Is the engine of science today the same as it was in our past? What are the origins of science and our powerful methods? We find that the key turning point in scientific history came with the unexpected invention of tools that enhance human perception: the first microscope and telescope. They opened unimaginable new worlds and sparked most major discoveries of the 17th century. These two optical breakthroughs put science on a no-return path of rapid discovery, triggered wider curiosity and kick-started modern observational and experimental science. Before their invention, science was limited by ancient tools and human senses—but their arrival broke those barriers, giving us direct access to microscopic and cosmic realms we never imagined. These extraordinary instruments did not emerge from scientific institutions, a large scientific community or formal scientific method. Instead, they inspired them—after observing the extraordinary discoveries these tools made possible. But to understand how we got there, we go further back—to the origins of scientific thinking. This leads us to big and challenging questions: how did we develop science—and even civilisation—in the first place? We cannot study what triggered our advances throughout human history as systematically as we can study contemporary discoveries using statistics. But we can trace what has driven dozens of the most transformational early breakthroughs. While we focus on science throughout the book, we will uncover how its origins are inseparable from the origins of technology and civilisation. To grasp this, we broaden our lens here. We explain how our mind's evolved methodological abilities—to observe, solve problems and experiment—and develop ever more complex methods and tools, from mathematics to systematic experimentation, have directly enabled us to create vast knowledge. They have allowed us to make vast innovations, from plant-based medicine to pyramids. Throughout history, we have actively driven the major advances—the agricultural revolution and later scientific, industrial and digital revolutions—by leveraging these abilities in new ways and inventing better methods and tools: throughmethod revolutions. Better understanding the origins of science, we can better understand their limits and how to push them: our evolved methodological capacities and the tools we develop are both the foundations and bottlenecks of progress. The 196 T HE ENGINE OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY
How did we develop science, technology and civilisation? These are some of the most foundational and oldest questions of science. Scientists attempt to address these questions mainly by taking one of three ways. One way is studying the evolution of human intelligence. Evolutionary biologist Kevin Laland and anthropologist Joseph Henrich highlight how our cognitive capacity for culture has been the central driver of our progress. Developmental psychologist Michael Tomasello also stresses the power of social cooperation. A second way scientists approach this puzzle is by exploring geography. Physiologist and geographer Jared Diamond points to favourable ecological conditions—climate, agriculture and domesticable animals— that gave some societies a head start in making these achievements. A third way is examining a particular point in history. Common explanations for the birth of science often revolve around 17th-century Europe and include the expansion of capitalism and economic wellbeing, Christian values and the printing press—catalysing the work of scholars like Galileo and Newton. These three main approaches focus on what broad factor can explain science and civilisation—two developments that are deeply interconnected. While these broad factors played an important role, they are often beyond ourdirect control. And they do not explain how individual breakthroughs emerge. What is missing is explaining the overall enabling conditions needed for science, technology and civilisation and especially the set of human capabilities that allowed us to actively shape and advance them. So in this chapter, we take a deeper step back in the history of science. To understand the present—and how we arrived here—we must understand the past. This principle applies across most of science, but especially when examining science itself: its cognitive foundations, methodological evolution and our mind's persistent constraints that shape discovery today. Yet this foundational question of the origins of science and civilisation represents an enormously complex and interdisciplinary challenge. Only with an integrated, bigpicture approach can we see how the different pieces fit together—and identify what underpins them. Only with such an approach can we tackle the deeper puzzle: how are we even capable of reasoning about the world and developing the methods and knowledge needed to create these tremendous advancements? How did our mind's method-making abilities evolve over time? What eventually made the work of scholars like Aristotle, Newton, Darwin and Einstein possible in the first place? And did our early ancestors—stretching across our evolutionary history—rely on the same reasoning capacities to gain knowledge as we do today? To tackle these questions, we draw on evidence from evolutionary biology, cognitive science, methodology and anthropology to reconstruct how our ancestors began to reason about the world. In the first six chapters of the book, we examined scientific methods and tools systematically applied in research, such as computational methods, x-ray devices and electron microscopes. In this and the next chapter, we broaden the scope to study more basic, general methods and tools—those used far beyond the narrow scientific context covered thus far. This wider view helps us see how our early ancestors observed, experimented and solved problems to create practical techniques and early basic tools: developing techniques for plant-based medicines to reduce illness, T experimenting with agricultural techniques to grow more food, and inventing systems of writing and numeracy to extend our limited memory. We accumulated experimental knowledge about nutrition, botany, natural pharmaceutics and ecology. These advances were not the result of chance—they reflected strategic cognitive adaptations that allowed our ancestors to iterate, refine and systematise their observations. Over time, we learned how to engineer boats, bridges and later pyramids—advances that require methodically measuring, experimenting and developing geometry and principles of engineering. And we eventually created complex systems of mathematics and astronomy. These early methods helped us better understand and control our environment and biology. They were later refined and scaled up by contemporary scientists using these same evolved method-making abilities, forming the foundation of scientific thinking over history. Science today is defined by formal methods, advanced instruments and controlled experimentation—tools that enable us to observe, measure and test in much more systematic and far-reaching ways. Taking this big-picture, interdisciplinary perspective, we begin by laying out the set of core requirements needed to create science and civilisation. At the centre of this explanation lies a novel insight: our mind's evolved methodological abilities (to observe, solve problems and experiment) that we have developed into ever more complex methods (like systematic experimentation and geometry) have been the key driving force that directly enables us to create scientific and technological knowledge—and eventually science and civilisation. While many think of science and civilisation as separate developments, they actually share six enabling conditions in common. Civilisation lays the infrastructure—stability, systems of mathematics, division of labour—that enables developing science. The two cannot be separated: science has only ever emerged within civilisation—within a highly complex and organised culture. We cannot understand the origins of science without understanding the origins of civilisation. Here we lay out a new explanation—a methods-powered view—of how we created science and civilisation: by leveraging our evolved methodological abilities of the mind (our universal toolbox) to collectively develop more sophisticated methods and tools (our adaptive toolbox) that have enabled us to make sense of the world in increasingly systematic and powerful ways. In this chapter, we dig deeper into our toolbox, exploring these universal and adaptive elements. So how well do existing explanations of the origins of science and civilisation actually fare? Can this holistic and methods-focused view here provide a clearer picture? And how have these capacities evolved and been used in ever more complex ways—from smart crows using sticks as tools, to early humans experimenting with fire, to Mesopotamian engineers designing irrigation systems, to van Leeuwenhoek discovering bacteria with the powerful new microscope that, with the telescope, drastically extended our perception for the first time in history? We sketch out our scientific origins, tracing the growing complexity of our methods—from our evolutionary niche, to the emergence of modern science with the optical revolution and then contemporary science driven by cutting-edge instruments. In short, we map out our method evolution over time. A striking insight emerges: our minds evolved not to detect distant galaxies or edit genomes or ever imagine them without tools—but 198 T HE ENGINE OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY to survive. Our tools are precisely what enable detecting and editing the world by stretching our senses and expanding our mind in unimaginable ways. By better understanding how we developed our toolbox over time, we are better able to systematically understand the complexities of where it breaks down, and how to upgrade it and add onto it today.
and geography: the missing role of methods We developed a world of hand axes, lunar calendars and agriculture—and eventually microscopes, randomised controlled experiments and quantum computers. How did we get from hand axes to quantum computers? Can we explain these remarkable developments through favourable geography or broad cultural forces like norms and institutions? Leading scientists have proposed these forces—geographic luck and cultural evolution—as the central driver of our progress (Box 7.1). Box 7.1 Leading explanations on the origins of science and civilisation Why did science and civilisation take root in some places and not others? Jared Diamond, professor of geography at the University of California, answers the question by pointing to favourable geographic conditions. He summarises his core thesis as: 'History followed different courses for different peoples because of differences among peoples' environments. ' He argues that factors related to 'the rise and spread of food production is [ … ] what I believe to be the most important constellation of ultimate causes' . In short: for Diamond, fertile land, domesticable animals and the right climate set the stage for everything from early cities to science. Kevin Laland, professor of behavioural and evolutionary biology at the University of St Andrews, argues instead that: 'our species' extraordinary accomplishments can be attributed to our uniquely potent capability for culture. ' For Laland, what makes our species extraordinary and explains our great advances are high levels of social learning: copying each other's behaviour. Michael Tomasello, professor of psychology and neuroscience at Duke University, also highlights the role of culture, focusing on cooperation. His principal thesis is strikingly simple: 'virtually all of humans' most remarkable achievements— from steam engines to higher mathematics—are based on the unique ways in which individuals are able to coordinate with one another cooperatively. ' For Tomasello, our species' 'most distinctive characteristic is its high degree (and new forms) of cooperation' that reflects our shared intentionality and enables our complex language. Joseph Henrich, professor of human evolutionary biology at Harvard, goes further, making his central argument clear in the title of his book, T T he secret of our success: How culture is driving human evolution, domesticating our species, and making us smarter. He argues that 'The key to understanding how humans evolved and why we are so different from other animals is to recognize that we are a cultural species' . Ultimately, these scientists argue that if the right ecological conditions emerge—like high-productivity farming and food production —or if humans develop cultural traits like cooperation, shared intentionality, language and abilities for learning, then science and civilisation can arise. What is clear is that culture and geography are important pieces of the puzzle. They act as basic building blocks, setting the broad stage for human progress. But they do not explain how humans—once fertile soil and social cooperation are in place—actually started building tools and methods to understand and transform the world. They do not tell us how we advance—which methodological steps we have taken to develop our scientific and technological knowledge. Existing researchers, because they focus on the broad backdrop, leave open the key question about the mechanism: what cognitive and methodological forces turned those broad ingredients into discovery? How did we actually begin designing the first boats, pyramids and microscopes—long before we even understood buoyancy, gravity or optics? Could it be the result of a kind of reasoning and testing that shares many similarities with science today? Michael Tomasello aims to identify the differences 'that ultimately lead to humans' unique forms of cultural coordination and transmission (and so to telescopes and parliaments)' . But there are vast worlds between cultural coordination or geography on one hand, and telescopes on the other. The former is a social scaffold, the latter is a technical innovation. The two operate at fundamentally different levels. So what bridges the divide? Here we provide a new perspective: shifting to our mind's methodological abilities to observe, solve problems and experiment and create better methods like mathematics. These abilities—both ancient and modern—directly connect these extraordinary innovations between our early ancestors who experimented with more productive farming techniques, and today's scientists and engineers who experiment with genetically modified crops. This is the missing methodological link: these evolved capacities turn more systematic observation and trial and error into refined methods and tools that create life-saving knowledge and innovations. Our species has always relied on these same methodological abilities to be able to unravel mysteries about the world and invent technologies. This integrated toolbox perspective offers a unified explanation that connects our early evolutionary origins with the methods we use to reason, do science and understand the complexities of the world—an explanation overlooked until now. So to explain the rise of science and civilisation we should not just focus on factors seen as the key to human success and uniqueness—like language, collective intentionality or agriculture. We must focus on this evolving set of methodological abilities and techniques we have developed over history. These are more directly observable and measurable in the tools, artefacts and knowledge we created than those broad factors. 200 T HE ENGINE OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERY
method revolutions Our early ancestors did not just adapt to diverse environments, but transformed them. We actively drove the palaeolithic technological revolution and—once favourable geographic conditions emerged—the agricultural revolution. We then— once favourable demographic conditions were in place—actively brought about the civilisation revolution. How were we directly able to spur each of these monumental shifts and then the scientific, industrial and digital revolutions? Through our ancestors' evolving methodological abilities: through method revolutions—developing and refining new methods to think, experiment and control the world. To connect geography and culture to the rise of better technologies, agriculture, civilisation or science, we must focus on our hands-on methodological capacities and innovative methods and tools used to make these advances possible. To drive the palaeolithic technological revolution over 50,000 years ago, early hunter-gatherers did not stumble upon tools like bows and arrows. They had to use those abilities in new ways: from reasoning causally about tension and trajectory to refining their designs by experimenting. That is methodical innovation. To trigger the agricultural revolution at least 12,000 years ago, early huntergatherers had to experiment with seeds and develop planting techniques. They understood the causal interplay between seeds, water, soil fertility and sunlight needed to produce crops. To bring about the civilisation revolution and the first large societies at least 6000 years ago, early village dwellers had to develop methods like systems of geometry and arithmetic that pushed the boundaries of our mind. With these mathematical innovations, they planned and constructed buildings, cities and monetary systems on a scale never seen before. To spark the so-called scientific revolution in the 17th century, we had to invent new extraordinary tools and methods—especially the first microscope and telescope—that transformed entirely how we observe, measure and experiment in more systematic, controlled and far-reaching ways. These pioneering tools opened up entirely new realms and ways to see and understand the world never imagined before. Galileo suddenly made unexpected astronomical discoveries employing the new telescope and Newton then laid a new foundation for understanding the physical world by also applying new methods like calculus. To spur the industrial revolution in the 18th and 19th centuries, engineers and entrepreneurs had to invent entirely new methods to transform raw materials into mass-produced goods. This leap involved trial-and-error innovation—from building steam engines to producing iron and textile spinning machines—and demanded understanding the complexities of heat, motion and mechanical pressure. To give rise to the digital revolution and digital technologies in the 20th century, scientists and specialised professionals had to work together to produce new and efficient transistors, computers and the internet—technologies that define modern society. This leap required developing new mathematical and computational methods, coding systems and continually experimenting. Across all these major revolutions one thread runs consistently: our mind's evolved methodological capacities and inventing new tools have been the main T force we actively and directly influence. These were not just major historical shifts, but well-defined methodological shifts. It is this method-making engine—our everexpanding toolbox of cognitive strategies and technological tools—that has spurred human progress. In short: method innovation drives the continuous thread of discovery across history, connecting us to our ancestors and propelling future advances. Future revolutions, such as an AI revolution, would also be catalysed by developing new data-processing architectures, more powerful machine learning algorithms and massive datasets. Complex AI systems rely on computer scientists, data analysts and systems engineers to optimise ever more complex deep learning programmes and computer technology. But even these cutting-edge tools are built on ancient foundations: logical deduction, systematic observation and iteration— strategies honed over millennia by our ancestors to track animals and craft effective tools. So how did it all begin? How have we even been able to start science in the first place? We begin with this question—as we progress through the history of science in the chapter.