historical questions
which question changed the course of history
Questions don’t just describe the world — they change it. From the courtroom to the laboratory to the public square, a single well-placed question has redirected the course of events again and again. This room gathers questions that shaped history, and questions that history itself has handed down to us.
questions that shaped history
Each of these is a real question asked at a turning point — or the question a turning point turned on.
Is the Earth at the centre of the universe (Copernicus, Galileo)
Are all men created equal (the American and French revolutions)
Ain’t I a woman (attributed to Sojourner Truth, 1851; the phrase first appears in an 1863 retelling)
What is the third estate (Emmanuel Joseph Sieyès, 1789)
Can machines think (Alan Turing, 1950)
To be, or not to be (Shakespeare, Hamlet)
What is to be done (the question that titled Lenin’s 1902 pamphlet)
Why should the many be ruled by the few (a question behind centuries of political change)
Do we fight, or do we resist without violence (the question at the heart of Gandhi’s movement)
.png)
Turing’s question — can machines think — opened a line of inquiry that runs all the way to the AI debates of today.
great questions from across the world
Thinkers across every continent have framed their wisdom as questions — or built whole traditions around a single one. These come from cultures around the globe.
.png)
What is the cause of suffering, and can it end (the question at the heart of the Buddha’s teaching, India)
If I am not for myself, who will be for me; and if I am only for myself, what am I. And if not now, when (Hillel the Elder, 1st century BCE)
How can we observe nature without being deceived by our own eyes (Ibn al-Haytham / Alhazen, pioneer of the scientific method, 11th century)
What can the rise and fall of past dynasties teach us about our own (Ibn Khaldun, the Muqaddimah, 1377)
Who am I, and where was I before I came to be (a question running through Sufi poetry, including Rumi)
How should ruler and subject, parent and child, friend and friend behave toward one another (Confucian thought)
What is the right way to live in harmony with the Tao (Laozi, Daoism, China)
If a tree falls in a forest with no one to hear it, does it make a sound (a Western phrasing of a much older puzzle about perception and reality)