How to slow technological progress in a setting

[A. E. Lowan]

Seriously, would you read the things I might assign to you? I know you are an educated person, but I was not the one who said something, on its face, not true. If I let that stand, what will people think of us?

The Renaissance, of course, had many reasons and causes. The pope/s at the time certainly had an influence. But they alone were only part of the whole.

Even in the topic of this thread, what could slow progress, religion could have a big effect, but the world is too big for one thing to really stop it.

I will agree that suppression and natural disasters could cause this, and serve that purpose in the story.

Of course I would. One of the things that makes us educated, not just through school but through life, is the ability to absorb new ideas and seek out new avenues of learning. I also think you are an educated person and I enjoy talking to you, so I was a bit confused to be snipped at. Did I make a general statement? Yes, because we're spit balling ideas, here, not prepping someone for their dissertation. But, yes, if you have a work or a paper or know someone who's research area is giving new light and life to pretty much anything in my wheelhouse, I'd be delighted to read it.

 

[ThinkerX]

A E Lowan is making a case for what I called the 'Great Sages' approach to the OP's question - a set of manuals or 'bibles' if you will that are (wrongly) claimed to have all the answers, are extremely useful for basic technology, but are ultimately wrong.

 

[pmmg]

Well, I am not going to play the game of books with you. There are many ways to learn.

Did I make a general statement?

Yes, you did. But you already addressed that a post prior.

But I dont have polite words for your assigned reading. I will leave it at that.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I would personally look to the real world for examples of how to slow progress. There are 2 clear examples to dig into for me. The first would be to dive into the early islamic world. When they first rose to prominence, the islamic world was a beacon of progress and scientific discoveries. They welcomed researchers from all across the (for them known) world, and supported their work both financially and by giving them the freedom they needed to work. At some point that (fairly gradually) disappeared. Why? It's a combination of factors of course. But it's mainly down to disliking people who think differently, and oppressing said research. Few people will knowingly dive into science if they know their results will get them killed. And if you then limit how far any knowledge that is discovered can spread, then you can easily slow down the rate of progress. Lot of oversimplification here perhaps, but more a research direction.

The other thing is rarely considered, but that is energy. Not so much perhaps for the first industrial revolution, but definitely for the second one. We have (had) a lot of easily accessible, cheap sources of energy available. The fact that we have coal and oil which in some places just flows out of the ground means that we had an easy way to power all kinds of machines. If you don't have those, you very quickly run out of energy to power all your wonderful trains and steam engines and all other sorts of contraptions that drive innovation. I'd dare say we wouldn't have modern electronics yet if it hadn't been for cheap and easily accessible energy sources.

So, take those away, and you take away an incentive to industrialize. There would simply not be enough energy to do so, and thus no economic reason for it.

I dealt with this issue in my books. The main means of suppressing technological advancement was making the printing press a church/state monopoly - unauthorized private possession of printing presses being a capital offence.

France actually tried that. It only partially worked.
Also, the thing is that it only has a limited impact. While it might limit science spreading far and wide, most scientists could still perform their science, and they all communicated via hand-written letters and such. Same with lectures. You have someone talking and people taking notes. You can do that without printed books.

The other thing, which pertains to the development of present-day technology, is something that gets glossed over - much of it came about by accident.

I disagree. Yes, there definitely are examples of people discovering things by accident. But the thing with even those accidents is that the conditions were there for those accidents to happen. The accidental discovery of penicilin was only possible because someone doing scientific enough research and just asking the question "that's odd, what happened?"

If anything, pretty much all scientific discoveries were ripe for discovery when they were made. And while we often attribute a discovery to 1 person (or 1 team), a lot of work has gone before it that is never seen in public, but was necessary to make it possible to take the final leap. You'll often see that many people have roughly the same discovery at roughly the same time, or that they'll almost get there and just don't make the final conclusion. I remember my professor on the history of science at university saying that pretty much the only scientific theory he could think of that "came out of the blue" and possibly wouldn't have been here today if it hadn't been for its discoverer, was the Theory of General Relativity. Which really came about because Einstein just sat in a room and thought, without anyone else even wondering about it.

 

[Aldarion]

I'm going to give you four words. "And yet it moves." The Church supported science that supported what they wanted to see or believe or what was the most politically expedient or beneficial, because we can't for an instant forget that the Catholic Church was, and is, one of the wealthiest and most powerful corporations in the pretty much ever. The Church had scientists, yes, and researchers, yes, and scholars of vast and deep knowledge who made discoveries about the world around them that could have changed the world and advanced technology by hundreds of years.

So... where is it?

Well, a whole lot was held in the minds of the heretics who made public ideas and theories that did not agree with the Church. They burned. A lot was held in books that somehow managed to survive the ages from ancient Greece and even further east as the Silk Road travelled. A lot were burned. But more, maybe even much more, were kept.

And you, perhaps unintentionally, hit the nail.

Heretics.

Yes, there were a lot of scientists who got into trouble with the Church. But none of them got into trouble with the Church for science.

They got into trouble for the occult.

Gallileo Gallilei? He got into trouble primarily because he ridiculed the Pope, not because he advocated heliocentrism.
Giordano Bruno? Guy was an occultist. Hermetic occultist, to be exact. Church will have burned him regardless of whether he was a scientist or not.

But Church itself had a lot of scientists, as well as a lot of respect for the antiquity. Most of the ancient texts - including philosophers - we have today were preserved by the monks. (And many others were destroyed because monks needed parchment for their own stuff, but well...).

Problem is, of course, that scientists are people who are naturally inquisitive and will want to question things. And this makes them more likely than average to be or become occultists or otherwise heretics and thus be targeted by religious persecution. But that alone does not prove that "Church was against science".

Seriously, would you read the things I might assign to you? I know you are an educated person, but I was not the one who said something, on its face, not true. If I let that stand, what will people think of us?

The Renaissance, of course, had many reasons and causes. The pope/s at the time certainly had an influence. But they alone were only part of the whole.

Even in the topic of this thread, what could slow progress, religion could have a big effect, but the world is too big for one thing to really stop it.

I will agree that suppression and natural disasters could cause this, and serve that purpose in the story.

I made a thread for "Dark Ages" topic.

And yes, religion could indeed have a big effect. But the effect is more likely to be produced by ways in which religion may shape people's mentality, rather than by active, violent suppression.

Basically this:

I would personally look to the real world for examples of how to slow progress. There are 2 clear examples to dig into for me. The first would be to dive into the early islamic world. When they first rose to prominence, the islamic world was a beacon of progress and scientific discoveries. They welcomed researchers from all across the (for them known) world, and supported their work both financially and by giving them the freedom they needed to work. At some point that (fairly gradually) disappeared. Why? It's a combination of factors of course. But it's mainly down to disliking people who think differently, and oppressing said research. Few people will knowingly dive into science if they know their results will get them killed. And if you then limit how far any knowledge that is discovered can spread, then you can easily slow down the rate of progress. Lot of oversimplification here perhaps, but more a research direction.

Islam did not have something like Index Librorum Prohibitorum or anything like that to my knowledge. Yet it still basically stopped science in its tracks... for a very simple reason.

You see, Christians were keenly aware that the Bible is not, in fact, a literal word of God. It is a history. And histories can be wrong.

Significant impetus for development of modern science - historiography, astronomy and quite a few others - was given by Catholic Church's dedication to solving Biblical questions. Is this text correct or another one? What is canon and what is not? All of that opened space for inquisitiveness.

Islam however had a book which claimed to be a literal Word of God. Early Islamic expansion did give significant impetus to science by mixing various ideas and texts from various areas of the world. As a result, science experienced kind of a boom - and if there were any attempts at suppression, they were clearly ineffective. Most people in the first few centuries of Islam were not actually dedicated believers - they were political Muslims, basically acting as believers because not doing so was very dangerous.

But as the Islam itself slowly settled and started to actually shape the way people thought, rather than being a case of a purely political oppression, it basically stopped science dead in its tracks. Because Qur'an is literal Word of God, and God can never be wrong, therefore any inquisitive thought was automatically heresy.

 

[ThinkerX]

disagree. Yes, there definitely are examples of people discovering things by accident. But the thing with even those accidents is that the conditions were there for those accidents to happen. The accidental discovery of penicilin was only possible because someone doing scientific enough research and just asking the question "that's odd, what happened?"

If anything, pretty much all scientific discoveries were ripe for discovery when they were made. And while we often attribute a discovery to 1 person (or 1 team), a lot of work has gone before it that is never seen in public, but was necessary to make it possible to take the final leap. You'll often see that many people have roughly the same discovery at roughly the same time, or that they'll almost get there and just don't make the final conclusion. I remember my professor on the history of science at university saying that pretty much the only scientific theory he could think of that "came out of the blue" and possibly wouldn't have been here today if it hadn't been for its discoverer, was the Theory of General Relativity. Which really came about because Einstein just sat in a room and thought, without anyone else even wondering about it.

I think you misunderstood me. I was referring to the concept of science itself - a system of logic, testing, repeatability itself being somewhat accidental. Prior to the early 1600's this approach didn't exist. And when it did come into existence, it was persecuted to the point to where its adherents sought refuge in secret and semi-secret societies. That these groups persisted long enough to formulate the mathematics, physics, and chemistry on which our current society is built is nothing short of astonishing. Things like calculus. Atomic theory.

 

[Prince of Spires]

I think you misunderstood me. I was referring to the concept of science itself - a system of logic, testing, repeatability itself being somewhat accidental. Prior to the early 1600's this approach didn't exist.

Unless you mean 1600 BCE, then it's a very narrow view of history. The first reference to something you could call the scientific method was found in an egyptian papyrus scroll from around 1600 BC, discussing how to examine patients before coming up with a possible ailment and then a cure. Which can definitely be seen as a precursor to modern day scientific method.

Similarly, all throughout history, scientists have applied testing, coming up with hypotheses, and experimenting. It may not have been the formalized method we have today, but that doesn't mean that they didn't have some process they followed. The first universities formed in the 11th century, and they were by no means secret or semi-secret. Various popes even recognized them and their abilities to operate independently.

The scientific method itself as we have it today didn't really become codified until the 20th century, when philosophers like Popper started discussing them (though there are a few earlier attempts). The concepts became more formalized of course between 1600 BC and 1934, but that was a gradual process. There isn't one specific moment in history where you can say "before that day there was no science and after it there was".

Similarly, having a codified scientific method isn't necessary for scientific research. Someone like Faraday had little formal education when he started his research, and yet he managed to advance science by a great degree simply by trying out stuff and being curious.

 

[Gurkhal]

I'd like to thank all participants of the thread for the discussion. Its been of great help to craft my setting specifics regarding technological progress so as to support the stories I want to tell in and through it.

 

[Fettju]

The Machine (VI): Usury

Usury, properly defined, is any credit in which the creditor does not share the risk of the activity that the loan finances.

treesandtriads.substack.com

This guy has some interesting articles about technology. The Machine 1-8
The article above mentions why the steam engine that was invented in the 1st century wasn't implemented until 1600 years later.

 

[ThinkerX]

The Machine (VI): Usury

Usury, properly defined, is any credit in which the creditor does not share the risk of the activity that the loan finances.

treesandtriads.substack.com

This guy has some interesting articles about technology. The Machine 1-8
The article above mentions why the steam engine that was invented in the 1st century wasn't implemented until 1600 years later.

That is the sort of thing I was talking about earlier. The ancient Greek and Roman world had the potential to advance technologically, but this was deliberately suppressed in favor of people power. What items were created were basically toys for the rich.