It is clear how far advanced civilisation in this world has become from touchscreen phones, to holograms to 3d printing and not forgetting the huge advancements in space. Yet it would seem with all this advanced technology available we are not producing enough or any at all new scientists, philosophers or great thinkers of this time except for a few handful which go unheard of. Moreover, in the last few years a number of scientists, like Stephen Hawking, have been very vocal in pronouncing the death of philosophy. The question is clear, why is there no more knowledgeable people in today’s civilisation, in other words the death of scientists and philosophers would impact the way we know this world and how we perceive it in an entirely different level.
We could say that there are many brilliant physicists alive today that it has become harder for any individual to stand apart from the pack. They are just less noticed today than the giant number of celebrities in the media. If you read a philosophy or a science magazine regularly, you would find someone who thinks at a level of Socrates or Einstein. It’s just that people are less impressed these days. Philosophy has played an important role in the birth of science, from mathematics in ancient times to physics in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries to psychology in more recent times yet there have been no major contributions or ways of thinking from any individual at a deeper level like the Greek philosophers used to do, in which discussion in very deep meaningful taboo subjects where questions and answers were given high priority, where explanations came from the depths of the mind in the way they perceived life. It is those ways and words we perceive life as of today. So the words or perceptions haven’t changed, what’s changed is the ability for an individual to be deep thinkers, but those major thinkers from Aristotle to Descartes were just as much scientists as they were philosophers. If we look at the great civilisations and their creations we go from Ancient Greece thinkers (Pythagoras, Socrates, Solon, and Lycurgus), developers (phalanx, Aqueducts, Colonies), new ideas and political systems (Democracy, Oligarchy, Council, Tyrants, and Aristocracy)
The Ancient Egyptians were master builders (Sphinx, Pyramids, Cities), cosmetic (Eyeliner, hairstyles, Tans) inventors (coloured glass, calendar and my fav Bowling) and Agricultures (great estates, Nile, Farmers). Ancient China was way ahead it military technology ( Rocket launchers, Handguns, Grenades, Crossbows) and nor forgetting major contributions from the Islamic civilisations where scholars from various parts of the world with different cultural backgrounds were mandated to gather to travel to the hub of knowledge which was in Baghdad, they advanced in Algebra and Geometry medicine and many more. It is basic that different cultures at different times travelled across and laid down the very basics for the western culture of today. It is why today’s progress in science is deemed so slow even though we have come a long way in creating the ultimate new cut technology.
However over the past few decades, many physicists and scientists have gotten bogged down by pursuing a goal so obsessed with seeking and studying past science to an extent that new science is simply not been accomplished or not anything new was produced at that level that would have been required.
It is also individuality of people in today’s world, are they creative and great thinkers of their own as people used to be or are we simply creating humans who absorb information without any input from themselves leading to a creation of world of humanoids. In today’s time most people who consider themselves knowledgeable people are voracious information junkies. Who get all the info from TV, internet, books and talking to each other.
So what went wrong?, unfortunately with all the great minds and thinking that have gone before us, with all the lessons of history left for us to examine, it is difficult to imagine why we aren’t further along than we are. Why are we asking the same questions in our search for meaning, the Greeks were asking 2600 years ago?
The information is there yet we now live in a world where we are inundated with more information, on a daily basis, than we can possibly process. It is an over-communicated environment. The average person can now communicate faster, with more people—without thinking—than ever before. Information has become disposable. It doesn’t matter whether you are connected to the Internet or not. It is a fact that Scientists of today know more than scientists 100 years ago, yet the average person knows less therefore would have very little to offer in terms of vision, and even less to offer in terms of mechanical representation and rather little to offer in terms of scientific understanding as well, especially seeing how the more intellectually industrious or academically affluent social classes were better educated than the average modernist.
We have access to more knowledge than ever before since we can ‘stand on the shoulders’ of these giants. Unfortunately, most people seem to have some sort of intellectual snobbery towards thinkers of the past because of our technological and scientific progress. This, despite the fact that many of the ancients were intellectually deeper than many people in modern society and the creating humanoids doesn’t help in the fading away of scientists and philosophers.

Published by Mary S (Editor)

References:
http://www.philosophytalk.org

http://blogs.scientificamerican.com/cross-check/why-there-will-never-be-another-einstein/