all right well thank you very much for coming out this is the inaugural lecture and what I'm calling the history of philosophy and 16 questions and there's an invisible asterisk by the number 16 because it turns out there are 17 weeks in this summer so apparently there's a seventeenth question that I don't know what it is yet so there's a mystery question and to some of the questions will occur more than once throughout the history of philosophy so a couple of them will be the same question that is revisited at a later date if you are interested in this series we're gonna do one section per week they each section of stand-alones if you want to make one that's great if you can make all sixteen that's great at the end of the lecture we'll have questions and I encourage people to do follow-up discussions amongst themselves to throughout the space till eight I'm only going to talk for about 45 minutes to an hour I'm not talking for two hours there's no way but the space is for you after that also if you look at the flyer I included some questions there that for you to ponder after the lecture so I'm kind of giving you homework basically so it's not just questions to be explored it's questions for to ponder as we go from lecture to lecture also any lecture that you miss will be online I put them up on YouTube and if you go there you you know you can hear everything you hear my earlier lectures and you can subscribe to YouTube channel and then you won't miss it so again thanks very much for coming out so this is lecture number one and the six the history of philosophy and sixteen questions question one is what the hell happened now this is a very important question and I'm trying to get a how to come to grips with this question because if you think about it where you ended up in history oh we block the door haven't we let's let's move that door okay there we go better leave that open so people can sneak in and out so if I put my arms out my arms are ridiculously wide or long for the my height or I'm short for my arms but it's that's about 75 inches but we're going to round that to 70 inches and get everybody put your arms up hit your neighbors right so this will give you this is going to be a timeline of human development intellectual history and human development so the idea here is how long has humanity been sort of thinking as it were so if I put my arms out and you could get to use yourself as a measure and every inch is 30,000 years then my left tip is 2.1 million years ago rounding the bed and 2.1 million years ago is when our earliest forebears are our distant relatives Homo habilis and Homo erectus but at this point were mostly Homo sibelius started using tools now this is an amazing innovation in history now there's some debate about whether tool use actually comes earlier which it may have but basically by 2.1 million years ago we're really sure that humans were using tools but again this is an ancient ancestors of humans are the ones that never right never invite you over for Christmas but for the next roughly say 1.7 million years which is now we're going all the way from my fingertip roughly to you know sort of mid arm elbow tool use improves very slowly and very slightly there is no great huge leap forward which means that our ancestors were evolving they're developing increased capacity to manipulate their environment and to manipulate tools but there's no you know leap then about 300 thousand years ago Homo erectus shows up and maybe Homo sapiens although most people put the date for us later than three hundred thousand years ago and there is a market dramatic increase in the quality of the tools but notice two million years of tool use and we're all the way over to about you know nine inches so almost to the palm of your hand so this is this is what I say what the hell happen notice for for a million eight hundred thousand years relative stagnation some improvements but relative stagnation three hundred thousand years ago you get a significant improvement and all sorts of tool use and the qualities of tools and how they're being used and what's going on you know this is important because it means something mentally and socially is taking place and then that sort of goes on till about fifty thousand years ago so not fifty thousand years we're just sort of like the last knuckle maybe knotty maybe a little past the last knuckle on my finger so again two million years of tool use fifty thousand years ago boom everything art we start getting sophisticated carvings massive increase in the to of this all from the archaeological record massive increase in the sophistication of tools all the evidence of complex social hierarchy and social communities being developed and this is happening are if you think evolutionarily this happens really fast some people say oh well maybe it took twenty thousand years to happen it's like okay yeah over two million years for they to get this dramatic change in a few thousand years is extraordinary nobody knows what happened by the way so fifty thousand years ago explosion everything we live in satellites computers electricity the internet fine cider is an act of that moment we are the inheritors of whatever transformation took place in those few thousand years an incredibly short period of time ago and then if you go further again keep the timeline in mind almost to the end of your finger about ten thousand years ago those crafty buggers our relatives came up with agriculture now this is a total GameChanger because agriculture allows you to cram a bunch of people together in a relatively small space and feed them and this allows for specialization and once you have specialization all of the sort of panoply of civilization begins to develop and it begins to develop really quickly so that by the time you hit three to five thousand years ago we'll call it five thousand years ago you get the early kanae form civilizations and you get the first incident that has survived in the historical record of human philosophy but when we talk about the history of philosophy we're talking about this just extraordinarily short period of time 5,000 years of recorded human philosophy at most that's that's being generous a 5,000 years of recorded human philosophy and so but the people who are doing the philosophy us have at least two million years of evolutionary history so I'm going to come back this over and over again our ancestors started using tools two million years ago we started doing philosophy 5,000 years ago this is why philosophy is such a wreck because we did not evolve to do philosophy we love to do all kinds of cool stuff philosophy is apparently not one of them and so I think we're just terrible at it I think in another Mille years we're gonna be like a really good at philosophy and so but but because we're living in the sort of evolutionary misfit between how we evolved that are our intellectual tool using manipulative environmental interactive selves and then the sudden capacity that develops roughly around fifty thousand years ago and then really takes off when you get agriculture and writing again five thousand years ago for the writing bit and and and so yeah we're not doing that great in some ways and people go oh we have these problems we struggle you know all the tears in the world although I'm like no this is incredible we are hairless monkeys smashing things with rocks the fact that we've achieved anything is astonishing it really is incredible people I mean it just think and that's one of these I want to explore is how did this happen how in this incredibly short period of time did we go from you know simple stone tool using to again the first art that we have roughly thirty thousand years ago there's a picture in the handout this is about thirty thousand years ago is extraordinarily beautiful it's so in fact it's so beautiful that if you try to reproduce it you just feel bad because you want to thank those people thirty thousand years ago didn't know what they're doing it turns out yeah they really did they're really good artists the pottery work is amazing the carving is amazing the stonework is amazing the tool making is extraordinary from that moment on we've been impressive but again we're struggling to put the pieces together of a world that we evolved in versus the world that's existed for the last six seven eight thousand years and trying to think that out is the central problem of philosophy so that's why I wanted to but always keep that timeline in mind by the way because if you say I'd like to use your body because it's a good reference point but if you ever see this timeline it's always broken up into even segments Paleolithic middle Paleolithic Neolithic and that's completely misrepresentative because it's all old painting left it's all just you know it's two million years of nothing and then three hundred thousand years of explosion but that looks stupid on the page because you have this big one and so they always compress it and then misrepresents which actually happened so second what is philosophy and I think key here is to distinguish philosophy from a religion and be just other kinds of thinking so first religion starts with an answer the gods God the magic whatever the spirit and then everything works backwards from that answer philosophy and this is key starts with a question hence the history of philosophy and 16 questions the beginning of philosophy is saying I don't know what's going on what the hell is going on that really you can't do philosophy excuse me until you can bring yourself to ask those sorts of fundamental questions and it's only under very peculiar and historically unique circumstances that were able to ask those questions and philosophy just isn't thinking in general because most of the thinking we do although we're pretty good at thinking but particularly comparatively the competition isn't that stiff you know it's us versus the plants but the the thing that a lot distinguishes philosophy from just normal thinking is normal thinking is focused on immediate problem solving I'm in a dangerous situation I need to achieve something I want to build something how do I do that now this is fine thinking and it's very helpful and we're relatively good at it as humans philosophical thinking again starts with a question rather than a necessarily a concrete problem or a short-term goal and in fact it often starts with a question that has no immediate concrete resolution there's no reason in some ways to ask the question but that's what it is so the first question is what the hell happened that allowed us to begin to think philosophically well number one is whatever happened fifty thousand years ago and nobody can decide by the way this is there's open argument archaeology all kinds of speculation was it a new layer developed in the brain was an expansion the neocortex was it environmental change that allowed for larger groups to get together was that you know discovery of beer some people say psychoactive drugs you know whatever who knows dog some people will point to the domestication of animals as key to this bleep and human intellectual capacity so far open question nobody knows but the second thing that we do know and this is where we're gonna start here is to do philosophy you need a little bit of freedom you need somebody not to shoot you if you ask a question historically speaking this is very rare this is so rare that in fact today if you live in China or Russia and you go man I really have questions about the way our country is run you get in trouble there are very large barriers put against you being able to ask those sorts of questions in any meaningful and powerful way and it's always important remember that Socrates one of the big heroes of this sort of inquiry was put to death for asking precisely these kinds of questions and so you need this historical circumstance in which there is a large enough polity and freedom and opportunity for people to sort of stand up and go hey what's going on what does this mean and so I want to look at again the first recorded historical evidence of philosophical thinking now it doesn't mean there was an earlier philosophical thing it just means we don't have a historical surviving record the problem is writing doesn't survive that well could be a few thousand years earlier but the one that we have comes from the Epic of Gilgamesh and I have sort of a long ish excerpt here but I'll just read some of the key elements of it and so by the way in epic of gilgamesh Gilgamesh has a friend and Kendu who is killed and this makes him very depressed and he goes on a journey to try to discover immortality and this does not work out that well for and he's sort of coming back from a failing in that journey and he runs into this wise woman who sort of she's a kind of a but just like a big immortal wise woman that sort of said dory that's the character that she is and sosa Doric greets Gilgamesh and then Satori said to him if you are the Gilgamesh who seized and killed the bull of heaven who killed the watchman of the cedar forest who overthrew whom Baba that lived in the force and killed the Lions in the passes in the mountains why are your cheeks so starved and why is your face so drawn why is despair in her heart and your face like the face of one who has made a long journey yes why is her face burned from heat and cold and why do you come here wandering over the pastures in search of the wind so first that repetition repetitious pattern lets us know that this was an oral tale that was subsequently written down so even though this is goes back 5,000 years we know the oral tell probably goes back further so this really is the remembrance of a very ancient story maybe six or seven thousand years old and Gilgamesh answered her and why should my cheeks not be starved in my face drawn despair is in my heart and my face at the face of one who has made a long journey it was burned with heat and cold why should I not wander over the pastures in search of the wind my friend my younger brother he who hunted the wild ass of the wilderness and the panther of the plains named my younger brother who seized and killed a bull of heaven and overthrew Humbaba and the cedar force my friend who was very dear to me and who endured dangers beside me in key to my brother who I loved the end of mortality has overtaken him I wept for him seven days and nights till the worm fastened on him because of my brother I'm afraid of death because of my brother I stray through the wilderness and could not rest but now young woman maker of wine since I have seen your face do not let me see the face of debt death which I dread so much so here it is I'm afraid of death human condition I've tried to overcome it my best friend is dead I'm in despair I'm heartbroken you who have immortality health do not let me see the face of death and again her answer here is pretty much the first recorded moment of true deep philosophical thinking she answered Gilgamesh where are you hurrying to you will never find that life for which you are looking when the gods created man they allotted to him death but life they retain in their own keeping after you Gilgamesh fill your belly with good things day and night night and day dance and be merry feast and rejoice let your clothes be fresh bathe yourself and wather cherish the child that holds your hand and make your wife happy in here a Brit embrace for this too is the lot of man [Applause] so faced with that desire for something else an answer from the gods the gods do not answer him they say no you have to choose mortality you have to live a mortal life there is nothing else notice this is essentially the end of the usefulness of the gods there is no promise of immortality there is no higher life that you're going to achieve by the way part of the importance of the story is Gilgamesh has killed several gods at this point he's been wandering around killing God so it has this very strong notion of the mortal at war with the immaterial the immortal the spiritual it comes up over and over again in the story and the answer is not oh there is salvation for you there is liberation for you oh you will be reborn oh there is immortality oh there is a heaven or there is a hell or there is no there's nothing nothing for you how do you face that love your children make your wife happy sing dance and be merry for that too is the lot of man this is this is this incredible like early notion of beginning to peel away from philosophy because if you can't please the gods and achieve immortality or something like it how should you live what should you do why should you do it again 5000 years ago the question is asked and the question is answer now importantly in the story Gilgamesh ignores this completely right he's like no no I'm not going for that and he gets he's been trying to become immortal he fails a couple of time by the way this is where you get the flood narrative and then he gets this sort of this'll leaf of some kind of translation of course difficult different translation something but some sort of spining leaf that will give him eternal youth which is distinguished from immortality I'm never quite sure how that works but it is distinguished from immortality ah but he loses it a snake takes it from it and so finally he gets home and says well this is a well-built city and we can have a well regulated society with gardens and temples and places of joy and that's what we should do and so the arc of Gilgamesh when he starts at the very beginning of the story he's totally out of control he's rampaging he's raping everybody he's killing everybody by the end of the story he's had to face human mortality in the face death of his friend and Kendu begging the gods for life failing at every turn and then to return home and decide okay what should we do now and that is the beginning it's it's both the first it recorded one we have and I don't know if there's a better one that we have I mean we got different we have all kinds of you know manifestations of this and it'll get more complicated and subtle and in different allocations and different questions but boy a lot of the core of the human philosophical narrative is right there from the first one so epic of gilgamesh is extraordinary for that because it's 5,000 years old and as it's like it was written yesterday in some ways and so that question is Wow what should we do which we're gonna address it in later episodes but in this one I want to say what the hell happened that allowed us to actually ask this question and I think this is often overlooked because it just seems natural to us to be able to do that it is not in any way natural or necessary or even good because when you ask questions invariably what you get are different answers and so when you think about philosophy people go oh look how much progress science has made look how much progress music is made look how much progress athletes have made and philosophy seems to be stuck in the same problems that it was stuck with several thousand years ago why is that well because you ask questions and you get a lot of different answers and then that creates more questions that create more questions and create more so it doesn't it's not this notion of progress it's not that we haven't made any progress I think we've made some but it's a it's a whole different notion because you're aren't really trying to get answers you're trying to get more questions because philosophy is the notion of what don't we know and how do we get about exploring it so again what the hell happened it hard to know but some of the things that we know must be true by the way we all do this in our own lives so so you are mirroring the the arc of human history and human civilization in your own lives so when you were born we're helpless we know nothing we're completely at the the control of our environment our parents because because human children are worthless this is one of the great things about you you see almost all other infants when they're born they're ready to go give them a day two days a week and they're like taking care of themselves uh we take forever it's about 25 years before the human brain is fully developed give or take 25 years and it can still change which is remarkable and so we spend this huge amount of time in which we're helpless we're essentially captives we're being brainwashed right we don't and it's necessary by the way it's you know it is brainwashing but what else are you supposed to do with kids they need a language while you teach them your language they need to know how to do things while you teach them how to do things the way you do it and then at some point by the way these are the teenage years we begin to wake up we begin to look around and go you know what it ain't necessarily so the way we do things the way I've been trained the way I've seen the world is not necessarily only even the most correct most satisfying and this is the worst thing that happens to you because then then all this conflict begins plucker filled with hormones it's great that our minds and our hormones just develop simultaneously so that you're trying to think with something that's overwhelmed with chemicals it's great it's a great combination not that helpful but but fun um so so you're trying to think the stuff out you're learning to think by the way and notice this is exactly what happened in ancient history for most of ancient history even after you get agricultural I forget pre-agricultural when you get agriculture everybody is a slave or a boss to do philosophy you need somebody in between because bosses know what they want they want things their way slaves don't have a choice until they overthrow the boss and they become the boss it's just a perfectly clear cycle but you need a society large enough for there to be people standing around in the inter stirs disease between this going hey wait a second maybe this doesn't have to be this way maybe the gods really don't have anything to offer us see this is extraordinary even today at somewhat extraordinary and controversial five thousand years ago this was a good way to get killed because now you're threatening everything that's going on by asking the question and the second you ask the question what's going on what the hell happened whoever is vested in what's going on is threatened it's it's a necessary parallel that you you it just has to be because if I say oh this is the way things work this is the way Singh works than somebody says well that's not how they work if I invested in them working that way I have to say look you're wrong shut up sit down but the authors of Gilgamesh had enough power and enough mental opportunity to begin to look at their world and ponder and go hey we sacrifice to the gods but we don't get a more tality we worship and all this terrible stuff happens to us we do what the King says and he kills us and and all of that is in there and this is these are the questions we have to ask and so just as we've matured the civilizations matured and they've gone through these repeated phases throughout history where once you come up with the answers you stop asking questions what's the best form of government for a long long time we said American democracy by far the best form of government nothing better perfectly functioning fine machine most of us were raised with that story it's a fine story fictional story but a fine one and then suddenly for reasons you know people are beginning to question this they're like perhaps there are problems in this story and it's a very challenging and unnerving moment when you start going maybe the story isn't entirely true because now you have to ask of course what is true and so what the hell happened to help us make this transition from basically tool-using Apes to people looking around going do my friends have to die can I live forever how should I live is the capacity both socially educationally to begin to reflect on the human condition and ask what how when and so I put some questions there at the back if you if you look on the back of the sheet these are some of the questions that come up in the epic of gilgamesh what makes us human now as I'm not sure they give you a good answer but for those of you are interested in the transition from create a graffiti agree cultural civilization that narrative is in the epic of gilgamesh they remembered this they saw they knew it that was going on around them and the Gilgamesh's friend is a wild man who still lives with the deer and he is educated and domesticated and brought into the fold of civilization to be gilgamesh's friend but when this happens he loses contact with the natural world and he's really upset and it robs him of his strength for a while he feels cut off from the animals who now flee from him in terror but that part of that whole narrative is the question of what makes us human what is the difference between a savage or an animal and a civilized human and the epic of gilgamesh it's bread perfume a prostitute and fine clothes and being clean that's what makes you human do you lack those things you're not really human it is explorative buddy but we still that this is still a tough question another question that that's raised in the epic of gilgamesh is what do dreams mean is this one of these funds that keep coming back keep coming back Freud of course famously talked about it enough people are continually interested in this question of what do dreams mean because they're so weird and in the ancient world they dreamt a lot more and a lot more clearly than we do electric life wonderful in many ways kills your dream life you can run an experiment get rid of electric light just live by candlelight for a while and try to cut basically all sugar out of your diet the ancient world had almost no sugars in it and by God I guarantee you you will start having dreams that'll blow your mind you will go back and understand why almost all ancient literature is obsessed by dreams because they were like hallucinating every night I mean it is amazing so it's a little experiment you can run but we all still dream to a certain extent and it raised the question of what do they mean is it something outside trying to communicate with us is something inside trying to communicate with us is it totally insignificant it does it mean nothing but it's another one of those questions that were asked it needs an answer because we dream and so like what I think our answer is to like ignore it right it's like we have dreams and we're like we're just going to pretend generally as a society not necessarily individually does aside II have a dream pretend like that didn't happen right that's just nothing to do with me and I'll go about my life and protect the ancient world was like really interested in this and you know I think it's sort of odd that we sort of pretend like these things don't happen to us why all this art so again as soon as you get anything like modern humans you get fantastic art not crappy art not a third grade art like Kenny Gardner fantastic art right out of the gate and so people always talk about oh what makes us human go back the other question and then one of the answers has to include something to do with the arts also something to do with making stone tools because not only did we make better stone tools at this explosion we started making beautiful stone tools they really started to clearly love their tools and we still have this today right people love their workshops they're all beautifully aligned and the nice that that like the Chinese well using a chisel today then this beautiful wood hand a lot on my Collis so it's unnecessary but it's just so nice that goes all the way we were doing that with stone tools fifty thousand years ago this is this is but that the love of the beauty of the heft of the object of art has got to be at least part of that answer but it's not clear why nobody knows by the way this is an open question in philosophy called question of aesthetic so just feel free to don't jump in right just you know think about that because it really does need pondering it's not necessary of in theory in practice it turns out totally necessary that we really do like to make things and we like to make beautiful things theoretically worthless things so if you read evolutionary biologist stuff they're always talking about you know survival and efficiency and you ya know humans have been wasting time and energy doing - since day one that's how you know you have Homo sapiens is because they're doing something stupid and pointless and you can't figure out why stone monuments by the way I know let's take huge stones and set them up right and then put another stone on top of that stone that'll be totally fun what what what wait what why I mean but but really this is a crucial philosophical cause it's clearly part of what makes us humans piling stones at some level and but now we're very much more sophisticated we made skyscrapers that's totally different you know you know but we just love how tall can we build it tallest building in the world biggest building in the world it's I mean clearly this what they're doing at some level those guys have a bigger pyramid than we do that earlier Pharaoh had a bigger pyramid so I want the biggest pyramid and so you get like the pyramid arms race nothing is less useful than a pyramid by the way it's just the dumbest use of materials ever invented and there's no internal space it's crazy but human and cool and so again trying to figure this out these are the questions we usually ask but why why put a man on the moon they keep trying to come up with reasons for this there is no good reason for this except for it's totally cool what a great challenge we did it which is crazy now they're like let's start a Mars colony people like why they kind of come up with all these explanations about oh well we have to leave the planet at some point and you know expanding populate no no no it's like Mars colony totally cool you look up at the night sky you see the little orange dot you think there is people living there that would be cool and apparently that's all you need to spend billions and billions of dollars to do it and so why not you know should I fear death this is right back to the right should we be afraid of death is it is it a bad thing it seems like a bad thing I'm always convinced that we're not so afraid of death for ourselves we just hate to see people we love die because that's just no good it's just a total it really is mortality that part of mentality is just awful and it's right so I think it's often people think oh it's not me dying I think yeah I often think we're more egalitarian than that that we just really are going to miss the people that we love and so we don't want them to die so we're anti immortality but you know should we be should we fear death it's right there of course right there at the beginning of the epic of gilgamesh and our early ancestors were clearly struggling with this from day one they buried their dead and all these weird ways again not efficient ways not any system that makes sense if you're just trying to bury people but clearly we're a pond we've been pondering about death for as long as we've been around most other animals don't do this we but we really like ah well let's point them a certain orientation on this barium with a bunch of gold or let's put all the weapons of the people they've killed in there or let's bury on you know some cultures let's bury them with their families because you know their man died what else does anybody have to do to be alive right you know that's sort of just that this attempt to do something how do we address this how do we respond to this how do we create something that allows us to inhabit this so it's a it's a real question and so these this is the core of what we want to explore in the next I guess 16 I thought it would be 15 more but apparently it's 16 more sessions how do we take this tool using eight put them into cities of a million two million ten million and get along and be human and understand you know what is going on and how we should respond to it and so as we work through this I really want to emphasize for for everyone try and you know ask the questions because we're so often presented with ready-made answers and that's the end of philosophy the answer is the end the question and the opportunity to ask the question which we're so lucky to have we get to ask a lot of questions we're the freest people the world has ever known in many ways and it's just what it's unbelievable benefit for us and so we squander it if we always start with answers if we can take a moment and just go oh you know what is our for why why build a pyramid you know how how how should I live these core central notions only have been asked in this way for as far as we can tell 5,000 years probably they were asked as long as we get fairly decent-sized agriculturally based cities but that maybe is 10,000 meters before that we lived in the patterns in the environment we didn't feel ourselves separate from it or segregated fund and therefore totally subjugated to it this is the Animus stage of human development which still exists by the way nothing wrong with animism but is this is the notion that we're just in this endless chain I'm subject to the world the world does not subject to me and I live in an unbroken harmony until something eats me or I die of old age and then that's just the cycle of life and that's why you can find were rarer today but earlier on you would find you know tribal groups that had lived similarly for tens of thousands of years very little change because that was the way you lived but at some point some of our ancestors started going huh what if we took a raft and push it out in that water and rode out farther than we can see from the shore would we find something and they said we don't know and some stupid stupid ancestors of ours said let's find out and some of them apparently hit Australia which is cool some of them hit other places some of them hit the Pacific Highlands look at the Pacific Islands on a map and think some of our totally stupid ancestors thought well let's sail out there and see if we can hit land the sky is not smart like even today people miss those islands and die out in the the Goshen and that's sat-nav and all kinds of groovy stuff but when you don't actually know there's Islands out there this is an extraordinary leap into the dark and so the answers that I said you're not supposed to have but the first answer I'm going to give you to the first question of what the hell happened as I think we've developed the capacity to do really stupid terrifying I really think that is it we were able to overcome every natural instinct to do something that said okay this is a great idea again think of the astronauts going to the moon here you're on the top of an entirely huge pile of explosives that you're gonna light on fire and it's going to launch you to a place where there is no oxygen and no one's ever done this before it's gonna be great right I think that's bad see other animals don't do this other animal I go oh no no no no no no no thanks for the opportunity right if you have dogs or cats or anything to try to get them to do something new they tend to be very carrying this they're like I don't think so but at some point we developed the innate capacity to do truly remarkably daft things and again that's it think about that they talk about Out of Africa right which is the migration of humanity out of Africa those are the stupid people these are the people who went what's over there we don't know let's go and then they got further they said what's over there we don't know let's go and they're always talking about oh they crossed the Bering Ice Sheet discovered the new world what you crossed an ice sheet who goes out on an ice sheet people died today in the North and South Pole and they have all that cool gear from Patagonia and they got documentary filmmakers with him and they died those people had none of this no documentary filmmakers no cool from Patagonia they just went out there like okay let's I mean how far could the ice go come on Edie let's go and they did and after a while they went man this ice goes a long way let's keep going anyway and then pretty soon they're always getting warmer it's getting warmer it's dude man is it warm let's keep going oh it's getting cooler it's getting cooler shut up and they just went all the way that loo look Jaguars that's bad ooh tropical diseases that's not very helpful and they just kept going into the dark into that that leak and I think that leap is precisely the leap of the philosophical question that says I don't know but I want to find out if you need to know you don't cut out with your buddy ed onto an ice sheet of unknown dimensions with no map no compass no freeze-dried food no nothing you stay where you are and you do what you've always done but the ability to stop for a moment and say you know I don't know but I want to find out I want to find out physically or I want to find out intellectually I think that's the first big leap and I think that's really you know what they all happened about Oh fifty thousand years ago so thank you lecture number one [Applause]