The Rise of the Sorcerers: Chapter Sixteen - FREE UNION OF KNOWLEDGE AND DOING
End of the journey: on horseback on some certainties. - Science and Technology can be two activities without connection or relationship; is contradictory. - This check illuminates our time and the past. - Abundance of evidence. - A glimpse of the world animal. - Astronomers' Fair Calculations and Misconceptions Babylonians. - Genius and impotence of the Greeks. - The Empire of the engineers. - On the progress of the Mughals. - Humanize the future, rehumanizing the buried millennia.
We've galloped a lot on the back of the questions. Some of these They were vigorous. Others seemed a little discouraged. But in the You have to take what you find. What's important, for the The beautification of life is travel. This is our last stage. Now we've found some certainties, which are mounts of another class. They are young and very nervous. We will try to have the Light spur.
We've galloped a lot on the back of the questions. Some of these They were vigorous. Others seemed a little discouraged. But in the You have to take what you find. What's important, for the The beautification of life is travel. This is our last stage. Now we've found some certainties, which are mounts of another class. They are young and very nervous. We will try to have the Light spur.
Official archaeology made great strides in Crete and, recently, important discoveries in Turkey. Let's Ride in these certainties, and from time to time, let us spur the mount with some of our absurd questions. But are they really that Absurd? Maybe one day, when some of the ideas or the hypotheses that float in our crude books engender vocations, they will attain the dignity of a method.
We carry, for example, in our saddlebags, an idea that, in our In my view, it deserves some consideration. It could serve very well for a more accurate understanding of the past and even the present. Already You'll see how we use it in the next chapters, when we talk about the myth of Daedalus and the refinements of the newly unearthed cities of Çatal Huyuk.
The idea is this:
Every time they are discovered In very ancient times, there is a movement of astonishment. Even of annoyance. It's something, you think difficult to admit, given the presumption that the science of the time It was childish and false. Only an exact knowledge of the laws It allows the application of science. In other words, it seems that A civilization, to be technical, has to be scientific.
Our IDEA rejects this principle. He rejects, then, the astonishment and the contrariety in the presence of technical traces.
Expel from the mind the taboo principle that prevents him from following those leads. We thought, in effect, which does not always and necessarily exist, in a civilization Given a relationship between technical realization and general knowledge. Even if this civilization is ours. This way of looking is, Admittedly, puzzling. However, we seem to agree with reality.
It is, properly speaking, of the order of discovery, and this discovery can serve to better understand our time and buried times.
All of our school education, organized and guided by philosophers, literary-minded men, and pedagogues, tend to persuade us that technique is a by-product of technology. science. The wise man discovers the principles, and the technician makes use of the them for practical realizations. According to this conventional scheme, Progress starts from men who had great general knowledge, such as Euclid, Descartes, Newton, Fresnel, Maxwell, Plank, and Einstein; and the role of type intelligences Archimedes, Roger Bacon, Galileo, Marconi or Edison deductions from fundamental knowledge of the laws of the Universe.
You have to start with understanding, and move on to action. But Such a scheme, on which all reflection rests, is based and, therefore, our whole way of studying the past does not correspond to reality.
Generally, most The great constructions of scientific genius have not given rise to any transformation of the material environment in which we live, or contributed to any material progress, nor to the dominion of man about Nature.
On the other hand, most of the stages of the technical progress, which have led to our current mastery of the natural phenomena are the result of actions without the slightest philosophical scope, carried out most of the time by men lacking in true scientific culture and who have made great things, not because they were wise, but because they were not wise enough to know that such things were impossible.
"Scientism" aristocratic, which prevails in the conventional scheme, does not It does not correspond at all to dynamic reality.
Often, man makes, before he knows the laws that he has to make. Properly explain the results you get. And the fact that attribute these results to the Gods, does not imply that what he does is necessarily mythical. Blast furnaces worked much earlier of the birth of industrial chemistry.
In the past, a A red-hot sword on the body of the sacrificed prisoner. Herself They imagined that the virtues of the victim tempered the steel. In Actually, organic nitrogen produced this effect. The The procedure was magical; But the technique was correct.
When Faust denies the priority of the Word, and then of the Thought, and he decides to write: "A beginning was the Action," begins his adventure, "the spirits in the corridor" are stirred and Mephistople enters disguised as a student... In the same way, some Men of vanished civilizations, disguised as sumos priests, with an irrational mentality and an absurd view of the Universe, they were able to perform technical feats that challenge our understanding and disrupt our calculations.
The solution does not lie in the refusal to consider the problem, even in the mystique of paradise of the Gods present in the beginning and of the Atlanteans of absolute knowledge. And even if we suppose (assumption It is permissible, in our view) that there were visits by "Great Galactics" in the mists of time, they did not transmit, however, doubt, an untranslatable science, but procedures, tricks, games hands, which met different fates, across seas of forgetfulness, ignorance, indifference to knowledge.
Let's take a fresh look at our own time.
Let's take a fresh look at our own time.
How little space there is occupy the passion of knowledge! And what a great extent the eagerness and the need to know how to do! Our technical world would continue to move on for years, for centuries, even though all of our science would stop tomorrow at the point reached, and even if it were forget the general principles.
Science intervened very late in technology, and not without to meet with resistance, for the impatience of doing does not tolerate the knowledge cumbersomeness. Of course, knowledge of the laws of Nature allows us to act on it. Science delegated its powers in the practical, in scientifically instructed engineers. But the action on Nature sometimes shows that the knowledge is false, or insufficient, or more simply, indifferent.
The inventor does not belong to the world of law, but to the world of law. of the acts. It is not an enlightened mind. It's a mind inflamed by the will to immediate power. Your inner fire drives you to succeed, regardless of whether science deems it achievable or your project.
Professor Simon Newcomb demonstrates mathematically, at the end of the nineteenth century, that the flight of an object Heavier than air is a chimera. Two repairers bicycles, the Wright brothers, build an airplane. Early of the 20th century, Hertz is convinced that its waves cannot serve to convey a message over a long distance. An Italian ingenious and without academic qualifications, Marconi sets the first wireless communications.
What happens is that we confuse it with the the accomplishments of this special kind of mentality that As soon as it follows the stream of knowledge as it sails against she. And, in our present epoch, the Faustian impulse, in so far as it has It has been revived by pure science, it submerges it, envelops it, and envelops it. suffocating in its waves. The image of the "great sage," who shone For a century, it's losing consistency.
The Great Sage It belongs to an increasingly rare species. Swept away by the wave, or, more stupidly, because of administrative duties, this kind of man, who gave himself up to a quasi-religious vocation in favor of the pure intelligence, justly proud of his knowledge, absorbed in general ideas, concerned about the consequences of his work, it's getting outdated.
On the other hand, it is significant that, in the the word "wise" should be replaced by "researcher". This is not the effect of modesty. What's happening It is that the "researcher" already belongs to another race, more closely specialized and entirely oriented towards know-how.
We see a homogeneity of knowledge and doing, of science and technique, whereas what there is is coexistence. overlapping and sometimes antinomy.
Experimental physicists willingly assert, privately, that The vast syntheses of theoretical physics do not have for them the less practical usefulness. The technicians themselves will tell you that the most Formidable nuclear installations represent, above all, a triumph of artisan ingenuity; that are the fruit of thousands and thousands of little "tricks" grouped together by experience and unrelated with the fundamental theories.
True, they have to confess that their The field was initially explored by theorists whose Jobs cannot be ignored. And herein lies, perhaps, a great novelty of our century: that, in order to be a technician, you had to be also a bit wise. This relationship is a new fact in the History, it is an originality. But this originality does not It could found a general law.
Los partos tecnológicos no requieren, como condición necesaria, el previo apareamiento de las dos actividades de la mente. Incluso en nuestra civilización, es ésta una unión muy libre, con sus rabietas, sus escapatorias y sus engaños. Tal vez se necesitaría una transformación de la mentalidad humana, comparable a la realizada por los griegos hace veinticinco siglos, para que nazca una nueva forma de conquista del Universo que una estrechamente el conocimiento a la acción.
Sin embargo, aquel esquema está tan profundamente arraigado en nosotros, que decimos de buen grado que nuestra civilización es científica. Y, en realidad, es tecnológica. No está en modo alguno gobernada por las virtudes del espíritu científico. Son los afanes del demonio del saber los que llevan la voz cantante.
Tenemos sociedades de managers y de ingenieros, de burócratas y de policías, en las que el empirismo rige las cosas y los hombres, con justificaciones ideológicas muy vagas, muy dudosas, y con peticiones de principio cuyo carácter relativo nadie ignora. Una sociedad regida por la Ciencia sigue siendo una utopía. No; el hacer no es, en circunstancia alguna, una recompensa del saber. Y nuestra visión de la historia de la mente se ve falseada por esta creencia.
El Renacimiento, por ejemplo, no es un fruto rápidamente madurado por una súbita luz. Cierto que la imprenta, la brújula, la pólvora, aparecen aproximadamente en el momento en que renace la ciencia fundamental, después de un eclipse de casi quince siglos; pero la contribución de la ciencia a los inventos y a los descubrimientos es absolutamente nula. La brújula no nació de la aplicación de las leyes del electromagnetismo, sino todo lo contrario. Los grandes navegantes españoles y portugueses precedieron en cuatro siglos a Ampère y a Maxwell. Descartes concretó las leyes de la óptica mucho tiempo después de que Galileo fabricase su primera lente y descubriese las montañas de la Luna, los satélites de Júpiter y las fases de Mercurio y de Venus.
El ejemplo más impresionante del distanciamiento entre la Ciencia y la técnica es la obra de Newton. este es sin duda con Einstein el genio más grande de los tiempos modernos. Sus trabajos inspiraron durante tres siglos, el conocimiento de las leyes del Universo.
But It would be impossible to cite a single practical application of its discoveries until the launch of the first Sputnik. There would be nothing changed since the eighteenth century, in the conquest of Nature by man, if the laws of gravitation had remained shrouded in ignorance. Nor the steam engine (invented a lot) before Carnot formulated his theory), neither electricity nor electricity, nor electricity. chemically, they owe them nothing.
When you think about all this, you are troubled. The Most Fruitful modern inventors, those who have contributed most to changing the world, Denis Papin, Watt, Edison, Marconi, Armstrong, De Forest, Tesla, George Claude, the Lumière brothers, were not what has been agreed in calling wise men. We could have lived the same as we live today. on a different theoretical probe on a view of the Universe and non-scientific, irrational or non-scientific, fundamental concepts. Religious.
After all, Nazism was a magical philosophy absurd, and his technique almost conquered the world. In order to In the end, our rationalism and our materialism are also ideological choices, rather than products of the spirit of truth. To In the end, evolutionism, on which all our Concept of progress, it's a fairy tale.
Everything inside us rebels against these checks. We would like the accomplishments were rewards of what we have for our most Noble desire: the desire for truth. That is why we want to deny our ancestors the possibility of doing; because they lived in a A profound detachment from truths.
And when we discovered the central heating in ancient cities, our surprise has a tinge of anguish. It's our tottering mental world. The small wooden forks, which emerged from prehistoric times, prick our mind.
Thales' robot, from the coast of Crete, Tombstone. The builders of Stonehenge are our enemies. Daedalus makes us doubt ourselves. The Mayan Calendar It disturbs our mental constellations. And yet, when We think of science and technology, a single glance at the Nature should undeceive us. There is not a single discovery useful, transformative of our world, that has not been realized previously by the animal world. Cuttlefish and certain insects Stimids are propelled by reaction. The wasp makes paper.
The Fish Torpedo has fixed capacitors, batteries and switches of electric current. Ants practice cattle raising and agriculture, and maybe they know the use of antibiotics. The fish Gymnarcus niloticus carries, close to the head and tail, voltage generators and apparatus capable of appreciating minute electrical gradients. The demon of doing plays all the cards and circulates mysteriously through all of Nature, and no doubt of all men of all times.
The prestige of the astronomical science of the Babylonians remains after three millennia. Indeed, there is no doubt that, in a certain way, In this sense, this science went far, farther than that of the United States. and even, in certain fields, than modern astronomy until the last century. More than two dozen centuries ago, Kidinnu calculated the value of the annual motion of the Sun and Moon with a a precision that was only surpassed in 1857, when Hensen obtained figures with an error of less than three arcseconds. The mistake of the Kidinnu's results did not exceed nine seconds.
The prestige of the astronomical science of the Babylonians remains after three millennia. Indeed, there is no doubt that, in a certain way, In this sense, this science went far, farther than that of the United States. and even, in certain fields, than modern astronomy until the last century. More than two dozen centuries ago, Kidinnu calculated the value of the annual motion of the Sun and Moon with a a precision that was only surpassed in 1857, when Hensen obtained figures with an error of less than three arcseconds. The mistake of the Kidinnu's results did not exceed nine seconds.
Even more extraordinary is the precision of the calculation of eclipses polka dots by Kidinnu himself. Current calculation methods, perfected in 1887 by Oppolzer, they represented an error of seven tenths of a second of arc per year in determining the movement of the Sun. Kidinnu's calculation was closer to the Actually, in two-tenths of a second!
Toulmin and Goodfiels, in a course they gave in 1957 at the University of Leeds, they did not hide their admiration for the old astronomer of Mesopotamia.
"That such exactness," they wrote, "could be attained without telescope, without a clock, without the impressive apparatus of our modern observatories and without higher mathematics, it would seem It would be unbelievable if we didn't remember that Kidinnu had archives covering a much longer period than that of their successors of our time."
Shall we say that Kidinnu and his colleagues were great astronomers? No! By Surprising as it may seem, his astronomical knowledge was practically nil. They were nowhere near the level of the a child from our elementary schools. Kidinnu and the Others Babylonian "astronomers" believed that the planets were divinities.
No They had the least idea of the dimensions of heaven: and the idea itself of spatial distance, applied to the Moon, the Sun, or Mars, It would have seemed absurd, scandalous, sacrilegious, as it would seem to them to our modern theologians any trigonometrical calculation of the the movement of the angels, or of the distance that separates Heaven from the Purgatory.
Astronomers, who for centuries and centuries observed the movement of the planets from the top of the Great Ziggurat, were true engineers in theology. This Great Ziggurat, whose Colossal ruins still justifiably produce a kind of sacred astonishment in twentieth-century man, had nothing to do with it. observatory, and only a psychological blindness inclines us to give it this name.
Astronomers, who for centuries and centuries observed the movement of the planets from the top of the Great Ziggurat, were true engineers in theology. This Great Ziggurat, whose Colossal ruins still justifiably produce a kind of sacred astonishment in twentieth-century man, had nothing to do with it. observatory, and only a psychological blindness inclines us to give it this name.
We would get closer to the truth if we imagined it like a gigantic sacristy, equipped with a study office. Moreover, the Babylonian "astronomical" texts reflect the basic concepts on which the Kidinnu's admirable calculations.
"Then, Marduk (the supreme God) created kingdoms for the Great Ones Gods. He traced his image in the constellations.
"He fixed the year and defined its divisions, assigning three constellations at each of the twelve months.
"When he had defined the days of the year by the constellations, he commissioned Nibiru (the Zodiac) to measure them all (...). Zenit in the center. He made the bright moon mistress of the darkness, and commanded him to dwell in the night and mark the time. He ordered his record to increase, month after month, incessantly:
"At the beginning of the month... You'll shine for six days like an arc crescent, and about half a disc on the seventh day. At the full moon, at the In the middle of each month, you will find yourself in opposition to the Sun.
"When the sun overtakes you in the east, above the horizon, you will You will shrink and form an inverted crescent... And on the twentieth day ninth, you will be back in line with the sun."(Excerpts from the text of the Enuma Elish.).
And so on for the planets, the movement of the Sun in the Zodiac, and so on. Modern man is inclined, by his invincible realistic illusions, to interpret these texts as literary fictions, intended to dress elegantly some facts the material character of which was perfectly known to the calculators of the Great Ziggurat.
He can't believe that such calculations could be realized by men for whom the moon, Venus, Mars, and all the stars were really Godis. But there is An ancient text, perfectly clear, which leaves no room for doubt about the prodigious ignorance of the Babylonian astronomers.
Back in the year 270 B.C., Berossus, of whom we have spoken Speaking of the Akpallus, he emigrated to the island of Kos, in the Dodecanese, and there he taught the science of his country. His teaching did not it fell on deaf ears, and, two hundred years later, the Roman Vitruvius made a summary of it, which has come down to us.
According to Berossus, heir to two thousand years of Babylonian astronomy, the Earth was The sun flew over it at a constant altitude, and so did the Moon, albeit at a lower altitude. It had a luminous face and a dark face, and it turned on itself, in such an ingenious way which explained its monthly variations, but so strange that, in the Moment; of the full moon, it gave its dark face to the sun! Of course the moon and the sun had to be God is ofnecessity, because, afterwards, To disappear every night across the western horizon reappeared the next day in the East, thanks to a miracle that only the great Marduk could explain.
But Berossus did not cease to to impress the Greeks (who had long known the roundness of the Earth and, broadly speaking, the configurations of the celestial ones), for the fantastic precision of their ephemeris and their Eclipse predictions. The Greeks were wise. Berossus was a technician. The practical works of the Babylonian astronomers did not They required no theoretical knowledge and have left no trace of wisdom of this kind.
The gulf that separates science from technology is getting even darker. This is evident if we remember that, at the time of Berossus' arrival in Kos, Aristarchus of Samos had already discovered the rotation of the earth about itself, its annual revolution around the sun, and the immense dimensions which, on the basis of the latter phenomenon, had to attribute to outer space.
The gulf that separates science from technology is getting even darker. This is evident if we remember that, at the time of Berossus' arrival in Kos, Aristarchus of Samos had already discovered the rotation of the earth about itself, its annual revolution around the sun, and the immense dimensions which, on the basis of the latter phenomenon, had to attribute to outer space.
But there was no need technique (here, theological) that would oblige Aristarchus to foresee the eclipses with an error of one-tenth of an arcsecond. It was enough for him to know how things happened and how things could be explained. appearances, as Plato had said.
On the other hand, the intellectual adventure of the Greeks illustrates in In a certain sense, the independent development of science and science They were the first true men of Science, they always considered technique as a skill of their own of barbarians and slaves, at least until Archimedes, whose genius Revolutionary is that of an engineer as well as that of a scientist.
Yes the Greeks were the first men in history to They glimpsed the true nature of the material universe and the the natural order that organizes it – the word Cosmos, which they give us legaron, is, above all, an adjective that means beautiful, elegant, orderly, if they were the first to understand the situation, at the same time, of man in the bosom of this machine On the other hand, we do not owe them any of the great inventions made in his time.
When Archimedes finally understood that the True science must also have the artisan aspect of the experimentation, it was already too late: as we know, Archimedes He was killed by a soldier of the victorious Roman army. With the During the Romans, technology once again replaced science.
We have quoted Vitruvius, to whom the dictionaries give the title of architect, because he gave himself that name. But, in reality, The Roman architect was a true engineer, as they were then the Italian architects of the Renaissance.
We have quoted Vitruvius, to whom the dictionaries give the title of architect, because he gave himself that name. But, in reality, The Roman architect was a true engineer, as they were then the Italian architects of the Renaissance.
The Roman architect Sergius Orata, a contemporary of Julius Caesar, realized indirect central heating, in the form it is Currently more fashionable: on the floor. Roman engineers and Up to the end of the Empire, the Gallo-Romans multiplied the small inventions that transform everyday life (such as panes (of the windows), without appealing to the slightest knowledge} scientist.
This technical progress was developed against a background of total scientific ignorance. In the time of Augustus, the schoolchildren continued to learn Euclid's theorems of geometry, but they were no longer taught the proofs... Well What was the use of learning the demonstration, "if Euclid had done already"?
This little detail shows us, better than any other, to what extent the Roman genius, so fertile in the art of transforming Nature, had isolated itself from the sources of scientific intelligence. When we tour the wreckage of a great Roman aqueduct, for example the one that fed Carthage to Across eighty kilometers of plains and hills, we marvel at the Accuracy of slope calculation.
But those who effected these calculations and the corresponding topographical measurements did not know prove the old Pythagorean theorem, and besides, they didn't give a damn about it. It is important to note that there is no such thing Like our modern engineers and like the engineers Babylonians, they had tables and scales that solved all the problems of the Babylonians. practical problems. And the theory of these tables was so indifferent as useful.
One of the most curious discoveries in modern archaeology, Professor André Varagnac, one of the The first thing to emphasize is that the fall of the Roman Empire was due to the for both technical and political reasons. By registering the tombs of the barbarians who, from the fifth century onwards, settled On the spoils of the former, it was ascertained, with surprise, that his Their weapons were better than those of the Romans, because their steel was too high. high quality, as well as their armor, the harnesses of their horses and even their utensils.
One of the most curious discoveries in modern archaeology, Professor André Varagnac, one of the The first thing to emphasize is that the fall of the Roman Empire was due to the for both technical and political reasons. By registering the tombs of the barbarians who, from the fifth century onwards, settled On the spoils of the former, it was ascertained, with surprise, that his Their weapons were better than those of the Romans, because their steel was too high. high quality, as well as their armor, the harnesses of their horses and even their utensils.
Moreover, the ferocious Huns, of whom, at the same time, Over the centuries, we will still have a dreadful memory, thank you From the testimony of the last Latin chroniclers, it appears that They contributed inventions of which no European people had the slightest Least of all the Greeks, who were so skilful in deciphering the secrets of the Universe.
In fact, to the former and to the Mughals we owe the horseshoe, the rational horses' garrisons, with their stuffed tails, the felt and even, indirectly, the printing press!
As far as the printing press is concerned, the long and complicated facts, can be summarized as follows: Era, the Chinese invented the art of woodcut; the Mughals invade China and India; In the latter country, they learn... The card game, the favorite distraction of the idle soldier. For renewing their decks, worn out on guard nights, use the Chinese engraving technique, which they then transmitted to Europe.
The Western monks seize the invention, not to manufacture cards, but pious stamps. A Dutchman conceives the idea of separate, into two different objects, the engraving depicting the image and the one containing the caption, in order to combine various images and captions, practicing a swap. Then, also in In Holland and northern Germany, other inventors separate letters of each other.
And finally, Gutenberg invents the different devices that are still in use today: the press, the Animal black ink, the metallic alloy of the characters. Only Considering these two inventions—the modern trimmings of the horse and the printing press (the latter indirectly)-, we are compelled to confess that the contribution of the Mughals to the West contributed more to the the transformation of this which all the admirable Greek science, to the at least until the Renaissance. However, the scientific basis of the printing and garrison with tail is absolutely nil.
In the time of the greatness of Rome, the geese, whose offspring constituted a specialty of Great Britain, were transported to Italy by They made the journey on their feet and were driven by twenty intermediaries across Gaul, from Calais to the Alps, in about a month.
With the advent of the workhorse, the The same trade could be carried on in the form of pasta and pickles. transported, in part, in river vessels, and in part, in heavy wagons that played the same economic role as our current railways.
The tow-horse, when generalizing the traction of heavy cargoes on the slow-flowing rivers of Germany and Flanders, so opened the way to the civilization to these countries, whose role very soon equalled that of the Mediterranean Europe and eventually eclipsed it. It was, therefore, in part, Thanks to the Mughals, civilization was implanted in the north of Europe.
However, who remembers it, and what place do the Mughals in the official history of progress?
Once the idea is established, countless examples emerge. Like this No bond unites the abstracts of Hellenistic science of the century II B.C. with the engineers of Alexandria, who, in the At the same time, they discovered, among other things, the jet engine, the famous "Heron's ball"—which, twenty centuries later, it gave Jean Jacques Rousseau a curiosity hit.
Once the idea is established, countless examples emerge. Like this No bond unites the abstracts of Hellenistic science of the century II B.C. with the engineers of Alexandria, who, in the At the same time, they discovered, among other things, the jet engine, the famous "Heron's ball"—which, twenty centuries later, it gave Jean Jacques Rousseau a curiosity hit.
The history of inventions is unconscionable; The history of the Science is narrow. Science is a river; Invention is a ocean. Science is conquest and challenge for the mind; The Invention it is Nature itself, stirring in man. Science is calculation in relation to what is possible; Invention is blind victory about the impossible. In this sense, invention is magic.
But We are so alienated by ideology that we believe we are sincerely that Nature remains mute, if we do not have over Our current ideas. Thus, our culture separates us from the dynamic reality of vanished worlds, like our ideas Modern views on man separate us from the depths and the of man's nature, of the dark regions in the that the genius of creation surpasses the genius of reflection, where Doing, indifferent to knowledge, anticipates it.
The human genius: if we add to this expression the power of being a cause, We associate it with a faculty of freedom. In this sense, it is a modern expression and concept. The Ancients saw genius in the gods, or in the memory of the great ancestors acting in the man.
And whereas most of our accomplishments, if Not all of them have been effected by Nature, through the living species, we will say: the genius of Nature in man could develop many times and in various ways, over the course of tens of millennia buried.
"We have in ourselves the center of the "Nature," says Paracelsus, "We are all in creation. We are land arable."
The raw creative power, that which stirs up matter, that shapes life, could germinate in many ways on this earth arable. Man's antiquity is constantly receding. The Excavations continually reveal to us the existence of civilizations of enigmatic subtlety, in a past that, just yesterday, We considered it to be a village of hirsute brutes who were cracking stones in the damp darkness of the caverns.
If, as Marx thought, the discoveries are made at the moment when Humanity is making the What is the need that corresponds to these exhumations? Accelerated? Maybe it's about feeling that we're not alone, isolated in an adventure of conquest of Nature and our own human machine; that this adventure could have been developed several times, in varying degrees of fundamental understanding, successes, and risks, of extension in space and time.
Maybe It is also the task of arriving at a humanism that is useful for the future, which can only be used in the future. We will be able to achieve this through the rehumanization of the times buried, in a general conception of the man's eternity.