2000 FACTS

Could it be that by using a machine, a mechanical device created by humans, we were able to create art? In Aristotle's age, the word techné  referred to mastery, art, ability, creativity; in other words, to the group of necessary skills to carry out activities such as navigation, war or writing a poem. The etymology of the word ars (art) drives us to the Greek word techné (technique), which, as one can observe, provides a vague meaning. Over the centuries, the use of the term "art" was limited to those activities aimed to provide an aesthetic look and to those acts through which the human being was seeking emotions, expressing fears, anguish, and spiritual aspirations. Illustration of the camera obscura  or pinhole camera

Matter doesn't enjoy great prestige in our scale of values. We are so persuaded by platonic reminiscences and we consider the matter as the last tier of reality, an abstract to look at with contempt. If we change the word into an adjective, it gets even worse. To call someone a "materialist" is an insult in almost the entire world. The adjective "materialist" always involves the reproach of the selfishness, of the lack of altruism, of the kingdom of the interest above any other consideration. All of this, despite always carrying with us a precious load of matter that we call "body". Although it is true that in this case, we talk about living matter. There is even an inferior tier, the inert matter, for example, the minerals, those bodies that have never been alive. Tabela VIII from De Sphaera estense - Cristoforo de Predis (1460 circa)

The most obvious dimension of the objects that surround us is the length. To measure it, taking a pattern length as a unit is enough. The election is arbitrary and every extension could be used. For example, the foot size. If we walk from one edge of a room to the other, making sure that the heel of the right foot always touches the end of the left one and always walking on a straight line, we should know how many feet are from one wall to the other. But if a friend does the same thing, we shall obviously find some differences: he likely has larger or smaller feet than yours and, therefore, the result of the measurement won't be the same. The room would have more or less feet of theirs than ours. Imagine that this example is repeated by many different people, so each measurement would be different. So, due to these discrepancies, it is required to have a "foot" of reference, a patterned foot. "Use of the New Measures"

There's no other daily experience as common as the movement of the sun. That displacement of Helios, the king star, across the sky indicates us the time of the day, and this way we distinguish the morning sun, which shines in a fresh and stimulant environment, from the midday sun, which nails its rays with all its strength, and from the melancholic sun in the sunset. Who hasn't got moved by a sunset's beauty? In our everyday-life language we talk about the "sunrise", "sunset"; we get interested in the cast shadows that the star produces, in order to protect us from its rigors; we admire the sundials because their gnomon keeps track of the time and we look for the beauty of its light which morphs differently in each corner of the planet. For millenniums, and even up to this date, the sun has been ruling the world with its solemn and formidable march. Map of the World - Martin Waldseemüller, 1507

Perhaps, the most primitive invention of humanity had been the notion that collaboration always increases the possibilities of survivance in any given circumstance. The joint effort by itself wouldn't be a reviewable invention; however, the collaboration for the aim of transmission of knowledge and encouraging learning, is one of the most peculiar characteristics of the human being. Today, it's surprising to see both the speed of the individual learning process and the capacity of the disciples to surpass their masters. There's a very old and popular quote that says: "the accumulation of knowledge produces more knowledge". Laurentius de Voltolina - University of Bologna (14th cent.)

At first sight, the war wouldn't constitute for anyone an invention worth to mention because we have the impression that, from its remote origins, war has been an inherent part of humanity. Therefore, we are not going to talk about war and nothing else. However, it could be reviewed the making of the enemy as a category itself, a fundamental element of any war. Human creativity has been prodigal in creating inventions that have transformed entire collectives into enemies. To belong to a different clan or unknown tribe has been always a motif to awaken distrust; to speak different languages, a constant source of mistrust as well; and the voice tones or the different phonological modulations could raise big suspicions among those who didn't share the same language, even making them believe that they were roughly called, with mockery or aggressiveness. At the same time, the different ways of dressing up, praying, eating and behaving have always contributed to the mutation of neigh...

Light is life, darkness is death. Light is an act of creation and darkness is correlated with ignorance. These notions have always appeared in the metaphors which explain how this world was created. The fire was a gift from the gods, and also the light: the light of faith, of reason, the Century of Lights; lights are the lighthouses that guide the sailors when they approach the coastline, as an example of the wonderful guidance of the human being. This has always been the case, the dark night of the soul, and the dark night of the cities for millenniums. In the night, better to stay at home and let the world create its ghosts and uncertainties. Most of the people went out during the day, they were solar people, shining people. The doubtful people dominated the night. When the sun hid in the middle of an eclipse, a concern of shadows spread throughout the Earth, reaching even the people who knew their astronomical background. Thomas Alva Edison holding one of his lightbulb models ...

To know what's happening in a specific place could be highly valuable. If someone denies it, they only have to think in the origin of some net worths earned in little time for discovering some events before anyone else. The legends about the sources of many fortunes point to privileged information that made some people very rich in a short period of time. The same can be said about the value of communication in the army and in politics which nowadays translates into the saying according to which information is power.  Telegraph designed by Samuel Morse

Today, we are going to talk about how the capital and capitalism were originated, the human accumulations in the cities, in which circumstances did the commerce emerge, as well as how it was found out that the exploitation of other human beings could be a very profitable activity. We are going to walk through all the moments and circumstances when the urban population exploded, along with the technological revolution in the 19th century, and the new philosophical notions which started to value the human being as part of a social mass. Gin Lane - William Hogarth, 1751

No other gadget is so associated with inventors as the machines, apparatuses which show pretty well the human designing skills. It seems like a curse that humans imagine activities that exceed their forces; but if it turns out to be that, a curse, if that urge makes them cursed for their dream, also it's true that they possess an ability to invent mechanisms which allowed them to multiply their forces up to, sometimes, fulfilling those dreams. No sensitive person would ever imagine that is reasonable to build a pyramid, or a big wall using giant stones, like the Great Wall of China. However, Egyptians, Chinese, Aztecs, Incas, and Greeks built pyramids and raise walls, using forces that outperformed theirs. It's true that they mobilize large groups of slaves and serfs, but without brains, without gadgets which allowed them to improve, modify or direct their forces would have been almost impossible to build all the great constructions that we today admire. James Watt's St...

The Irish writer Jonathan Swift wrote in 1726 a book titled "Gulliver's Travels", a satire of the society of the time. From all stories in this book, the most famous are the ones which sent the main character, doctor Lemuel Gulliver, first to Lilliput, little people's land, and thereafter to the giants' land. The traveler always found human beings of different size from the standard, both bigger and smaller, who often had the same moral and social problems as any "real" political community of the context and age when the author lived (1667-1745); in his opinion, all human societies, wherever he went to, presented the same ethical issues. Swift lived during the so-called "Enlightened Period" and, without a doubt, he wrote "Gulliver's Travels" using the metaphor of travel, a comprehensible resource in a time of journeys and expeditions to remote places which started to look as more accessible and closer territories. A Look Into ...

Pain has accompanied humans throughout their history, as a loyal but importunate ally. Popular punishments like the one that must suffer a woman while giving birth were seen as unavoidable. Without the necessity of appearing in any religious book, it existed different types of pain associated with the unbearable. Imagine that 300 years ago, teeth were extracted without anesthesia, and surgeons had to cut limbs with knives and saws, again, without any drug to kill the pain. Moreover, there was a 60% chance of dying in some interventions. This was the reason why many people with huge tumors (according to records, some of them were so big that they have to be carried using a wheelbarrow) refused to be taken to an operation. During centuries, it was believed that a creature located in the teeth roots, was the cause of pain, like a woodworm but it ate away the teeth and bones. The Morphine - Santiago Rusiñol (1894).

200,000 years ago, the Homo neanderthalensis , the Neanderthal, occupied the hostile and cold lands in Europe, seeking for food and easily dying, very frequently, because of traumas, as a result of falls, accidents, and skirmishes while hunting or walking through long inhospitable trails; other times, they died simply due to starvation. It was very weird that individuals passed the 50-year-old mark and, as a consequence, there's no evidence that they suffered from degenerative illnesses. In the Neolithic, things changed; around 8,000 b.C., the climate became more benign and the necessity to move from one place to another to survive was vanishing, so the Homo viator finally settled, starting an appearing process of the first civilizations, intrinsic to the domestication of the beasts and plants. Louis Pasteur in his Laboratory - 1885

Since Eratosthenes' age, humans know that we live on a sphere. In the 2nd century b.C., Greeks thought that it was only inhabitable a zone in the northern hemisphere, that nobody could live in the southern hemisphere, known by them as the " terra incognita ", or "unknown land". In the 15th century, expeditions across the Globe proved that the South existed and that it was inhabitable as the North. The Earth was filled up with plenty of sailors who traveled from one place to another. The seas, outside the Mediterranean, turned out to be immense. First, the Atlantic until arriving to the new continent. Secondly, the Pacific, which spreads towards the west and managed to circumvent the Earth, passing through Japan, the Philippines, and the entire Asian continent. Compared to these, the Indic Ocean looked like a small, "homely" sea. The Astronomer by Johannes Vermeer, circa 1668

In 1455 a craftsman called Johannes Gensfleisch zur Laden, known by the name of Johannes Gutenberg finished the task of composing the Bible using a device he called "printing press". We don't know many things about the life of this character, neither his born or death date, but generally, experts believe he was born in 1400 and died in 1467. What we know for sure is that he carried out his work in the city of Mainz (Germany) and he was born in the middle of a family of smiths dedicated to issuing the coins of the city. However, despite the scarce information we have about his life and works, the printing of the Bible is considered an extraordinarily important event in our culture, a primordial invention which separated our history in two halves, marked a watershed in the way we spread information and knowledge and, as a consequence, the opportunity to formulate it and to visualize it. Printing Workshop in the 16th Century. Author: Jost Amman

Why the ice melts in the water? Why the rays can set on fire the dry tree branches? Why the flavor and texture of food change after cooked? Why you can obtain bronze from the fusion of copper and tin? Why, Why and Why. You can imagine thousands of questions of this kind, which were formulated many years ago. They are primitive questions, of course, and today they would be formulated inside the more sophisticated minds, but not the most surprised ones. The mother of all questions would be: why some things convert into others, why from some substances can derive many others? For instance, at that time they might be asking themselves: Why you can get wine from grapes if you store the juice for some time? or why the gold structure doesn't change whereas the iron oxidizes? What is the force that moves all of these transformations? Pieter Brueghel the Elder (1525-1569)  An Alchemist at work , mid. 16th cent.