by Stephen Sagarin, Tenth Grade Advisor – 11 Jul 2004
Part of Ninth Grade History of the Modern World addresses this question: how does the world change? Not the natural, forest fire-earthquake-volcano part of the world, but the world of ideas and events, the human world. The simple answer is that change comes through the work of human beings. This is not to deny the effects of unintended consequences. Louis XIV centralized power in France, drawing nobles away from the provinces and their fiefdoms to serve him at Versailles. One effect of this policy? Nobility itself became trivial and weak, laying part of the groundwork for the French Revolution. On the other hand, the bureaucracy that Louis and his cardinals furthered is still in place in France despite the Revolution.
Another example shows the place of genius in history. Galileo altered our view of the heavens, cementing in place Copernicusís heliocentric model of the solar system and demonstrating the power of a scientific, mathematical worldview. He, and others, provided the raw material from which Isaac Newton, for example, fashioned his description of gravity. But hereís the rub: Knowing everything that Galileo and his contemporaries knew, could you or I have become Newton? Could we have built Newtonís edifice? Unlikely. Newton famously said, ìif I have seen farther, it is because I have stood on the shoulders of giants.î Well, those shoulders were available to many people, but only one was Newton. To use outdated language, paradigm shifts require two things. The first is a necessary history. Without Galileo, no Newton. The second is a necessary innovator.