Philosophical Ideas Behind Their Time

Economist Alex Tabarrok (GMU) recently wrote of “ideas behind their time”. He explains: We are all familiar with ideas said to be ahead of their time, Babbage’s analytical engine and da Vinci’s helicopter are classic examples. We are also familiar with ideas “of their time,” ideas that were “in the air” and thus were often simultaneously discovered such as the telephone, calculus, evolution, and color photography. What is less commented on is the third possibility, ideas that could have been discovered much earlier but which were not, ideas behind their time. Tabarrok’s post is mainly about physical inventions, and someone’s attempt to use AI to come up with a list of such inventions that appeared “behind their time”. The results? Most useful technologies tend to be invented quite quickly once they are possible—this is reassuring. The airplane, for example, could not have been invented before a high power-to-weight engine, which happened circa 1880 making the late 1880s the earliest feasible date for powered flight. Thus, the Wright Brothers (1903) were only just behind the earliest feasible date—and that is true for many inventions. The ideas very far behind their time include the stethoscope, general anesthesia and reinforced concrete and quite far behind are the Jacquard loom and canning. The post made me wonder about philosophical ideas behind their time. One might think that nearly all but the very earliest philosophical ideas are behind their time, in that it is possible that they could have been thought up by sufficiently smart and creative persons at any point in history. While the light bulb could not have come into existence prior to developments in glass blowing, metallurgy, and the control of electricity, philosophical thoughts aren’t like that. Anyone could have thought up “act so that the maxim of your act could be willed as a universal law” at any time. But that response seems to misunderstand what the query about philosophical ideas behind their time is about. It’s not a question about logical or metaphysical possibility. Rather it’s a question about likelihood, about what it is reasonable to expect from particular types of persons in particular cultures at particular times. Of course “reasonable to expect” is ambiguous. And there are other relevant.. The post Philosophical Ideas Behind Their Time first appeared on Daily Nous.