20. The New Civilization School

The New Civilization School

Faced with the spirited, renowned old professor before him, Zhang Yuan felt a little nervous.

Never mind all the other assorted titles—just being an "Academician of Mathematics" was enough to scare most ordinary people half to death.

An academician!

Professor Wang's main field of research was motive theory, one of the most difficult branches of mathematics. Motive was a high-dimensional generalization of Galois Group Theory, later discovered by chance to have a mysterious connection to Quantum Field Theory.

Research into the Langlands Program and motive theory represented the two major currents in mathematics at the time. The Langlands Program sought to unify number theory, algebraic geometry, and group theory, while motive theory sought to unify the discrete and the continuous.

They were called the two sides of the same coin.

One mathematician had once predicted, "When humanity truly completes these two frameworks, mathematics will achieve a grand unification. Every mathematical problem will be solvable using these two great theories."

It sounded impressive, but humanity might never get there. Progress on the Langlands Program was at least passable; after centuries of research, people had developed Geometric Langlands, p-adic Langlands, and other branches. But motive theory was so abstract that it had become a matter of mathematicians talking to themselves. Even peer review had grown extremely difficult, and progress had slowed to a crawl.

There was no doubt that Wang Zhong was one of the top mathematicians. The construction of the Mixed Motive had been proposed by Professor Wang and caused a huge sensation at the time.

Zhang Yuan had often heard his father speak of his mentor with deep respect, so he had taken the opportunity to pay the older man a visit. He had no other intentions.

He had even brought a small gift: a local specialty from Donghua City, Donghua Ham. Though now that he thought about it, it seemed a little odd.

"What university did you graduate from?"

"Z University," Zhang Yuan answered honestly.

"Z University..." Wang Zhong furrowed his brow, feeling a little dissatisfied. Z University was ranked third in Xia Kingdom, but it still fell a bit short of the top two. In the eyes of an old man like him, good students belonged at one of those first two schools...

"Are you a spaceflight volunteer too?"

"Yes."

"Very good. You've inherited your father's aspirations." Wang Zhong nodded, pleased with that much.

If he weren't already old and nearing the end of his life, he would certainly have been one of the 500,000 people going to experience interstellar travel.

"What are your plans for the future?" Professor Wang picked up his teacup and took a leisurely sip.

"I still have nineteen days of vacation. I plan to spend some time reading in the library. After boarding the ship, I hope to find an advisor and complete my master's and doctoral degrees..."

"It's good to learn as much as you can. What field do you want to research?"

At that, Zhang Yuan smiled sheepishly. "I really like studying mathematics, but restarting a civilization will require a lot of practical talent, so I'm still planning to do research in engineering, like information science... Well, mainly mathematics and space engineering."

Wang Zhong was a science professor. The sciences looked down on engineering, and engineering looked down on the humanities. It had always been the academic hierarchy.

The hierarchy was determined by how easy it was to churn out papers. For science professors, publishing papers was relatively difficult; they had to come up with something innovative, at the very least. As for the humanities, churning out papers was ridiculously easy. Film studies, acting—those fields were factories for junk PhDs...

When Zhang Yuan's father had switched from mathematics to aerospace engineering, Wang Zhong had thrown a fit, calling the move "too utilitarian."

Sure enough, Wang Zhong furrowed his brow again and fell silent for a while. But since this was their first conversation and they didn't know each other well, he didn't say much.

"Have you found an advisor yet?"

"Not yet. We'll have to take exams after boarding the ship. I hope I can get a high score..." Zhang Yuan said humbly.

"..."

Wang Zhong naturally took that the wrong way.

The Earth Era was just one large spaceship. Even with thorough preparations, its resources and production capacity would still be limited. Most of the crew would spend most of their time in hibernation.

To restart civilization on an unfamiliar planet, knowledge and technological expertise were what mattered most. So the various experts and scholars aboard the ship would naturally control more resources and enjoy greater privileges.

These well-known experts and scholars had only a limited number of places for students. Being one of their students naturally came with more benefits than being an ordinary technician—it was like having someone influential backing you.

Now it seemed as though Zhang Yuan knew he couldn't get a high score and was asking him to pull strings, hoping to find a good advisor through Wang Zhong.

He frowned and asked, "What kind of advisor do you want?"

Zhang Yuan was taken aback. "Obviously, the better the advisor, the better. Someone like my father would be ideal!"

Wang Zhong grew even more displeased. He glanced again at the Donghua Ham on the table.

In all his years of teaching, he'd learned that anyone trying to use their father's connections to get special treatment was bound to be a lousy student!

If that wasn't true, I, Wang Zhong, will eat this whole ham!

Take a look in the mirror and see what you are...

You want the best advisor? First ask yourself if you're even worthy!

His gaze toward Zhang Yuan turned unfriendly.

Wang Zhong wasn't completely oblivious to social niceties. Looking after the son of his favorite student a little was no great matter.

But anything involving the Earth Era touched a nerve and made him terribly anxious.

The Earth Era was an independent society. Once it launched, Earth's civilization would no longer be able to interfere with it. Aside from the various external factors, such as Dyson Spheres and Hypernovas, this massive project had another internal motivation.

It was a celebration for the idealists of Earth!

A great social experiment!

Back when Professor Qi Yuanshan, the "Father of Nuclear Fusion," founded the Deep Space Foundation, he had also established a new school of thought called the New Civilization School.

The New Civilization School held that civilization developed like a living organism: it could only be improved upon, little by little, from its existing foundations. It could never be torn down and rebuilt from scratch. As a result, the history, culture, and ideologies of the past would deeply influence future development.

Some of that influence was good, some bad, and it could not be changed substantially through simple reforms. It was like growing up: once a person's worldview took shape, it became fixed.

Thus, some old historical burdens would become millstones around the neck of progress.

The New Civilization School had once asked: Why hadn't Earth's civilization unified into a single nation by now?

The answer was simple.

First, humans couldn't give up their existing power and interests. If several countries unified, the leaders of some smaller nations would have to step down, and a huge amount of class interests would have to be redistributed. Those who already benefited had no desire to give that up.

Take a simple example: railway gauges still weren't standardized around the world.

Standardizing railway gauges involved not only politics but also all sorts of economic issues. Replacing old tracks cost money. Who would pay for it?

Since nobody was willing to pay, the problem was simply left unresolved.

If something as simple as railway gauges could be put off indefinitely, what hope was there for resolving even more complex conflicts of interest?

Second, throughout history, rifts between nations had been difficult to mend. Ethnic hatred and racial conflict still persisted. After the Third and Fourth World Wars, things had improved a little in East Asia, but elsewhere old and new grievances remained, along with small-scale clashes. The poorer a region was, the more conflict it had...

There was little chance any of that would disappear in the foreseeable future.

Third, many countries simply weren't worth supporting or saving.

Some countries were ruled by dictatorships and bureaucratic capitalism. In others, the entire population was hooked on drugs, which they even exported to the rest of the world, while the government had fallen into the hands of criminal syndicates. In some, the people were so lazy they would rather let fruit rot on the ground than pick it. And some countries were entirely religious... The chaos of global ideologies couldn't be fixed by a single great man or a single major power.

In short, the New Civilization School believed that if Earth's civilization couldn't unify now, it never would. Even if it were forcibly unified, all kinds of new conflicts would arise. That was determined by a combination of history, culture, and other factors.

Thus, the Earth Era was a great experiment by the New Civilization School.

It sought to use physical distance to leave behind all the dross of human history and build a stronger, more unified, more cohesive new civilization, one whose entire population shared the same ideology!

It was like a father, seeing no hope for his own future, placing all his hopes on a newborn child.

If this stronger new civilization succeeded, there was some chance it could, in turn, influence Earth's existing civilization.

That was the plan Professor Qi Yuanshan had devised.

A great... ten-thousand-year plan!

(Some notes on motive theory: Grothendieck dreamed of establishing a "universal" cohomology theory, which he called motive theory. In mathematics, whenever you see words like "motive" or "motivic," you know the topic is impressive and highly abstract.)

(There will be some mathematical science fiction content in the future. You don't need to know much about it; just know that it exists.)