you cannot just explain the DVD player. You'd first have to explain the concept of electrical power, power generation methods, power lines, AC/DC current, lights, plastic, the television, the laser, the concept of being able to encode something onto a disk by burning invisible holes onto a "plastic" disc (this one might take a while!), etc... and even then, lots of people will be stubborn and continue to say "magic" because that's human nature (like how it's harder for older people to understand newer technology).
A few people would be able to understand. The human race now is the same genetically, after all. But the majority of the people... no way. Especially once you consider that before the past 100, 150 years almost no one below the top few percent of the population got an education...
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