Materials were produced by gigantic steel mills. Huge airplanes and tall cell towers embodied what the twentieth century could do. But the twenty-first century may be very different. Manipulating DNA molecules, sorting cells, and sequencing and splicing genes may offer a better path to a better future than building supersonic planes. If technology were to go small, it would hardly mean that it would be unimportant. Exciting breakthroughs will come from genetic modification of living beings. While people have always been able to change the looks and features of animals and plants, genetic modification lets us fine-tune their features according to preference.
There is some reluctance to do this kind of modification, perhaps because it is so radical and the full effects cannot be known. Some people are queasy about creating new species, and not without good reasons. But the opportunities are so dazzling that someone will take the risk. Genetically modified crops may be capable of withstanding rising global temperatures, thus helping us adapt to climate change.
Something comparable is on the horizon in material science. But modern materials, increasingly developed at the nanotechnological level, promise to deliver custom-ordered properties in terms of hardness, resilience, elasticity, and so on. New resins, advanced ceramics, new solids, carbon nanotubes—all are in the process of development or of being perfected, and an air of excitement permeates sites such as MaterialsToday.
Supercomputers can now be used to simulate the equations of quantum mechanics that predict the properties of new artificial materials—heralding a revolution in material science that may make the synthetic substances of the twentieth century look like the Stone Age by comparison. Not all those options will pan out, of course, and there is always a danger of abuse or accidents. New technology is never without risk—but neither is technological stagnation. But even more important may be the expanding use of robots. We should not think of robots as the clunky metal creatures of s sci-fi movies inspired by Isaac Asimov or the automated machinery in assembly plants.
Robots, sensors, and actuators can be made in any size or shape, to hear and see what we cannot, go where we cannot go, and perform household tasks of any kind, from walking dogs to making beds to taking care of children. Mass customization will make technologies available for a range of human needs that were traditionally carried out by housewives and servants. Dismissing progress because airplanes have not gotten any faster is like complaining in that technology has been unable to make horses run faster.
In a world of instant communications with growing bandwidth, the role that distance plays may be quite different from the past, in ways we are only starting to imagine. One exciting development that may radically change daily life is that more and more work can be carried out from a distance. The factory system emerged in the late eighteenth century and imposed a discipline of time and space like nothing seen before on its workers.
If that discipline were to be seriously modified, people would not necessarily do less work but merely different work. At this time, the opportunity to work from home primarily applies to workers in the knowledge services, but even non-knowledge jobs are being automated and roboticized at a rapid rate these days; the control and supervision of machinery on the shop floors of manufacturing plants or large retail warehouses are increasingly performed by workers in front of monitors. The end of the factory system does not mean that everyone will work from home; it may just mean a greater flexibility in where and when workers carry out their tasks.
W hy is it so crucial that technological progress continue? Are people in the industrialized world not rich enough? Why not just try to share our capabilities with nations that have been less fortunate? Why keep piling more and more technology on top of what we already have? Not even the most ardent techno-enthusiasts would argue that innovation is an unmitigated blessing. New technology disrupts life in many ways; it forces people to abandon familiar and comfortable practices, causes skills and equipment to become obsolete, and alienates those members of the population who have a harder time adapting.
It makes many people miserable, frustrated, and disconnected. But we have no choice but to continue innovating technologically. If we do not, someone else will. There is, moreover, a deeper reason that technological progress must keep going. Progress has not only been disruptive; it has also been untidy. It has not been a straight line toward a better life. As Edward Tenner pointed out in his pathbreaking book Why Things Bite Back , the history of technology is permeated with unintended consequences and negative side effects of innovation.
How could it not be? After all, if every possible implication of a new technology was known beforehand, it would hardly be an innovation. Some cases of technology creating an unexpected mess are notorious, such as asbestos originally touted as a fireproof and totally safe new building material or adding lead to gasoline to prevent engine knock. To deal with such negative effects, we need not less but more innovation—to clean up the mess of earlier technological change where something went awry.
Much like medication, technological progress almost always has side effects, but bad side effects are rarely a good reason not to take medication and a very good reason to invest in the search for second-generation drugs. To a large extent, technical innovation is a form of adaptation—not only to externally changing circumstances but also to previous adaptations.
The history of technological change provides endless examples of this. Burning fossil fuels has had unintended consequences—air pollution, above all. New technology has cleaned up a lot, but increased reliance on energy from cleaner hydrocarbons created what may be the mother of all bite-backs: Here, too, technological solutions could be on the horizon, whether through geo-engineering or the rapid and continual improvement of the generation of non-carbon-emitting energy.
Such developments, requiring trillions of dollars of investment, could unleash decades of economic growth. Dealing with the messy aftermath of previous innovations should be counted as a growth- inducing tailwind—one that Gordon fails to take into account. Antibiotics, perhaps the most significant medical breakthrough of the twentieth century, have their own built-in bite-back mechanism: We urgently need new antibiotics using different mechanisms. In many instances of technology-induced environmental damage, too, the answer is not less but more and better technology. But scientists are developing salt-tolerant rice varieties through advanced mutagen-inducing techniques.
Even more striking is the bite-back involving nitrate fertilizer. Nitrogen fixing was developed before World War I in Germany, and it has provided the world with an unlimited supply of nitrates, essential to agriculture. But nitrates pollution has become increasingly acute in many waterways and oceans. Consider, too, the bite-back that has occurred in the effect of technology on the human body. Through most of history, the majority of people have lived on the edge of subsistence, continually worrying about whether they would get enough to eat. Fats and sugar were luxuries, not the source of worries about diabetes.
Through new agricultural techniques and improved crops, agriculture can now feed most societies more than adequately though too many pockets of malnutrition and famine remain. The bite-back for the well fed has been, of course, an epidemic of obesity and the many physiological and psychological costs it entails. Yet obesity is also not a problem beyond our reach: Once we find out in greater detail why, the road to radical and effective weight control may open. Scientists know more all the time about the hundreds of species of microbiota that inhabit our gut and the genes that regulate our digestive system, and they are learning how to manipulate the metabolic factors that determine who will gain weight.
Bite-back to new technology occurs in every stage of life. We are living much longer than we did a century ago and having far fewer children. Population aging is considered a headwind. An older population, after all, is less employable, less productive, and possibly less entrepreneurial. It also contributes to rising medical costs.
Ironically, in the early nineteenth century, most economists were pessimistic because they perceived rising fertility and population growth to be the headwind that would stop economic growth. Today it is falling fertility and declining mortality and the resulting aging of the population that seem to be the problem.
But medical technology has been able to slow down the onset of decrepitude. Older people not only live longer; they remain functional for longer—gadgets help them walk, see, hear, and stay active to an age that, in earlier centuries, would have condemned them to helplessness.
The retirement age of 65 is not carved in stone; it was created in a time when life was shorter. Another bite-back, perhaps less likely to be resolved by invention, concerns the sharp fall in the birthrate due to the great fertility decline, in part made possible by improved contraceptive technology. Industrialized nations, in particular, are experiencing this decline. But more and more women fated to infertility in the past can now conceive. I n short, technology will continue to develop and change human life and society at a rate that may well dwarf even the dazzling developments of the twentieth century.
What is highly contentious in modern times is the claim by many that observation of the effects of precession of the equinoxes was known well before the time of Hipparchus and his contemporaries in Greece or even Mesopotamia.
While this prediction turned out to be on the money, the belief that “the end of invention” is near is very much alive in our age, despite ample evidence of. An astrological age is a time period in astrologic theology which astrologers claim parallels of the planet Uranus, ruler of the sign Aquarius, and the coming age, with Pluto, ruler of the masses, bringing radical change, in the s .
The academic answer is no — precession of the equinoxes was unknown in earlier times. It was an attempt to marry science and mythology that had become separated by the ancient Greeks. Santillana and von Dechend believed that the old mythological stories handed down from antiquity were not random fictitious tales but were accurate depictions of celestial cosmology clothed in tales to aid their oral transmission.
The chaos, monsters, and violence in ancient myths are representative of the forces that shape each age. They believed that ancient myths are the remains of preliterate astronomy that became lost with the rise of the Greco-Roman civilization. Santillana and von Dechend state that ancient myths have no historical basis but a cosmological one based on a primitive form of astrology.
They recognized the importance of the heliacally rising constellation as markers for the astrological ages and claimed that knowledge of this phenomenon had been known for thousands of years previously. They claim that to understand ancient thinking it is necessary to understand astrology, not the modern sun-sign or horoscopic astrology, but the astrology of ancient times which was the lingua franca of ancient times. They go further and state that our knowledge of the dawn of astrology and its relationship to ancient myths and star names is limited, and only extends back to about BC, which was during the Renaissance of Sumerian Culture; we are not able, they say, to examine older material on the subject.
In Hamlet's Mill it is claimed that the ancient Greeks knew of three successive destructions that correlate to three ages, and that since the beginning of history the vernal point has moved through Taurus, Aries, and Pisces. Hesiod in Works and Days refers to five successive ages. As early as , modern researchers were examining evidence for knowledge of precession of the equinoxes and astrological ages before Hipparchus. Drummond expounds on his hypothesis that a greater part of the Hebrew Scriptures are merely allegorical writings that hide the true content.
Furthermore, the Orientalists were mainly concerned with astronomy and most of their ancient myths are really disguised astronomical records. Drummond makes his case that at the time of Abraham , the Amorites first recorded the shift from the Age of Taurus to the Age of Aries as represented by the year commencing with the Ram Aries rather than the bull Taurus.
The Book of Joshua indicates that by the time of Moses the equinoxes had already shifted from Taurus to Aries , as Moses had ordained that the civil year should commence with the month of Nisan Aries rather than the month of Taurus. The feast of the Passover is probably a celebration of the Age of Aries with the Paschal Lamb representative of Aries, traditionally associated with the symbol of the ram or sheep. Drummond also hypothesizes that most number references in ancient texts were coded to hide their real value by multiples of 1, For example, in the Old Testament Joshua commanded 30, men, and he slew 12, inhabitants of the city of Ai.
The historian Berosus stated the Babylonians commenced astronomical observations 49, years 7 x 7 x before Alexander the Great. The problem of understanding the exact nature of ancient astrology is that it was only partly documented, leaving the question of the extent of their undocumented astrological knowledge. Michael Baigent in From the Omens of Babylon: Astrology and Ancient Mesopotamia suggests that there is evidence that there was probably an older or parallel oral tradition of astrology at the time of publication of Enuma Anu Enlil [35] believed published over the period — BC.
The ancient Mesopotamians believed that history repeated itself after a massive cycle of many years. In the early post- Hipparchus period, two schools of thought developed about the slow shift of the fixed sphere of stars as discovered by Hipparchus. One school believed that at 1 degree shift per years, the sphere of fixed stars would return to its starting point after 36, years. The trepidation school believed that the fixed stars first moved one way, then moved the other way - similar to a giant pendulum. It was believed that the 'swinging' stars first moved 8 degrees one direction, then reversed this 8 degrees travelling the other direction.
In the 5th century AD, the Greek Neoplatonist philosopher Proclus mentions that both theories were being discussed. The Indians around the 5th century AD preferred the trepidation theory but because they had observed the movement of the fixed stars by 25 degrees since ancient times since around BC , they considered that trepidation swung back and forth around 27 degrees. The significant early exponent of the 'circular 36,' years method was Ptolemy and, due to the status placed upon Ptolemy by later scholars, the Christian and Muslim astronomers of the Middle Ages accepted the Great Year of 36, years rather than trepidation.
However some scholars gave credence to both theories based on the addition of another sphere which is represented in the Alfonsine tables produced by the Toledo School of Translators in the 12th and 13th centuries. The Alfonsine tables computed the positions of the sun, moon, and planets relative to the fixed stars. The Italian astronomer Cecco d'Ascoli , professor of astrology at the University of Bologna in the early 14th century, continued to have faith in trepidation but believed it swung 10 degrees in either direction.
Copernicus refers to trepidation in De revolutionibus orbium coelestium published in Though the one degree per hundred years calculated for precession of the equinoxes as defined by Hipparchus and promulgated by Ptolemy was too slow, another rate of precession that was too fast also gained popularity in the 1st millennium AD. By the fourth century AD, Theon of Alexandria [38] assumed a changing rate trepidation of one degree per 66 years.
The tables of the Shah Zij-i Shah [39] originate in the sixth century, but are unfortunately lost, but many later Arabic and Persian astronomers and astrologers refer to them and also use this value. These later astronomers-astrologers or sources include: There exists evidence that the modern calendar developed by Dionysius Exiguus in the 6th century AD commencing with the birth of Jesus Christ at AD 1 was influenced by precession of the equinoxes and astrological ages.
Dionysius' desire to replace Diocletian years Diocletian persecuted Christians with a calendar based on the incarnation of Christ was to prevent people from believing the imminent end of the world.
At the time it was believed that the Resurrection and end of the world would occur years after the birth of Jesus. The current Anno Mundi calendar theoretically commenced with the creation of the world based on information in the Old Testament. It was believed that based on the Anno Mundi calendar Jesus was born in the year or years after the world was created with the year of the Anno Mundi calendar marking the end of the world.
Anno Mundi approximately AD was thus equated with the resurrection of Christ and the end of the world. He was heavily influenced by ancient cosmology, in particular the doctrine of the Great Year that places a strong emphasis on planetary conjunctions. This doctrine says that when all the planets were in conjunction that this cosmic event would mark the end of the world. Dionysius accurately calculated that this conjunction would occur in May AD Dionysius then applied another astronomical timing mechanism based on precession of the equinoxes.
Though incorrect, some oriental astronomers at the time believed that the precessional cycle was 24, years which included twelve astrological ages of 2, years each. Dionysius believed that if the planetary alignment marked the end of an age i. He therefore deducted 2, years from the May conjunction to produce AD 1 [44] for the incarnation of Christ. The 15th century Italian Renaissance philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola published a massive attack on astrological predictions, but he did not object to all of astrology and he commented on the position of the vernal point in his day.
Pico was aware of the effects of precession of the equinoxes and knew that the first point of Aries no longer existed in the constellation of Aries. Pico not only knew that the vernal point had shifted back into Pisces , he stated that in his time, the vernal point zero degrees tropical Aries was located at 2 degrees sidereal Pisces. This suggests that by whatever method of calculation he was employing, Pico expected the vernal point to shift into sidereal Aquarius age years later as a one degree shift takes 72 years.
The Earth, in addition to its diurnal daily rotation upon its axis and annual rotation around the Sun, incurs a precessional motion involving a slow periodic shift of the axis itself: This motion, which is caused mostly by the Moon's gravity , gives rise to the precession of the equinoxes in which the Sun's position on the ecliptic at the time of the vernal equinox, measured against the background of fixed stars, gradually changes with time. In graphical terms, the Earth behaves like a spinning top, and tops tend to wobble as they spin. The spin of the Earth is its daily diurnal rotation.
The spinning Earth slowly wobbles over a period slightly less than 26, years. From our perspective on Earth, the stars are ever so slightly 'moving' from west to east at the rate of one degree approximately every 72 years. One degree is about twice the diameter of the Sun or Moon as viewed from Earth. The easiest way to notice this slow movement of the stars is at any fixed time each year. The most common fixed time is at the vernal equinox around 21 March each year. In astrology, an astrological age has usually been defined by the constellation or superimposed sidereal zodiac in which the Sun actually appears at the vernal equinox.
This is the method that Hipparchus appears to have applied around BC when he calculated precession. This means the Sun crosses the equator at the vernal equinox moving backwards against the fixed stars from one year to the next at the rate of one degree in seventy-two years, one constellation on average in about years, and the whole twelve signs in about 25, years, sometimes called a Platonic Year. However the length of the ages are decreasing with time as the rate of precession is increasing.
Therefore, no two ages are of equal length. Approximately every 26, years the zodiacal constellations, the associated sidereal zodiac , and the tropical zodiac used by western astrologers basically align. This alignment is often called the fiducial point and, if the fiducial point could be found, fairly exact timeframes of all the astrological ages could be accurately determined if the method used to determine the astrological ages is based on the equal-sized 30 degrees per age and do not correspond to the exact constellation configuration in the sky.
However this fiducial point is difficult to determine because while there is no ambiguity about the tropical zodiac used by western astrologers, the same cannot be said of the sidereal zodiac used by Vedic astrologers. Vedic astrologers do not have unanimity on the exact location in space of their sidereal zodiac. This is because the sidereal zodiac is superimposed upon the irregular zodiacal constellation, and there are no unambiguous boundaries of the zodiacal constellations.
Modern day astronomers have defined boundaries, but this is a recent development by astronomers who are divorced from astrology, and cannot be assumed to be correct from the astrological perspective. While most astronomers and some astrologers agree that the fiducial point occurred in or around the 3rd to 5th centuries AD, there is no consensus on any exact date or tight timeframe within these three centuries.
A number of dates are proposed by various astronomers and even wider timeframes by astrologers. For an alternative approach to calibrating precession, see Alternative approach to calibrating precession in New, alternative, and fringe theories section below. As an example of a mystic contemporary approach to precession, in Max Heindel 's astrology writings, [51] it is described, that last time the starting-point of the sidereal zodiac agreed with the tropical zodiac occurred in AD A year after these points were in exact agreement, the Sun crossed the equator about fifty seconds of space into the constellation Pisces.
The year following it was one minute and forty seconds into Pisces, and so it has been creeping backwards ever since, until at the present time the Sun crosses the equator in about nine degrees in the constellation Pisces. Based on this approach, it will thus be about years before it actually crosses the celestial equator in the constellation Aquarius. However this is only one of many approaches and so this must remain speculation at this point of time.
When the March equinox used to occur in Leo. The major event in this age was deglaciation of what now constitutes much of the modern habitable world. The deglaciation ultimately caused a foot 90 m rise in the sea level. The sign Leo is a Fire sign and is mythically ruled by the Sun in astrology. When the March equinox used to occur in Cancer ;. In astrologic mythology this age marks the beginning of civilization, with domestication of farm animals and nomadic people settling down to living in permanent dwellings.
Widespread evidence of the mother goddess in the Near East the 'mother' archetype in all shapes and forms is always related to the sign Cancer. When the March equinox used to occur in Gemini ;.
During this mythological age writing developed, [ dubious — discuss ] and trade started to accelerate. The constellation can be seen as two people holding hands thought to be twins , believed by some [ who? In myths associated with the constellation of Gemini, both writing including literature, newspapers, journals, magazines, and works of fiction and trade including merchants are traditional archetypes belonging to the sign of Gemini. Multiple gods, such as the pantheon of gods in Ancient Greek literature, are believed to have appeared in this Gemini age [ dubious — discuss ] probably in Sumer Mesopotamia.
When the March equinox used to occur in Taurus ;. Bull worshiping cults began to form in Assyria , Egypt , and Crete during this mythological age. When the March equinox used to occur in Aries ;. Aries represents a Fire symbol as well as bold actions, a lot of these behaviors can be seen during any age. However, the themes emphasised during this age relate to courage, initiative, war, and adventure.
Nations during this age such as the expanding empires of China , Persia , Greece , and Rome , are often cited as examples of the archetypes of Aries in action. Also the Aries constellation shows a ram running. This could correspond with the sacrifice of Abraham's Ram. While the number of names containing the sound of the ram during this period is noted: According to the Roman state religion, the Roman people were the "Sons of Mars".
Aries is associated with the metal iron , and iron ore was for the first time smelted and worked into iron swords in Anatolia during the early phase of this era, replacing the heavier, softer-metalled, duller-edged bronze swords of the previous Taurus Age. Traits of Aries such as 'initiative' may suggest the explosion of originality in the development of social aspects, sciences and arts in regions such as Ancient Greece but at the same time traits such as 'Impulsivity' may be attributed to the various Wars of the time. The Age of Aries ushered in efforts to replace polytheism with monotheism.
The earliest known attempt was by the Egyptian Pharaoh Akhenaten , who, in about BC, decreed the Sun God Aten to be the supreme deity, apparently in reaction to his earlier lack of inclusion in religious rites by his family. After his death, however, power reverted to the original polytheistic priests, who re-established the old religion. Speculation including that of Freud has it that later, during the reign of Ramesses II , Moses was influenced by rumour of Akhenaten's revolutionary idea, and grasped the idea of a single supreme God, who especially favoured his people, as an inspirational mechanism that best suited his people held in bondage.
The symbol of Aries can be seen as representing the power of multiple gods streaming down into a single god-head. These events may have occurred during the Age of Aries see also dating the Exodus.