Over millennia, our ability to think critically, in combination with our curiosity, creativity, playfulness, and vivid imaginations, have been fundamental to human advancement. During the emergence of humankind, we were, by necessity, an experimental society. Nomadic hunter-gatherers would frequently find themselves in challenging conditions, where determining the most productive ways to interact with their environment required constantly taking risks. Long before the development of the scientific method, the lone approach toward experiment was limited to trial and error; and the consequences of error were severe including sickness, injury, and death either immediate, or painfully slow. Yet despite a high casualty rate, being experimental enabled breakthrough upon breakthrough.
For example, as early humans experimented with inhabiting new environments, they encountered unknown vegetation. Determining which plants were safe to eat or poisonous required careful trials of ingesting miniscule amounts of new foods and slowly increasing them until they could be established as safe. Because humans could pass information from one generation to the next and had developed trade networks facilitating communication across vast regions, they could share their results. Therefore, one person’s experiments could yield a significant advance for all of humanity. This process was crucial to humans being able to thrive in diverse environments.
Early humans experimented to improve their hunting, fishing, building shelters, controlling fire, and cooking. They created language, delved into artistic expression, and invented tools such as darts, axes, bows and arrows, spears, and atlatls, which increased the velocity of a thrown object such as a spear.
Early humans were generalists. Over millennia, their experimental mindset and willingness to share information enabled the development of permanent settlements, a stable food supply, and an increasingly complex human culture. Ironically though, the more stability that our ancestors achieved the less experimental the average person’s daily life became. Once our ancestors began farming, domesticating animals, and settling into permanent agrarian communities, their existence radically changed. Instead of widespread experimentation and innovation, early settled society brought well defined and inflexible social roles, repetitive tasks, and daily routines. These roles were enforced by social institutions utilizing rituals, traditions, codes of conduct, laws, and religious practices. As life became progressively specialized, the experimental mindset was concentrated among just a relative few.
Over time, experimental methods produced revolutionary achievements, ultimately leading to the accelerating technological change that challenges us today. Our most effective response is to reconnect with our common heritage and become a modern version of the experimental society that made our ancestors unparalleled in their success. Today, most experimentation to advance state of the art knowledge is so technologically intensive that it usually requires the resources of well-funded institutions and is unlikely to be done by individuals. However, developing and enjoying an experimental mindset does not necessitate being involved with cutting edge research. The practice of Naturalistic Humanism can again bring the transformative experience of the experimental mindset into our individual lives.
The experimental mindset also provides a useful lens through which to view the future of humanity. Traditional faith-based beliefs about our future usually involve horrible carnage and an ultimate intervention by a god that will end the mortal human experience and replace it with a supernatural messianic age. Understanding our future within the context of the experimental dynamic, central to our humanity, offers a drastically different perspective. Rather than having a specific end goal, human achievement has a constantly moving goal post — the ultimate ongoing experiment being humanity itself.