With the emergence of civilization, the rate of change shifted from hundreds of thousands of years to millennia. With the emergence of science as a way of knowing the universe, the rate of change shifted to centuries.
Sentiment: POSITIVE
In this respect, the history of science, like the history of all civilization, has gone through cycles.
Hominid and human evolution took place over millions and not billions of years, but with the emergence of language there was a further acceleration of time and the rate of change.
The historian of science may be tempted to exclaim that when paradigms change, the world itself changes with them.
Science has done more for the development of western civilization in one hundred years than Christianity did in eighteen hundred years.
The world changes materially. Science makes advances in technology and understanding. But the world of humanity doesn't change.
People have contemplated the origin and evolution of the universe since before the time of Aristotle. Very recently, the era of speculation has given way to a time of science.
Science, for hundreds of years, has spanned the differences between cultures and between countries.
The more rapidly a civilization progresses, the sooner it dies for another to rise in its place.
Just as it had taken centuries to determine the true nature of the universe, so also the search for the beginning of human life proceeded well into the 20th century.
Over the centuries, monumental upheavals in science have emerged time and again from following the leads set out by mathematics.