BIO 358 Lecture 22: BIO358, Lecture 22
Document Summary
Modern world will emerge in two steps driven by gunpowder. Topic: gunpowder and the emergence of the modern state. Theory of history is theory of present and future- give us opportunity of how we are beneficiaries of coming out of pure hierarchy. We can refine our predictions a little bit- new weapons expand scale of social cooperation but implications are sensitive to internal structure of society. Contrast with roads we have- million times bigger than roman road system. We are desensitized to the scale of the modern state. How novel the adaptive sophistication is that we now enjoy- when does this actually unsophisticated weapons. Democratization of modern state about 400 years ago driven by the development reliable inexpensive gunpowder hand guns is the more important of these two. Many of us live in urban envt- hand guns are chaos and mayhem. Implications of our capacity on good and evil, misery, generate wealth mutual, common,
