Submission statement: Adam Mastroianni examines why scientific discovery seemingly avoided low-hanging fruit for so long.
For example, why did the Ancient Egyptians know how to calculate the volume of a truncated pyramid 4,000 years ago, but medieval European thought that meat transformed into maggots until 1668? Why were ancient people able to make significant mathematical discoveries, while still demonstrating ignorance about basic real-life processes?
Submission statement:
Erik Hoel argues that 2012 was a cultural inflection point. Just as 1968 signalled the peak of the 1960s cultural revolution that would set the stage for the next few decades of social change, 2012 represents the beginning of the (spoiler) smartphone era and a new round of social change.