The American physicist Richard Feynman once asked, if civilisation were somehow destroyed and if he could only write down one sentence, what sentence would he pass down for future generations so that they could rebuild civilisation? He eventually thought that the most important sentence would involve the details of the atomic hypothesis. From there, they could eventually discover the laws of physics and chemistry.

I would give people something different. I would give them the laws of relativity and the quantum theory. Together, these represent the sum total of physical knowledge. Relativity can be derived from two sentences, for example: 'the speed of light - c - is constant in all inertial frames', and 'gravitating and accelerating frames are indistinguishable'.

The quantum theory is a bit more involved, but can also be summarised in a few lines. From there, one can derive everything else. Actually, on just a single sheet of paper, one can probably summarise the kernel of all of the great ideas of science. Evolution is easy to write down, and even the idea of DNA can be explained briefly.

Great ideas in science become simpler and simpler every year, until all of the basic, fundamental ideas can be summarised on a single sheet of paper. This is in contrast to literary criticism, where things get more and more muddled and complicated every year, rehearsing the same things.

Michio Kaku is author of books including Einstein's Cosmos: How Albert Einstein's Vision Transformed Our Understanding Of Space And Time (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)), and Parallel Worlds: The Science of Alternative Universes and Our Future in the Cosmos (buy this book from Amazon (UK) or Amazon (USA)). See his website.