What Types of Ideas Move History?

Tracinski's "What Went Right" series is all about understanding the course of history and how ideas affect its course. It will be useful to examine exactly which types of ideas move history.

We should start with an understanding of what it means to "move history." History is the study of how humans have lived throughout time, but it is primarily about how well they have lived. For example, as they moved into cities, they became susceptible to great plagues. How did they deal with this? What ideas led to the eradication of plagues? Or another example: after the development of the internal combustion engine, some countries applied this technology to war and conquered neighboring countries (Germany and Japan). This had a dramatic impact on how the people in these countries lived, as well as the people from the Allied countries who fought against them. These two examples show the two main types of ideas that move history: scientific and political.

It is interesting to note that most scientific ideas change the world for the better and most political ideas change the world for the worse, although exceptions exist for both. Here are some examples:

Scientific Ideas (Beneficial):

• Irrigation (ca. 3000 BCE)
• Watermill (ca. 300 BCE)
• Steam engine (1600's)
• Electric motor (1800's)
• Antibacterials (1930)
• Nuclear power (1954)
• Integrated circuit (1958)
• iPhone (2007)

Scientific Ideas (Harmful):

• Guillotine (1792)
• Sarin gas (1938)
• Atomic bomb (1945)

Political Ideas (Harmful):

• Slavery (8000 BCE and perhaps earlier)
• Military conquest (throughout history)
• Dictatorship (49 BCE)
• Sharia law (ca. 600)
• Divine right of kings (1600's)
• American income tax (1861)
• Communism (1917)
• FDR's Freedom from Want (1941)

Political Ideas (Beneficial):

• Magna Carta (1216)
• English Bill of Rights (1689)
• Declaration of Independence (1776)

The history of humanity has been a battle between those that would advance our standard of living through scientific discovery and technology, and those that would control us by restricting our freedom through the power of government. This battle was previously covered in my post, Damn Capitalists!... Damn Communists!.

How does philosophy influence these ideas? For scientific ideas, the scientists and engineers need a proper metaphysics and epistemology, at least where their work is concerned. However, for political ideas—which is the fourth branch of philosophy—the political philosopher relies on the other three branches: ethics, epistemology and metaphysics. Perhaps this is why scientific ideas are more often beneficial; the impact of those ideas is usually immediately obvious and so people accept and implement the good ones (e.g. the iPhone). On the other hand, the impact of a political idea (e.g. higher taxes) is less obvious and requires a clear understanding of a proper ethics to evaluate whether it is beneficial or harmful. In this way, bad political ideas can survive for millennia whereas bad scientific ideas are not widely adopted because either they don't work (e.g. a perpetual motion engine) or they are clearly harmful or dangerous (e.g. flying wingsuits).