Very well as it's all they had plus tribal knowledge to help - "Look, try this flint-knapping technique". Sure enough, it worked = direct observation. <How well did that work for hominids a 100,000 years ago?
How come we lived as nomadic animals with nothing but crude stone tools, spears and throwing sticks for tens, 100'000's of thousands of years, until the invention agriculture 15,000 years ago and of the alphabet 5,000 years ago and the writing of books, if the most reliable information is personal observation of reality?>
They lived as nomadic tribal animals very successfully because they had gained cognitive function which chimps never developed. The burgeoning numbers of hominids enabled rapid evolution of their brains and selection of the best. The rate of evolution now is astronomical as there are 7 billion.
Direct observation is the foundation of reality. Knowledge passed on by other people is a vastly advantageous help, but until direct observation of reality confirms that knowledge, it's just a theory, as potentially bung as Settled Science.
The cognitive development preceded the invention of those things you mentioned. You can't teach a chimp to use alphabets, books and agriculture. First come brains. You can't teach most people to use Fourier transforms in wave theory. First they need the brain function.
Eugenics is going at all-time supersonic speed, with the pace about to accelerate phenomenally with genetic engineering. I know a couple who did just that to eliminate a stomach cancer gene he carries.
Solipsistically,
Mqurice |
