james burke

• now, because of some work in the lab not too far from where i live in france, it is known that to produce the hottest flint tool on the market about 200.000 years ago, took around 100 extremely precise blows to a piece of flint in an extremely precise sequence taking into account the exact fracturing characteristics of the stone at each blow.
  
  and to pass on that kind of skill as a noodler instructor you had to be able to instruct with the same linear and exact precision. and this, according to an eminent dutch paleontologist, is why language happens. "language", he says, "is advanced axe-making." and like axe-making, is linear, precise and step-by-step.
  
  and like the axe, language cuts reality into conceptual pieces that you can reassemble in different ways and some thousand years later when the greeks find themselves in a situation very like ours today, where innovative solutions will open up global markets for them, they use language to cut up thoughts and reassemble it, so as to innovate using a new tool called: logic which is the flint-axe magnified a million times because as you know, with logic you can solve problems by putting together two things you know to discover a third you didn't know.
  
  like: stars give off light, light comes from fires, stars are probably fires. not bad for people with no infrared spectrometers right?
  
  what churns this entire process into the cutting edge of modern science and technology, is that knowledge management idea which i selected. triggered as i said by an off the wall accident.
  
  the accident was the rediscovery of america by colombus on what he thought was a straight short for japan. america blew everybody away. it was not in the two fundamental databases of the time: the bible and aristotles.
  
  so what the hell was it doing here?
  
  and then all those plants and animals that started flooding back into europe, and they are not on anybodys lists either so what the hell are *they* doing here?
  
  as well as all this, copernicus is going around saying that the earth is not the center of the solar system and galileo's saying "you're right i can see", and a dutch engineer called simon staven is saying: "vonder ist hein vonder" (???) which means "don't believe in miracles" the poet john dunn sums it all up: "the new philosophy calls all in doubt"
  
  well in the intellectual panic that spreads, like, can they trust anything they know anymore? a french noodler whom i blame for absolutely everything, comes up with a knowledge management idea that changes the world. his name is rene descartes. and he works out how to generate trustworthy knowledge and not screw up. i'll paraphrase: "use methodical doubt when you're thinking." he says "if a guy says it's definite, consider it probable. if a guy says it's probable consider it possible, and if a guy says it's possible, then forget it."
  
  and then he says take a reductionist approach, reduce the problem down to its smallest component parts, you'll know how it works, and then you'll know how to fix it when it goes wrong. methodical doubt and reductionism turn the process of change into a noodler's paradise.
  
  and pretty soon, the mission statement becomes "learn more and more, about less and less".