In “Directionality of Humankind’s Development,” Victor Torvich, a physicist and specialist in complex systems, builds a considerable set of data, and applies consistent and rigorous standards to it while tracing the development of the human race. His time frame begins 44,000 years ago, and ends last year, in 2023. His methodology is to define resources humankind invented for itself, and accumulate them over time, and thus measure the creative energy of the race, and try to establish the cumulative direction. He is exacting and somewhat exhaustive in his researches and his methods.
He first assigns levels to the resources he enumerates, and describes the relationship between these levels; however, my discussion will focus (as his does too, mainly) on the resources themselves. Obviously these resources can be categorized, for instance mass transportation can be divided into mass transit by rail, mass transit in a vehicle with a motor, mass transit by water, even mass transit by tank. The author enumerates these separate classes, but I found his level of detail about these data appropriate and useful.
I will say that I am not a scientist, nor a historian, nor am I conversant in complex systems. I have exposed myself just slightly (almost not at all, really) to the new disciplines of Big History and Deep History. Torvich does not align himself with either of these disciplines, which have their own methods, terms, and theorems. I did find it interesting and gratifying that he chose the time period of 44,000 years ago to the present as his sample. (It’s not a sample at all, it’s a population. I do know that much.)
The first resource humankind invented for itself, much further back in history that 44,000 years, is “Novel Mental Images,” and the date given for its inception is 42,000 BCE. This is based on the dating of human-animal hybrid paintings found in caves in Indonesia. He also offers the current finding that Neanderthals and Denisovans were gone from Earth by then. Of course, the main interchange of Novel Mental Images between humans is language. He excepts language from his scheme because of, among other things, of deep uncertainty of when to peg its beginning. He cites the most recent invention of a resource as the First Communication via hologram, which occurred in 2018.
In all, Torvich enumerates 318 resources which humankind invented for itself, and they aren’t all intuitive, but I’m sure that’s my fault. I clearly haven’t devoted the time and energy to the issue as he has. I will say that his choices, aside from some splintering of latter-day digital resources, appear to have merit. And 318 data points is certainly enough to warrant the use of statistical methods and conclusions. His concise conclusion says, “Humankind is moving towards increasing the arsenal of resources and classes of resources that humankind creates for itself”; that the rate at which humankind is creating resources is increasing, and that the process has not occurred at a steady rate over time.
He dives deeply into the data in later chapters, particularly Chapter 3, and for me, much of this information could have been added as appendices. But this is a quibble. This is a thought-provoking, sweeping assessment of humankind’s historical amassing of its “arsenal of resources.” Torvich applies his rigorous standard to it, eschewing any political, emotional, or religious terms. He simply counts up each resource, establishes the year when it first went into service, and goes from there. Again, I’m not an academic in any historical field, but I found the design commendable, and it seems to me a solid, basic text from which further work may well grow.
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