The civilization has just collapsed; we have the chance to ask only one question. What is one piece of knowledge that will give people the most amount of knowledge to jump-start the civilization? Knowledge about agriculture, medicine, social norms? According to Richard Feynman, it would be this:
<< If, in some cataclysm, all of scientific knowledge were to be destroyed, and only one sentence passed on to the next generations of creatures, what statement would contain the most information in the fewest words? I believe it is the atomic hypothesis (or the atomic fact, or whatever you wish to call it) that all things are made of atoms—little particles that move around in perpetual motion, attracting each other when they are a little distance apart, but repelling upon being squeezed into one another. In that one sentence, you will see, there is an enormous amount of information about the world, if just a little imagination and thinking are applied.
And he proves that statement in his brilliant book “The Feynman Lectures on Physics.”