Quick thought -- it seems like this is the sort of issue historians deal with all the time. It's a hell of a lot easier to determine truths of the Battle of Gettysburg if everyone can observe it happening. However, we only have primitive accounts of the event by people who were busy commanding armies and/or being shot at. It would be a lot easier for historians if they could re-run the Battle of Gettysburg over and over in a lab, but they can't.
As for missing technology to observe things, I think cosmology is moving so slowly that we'll be either all dead or a galaxy-spanning intelligence by the time any of these issues come around.
What isn't changing slowly, however, is our civilization, and the transitions that will take place over the next 100 years or so should be unprecedented. There's probably a lot we can learn about emergent order in complex systems and numerous other things that we're just not observing right now, and will never get to observe.
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As for missing technology to observe things, I think cosmology is moving so slowly that we'll be either all dead or a galaxy-spanning intelligence by the time any of these issues come around.
What isn't changing slowly, however, is our civilization, and the transitions that will take place over the next 100 years or so should be unprecedented. There's probably a lot we can learn about emergent order in complex systems and numerous other things that we're just not observing right now, and will never get to observe.