>Alfred Whitehead's observation that 'civilisation advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them'.
Reminds me a bit of a quote I heard recently: "Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back."
That's the modern justification. Surgery "in the middle of a desert in the insanitary conditions and no water" for "hygiene" is a very counter-intuitive practice, don't you think?
Wow, I never thought about this. It would be interesting to do a study to see what lead to more disease, child circumcision during that time, or hygiene complications later in life, not to mention and STDs that might be spread more easily. Fascinating new way to look at it.
Of course, sometimes the underlying problem has gone away entirely or been dealt with by a different solution. Then you run into traditionalists defending ridiculous things with arguments that make no sense.
Reminds me a bit of a quote I heard recently: "Tradition is a set of solutions for which we have forgotten the problems. Throw away the solution and you get the problem back."