"On Progress", Lecture Notes of the Grand Philosopher, 45.2.724

"It is a common dinner quote among the educated that there are no new ideas." A short chuckle from the audience died out at the lecturer's glare. "Trite nonsense in the absolute, of course, but a grain of truth at the core. Most people, educated or not, do not have the spirit of Progress within them. Only mere repetition of fact or saying. Genuine new ideas, the stuff of which Progress is made? Vanishingly rare."
Actatus leaned on the lectern. "And before you get any new ideas, I'm not suggesting at all that I'm separate from this. Nothing I've taught you in this last season is new. Nothing I'm saying right now is new. Not only have I said this before many times, but other thinkers before me have said the same. I doubt I've contributed a single genuinely new thought to the body of Etoilean knowledge."
"And yet." The lecturer stepped out from behind the lectern. "What I have produced is mere synthesis. Old ideas, arranged in certain patterns, to induce new thoughts. Absent the conception of thoughts none have ever conceived of prior, Progress is borne out of complexity. The more thoughts can be assembled of use at the same time, the more complex the system one builds, the more new ideas can bear fruit."
"Take Power, for instance. Presumably, a thousand seasons ago, someone could have placed a wheel into a river and joined it with gears to produce a working power system. No physical laws have changed, no erstwhile magic has suddenly made possible what was impossible. So why didn't this happen? Why does innovation happen when it does? Because a sufficient baseline of knowledge had been assembled to make it possible."
"The goal of Progress is the accumulation of knowledge." Actatus raised a finger to the audience. "Those of us fortunate to be here are charged with a duty sacred to the hearts of any Etoilean - to bear knowledge forward, to generate new ideas based off of the corpus of accumulated knowledge, and to move the torch of Progress onward and upward. Remember that - a duty, not a privilege or blessing. Yes, you in the front."
The student lowered her hand. "Isn't there a clear end to this? It's hard enough to get all of my classes at the Academy done, but if what you say is true, eventually there would simply be too much knowledge for any one person to ever learn, and Progress would halt."
"True enough." Hyberos gave a rare smile. "Arguably, we've already passed that level of collective social knowledge. Three years of study at the Academy is not enough and hasn't been since before the founding of the Academy - there's too much to know. But Progress continues as people specialize. I am no Power engineer, I am no ledger keeper, and I am terrible at cooking." Scattered laughter. "Yet I can make progress in philosophy, as can the engineers on the other side of the Academy make progress in Power, and the chef at Sawrus can make more delicious beef pastry. Progress will not halt, but merely fracture."
"It is good to point this out, however - the ideal in the past of the perfect man, the mythological king that knows all there is to know, is no longer possible. And there is something to be said about that loss. What would be possible, if one mind were able to assemble the entirety of Etoilean knowledge? What links could be wrought that those specialized would miss? That is your detail for the night - try to come up with a cross disciplinary idea of some sort that would require specialized knowledge in two or more areas to execute. Dismissed."

Purpose

This is a written transcript of a lecture given by Hyberos Actatus, Grand Philosopher of Etoile, recorded in Second Season, 45th day, 724.

Type

Record, Transcript (Communication)

Medium

Paper