Wow, there’s a lot to chew on here.
rogersbacon wrote, ”...there is something grand, something beautiful and glorious, dare I say holy, in the act of passing knowledge on to the next generation”.
The problem for progress seems to be...
KNOWLEDGE: It’s easy to pass on knowledge and build upon it generation after generation.
WISDOM: It’s much harder to pass on wisdom. We try, and succeed to some limited degree, but given that wisdom is largely a function of life experience, it almost has to be rebuilt from the ground up in each individual.
Example: while one can learn physics from a book (easy transfer) one can not learn love from a book (hard transfer).
Thus, we see knowledge developing at one speed, and wisdom developing at a much slower speed. Over time the gap between knowledge and wisdom widens.
This phenomena might be compared to giving kids driver’s licenses. At first we’re giving driver’s licenses to 17 year olds. Then 16 year olds. Then 15. Then 14 etc. The cars keep getting bigger, while the drivers keep getting smaller. As this progression unfolds, sooner or later we arrive at crash.
If science is slowing down, that sounds like exactly what should be happening, so I hear this as good news.
QUESTION: Do we believe that human beings can successfully manage ever more, ever greater powers, delivered at an ever accelerating rate, without limit?
If we answer no, then we can be happy that the “ever accelerating rate” factor may be subsiding.
What seems to be missing from so much discussion of science is the understanding that human beings are a limiting factor on what can be successfully accomplished in the way of progress. It’s not science which is the limitation, but human maturity. Here’s an example to illustrate:
We currently have thousands of massive hydrogen bombs aimed down our own throats, an ever present existential threat which we typically find too boring to discuss, even in presidential campaigns when we are selecting a single individual to have sole authority over the use of these weapons.
This is the species which science is giving ever more powers.