Imagine just for a second looking around at all
the scattered sort of disparate pieces of human
understanding. So you've got astronomy over here,
agriculture, magic, medicine, the movement of
the stars, the deepest workings of the earth,
and deciding that you alone are going to be the
one to save it all. Imagine making the conscious
decision to write down absolutely everything
known to humanity. Every single thing which is
I mean, it's just staggering right in a single
document by hand by candlelight Yeah, two thousand
years ago. Yeah, so welcome to the deep dive
I'm your host and today you and I are immersing
ourselves in a project of a scale that borders
on the impossible Thanks for having me. And yet,
it genuinely defies our modern understanding
of what a single human mind is capable of processing.
Because when we conceptualize massive informational
projects today, we naturally assume the presence
of sprawling teams. Right, like supercomputers.
Exactly. Supercomputers, cloud architecture,
billion dollar endowments. We assume this massive
infrastructure of preservation is just baked
in. But the endeavor we're examining today rests
entirely on the intellectual stamina of one individual.
operating in an era where knowledge was just
terrifyingly fragile. Terrifyingly fragile is
a good way to put it, because, I mean, a single
library fire, a damp room, a careless emperor,
and centuries of human discovery could simply
vanish. Gone. Just like that. That is the precarious
world we're stepping into. And our map for this
journey is legendary. We are diving deep into
the Elder Pliny's natural history. Yes. And specifically,
we're exploring volume one, working from the
project Gunnberg Text, which is based on the
translation by John Bostock and Henry T. Reilly.
And just to set the stage for you regarding the
sheer physical gravity of this project, volume
one is merely the prologue. Yeah, it's just the
start. We are talking about a monumental six
volume set. And the Bostock and Reilly translation
gives us this phenomenal window into the work.
The ideas contained within it, they remain as
structurally profound today as they were in the
first century because Pliny wasn't merely compiling
a long list of facts. He was attempting to build
the cognitive architecture that later generations
of humanity would unknowingly inhabit. OK, cognitive
architecture. I love that. So our mission today
is to pull this architecture apart. and see how
it actually works. Exactly. We're going to explore
how one man living in the Roman Empire around
AD 77 attempted to categorize literally all of
existence. We need to figure out how he managed
the physical and frankly mental logistics of
this task while working a deeply demanding administrative
day job for the Roman Emperor himself. Which
is a whole story on its own. Oh, absolutely.
And perhaps most critically, we're going to dissect
why his specific highly unique worldview, the
very labels and folders he used to sort the universe,
fundamentally shaped how humans organize information
to this very day. Because the way you organize
information dictates how you understand reality.
Totally. Plenty had to make choices about what
counted as valid knowledge. He had to draw a
boundary around his project. And in doing so,
he had to define his terms. I keep thinking about
this in terms of an analogy. Like, imagine you
get a credible tip that the entire internet is
going to be permanently deleted tomorrow. Oh,
wow. OK. Wikipedia, the databases of the Louvre,
every medical journal, every geographical survey,
just gone. Right. A total wipe. Yeah. To prevent
a dark age, you decide to manually write out
the internet. But you have no search engine.
You just have to gather every scroll, interrogate
every traveler, read every rumor you can find,
and synthesize it by hand. And before you write
a single word, you have to decide what actually
belongs in your survival manual. Exactly. You
have to establish the parameters of your universe.
And Pliny defined the scope of his massive undertaking
with a very specific, carefully chosen phrase.
He called his subject the natural world or life.
the natural world or life, which, you know, on
the surface, that sounds fairly standard. You
hear natural world and you think of biology,
trees, bears, rivers. Sure. Yeah, that's our
modern bias. But volume one reveals that his
definition of that phrase is unfathomably broad.
He compiles knowledge on astronomy. geography,
zoology, botany, mining, and art, all crammed
under the single banner of the natural world.
And the grouping of those specific subjects is
where we see the first major rupture between
Pliny's worldview and our own. How so? Well,
it reveals a philosophy of existence that is
radically uncompartmentalized. Consider the modern
university system. OK. It's essentially a monument
to separation. The astronomy department is isolated
in a modern physics building, focused purely
on mathematics and optics. Botany is housed in
the biology department, dealing with cellular
structures. Right. And if you want to study art,
you are walking clear across the campus to a
humanities building. Exactly. You're interacting
with different faculty, using entirely different
methods of inquiry, and probably operating under
a completely different philosophy of what constitutes
truth. We have effectively walled off the things
humans create from the things the Earth creates.
We draw a thick, unyielding line between the
hard sciences and the humanities. We separate
the artificial from the natural. Right. But for
Plani, no such line existed. These were all intimately
intertwined facets of the exact same reality.
Life wasn't restricted to biological organisms
with a pulse. It encompassed the cosmos, the
geological crust of the Earth, and critically,
the physical ways in which humans interact with
and manipulate that crust. Okay, I am going to
have to push back on this a bit because I really
need to understand the underlying logic here.
Go for it. I can accept zoology and botany as
nature. I can even stretch my modern sensibilities
to accept geography and astronomy as the natural
world, since we're talking about the physical
planet and the physical stars. Right, right.
But art, including art in a comprehensive book
about nature, feels like a massive category error.
I mean, how does a marble statue of a senator
or a painted fresco in a dining room qualify
as the natural world or life? It feels like a
category error to us because we've spent centuries
defining ourselves as separate from nature. Oh,
interesting. Yeah, we view ourselves as external
agents acting upon a passive world. To understand
Pliny, you have to entirely erase that boundary.
Erase it completely. Completely. Volume 1 insists
that nature is a coherent whole. Let's break
down material reality of a painting from his
perspective. When you look at a fresco, you see
human imagination, human politics, human culture.
You see something artificial. I see an expression
of human intent. The intent is what makes it
art rather than just, you know, a stain on a
wall. But what is the material reality of that
intent? A painting in the ancient world relies
entirely on natural pigments. To achieve a deep
red, a human must discover, extract, and crush
cinnabar. To achieve blue, they might crush lapis
lazuli or utilize specific copper compounds.
The binder holding it together is egg yolk or
plant resin. Art is fundamentally a biological
organism, a human taking raw geological and botanical
materials and rearranging them. Wait, really?
So he's looking past the image of the painting
and focusing entirely on the chemistry of the
painting. He's seeing both simultaneously because
he does not view human action as unnatural. A
bird building a nest out of twigs is nature.
A human building a fresco out of crushed minerals
is also nature. Wow. The human is an active integrated
component of the ecosystem. Therefore, a sculpture
is merely a piece of the earth's crust, a block
of marble that another piece of nature a human
has physically interacted with. That reframes
everything. You are saying that to Pliny, you
cannot fully understand the properties of marble
without understanding the sculpture it becomes.
Yes. And you cannot understand the sculpture
without understanding the geological forces that
created the marble in the first place. They are
a continuous feedback loop. A continuous unbroken
chain of matter and utility. And this identical
logic governs his inclusion of mining, which
volume one explicitly lists as a core subject.
Right. In our modern context, mining is often
framed as an industrial violation of nature.
It's an artificial process imposed upon the Earth.
We treat it as an extraction, like a removal
of resources from the natural world into the
human world. Exactly. But for Pliny, there is
no separate human world to move it to. Mining
is simply the exploration of the Earth's internal
anatomy. It is the discovery of the veins, minerals,
and hidden structures that the planet has organically
grown deep within itself. Right, right. To write
a comprehensive encyclopedia about nature without
detailing the metals and gems hiding underground
would be as absurd as writing a comprehensive
medical textbook about the human body but refusing
to acknowledge the existence of the skeleton.
Oh wow, the rocks are the bones of the earth
and we're just the organisms figuring out how
to utilize them. Precisely. This concept of the
coherent whole is conceptually beautiful, I have
to say. But I imagine it also served a massive
psychological function. How so? Well, living
in the ancient world meant living in a state
of constant vulnerability. Plagues sweep through
cities without warning. Famines occur because
of unpredictable weather. Empires collapse into
civil war. The universe must have felt incredibly
random and terrifying. Oh, absolutely. The ancient
lived experience was characterized by extreme
precarity. The forces of nature were not abstract
concepts, they were immediate existential threats.
So by structuring his encyclopedia this way,
by insisting that the universe is a coherent
whole... Pliny is fundamentally rejecting the
concept of chaos. Yes, exactly. He's looking
at a scary random universe and declaring, no,
there is an underlying order here and I can map
it. Right. The stars in the sky, the astronomy
are logically linked to the metals in the ground,
the mining, the plants that grow botany are chemically
linked to the pigments we use to paint art. Everything
is tied together in this massive impenetrable
knot of logic. It is a deeply reassuring philosophy,
a bulwark against the darkness. It suggests that
the universe is not a series of random, cruel
accidents. It implies that if we simply study
diligently enough, if we categorize every single
piece of the puzzle meticulously enough, we can
eventually comprehend the mind of the universe.
We can discern our exact place within the grand
design. But volume one makes it abundantly clear
that Pliny didn't just believe nature was this
neat interconnected web of neutral facts existing
in a vacuum. Far from it. Right. He believed
this web had a very specific undeniable purpose.
It wasn't just existing for its own sake spinning
away in the void. It had a job to do. And that
job was us. Which brings us to the most defining
characteristic of Pliny's entire project and
arguably the defining characteristic of the Roman
imperial model. mindset as a whole. His text
explicitly presents nature as a coherent whole
that is actively serving humanity. Serving humanity?
That specific phrasing completely alters the
trajectory of the encyclopedia. We are moving
from a philosophy of interconnectedness to a
philosophy of intense, unapologetic anthropocentrism.
Anthropocentrism is the absolute core of his
methodology. In this view of the cosmos, humanity
is not merely one biological species among millions.
We're not just another animal struggling for
survival on a ship. planet. We are the apex of
existence. We are the intended recipients of
creation. Every other element, every mountain
range, every constellation, every predator, every
herb was placed there specifically to interact
with, challenge, or benefit us. It sounds like
Pliny viewed the entire universe as a giant cosmic
vending machine. A cosmic vending machine. I
like that. Yeah. Carefully stocked and curated
for human convenience. Or maybe a vast sprawling
estate where humanity holds the deed. and all
the plants and animals are just the staff waiting
for instructions? The estate analogy is incredibly
precise. Pliny does not recognize the concept
of nature for nature's sake. He doesn't. No.
If you were somehow able to explain modern ecological
conservation to him, the idea that we should
cordon off a section of wilderness and protect
it simply so it can exist untouched by human
hands, he would find the concept not just strange,
but entirely illogical. I would imagine he'd
ask, what's the point of a forest if no one is
cutting down the trees? What's the point of a
river if no one is drinking from it or sailing
on it? Exactly. To him, an untouched wilderness
is a wasted resource. It's a toolbox that has
never been opened. If the fundamental reality
of nature is that it exists to serve humanity,
then the act of cataloging it, which is the monumental
task he set for himself, is essentially writing
the definitive user manual for human survival
and imperial prosperity. A user manual for the
earth. That is, I mean, if we view natural history
as a user manual rather than an objective scientific
textbook, it completely changes how we read every
single entry. It really does. It's no longer
a dry list of biological observations. It becomes
an urgent, practical survival guide. The tone
shifts entirely from the theoretical to the intensely
pragmatic. When Pliny approaches botany, he isn't
just describing the shape of leaves or the color
of petals out of abstract curiosity. Botany is
the study of medicine and agriculture. The burning
question behind every botanical entry is what
does this do for us? Which specific plant root
will cure a migraine? Which leaf will sue the
burn? Which grain will yield the highest caloric
return to feed the marching legions of Rome?
And when he tackles zoology, he isn't just creating
a taxonomy of animals to understand evolutionary
relationships, because that concept doesn't even
exist for him. No, not at all. Zoology is a threat
assessment and a resource inventory, he's asking.
Which animals possess venoms we need to avoid,
or perhaps harvest for our own use? Which beasts
of burden can we domesticate to pull our plows
and build our cities? Which animals provide the
most durable leather for our armor? Which migratory
birds can serve as reliable indicators of changing
seasons for our farmers? It's all about utility.
Exactly. Every single entry implicitly demands
an answer to the question, how does this serve
the human empire? This anthropocentric lens assigns
a profound sense of meaning to the physical world.
Right. The stars aren't just burning balls of
gas separated by vast gulfs of empty space. They're
a navigational system intentionally placed in
the sky to guide Roman trade ships across the
Mediterranean. Oh, wow. The mountains aren't
random tectonic accidents. They're geological
storehouses designed to be cracked open for their
iron and gold. It is a worldview that grants
humanity an incredible sense of power and destiny.
But from a modern ecological perspective, it
borders on the megalomaniacal. It is an astonishingly
arrogant way to view the universe. Yeah. But
before we judge Pliny too harshly for thinking
the entire cosmos revolves around the needs of
Rome, I think we need to reflect on our own modern
biases. Because, you know, do we really operate
that differently today? That's a great question.
I mean, when you look closely at how we interact
with the environment, how often do we still view
the natural world purely through the lens of
human utility? That is a deeply uncomfortable
but necessary question. We like to think we've
evolved past Pliny's cosmic venting machine,
but the underlying mechanisms of our relationship
with nature remain strikingly similar. Think
about the arguments we use when advocating for
environmental protection. When we talk about
saving the Amazon rainforest, how often is the
primary argument, we need to save these trees
because they are an independent ecosystem with
an inherent right to exist? Almost never. Almost
never. The argument is usually we need to save
the rainforest because it acts as the lungs of
the earth and we need the oxygen to survive,
or we need to prevent deforestation because there
might be undiscovered plants in that jungle that
hold the cure for human diseases. Yes. We continuously
assign economic, medical, or survival value to
ecosystems in order to justify their continued
existence. Right. We struggle profoundly to value
a deep ocean trench or a barren desert unless
we can articulate exactly how it benefits human
industry human health or human climate stability.
Our modern environmental policies are still,
in many foundational ways, deeply rooted in Pliny's
anthropocentric framework. We're still frantically
reading Pliny's user manual. The only difference
is that we've recently added a frantic new chapter
on maintenance because we realize we're breaking
the machine. Exactly. We realize we can't smash
the glass of the vending machine without ruining
the snacks inside. We have a more sophisticated
understanding of the interconnected consequences
of our actions, yes. But the ultimate goal Human
preservation and prosperity remains the driving
force behind our interest in the natural world.
But let's zoom out from the philosophy for a
moment and consider the sheer physical logistics
of this undertaking. Because deciding that the
entire universe is designed to serve humanity
is one thing. Actually sitting down to document
every single way the stars, plants, animals and
minerals serve the Roman Empire is an entirely
different reality. It's a logistical nightmare.
Right. This is not a hobby. This is not a weekend
project you chip away at in your garage. No,
it's a life consuming obsession that requires
a level of stamina that is difficult to fathom.
Which brings us to the astonishing personal reality
of the author himself. Planey was not a cloistered
monk sitting in a quiet, isolated tower with
Enley's hours of free time to ponder the cosmos.
Not even close. He was operating in the absolute
nerve center of global power. He was a high ranking
official within the Roman Empire. This is the
point in our exploration where the narrative
shifts from a theoretical discussion about ancient
philosophy into a staggering portrait of human
endurance and discipline. So volume one provides
a very specific. almost easily overlooked detail
about the creation of this work. It notes that
Pliny wrote this monumental encyclopedia at night
while serving Emperor Vespasian. At night? At
night. It began publication around AD 77 and
stands today as the largest single work surviving
from the Roman Empire. I want to pause and really
interrogate that phrase, written at night. It's
a phrase that demands intense scrutiny because
it defies normal human biological limits. If
he is working for the emperor of Rome during
the daylight hours, when exactly is the man sleeping?
Serving this patient is not a quiet administrative
desk job with predictable hours. What did his
day actually look like? Are we looking at the
ancient Roman equivalent of extreme toxic hustle
culture? It is the ultimate historical example
of a side hustle. But it was fueled by an intellectual
drive that borders on the fanatical. To understand
the weight of his day job, we have to understand
the context of Emperor Vespasian. Okay, set the
scene. Vespasian came to power after the year
of the Four Emperors. Which sounds intense. Oh,
it was a period of devastating civil war and
instability that followed the death of Nero.
Vespasian was not a frivolous, partying emperor.
He was a pragmatic, gruff, deeply hard -working
military man. tasked with pulling a fractured
empire back from the brink of collapse. So to
be in Vispasian's inner circle meant you were
part of a crisis management team responsible
for the entire known world. Precisely. You're
part of the immense grinding machinery that keeps
the empire functioning. Right. A day in the life
of Pliny would have involved crushing administrative
burdens. He was dealing with complex military
logistics, managing taxation across provinces
that stretched from the cloudy borders of Britain
to the scorching deserts of Egypt, resolving
high -level legal disputes and navigating the
treacherous, often -lesal political waters of
the Roman elite. His day job is literally managing
the chaos of humanity. He's dealing with greed,
ambition, border skirmishes, famine relief, and
imperial decrees. It must have been mentally
exhausting and emotionally draining in a way
that is hard to even articulate. A day filled
with the messy, unpredictable, often violent
reality of running a human empire. And then the
sun finally goes down over Rome, the Senate empties
out, the elite go to their elaborate banquets
or to the baths to unwind, the common citizens
go to sleep. And Pliny. After managing the world
all day, he goes home, lights a candle, pulls
out his wax tablets and papyrus scrolls, and
decides it is time to synthesize the universe.
He begins the second shift. The second shift.
And we must remember the physical reality of
writing in antiquity. There is no artificial
lighting beyond the flickering, uneven glow of
oil lamps and candles, which strains the eyes
terribly. All right, no electricity. There are
no ergonomic chairs or keyboards. It is the slow,
painstaking physical labor of writing by hand.
cross -referencing notes without the aid of an
index, relying on an immense feat of memory and
physical organization. The physical toll must
have been astronomical. But as you describe his
day job under Vespasian, a thought occurs to
me. What's that? I wonder if the day job and
the night job weren't actually in conflict. What
if they were feeding each other? What if working
for the emperor was the only way this book could
have ever been written? That is a critical insight.
The fact that the natural history remains the
largest surviving work from the Roman Empire
is not a coincidence of survival. It is a direct
result of Pliny's imperial position. Tell me
more about that. Think about the unique vantage
point his day job provided. By sitting at the
right hand of his patient Pliny had unparalleled
access to the greatest information gathering
network on the planet. The Roman Empire itself
was his research apparatus. All roads literally
lead to Rome and they bring information with
them. Exactly. The empire functioned as a massive
funnel for data. When a Roman general conducted
a military campaign in the deep forests of Germany,
detailed logistical reports and geographical
observations were sent back to Rome. When a merchant
fleet returned from the edges of India, they
brought back exotic spices, but they also brought
back manifests, travelers' tails, and biological
specimens. When a governor in North Africa surveyed
agricultural yields, that data arrived at the
Imperial Court. Pliny is sitting at the very
center of the spiderweb. He doesn't have to travel
the world to write about it. The world is constantly
reporting its findings directly to his desk.
He is perfectly positioned to intercept, copy,
and synthesize this unimaginable flow of raw
data. So if you were just some rich guy in the
country? A wealthy farmer living in a quiet villa
in the countryside could never have written the
natural history. They wouldn't have had the security
clearance, the access to state archives, or the
constant influx of global intelligence. Right.
Pliny needed the vast sprawling infrastructure
of the Roman state to funnel the world's facts
to his candlelight. So his imperial access made
the project logistically possible. But I'm also
fascinated by the psychological dynamic at play
here. The stark contrast between his day and
his night. By day, he is drowning in human affairs.
And human affairs are inherently unpredictable,
politically motivated, emotionally volatile,
and often totally irrational. Yeah, humans are
messy. Right. He's trying to impose order on
a chaotic human empire. A task that is ultimately
frustrating because humans will always resist
absolute control. Exactly. But by night, he retreats
into his text. He retreats into the concept of
the coherent whole. The political landscape of
Rome might be a treacherous mess of assassinations
and bribery. But at night, Kleine can meticulously
categorize the different species of bees. Yes.
He can list the exact chemical properties of
gold. He can impose absolute unquestionable order
on a natural universe that, unlike Roman senators,
actually follows consistent rules. It is an intellectual
refuge. But it's also an extension of his imperial
mindset. He is not merely observing nature, he's
conquering it. He is colonizing knowledge. Just
as the Roman legions marched out across Europe
and North Africa to conquer physical territories,
subdue wild populations and impose Roman law,
Pliny is marching his intellect out to conquer
the vast wild territories of human ignorance.
He is subduing the wild chaos of global information
and forcing it into manageable, disciplined,
highly structured Roman categories. He is bringing
the universe to heel. And that disciplined imperial
approach to organize the universe didn't just
result in a very heavy book for Emperor Vespasian's
personal library. It achieved something far more
lasting. So much more lasting. It created a template.
a cognitive blueprint that would survive the
death of Vespasian, survive the death of Pliny,
and outlast the entire Roman Empire by millennia.
It became the intellectual bedrock upon which
Western thought was constructed. This brings
us to the final and perhaps most impactful point
derived from Volume 1. The text explicitly states
that this ambitious compilation became a model
for all later encyclopedias. I want to really
examine that word, model. What does it actually
mean to be the model for human knowledge? To
understand the gravity of being the model, we
have to visualize the landscape of knowledge
before Pliny entered the scene. Okay, let's go
there. It is not that no one was writing things
down before AD 77. The Greeks, the Egyptians,
the Babylonians had been producing brilliant
texts for centuries, but the knowledge was intensely
siloed. It was fractured and scattered. So if
I'm a scholar in the ancient world before Pliny,
and I want to understand how the world works,
What does my library actually look like? Your
library is a chaotic collection of highly specific,
unconnected scrolls. You might possess a brilliant
treatise written by a Greek mathematician entirely
dedicated to the movement of the stars. In a
completely different scroll written by a different
author in a different century, you might have
a text on the medicinal properties of herbs.
Another scroll details mining techniques in Spain.
These texts do not speak to each other. They
exist in intellectual isolation. So if I'm trying
to research a specific disease, I don't just
need the medical scroll. I need the botanical
scroll to find the plant that cures it, the geographical
scroll to find out where that plant grows, and
the meteorological scroll to know when it blooms.
And none of these authors know each other or
use the same terminology. Incisely. You are forced
to hunt down a hundred different experts across
a hundred different scrolls, and you have to
do the mental labor of connecting them yourself.
Plany's grand innovation was not necessarily
discovering all this raw information firsthand.
Much of his work is compiling the observations
of others. Right. His true genius, his world
-changing innovation, was the structure. The
architecture of the information. Yes. He had
the audacity to look at this massive fractured
landscape of disconnected facts and declare,
no, this is a coherent whole and therefore it
all belongs together in one single unified place.
He gathered the scattered fragments of human
understanding and wove them into a single massive
interconnected tapestry. If we translate this
into modern digital terms, Pliny essentially
invented the folder structure for human knowledge.
He created the very concept of an overarching
directory. Before Wikipedia, before the Encyclopedia
Britannica, before the French Encyclopedia of
the Enlightenment, there was Pliny the Elder.
sitting in a dark room with a flickering candle,
deciding exactly how reality should be sorted.
He created the physical and conceptual prototype
of the comprehensive reference work. He proved
that an attempt to capture the totality of knowledge
was theoretically possible. And we absolutely
cannot overstate how monumental it is that this
specific text is the one that survived. The record
reminds us that this is the largest single work
surviving from the Roman Empire. Which is incredible
luck, really. It is. When we look at the centuries
that followed the fall of Rome, the chaotic transition
into the Middle Ages, countless other ancient
texts were lost to history forever. They rotted
in damp monasteries, they were burned in sacks
of cities, or they were simply forgotten and
recycled. We lost unimaginable volumes of poetry,
science, philosophy, and history. The loss is
incalculable. But Pliny survived. This massive,
six -volume physical object was copied, preserved,
and handed down. And because it survived, It
disproportionately, almost monopolistically,
shaped how subsequent generations organized their
own information. It is the ultimate historical
example of survivor bias. When scholars in the
Middle Ages or the brilliant minds of the Renaissance
decided to write their own compendiums of knowledge,
they didn't start from scratch. They looked to
the past for a model. And the only comprehensive
model they possessed was Pliny. So because Pliny,
one guy working the night shift in 8077, decided
that geography, zoology, and art should all be
grouped together in the same folder as facets
of a coherent whole, later European scholars
simply followed his lead. Yep. They adopted his
specific, highly personal framework as the objective
default setting for reality. Exactly. Imagine
if a different text had survived as the definitive
model. Imagine if an encyclopedia survived that
firmly separated things created by the divine
from things created by humans, or one that categorized
the world purely by color or geography rather
than utility. The entire trajectory of Western
intellectual history, the very way our universities
are structured today, might look fundamentally
different. Planey hard -coded the operating system
for European thought. He gave us the folders,
but he also gave us something less tangible,
didn't he? By attempting to compress all of life
into physical volumes, Pliny gave humanity an
incredible psychological gift. He gave us the
gift of confidence. Confidence to do what, exactly?
To conquer nature. Confidence to believe that
nature can be conquered intellectually. Think
about what it feels like to face the infinite.
The universe is terrifyingly vast, relentlessly
complex, and seemingly boundless. It is enough
to induce intellectual paralysis. Right. But
Pliny, utilizing sheer, stubborn, relentless
Roman discipline, proved that the infinite could
be bounded. He looked at the totality of existence
and proved that it could be captured, categorized,
and contained within the pages of a book. He
proved that the human mind is capable of grappling
with the absolute scale of reality as long as
you break it down into chapters and entries.
He looked at a boundless universe and said, I
can put this in a box. And by successfully building
that box, he gave every scholar, every scientist,
and every thinker who came after him the permission
to keep building boxes. He gave him the confidence
to keep sorting the universe, to keep pushing
back the dense fog of ignorance because he proved
that the world is fundamentally knowable. What
an absolute journey. Let's bring all these threads
together. We started this deep dive with an image
of a man trying to manually write down the entire
internet to save it from the void. And look at
the incredibly complex reality we've uncovered.
It's a lot to take in. We have a Roman administrator
exhausted from managing the geopolitical chaos
of Emperor Vespasian's reign, retreating to his
study by candlelight. We have a man who compiles
the largest surviving text of antiquity, not
merely as a flex of imperial access, but to prove
a deeply stabilizing philosophical point, that
the art on our walls, the stars guiding our ships,
and the minerals buried deep in the earth are
all intrinsically connected. A completely unified
system of reality. A unified system that is designed
entirely unapologetically and specifically for
human utility, a massive cosmic vending machine
waiting to be cataloged and utilized. And in
executing this monumental vision, he inadvertently
builds the cognitive folder structure for every
encyclopedia, every reference work, and in many
ways, every scientific classification system
that would follow in his wake. It is an intellectual
legacy that is so ubiquitous we often fail to
even recognize it. We swim the waters Planey
drew for us. Yeah. But as we prepare to wrap
up our exploration, this massive legacy raises
a vital lingering question, a provocation that
I think you and I and everyone listening all
need to sit with. I'm ready for it. What is the
lingering question? We've clearly established
that Planey's model of categorizing nature as
a service to humanity became the blueprint for
future knowledge. His texts survived the collapse
of Rome. And his anthropocentric worldview survived
right along with it, embedded deep in the architecture
of the text. So the question is, how much of
our modern information, even our supposedly rigorous,
objective modern sciences, is still secretly
biased by this 2000 -year -old Roman belief?
Oh man, that is a heavy thought. When we send
a probe to a distant star system or map a deep
ocean trench or sequence a new genome, how much
of our core scientific curiosity is still implicitly
driven by that primal Plinian assumption that
the universe is just waiting around to be useful
to us? Right, like are we doing it for knowledge
or for utility? Exactly. Are we truly acting
as objective detached observers of a neutral
cosmos or are we just diligently reading the
latest highly updated edition of Pliny's user
manual? That is going to fundamentally change
how I read every scientific news article from
now on. Are we exploring to understand or are
we just exploring to see what we can use? It
brings us right back to the fragility of knowledge
we discussed at the beginning. It makes you wonder
how fragile or perhaps how biased our current
lens on the universe really is, resting on a
foundation built by a single man illuminated
by a candle in the dark. Yeah, it really makes
you think. Well, thank you to everyone for joining
us on this exhaustive deep dive. into the mind,
the methodology, and the massive legacy of Pliny
the Elder. It has been an absolute privilege
to dissect this monumental work with you. I hope
everyone listening continues to question the
categories they use to sort reality and of course
keep exploring. Until next time, keep diving
deep.