BY THE year 3700, Earth is far too hot for any human to call it home. On this planet at least, Homo sapiens is nothing more than a memory 鈥� if there is anything left to remember the 鈥渨ise man鈥�. But what of our wisdom 鈥� will any of it outlive us?
The conventional answer is no. Knowledge requires a knower, and there will be no sufficiently knowing minds around. But if information survives, perhaps in books or hard drives, maybe the knowledge isn鈥檛 quite dead but dormant, ready to be resurrected by other minds that evolve or come to visit Earth in the distant future.
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At first sight, that seems plausible: after all, we have done similar things with past knowledge. Take the reconstruction of the Antikythera mechanism, an ancient computer salvaged from a shipwreck off the southern coast of Greece, or the deciphering of Egyptian hieroglyphics thanks to the Rosetta stone. Meticulous work can bring previously lost wisdom back to life.
Crucially, however, there is a certain cultural continuity with those ancient times that allows us to draw inferences and make leaps in the dark: we know we are dealing with the legacy of other humans. Without that link, the survival of artefacts and raw data doesn鈥檛 guarantee the survival of knowledge 鈥� and certainly not complex, multilayered knowledge.
Take our cosmology. Detailing how it explains the workings of a star, or demands the existence of something like dark energy, isn鈥檛 easy with raw data alone. A cultural relativist might even say it is impossible: every culture constructs its own knowledge and there is no objective starting point.
, a philosopher at McGill University in Montreal, Canada, thinks that鈥檚 going too far. 鈥淭here are very basic facts that we all know; if you drop a ball, it鈥檚 going to fall on the ground. I don鈥檛 see how there鈥檚 any cultural relativity there.鈥�
Even if that is true, a lack of linguistic continuity with any future intelligence would be a stumbling block. Knowledge is intimately bound up with language, says at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Take a statement such as 鈥渢here are infinitely many prime numbers鈥�. Whether it is true or not, its language implicitly assumes that numbers exist. That might not seem controversial, but philosophically it isn鈥檛 a given.
鈥淚f books or hard drives survive, perhaps the knowledge is not dead鈥�
Or take the word 鈥渟carlet鈥�, or thesubtle lexicon of names Canada鈥檚 indigenous First Nations communities give to caribou. What they actually mean depends on a package of assumptions and inferences that aren鈥檛 necessarily shared across cultures. When a language dies out, we can lose systems of reasoning that they contain. 鈥淚f that鈥檚 lost, then it can鈥檛 be recovered,鈥� says Collin.
All this means that other minds might not be able to fully resurrect human knowledge once we are gone. Better to concentrate on not dying out in the first place.
This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淲ill our knowledge survive us?鈥�
