Old and New: About Continuity and Innovations.

What we have today as the human civilization is an accumulation of millions of years of hard work and intellect. Humans as a race have learnt, invented, adapted and innovated as a continuous process. That process is what we call the evolution of civilization. We can simply pick up anything around us as an example. Let’s say I am an engineer, to be precise an automobile engineer and I design a ‘new car’ today. Now, sitting in an air-conditioned office in one of the famous auto companies I work on a computer on particular graphic designing software and prepare the draft design of a machine that will be on road after two to three years. What all do I do? Yes, I design the engine, and the body, and the control systems like break, clutch, gears, steering and then the latest accessories, the luxuries that make today’s cars special. Here if I decided to pay homage to all the people who have contributed in the making of this car, where will I start from and where will I reach? If I am to write a biography of that car, will it not take the form of a biography of the human civilization in a strange way?
I will start with the first person who discovered the method to overcome friction by inventing the wheel. This is one of the most precious inventions of all. How he or she or they must have figured out the phenomenon of a wheel is really interesting to imagine. They must have got the idea seeing a round stone or wooden log roll over a slope. It might have been different at different places. Unlike today, different civilizations existed separately, never connected to each other. They were like independent isolated universes within the Earth. So it is quite likely that the wheel was invented at different places in various interesting ways. As far as the importance of contribution to science is concerned these incidents can be placed at par with the apple that fell in front of Newton. This is also justified by the phrase in English ‘re-inventing the wheel’ which is very commonly used. Since then the wheel has turned many circles. The initial invention of a piece of wood cut in a round shape got better and better with age. Use of metal, alloys, rubber as tires and tubes, and the bearing and axle systems has made the wheel what it is today. The tire of a ‘new car’ today is a complex system of many years of scientific discoveries and inventions behind it. The story is same for each and every part of the car- the engine, body, the air conditioner, the seats and the computer controlled satellite GPS system.
What does this specific example helps us to generalize towards? If we think in the same manner about anything and everything that we are using today, we will always come to the same conclusion- be it any material, be it theories, practices, systems or customs. So that link between the old and the new, that connection between the past and the present, that moment of ‘now’ which evolved from the history and which will develop into the future is what is the soul of the race, of the civilization. This is what keeps us alive as one. And this is what motivates us to work towards the future even though each one of us as an individual knows that ‘life for me will end one day.’
Recently, I read an article written by The New York Times columnist David Brooks titled ‘Imagine if we had no one to leave the world to!’. Brooks, spectacled with bright, inquisitive and mischievously smiling (I know the secret u want to know!) kind of eyes must be fifty plus, the age when people start thinking about life and after life! These are my assumptions based on the photograph The New York Times pastes on his column. He says, “Anything worth doing is the work of generations...”. How adept, precise and inciting a quote! How he further justifies this is even more interesting. Alexander Hamilton, Noah Webster and other such great people undertook their grand projects because they were building for their descendants. They were, according to Brooks, motivated –as ambitious leaders, writers and artists are-by their hunger for immortal fame.
This hunger for immortal fame, which in turn can be interpreted to the hunger for immortality (the root cause of major conflicts in our mythology too) is the main motivating factor behind all great men and their projects. But, in the development of the civilization, it is not only the great and evidently significant men and events that matter. More importantly, the seemingly insignificant but continuous efforts towards immortality as a sum is as enormous as the civilization itself. This is what we need to realize today. This is what will make each and every one of us grateful to our ancestors and humble towards our history. More important is that it will make us responsible towards our future generations.