What crucial capacity, refined over millennia, is identified as the direct ancestor of every other technological breakthrough?
Answer
The ability to formalize abstraction
When synthesizing the impact of various giants—from the wheel moving bodies to penicillin extending years—the underlying prerequisite for complex creation is deemed the most potent tool. This is identified as the ability to formalize abstraction, which manifests through language, mathematics, or the systematic framework of the scientific method. This capacity allows humans to move beyond immediate physical realities to conceptualize things like trajectories or circuitry design. It is deemed the direct ancestor of all subsequent breakthroughs because it is the invention that fundamentally enabled humanity to invent other things in a complex, non-linear fashion.
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