Newton, one of the greatest scientists ever, wrote in humility, “If I have seen further, it is by standing on the shoulders of Giants."

The idea is old. We are where we are because the generations before us paved the way for us thus far. They raised the pedestal of humanity for us to see further, and our actions will hopefully do the same for our successors.

When ideas that have stood the test of time are handed over to the next generation and spread over in the fabric of time, a great dialogue starts between them. These ideas breed with each other and lead to the synthesis of something new, useful for their time, elevating the level of being.

And this idea is conveyed beautifully by author Matt Ridley in his TED talk: When ideas have sex. He says, “I’m not interested in the debate about I.Q., about whether some groups have higher I.Q.s than other groups. It’s completely irrelevant. What’s relevant to a society is how well people are communicating their ideas, and how well they’re cooperating, not how clever the individuals are. So we’ve created something called the collective brain. We’re just the nodes in the network. We’re the neurons in this brain. It’s the interchange of ideas, the meeting and mating of ideas between them, that is causing technological progress, incrementally, bit by bit.”

Here’s the link to his video: