Re: fork, trivial confinement, constructor

[Marcus Brinkmann]

At Wed, 14 Jun 2006 07:33:35 -0400,
"Jonathan S. Shapiro" <address@hidden> wrote:
> If you succeed, I think there is a chance that you will destroy (or at
> least severely damage) the incentive structures that have driven
> creative process since the beginning of recorded history.

Just so that we are on the same page: The recorded history indicates
that the homo erectus started to cook meat at 400.000 BC.  I consider
that a creative process.

But I am willing to go over to less disputable examples for a creative
process.  Probably the first major episode of symbolic,
non-utilitarian, art was the era of the Cro-Magnons 30.000 BC, with
elaborate cave paintings and bone flutes.  The tiny Vogelherd horse,
carved from mammoth ivory, is dated at 34.000 BC.[1]

Maybe you have a narrower understanding of the term "recorded
history", ie, from when people started to record history by writing.
The first Sumerian writing appeared 4000 BC, by that time already the
wheel was invented, plants were cultivated and animals were
domesticated.  Copper smelting was well under way, people made cloth
and pottery.  The art created in the third millenium BC is already way
too extensive to be listed here, though.  An excellent resource for
the development of art in history is the timeline of art history of
the Metropolitan Museum of Art:
http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/splash.htm

In contrast, the first pre-money exchange goods where used in 2000 BC
in China, the first trade between Greeks and Egyptians begins merely
in 800 BC, the first coins were made around the same time.  The first
patents and copyrights where granted in the 15th century.  That's a
whopping 2000 years after Socrates, Plato and Aristotle.

Can you share us your insight to what incentive structures drove the
creative process of the Cro-Magnons, and later the Sumarians,
Egyptians, Chinese, Indians, etc?  I will surely appreciate it.

Thanks,
Marcus

[1] http://www.metmuseum.org/special/Genesis/tattersall_lecture.asp?page=3