Humans: the irrepressible innovator

By Dr Anthony Lewis

Anthony is Chair of Windsor Humanists and former Chair of the South Central England Humanists Network. In this article, he responds to this month’s misanthropic theme by arguing that, rather than humanity being ‘our own worst enemy’, we are in fact our only hope. Human ingenuity has driven our progress so far and it is our best hope for the future. But not if today’s young ‘Golden Generation’ have their hopes dashed by relentless misanthropy and pessimism.

Do you have a misanthropic or philanthropic outlook about the future of humanity? Misanthropy is defined as a dislike or even hatred of mankind based on a focus on humanity’s flaws and vices. In contrast, philanthropy refers to a love of humankind which is often linked to efforts to improve overall human well being. Many religions are misanthropic and based on deeply held negative views of mankind as an inherently evil creature whose natural instincts must be rigidly controlled through doctrinal beliefs. I often feel that many environmentalists, social academics and modern politicians are also driven by very similar misanthropic views and ideologies about humanity. Misanthropy dominates much of today’s public discourse. It's driven by social media and because bad news sells and gets more attention than anything positive. We appear to live in a misanthropic age, where pessimism about our future permeates most public discussions with many predicting that we are nearing ‘the end of times’ or approaching irreversible dark 'singularities’.

Are you a misanthropist or a philanthropist?

Amidst all this ‘gloom mongering’ and warnings of a coming dystopian future, many philanthropic intellectuals have tried to stem the tide of wailing. They point out that there is clear evidence that actually things are improving at an accelerating pace for most of humanity. There have been a slew of excellent books published over the last decade laying out this more positive prospect, such as Enlightenment Now by Stephen Pinker, Progress by Johan Norberg, Sapiens by Yuval Harari, and Superabundance by Marion Tupe and Gale Cooley to name just a few (links are provided below). However, one wonders if anyone has noticed the ongoing good news against the daily diet of irrational woe that continues to be pumped into our heads from all directions by our modern global media.

‘The Little Blue Dot – the only home we’ve ever had – suspended on a sunbeam – there is nowhere else for us right now.’ Carl Sagan

For me, it is clear that human progress has been driven by our philanthropic urge to bring our more primitive and violent tendencies under increasing control through the march of civilisation, the rule of law, and securing our individual freedoms. From archaeological evidence we know that we are just a humble primate and that our early existence as hunter gatherers was by necessity savage and impoverished. Our natural state is destitution and poverty. The miracle is how we have been able to transcend these savage and primitive origins to build the quality of life that most of us enjoy today. In 1994, in his poetic and almost transcendental documentary, Carl Sagan pointed out that we live on ‘The Little Blue Dot – the only home we’ve ever had – suspended on a sunbeam – it is the only place we know that harbours life – there is nowhere else for us right now’. It is clear then that our future depends on ‘just us’ because, as far as we know at the moment, we are alone in the universe sitting on our ‘Little Blue Dot’. There is no-one or nothing else coming to save us or our planet from ourselves.

‘A pessimist sees the difficulty in every opportunity; an optimist sees the opportunity in every difficulty.’ Attributed to Winston Churchill

So my response to this month’s rather misanthropic theme is that, rather than humanity being ‘our own worst enemy’, we are in fact our only hope. As a humanist, I believe that each one of us has a duty to be an advocate for a more philanthropic perspective on our future to counter the pervading culture of misanthropy. I would even contend that to be a misanthropic humanist is an oxymoron. To me, being a humanist means that you have to be a philanthropist. Let’s explore in a bit more detail how our irrepressible human ingenuity has driven our progress and will continue to be the best hope for our continued future.

The evolution of human ingenuity

There has been a revolution in our understanding of the evolution of early humans, driven by recent scientific research across a broad range of disciplines from anthropology, evolutionary psychology, genetics and archaeology to neuroscience. For example, the attached plot charts the increasing cranial capacity of early hominid skulls which rapidly increased around two million years ago at about the same time as early humans acquired the ability to control fire. This pivotal skill expanded the range of edible foods through cooking, which in turn contributed to the evolution of larger brains. Improved cognitive capabilities enabled us to develop language. Our vocal chords co-evolved with our speech abilities so that we were increasingly able to co-operate in ever larger groups, improving our chances of survival. Homo Sapiens then out-competed other hominin species to extinction. Humans are the only species that is capable of significant innovation. This capability stems from our use of language to collaborate, plan for the future, and invent increasingly sophisticated tools and methods of cooperation.

Innovation is not rocket science!

All innovation starts with a thought, a spark of inspiration, when someone, somewhere, has an idea about a better way of doing something. For example, even the humble wheel had to be invented at some point. The exact history of the development of the wheel is lost to us now. But a human mind had to invent the concept, maybe by seeing a log roll along the ground and then, through trial and error, the idea was developed into a workable transport solution. Once done, others copied the invention as it clearly proved to be useful for getting around and carrying things. We know from the archaeological record that the wheel was probably invented at different times in different places, such as Eastern Europe and Mesopotamia, but not everywhere. For example, it was not invented in the Americas or in Australia!

Innovation has accelerated since the 18th century Enlightenment (Source Unsplash+)

This process of having ideas and then investigating them further, developing them, building prototypes and testing them, is what in some ways defines the human species. Innovation proceeds by a process of repeated trial and error – what works or is beneficial is replicated, and survives. It is an example of an evolutionary process for new ideas, cultures and inventions. Innovation is a very practical process for converting our ideas (i.e. science) into something real and useful (i.e. technology) through knowing what to do (i.e. knowledge) and improving how to do it (i.e. know-how). Most of our innovations and inventions quickly become embedded and taken for granted in our everyday lives. They have driven human progress, not only directly through the invention of new technologies but also indirectly through developing better ways to cooperate. This has been achieved through advances in our scientific, commercial, and civic processes.

Innovation drives human progress

In the modern era we are living in a time of extraordinary and fast technological change. It is common now for each generation to witness unimaginable change several times in the span of a single lifetime. However, for most of our history, technological and social developments progressed very slowly, resulting in most early humans experiencing little to no significant technological or civic change during their lifetimes. The accelerating exponential trajectory is represented schematically on the following diagram, with time plotted along the bottom on a logarithmic scale, spanning from two million years ago on the left to the present day on the right. Three significant periods of accelerated innovation are generally recognised. The Agricultural Revolution marked in green at 10,000 years ago, the Industrial Revolution marked in blue some 300 years ago and the ongoing Information or Silicon Revolution is on the right. The ratcheted lines on the schematic illustrate that these ‘revolutions’ are often times of huge societal disruption where the old ways of doing things are replaced by new ways and new technologies. During these periods of disruption, technological innovation drives significant changes to civic culture and to commerce, as we are witnessing at the moment with the internet.

‘The optimist thinks this is the best of all possible worlds. The pessimist fears it is true.’ Robert Oppenheimer (American theoretical physicist)

As Max Roser, co-director of Our World in Data, and others including Steven Pinker have pointed out, the exponential rise depicted on the vertical axis of the schematic represents human progress across a wide range of activities. These include the spread of democracy, women's emancipation, increasing wealth, improvements in public health, reductions in absolute poverty, and declines in disease incidence, among many others. Multiple fascinating narratives can be woven about every one of these areas of technology and social innovation across the whole span of human activity. In this short article, I can only summarise one of these by briefly exploring the huge increase in human knowledge, illustrating how technology also often drives beneficial changes in civil society.

The images depict early writing on clay tablets, Gutenbergs printing press, Leonardo Da Vinci, Isaac Newton, Moon Landing and Professor Dudah — Human progress is driven by our innovations.

The democratisation of human knowledge

In the Stone Age, knowledge and know how could only be passed down orally using songs and myths, which limited the total amount of human knowledge. In the New Stone Age, beginning around 10,000 BCE, a form of proto-writing developed to record farm surpluses generated during the Agricultural Revolution. True writing was invented around 3,200 BCE in Mesopotamia. Scholars used these new writing materials and technologies such as papyrus (similar to thick paper), clay tablets, inks and pens, to record oral histories representing the totality of human knowledge at that time. For example, parts of the Old Testament (also known as the Hebrew Scriptures) were probably written on papyrus scrolls during the Iron Age (c. 1200-586 BCE). However, there was only limited growth in human knowledge because access to writings was monopolised and controlled by religions and autocratic monarchies. Also, most of humanity was focused on the daily struggle to survive and few could read or write, so getting access to books was not exactly a priority for most people.

Access to knowledge has driven human progress (Source Unsplash+)

Johannes Gutenberg’s invention of the printing press in Germany around the year 1436 broke the monopoly on knowledge, democratising access to books and human knowledge that had previously been jealously guarded by state monarchies and major religions. The printing press significantly improved upon earlier rudimentary printing technologies developed in China and Korea in the 9th century. The resultant flourishing of intellectual endeavour, often termed the Enlightenment, led directly to the Industrial Revolution, which drove a rapid increase in economic activities and transformed the world. It is a period when the scientific method was formalised, when modern ideas about equality and liberal democracy were formulated, when access to education became progressively more widespread, and when modern banking and financial systems were established. The Enlightenment is considered, by humanists especially, to be a key turning point in human affairs.

We are now living through another significant disruption, driven by new information technologies that are once again democratising access to knowledge and information. Humanistically Speaking magazine is an example. All of us can now hold the whole of human knowledge in our hands on our mobile phones. Young people today are the first generation to have such easy access to the entirety of human knowledge and the first-ever generation globally to be consistently educated to secondary school level (nearly 80% according to the UN). This generation is also the largest age cohort there has ever been in human history, due to the increase in global human population over the last hundred years. As former US President Obama pointed out in his speeches, it is likely that the current generation will very likely drive another wave of accelerated innovation as part of the ‘Information Revolution’ or ‘Silicon Revolution’.

The disruptors and mavericks

Do you think this curve of human progress will continue to rise exponentially or, alternatively, do you think humanity is heading for a societal collapse? Science and our economic development are, in some ways, victims of their own successes. They have driven a human population explosion. The UN now predicts that the human population will peak at just over ten billion although this figure keeps being revised downwards as global fertility rates decline, attributed to worldwide economic development. We reached ‘peak child’ in 2002 and, as a result, much of the remaining predicted population growth is already ‘baked in’ as this cohort reproduces but at a slower rate. Nevertheless, it is clear that the huge population explosion of recent decades, coupled with our use of fossil fuels, is having a huge impact on the Earth’s biosphere and environment. We have also invented a number of technologies, such as nuclear weapons and biochemical nerve agents, that present other serious existential threats. Some people argue that we now also face a series of ‘Existential Singularities’ such as a possible AI take over. There are plenty of potential catastrophes for those of a misanthropic nature to imagine.

‘Pessimists are usually right and optimists are usually wrong but all the great changes have been accomplished by optimists.’ Thomas Friedman, American author and journalist

However, there is no reason to believe that future scientific advances, technological inventions, and social progress will not continue to improve the quality of life for future generations, much as our lives have been transformed over the past 200 years. The pace of technological innovation will accelerate across many areas as the ‘Information Revolution’ or ‘Silicon Revolution’ gains momentum. This includes decarbonising our economies through the green energy transition, the development of nano-technologies, genetic engineering and Artificial Intelligence – to highlight just four areas which are likely to have a huge impact. As so often before, many of these technologies will be disruptive, as, for example, we are witnessing with social media. But even so, it is likely that science and human ingenuity will continue to help us solve our remaining challenges in beneficial ways. One very positive example in the news currently is the recent development and rollout of new malaria vaccines, developed using CRISPR genetic engineering techniques, which will have a significant impact on those living in Africa and Asia.

A central tenet of humanism is that science is the best way to understand reality, driving human flourishing through innovation and technological progress, especially since the Enlightenment. It is clear that scientific progress has been hugely beneficial but it can also be disruptive. The history of innovation shows that many innovators and their teams were often mavericks who challenged established norms against fierce opposition from vested interests. They include James Watt, the perfecter of the steam engine that powered the Industrial Revolution, Alan Turing, who is considered to be the ‘father’ of the modern computer, and contemporary disruptors such as Elon Musk, and Jennifer Doudna, who developed the CRISPR gene editing technique. Such innovators were often driven by optimism and a passion to improve things.

‘It is hope, not despair, that will inspire the Golden Generation.’

In my view, our best hope for solving today's global challenges is to encourage the mavericks and the disruptors of the ‘Golden Generation’ to innovate and invent. They are our best hope for the future, but not if their heads are filled with misanthropic pessimism. It is hope not despair that will inspire them. Optimism and philanthropy have always been major drivers of human progress, whereas an excess of pessimism has often held us back. So let us have a lot more optimism, and much less misanthropy. We can and we must. There really is no alternative.