Sept 20, 2008
My older daughter is a biologist by profession. However, being a woman of lively intelligence, she is also interested in the evolution of human civilization.
She posed an intriguing question. To what extent human civilization owes its progress to the invention of electric lamp? The question set me thinking furiously.
Electric lamp was patented by Thomas Alva Edison in the year 1891 or so. That gave me a cutoff date, and the question was now reduced to the causative input of electric lamp to the progress of the civilization from the year 1900 onwards.
Well, vast human knowledge had been gathered before the beginning of the 20th century. The great ancient civilizations like Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian had thrived and made their invaluable contribution to the sum total of human knowledge and culture.
The philosophical doctrines posited by the great thinkers like Confucius, and Lao-Tse enriched human thinking. The great religions like Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Shintoism, and Judaism took root in different countries, spread widely, and gave humans a choice to live according to their own belief.
Also, the contribution by Greek and Roman thinkers had taken place much before our cut-off date. Skipping over the medieval ages, we saw in Europe, renaissance in the field of art, philosophy, literature, science and astronomy. Newton, Galileo, Leibnitz, Gauss, Riemann, Goethe, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven were all intellectual giants born much before the dawn of 20th century. They had little opportunity to use an electric lamp.
However, if instead of electric lamp, we examine the historical value of a lighting device, the question assumes a different color. The primitive man was able to develop some sort of lamp, possibly as early 50,000 years ago. It consisted a hollow rock with filled with fat-soaked moss or some other such material. My understanding is that Eskimos still use a similar kind of lamp. Development of such devices transported man from Stone Age to later Ages. Somewhere in between man must have found how to make candles and torches.
The lighting devices of one kind or another increased the total working time for everybody. Night ceased to a forbidding factor for those who wanted to work. In enhanced the overall safety. It led to great works of art, science and literature over thousands of years.
We can perhaps say with reasonable confidence that although the electric lamp was not a critical factor in the evolution of human civilization, the lighting device of one kind or another most certainly was.
My older daughter is a biologist by profession. However, being a woman of lively intelligence, she is also interested in the evolution of human civilization.
She posed an intriguing question. To what extent human civilization owes its progress to the invention of electric lamp? The question set me thinking furiously.
Electric lamp was patented by Thomas Alva Edison in the year 1891 or so. That gave me a cutoff date, and the question was now reduced to the causative input of electric lamp to the progress of the civilization from the year 1900 onwards.
Well, vast human knowledge had been gathered before the beginning of the 20th century. The great ancient civilizations like Egyptian, Chinese, and Indian had thrived and made their invaluable contribution to the sum total of human knowledge and culture.
The philosophical doctrines posited by the great thinkers like Confucius, and Lao-Tse enriched human thinking. The great religions like Hinduism, Islam, Christianity, Buddhism, Jainism, Shintoism, and Judaism took root in different countries, spread widely, and gave humans a choice to live according to their own belief.
Also, the contribution by Greek and Roman thinkers had taken place much before our cut-off date. Skipping over the medieval ages, we saw in Europe, renaissance in the field of art, philosophy, literature, science and astronomy. Newton, Galileo, Leibnitz, Gauss, Riemann, Goethe, Shakespeare, Voltaire, Bach, Mozart, Beethoven were all intellectual giants born much before the dawn of 20th century. They had little opportunity to use an electric lamp.
However, if instead of electric lamp, we examine the historical value of a lighting device, the question assumes a different color. The primitive man was able to develop some sort of lamp, possibly as early 50,000 years ago. It consisted a hollow rock with filled with fat-soaked moss or some other such material. My understanding is that Eskimos still use a similar kind of lamp. Development of such devices transported man from Stone Age to later Ages. Somewhere in between man must have found how to make candles and torches.
The lighting devices of one kind or another increased the total working time for everybody. Night ceased to a forbidding factor for those who wanted to work. In enhanced the overall safety. It led to great works of art, science and literature over thousands of years.
We can perhaps say with reasonable confidence that although the electric lamp was not a critical factor in the evolution of human civilization, the lighting device of one kind or another most certainly was.
2 comments:
It would be interesting to trace the origin of the saying "burning the midnight oil" in reference to the above.
Origin of the phrase "burning midnight oil":
The English author Francis Quarles wrote in Emblemes, 1635:
Wee spend our mid-day sweat, or mid-night oyle);
Wee tyre the night in thought; the day in toyle.
Ignore the spellings used in 17th century English.
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