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Reuben asked:

Upon which assumption do we form the belief that "Much more is known now than 50 years ago?"

Also, what factors should we use when deciding the "level of advancement" within a given culture/
regional group? What constitutes an "advanced" culture and how will it differ from a "primitive" one?

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This is really two interesting questions, which are fraught with "politically correct" emotionality, not to
mention a variety of post-modernist deconstructive attacks on science. I'm a real fan of the
philosopher of science Paul Kitcher, who was a student of Thomas Kuhn. Kitcher wrote the book, The
Advancement of Science,which (in my opinion) Kuhn should have, but did not write. So, first, read
Kuhn The Structure of Scientific Revolutions,if you haven't. Then read Kitcher's book, above.

Roughly, some of the ideas in Kitcher's book are that science is not, nor should be, a huge consistent
logical system, as the old philosophers of science believed (and on which many attacks are based). It
is a set of practices and knowledge which attempt to find, imperfectly, truths about the world. Those
truths are tested and retested, refined, revised... and in no real sense are they finished, polished, or
necessarily consistent. Yet we doadvance, slowly, and this is seen through various measures, such
as our success at building machines, at causal explanation, at the scope and consistency of our
theories, and so forth. It's not a simple nor error-free picture, and why should it be? So there is no
singleassumption upon which we believe that "more is known now than 50 years ago", no single nor
simple test. There is a huge complex of theories, tests, experiments, ideas... various cognitive and
experimental bases for concluding,not assuming, that we are making progress, in the sense of
knowing more about the world. This is, actually, part of the problem that people uneducated in
science have with it; in order to appreciate that, say, the "theory" of evolution is really much more
than a theory, one must have knowledge in a variety of fields and in the experimental basis of science
as well. It's just not simple.

See also: Shermer, Why People Believe Weird Things,Radner Science and Unreason,Hines
Pseudoscience and the Paranormal.

The "culture" thing....here's the emotional issue. You might take a look at the book: Edgerton, R. B.
(1992) Sick Societies: challenging the myth of primitive harmony(1st ed.) New York: The Free Press.

Edgerton really takes the bull by the horns; and just simply claims that societies in which the people
are unhappy (they want to leave and do, given the chance), sick, poor (again, they leave when given
the chance to make money), malnourished, etc., are societies which aren't working well. That doesn't
sound unreasonable to me, but it's not very politically correct to say that, these days. You can claim
that they are being exploited, etc., and that is certainly true in many cases, but the lifespan of
humans, as we go back in history, decreases as a function of the time we go back, while disease and
general misery increase, as far as we can tell. So it's not just the exploitation of societies in modern
times that correlates with negative (and I would say that short life-span and disease, to name just two,
are indeed negative) values and suffering. I'm afraid that I'm rather cynical about the "noble primitive"
idea. I myself would have died of acute appendicitis at the age of 12 if it were not for modern
medicine. That seems a pretty good criterion for progress to me.

So an "advanced" culture then has at least potentially a greater ability to ameliorate suffering,
disease, starvation, than a primitive one. Whether and for whom such a culture actually doesthat is
another question, isn't it? I would certainly say that the more the better....and many "advanced"
cultures are certainly wanting in that respect.

Steven Ravett Brown

These are good questions. They are often dismissed as too simple to be worthy of much real
attention in politics and social planning. However it is the failure to ask, never mind answer, these
questions that allows society to wander so aimlessly into its future. The usual answers concern
technological cleverness and economic growth, neither of which relate in any straightforward way to
social improvement or genuine understanding of the world.

The real answer is that there is no agreement on these issues in general terms. It is perfectly
reasonable to say that we know more 'facts' than we did 50 years ago. It is not so easy to say that we
have a better understanding of the world. It could be argued either way.

Most anthropologists would say that 'advanced' and 'primitive' are not terms that we should used in
relation to human society without great care. However almost everyone does use these terms, and
think them, as value judgements without any care at all.

It may be unhelpful to you but I would say that until some real work is done on these issues, and
some consensus is reached, your own answer will be as good as anyone else's.

Peter Jones

I am not sure about an assumption. We can certainly give examples of what we know now that we did
not know 50 years ago. Here is one. The existence of DNA and its structure. There have been
significant advances in the treatment of cancer such as 3D radiation, which was not even thought
about 50 years ago. And these examples can be multiplied. I suppose you can be asked the question,
"On what assumption do you believe that we do not know now more than we did 50 years ago?"

Technically, the difference between a primitive and a non-primitive culture is that primitive cultures do
not possess writing. Of course, more loosely, advanced cultures possess science, but primitive
cultures do not.

Kenneth Stern