30 March

Researchers studying the remains of the Egyptian Pharaoh Ramses 2, who died more than 3000 years ago, concluded that he died of tuberculosis. Tuberculosis was only isolated by Koch in 1882. Notice how our technologies are specifically positioned in time and space, in fact we often date human history using the emergence of different technologies. Machine guns don’t turn up in Neanderthal sites, we don’t expect them to. But knowledge we take to be eternal, timeless. Once something is ‘discovered’, it apparently has been that way forever. But it ain’t so. Knowledge is as bound by time and space and specific conditions as technology. Facts have histories, and not just histories of the people who ‘discover’ them. Which might seem bizarre, but there I think we have one of the keys to understanding the world we live in.