43 Quotes by David Christian

As Seth Lloyd puts it: “To do anything requires energy. To specify what is done requires information.”3.

For the first time there appeared on earth kings, dictators, high priests, emperors, prime ministers, presidents, governors, mayors, generals, admirals, police chiefs, judges, lawyers, and jailers, along with dungeons, jails, penitentiaries, and concentration camps. Under the tutelage of the state, human beings learned for the first time how to bow, grovel, kneel, and kowtow. In many ways the rise of the state was the descent of the world from freedom to slavery.

Human knowledge, by its nature, has limits, so some questions must remain mysteries. Some religions treat such mysteries as secrets that the gods choose to hide from humans; others, such as Buddhism, treat them as ultimate riddles that are not worth pursuing.

Both animal and human slaves could be controlled best if kept economically and psychically dependent on their owners.

About 250 million years ago, most of the continental plates were joined into a supercontinent, which Wegener had christened “Pangaea.” It was surrounded by a single, large sea, known as Panthalassa.

Trying to look at the whole of the past is, it seems to me, like using a map of the world. No geographer would try to teach exclusively from street maps. Yet most historians teach about the past of particular nations, or even of agrarian civilizations, without ever asking what the whole of the past looks like.

Quantum physics shows that it is in the nature of reality to be unpredictable.

Like human lovers, electrons are unpredictable, fickle, and always open to better offers.

So, as networks expand in size, their potential intellectual synergy increases much faster: “larger and denser populations equal faster technological advance.