If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence was passed on to the next generation of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words?
I actually had a similar discussion with a friend a while back! Ideally, I’d say you convey the spirit of the scientific method, so the new civilization skips the first few millennia of mysticism and alchemy, and goes straight to rigorous discovery. Trying to put any individual fact in there seems hopeless when measures against the flood of knowledge we have now.
Maybe something along the lines of
True understanding is gained though falsifiable theories, experiments, and challenges from your peers, until that which fails to be disproven can be accepted as the truth
Tangentially reminds me of Richard Feynman’s Cataclysm Sentence.
I actually had a similar discussion with a friend a while back! Ideally, I’d say you convey the spirit of the scientific method, so the new civilization skips the first few millennia of mysticism and alchemy, and goes straight to rigorous discovery. Trying to put any individual fact in there seems hopeless when measures against the flood of knowledge we have now.
Maybe something along the lines of