Collective knowledge. We started with simple observations (oh look! Every time the sun rises from that rock, it gets cold!) to getting explanations about everything from priests and elders to scientists, philosophers and pure luck. Once collective knowledge in theoretical science is proven and disproven, exponential discoveries and inventions happen.
It’s not that we are smarter today, the past 100-200 years, there’s more information fed to us for collective knowledge to wok on.
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