Large Fierce Mammal

The words “lost knowledge” conjure imaginings of arcane wisdom once known in antiquity, but that has disappeared from the ken of Man leaving the world a lesser place. Regrettably, this is not the case because, more often than not, knowledge isn’t so much lost as misplaced, and each year more time is spent by researchers who are attempting to solve a problem in first researching whether or not someone else has already solved it. If you think on this a moment, you will see how it can come to pass that a solution to a very real problem may be solved in intricate detail, and then shelved rather than implemented.

Let’s say that tomorrow, a team of engineers develop a design for a high efficiency engine that would permit a medium sized vehicle to travel 100 kilometers on a fuel load consisting of a single milliliter of Scotch whisky. Beautifully engineered, all the calculations and computer models show that it will work perfectly, except for one small fly in the ointment – all moving parts, plus the lubricant they will require, must be made from from materials that don’t yet exist, and that nobody has so far devised a development path at the end of which they may reasonably be expected to exist.

Fast forward now 25 or 30 years, and we find a new crew of young turks wishing they had a way of using up all the surplus Scotch whisky in the world in some way that will benefit the greater good. After a few weeks of diligent scavenging, they turn up the design aforesaid and immediately go to the Canadian Tire website to order the materials they need, all of which are now mundane, over the counter items.

This facetious example highlights a situation that confronts anyone who seeks research funding – first proving that the thing you’re trying to do hasn’t been done before. Just saying, “What do you mean? It’s not being done, so I think if it had been done we’d be doing it now,” isn’t enough because inventors are often ahead of their time. A design for an airplane supported by detailed, working, proof of concept models will not yield a useful man carrying flying machine if your current level of technology cannot also build a means of propulsion that is at once sufficiently light in weight, and powerful enough, to make it work, but that doesn’t make the work any less valid as far as you were able to take it. Get my drift?

Not all problems require a technological solution, and in fact not all problems were even problems until previously known knowledge was somehow forgotten. In these cases, more often than not, knowledge that was once in general use fades into obscurity when it comes to be generally held that new ways of thinking, possibly combined with a technological crutch, have rendered it obsolete. Too often, this leads to the adoption of inferior methods, much effort expended to redefine inferior as the new superior, and the appearance of problems that never existed before that both afflict and come to be blamed upon a previously unafflicted party.

Let this be your introduction to an area of lost knowledge that has tenaciously refused to disappear – the reality of the Dog. The next few Worldly Wisdom Wednesdays will shed a light.