According to Harari, these three elements are connected. Capitalism refers to an empire or a society that is, somehow, associated with wealth as they want to make money, and it finances science and the idea of empire. Therefore, it enjoys the opportunity to develop new technological advancements and medical discoveries. Consequently, if we add the necessity or wish of invading other territories as empires, we have this perfectly correlated triangle, which is, according to Harari, also linked to the lack of knowledge, “ignorance”. One example of this would be the “discovery” of America. Europeans knew that there were more lands than only Europe. Their ideas of Empire and conquest, their wealthy financial situation and scientific behavior for new technologies led them to the conquest. “Scientists have provided the imperial project with practical knowledge, ideological justification and technological gadgets.” (Harari, 304). In sum, science was supported by empire and capitalism, as well as science help these empires and capitalist societies flourish.
For Harari, the ideal of progress has its basis on ignorance. “Many convinced that humankind could overcome any and every problem by acquiring and applying new knowledge. […] They were simply the fruit of our knowledge.” (Harari, 264-265). This means that we thought that all these problems were not able to be solved. However, with the progress thanks to this triangle, Sapiens discovered, for instance, vaccines for some diseases, or even Benjamin Franklin showed how to “dominate” the lighting and disarmed the idea that it was a punishment of God. To sum up, progress comes after the Scientific Revolution to make people think that there are solutions to some problems that people considered as inevitable. These can be reached thanks to the three main elements: science, empire and capitalism; which allow science to invest in researching and observations. When there is a progress, the science, empire and capitalism grow in society, and presumably, make people’s lives better.
I have to start by saying that I love your title! A great way to kind of sum up the reading and relationships that Harari talks about. But I think that your description of capitalism is a bit off as I don’t think it is directly connected to empire. It’s more of a correlational relationship. Also Europeans didn’t just set out to find and conquer other peoples and lands. Harari states that Europeans were unique in the fact that a primary motivation to get out and explore new worlds was science. They wanted to find out how other people did things, how they lived, how different crops grew, etc. I really like your explanation of progress in the second paragraph. Science seemingly made progress possible while the combination of these three factors; science, empire, and capitalism made progress seem inevitable.