# The Knowledge
## Metadata
- Author:: [[Lewis Dartnell]]
- Full Title:: The Knowledge
- Category: #books
## Highlights
> These fragments I have shored against my ruins T. S. ELIOT, THE WASTE LAND ([Location 24](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=24))
> People living in developed nations have become disconnected from the everyday processes of civilization that support them. Individually, we are astoundingly ignorant of even the basics of the production of food, shelter, clothes, medicine, materials, or vital substances. Our survival skills have atrophied to the point that much of humanity would be incapable of sustaining itself if the life-support system of modern civilization failed, if food no longer magically appeared on store shelves, or clothes on hangers. Of course, there was a time when everyone was a survivalist, with a far more intimate connection to the land and methods of production, and to survive in a post-apocalyptic world you’d need to turn back the clock and relearn these core skills.* ([Location 73](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=73))
- Tags: [[favorite]]
> The sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke said in 1961 that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ([Location 85](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=85))
> Denis Diderot explicitly regarded his Encyclopédie, published between 1751 and 1772, as a safe repository of human knowledge, preserving it for posterity in case of a cataclysm that snuffs our civilization as the ancient cultures of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had all been lost, leaving behind only random surviving fragments of their writing. ([Location 147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=147))
> The most glorious moment for a work of this sort would be that which might come immediately in the wake of some catastrophe so great as to suspend the progress of science, interrupt the labors of craftsmen, and plunge a portion of our hemisphere into darkness once again. DENIS DIDEROT, Encyclopédie (1751–1772) ([Location 287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=287))
> So what is the theoretical minimum needed for repopulation? Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA sequences in the Maori people living in New Zealand today has been used to estimate the number of founding pioneers who first arrived on rafts from Eastern Polynesia. The genetic diversity revealed that the effective size of this ancestral population was no more than about seventy breeding females, and so a total population a little over twice that. A similar genetic analysis deduced a comparable founding population of the great majority of Native Americans, who are descended from ancestors who crossed the Bering land bridge from Eastern Asia 15,000 years ago when sea levels were lower. Thus a post-apocalyptic group of a few hundred men and women, all in the same place, ought to encapsulate sufficient genetic variability to repopulate the world. ([Location 362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=362))
> Thus we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it. DANIEL DEFOE, Robinson Crusoe (1719) ([Location 475](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=475))
> In the Norfolk system, succession of crops through each plot follows the order: legumes, wheat, root crops, barley. ([Location 952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=952))
> “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries,” said science fiction author Isaac Asimov, “is not ‘Eureka!’ [“I found it!”], but ‘That’s funny ([Location 2126](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=2126))
> When you divide national energy consumption by total population, you find that each individual living in the United States actually uses nearly 90,000 kWh every year, while a European uses just over 40,000 kWh. ([Location 2171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=2171))
> We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T. S. ELIOT, Four Quartets (1943) ([Location 3495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=3495))
> In this way, science isn’t listing what you know: it’s about how you can come to know. ([Location 3688](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=3688))
# The Knowledge
## Metadata
- Author:: [[Lewis Dartnell]]
- Full Title:: The Knowledge
- Category: #books
## Highlights
> These fragments I have shored against my ruins T. S. ELIOT, THE WASTE LAND ([Location 24](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=24))
> People living in developed nations have become disconnected from the everyday processes of civilization that support them. Individually, we are astoundingly ignorant of even the basics of the production of food, shelter, clothes, medicine, materials, or vital substances. Our survival skills have atrophied to the point that much of humanity would be incapable of sustaining itself if the life-support system of modern civilization failed, if food no longer magically appeared on store shelves, or clothes on hangers. Of course, there was a time when everyone was a survivalist, with a far more intimate connection to the land and methods of production, and to survive in a post-apocalyptic world you’d need to turn back the clock and relearn these core skills.* ([Location 73](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=73))
- Tags: [[favorite]]
> The sci-fi author Arthur C. Clarke said in 1961 that any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic. ([Location 85](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=85))
> Denis Diderot explicitly regarded his Encyclopédie, published between 1751 and 1772, as a safe repository of human knowledge, preserving it for posterity in case of a cataclysm that snuffs our civilization as the ancient cultures of the Egyptians, Greeks, and Romans had all been lost, leaving behind only random surviving fragments of their writing. ([Location 147](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=147))
> The most glorious moment for a work of this sort would be that which might come immediately in the wake of some catastrophe so great as to suspend the progress of science, interrupt the labors of craftsmen, and plunge a portion of our hemisphere into darkness once again. DENIS DIDEROT, Encyclopédie (1751–1772) ([Location 287](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=287))
> So what is the theoretical minimum needed for repopulation? Analysis of the mitochondrial DNA sequences in the Maori people living in New Zealand today has been used to estimate the number of founding pioneers who first arrived on rafts from Eastern Polynesia. The genetic diversity revealed that the effective size of this ancestral population was no more than about seventy breeding females, and so a total population a little over twice that. A similar genetic analysis deduced a comparable founding population of the great majority of Native Americans, who are descended from ancestors who crossed the Bering land bridge from Eastern Asia 15,000 years ago when sea levels were lower. Thus a post-apocalyptic group of a few hundred men and women, all in the same place, ought to encapsulate sufficient genetic variability to repopulate the world. ([Location 362](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=362))
> Thus we never see the true state of our condition till it is illustrated to us by its contraries, nor know how to value what we enjoy, but by the want of it. DANIEL DEFOE, Robinson Crusoe (1719) ([Location 475](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=475))
> In the Norfolk system, succession of crops through each plot follows the order: legumes, wheat, root crops, barley. ([Location 952](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=952))
> “The most exciting phrase to hear in science, the one that heralds new discoveries,” said science fiction author Isaac Asimov, “is not ‘Eureka!’ [“I found it!”], but ‘That’s funny ([Location 2126](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=2126))
> When you divide national energy consumption by total population, you find that each individual living in the United States actually uses nearly 90,000 kWh every year, while a European uses just over 40,000 kWh. ([Location 2171](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=2171))
> We shall not cease from exploration And the end of all our exploring Will be to arrive where we started And know the place for the first time. T. S. ELIOT, Four Quartets (1943) ([Location 3495](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=3495))
> In this way, science isn’t listing what you know: it’s about how you can come to know. ([Location 3688](https://readwise.io/to_kindle?action=open&asin=B00DMCV5YS&location=3688))