AHC: How far can the Western Civilization technology advances before 1900?

I just want to know as already described in the title, how far can the Western Civilization technology advances before the 1900? And what happen if by any means, decisive discovery in science such as the Newtonian physics and Calculus were able to be discovered earlier?

Also, what factors could speed up the Western Civilization technology? Any decisive event that could actually speed up our technological advance significantly?

I don't think that question can be answered. We don't know how far technology can advance. It's likely there's a fair bit of room to go still, but ultimately, it's not something wecanm knbow until we get there. So, of course, if you assume a significantly earlier emergence of key technologies and dissemination of information, the world could easily be at 2010 levels by 1900. And we can't really know how things go on beyond that point.

carlton_bach said:

I don't think that question can be answered. We don't know how far technology can advance. It's likely there's a fair bit of room to go still, but ultimately, it's not something wecanm knbow until we get there. So, of course, if you assume a significantly earlier emergence of key technologies and dissemination of information, the world could easily be at 2010 levels by 1900. And we can't really know how things go on beyond that point.

Click to expand...

But then could we know what event that perhaps could be butterflied to achieve greater technological march?

Mauser said:

But then could we know what event that perhaps could be butterflied to achieve greater technological march?

Click to expand...

No because founder principle and social pressures apply - to have an industrial revolution you need more than just a steam engine or a textile loom that uses the flying shuttle.

Mauser said:

But then could we know what event that perhaps could be butterflied to achieve greater technological march?

Click to expand...

It's not that simple. archaeogeek probably knows more about that than me, but the Lynn White perspective on technological change is as discredited as the Victorian 'great men' narrative. To get technological advancement, you need the right social conditions, so it takes much more than a single event or two. You have to have the right circumstances meeting the right inventions. If you search the forum for the many, many threads on Roman steam engines and printing presses, you can find some very intelligent discussion on the subject.

Generally, I suspect a few developments that could affect the big picture would be
- earlier printing, in a literate society (Helleistic or Roman antiquity or the Islamic middle ages are good for this)
- earlier statistics (my favourite POD is the empirical school prevailing in Classical medicine)
- earlier salt-glazed pottery
- earlier plastics

I'm pretty sure an earlier emergence of writing could also have a tremendous effect, but I don't know enough about neolithic societies to say how likely that is.
-

carlton_bach said:

It's not that simple. archaeogeek probably knows more about that than me, but the Lynn White perspective on technological change is as discredited as the Victorian 'great men' narrative. To get technological advancement, you need the right social conditions, so it takes much more than a single event or two. You have to have the right circumstances meeting the right inventions. If you search the forum for the many, many threads on Roman steam engines and printing presses, you can find some very intelligent discussion on the subject.

Generally, I suspect a few developments that could affect the big picture would be
- earlier printing, in a literate society (Helleistic or Roman antiquity or the Islamic middle ages are good for this)
- earlier statistics (my favourite POD is the empirical school prevailing in Classical medicine)
- earlier salt-glazed pottery
- earlier plastics

I'm pretty sure an earlier emergence of writing could also have a tremendous effect, but I don't know enough about neolithic societies to say how likely that is.
-

Click to expand...

Those could be interesting but they might also lead to different paths of technology development...

Shorter Middle Ages.

Medieval scholars practice empiricism rather than being afraid of going against established fact.

Quicker and greater adoption of knowledge from the Muslim World. For that matter, have a more empirical, less dogmatic Islam like Mu'tazili.

Sticking to just the things that interest me -

- No War of the Currents between Tesla and Edison in the 1880s. Have Tesla's alternating currents trump Edison's direct currents years earlier than they did OTL, and you'll get more people with more electricity as their disposal faster and safer, which certainly would have an effect. This would have the secondary benefit of not having Edison discredit Tesla, and so Tesla would get more money and funding for his inventions. I predict the Internet is up and running by 1960 as a result.
In fact, you know what? Thomas Edison has a stroke, dies, and Tesla takes over his company. BOOM! Star Trek: Enterprise-level tech by 2010.

- Have Count Ferdinand von Zeppelin make a few breakthrus a little earlier, and you could have the first Zeppelins taking flight as early as the 1880s as well (he'd been toying with the idea since observing hot-air balloons in the American Civil War)

Those are just the two that come immediately to mind.

Oh, and of course, there's the classic "the Library of Alexandria isn't destroyed."

Or have someone take a look at the diakalos and the aeliopile and realize that if you combine the ideas - BOOM! Railroads in Hellenistic Greece, Persia, the Levant, and Egypt.

Also apparently ther Antikythera mechanism did something that nothing else could do for 1000 years or something. Have more of those built.

BASICALLY:
- Get the Greeks to stop tinkering and amusing themselves, and start looking at practical applications for some of the stuff they come up with.

Could have happened much faster

Romans were not innovative- they did one thing and stuck to it, which was why the empire ultimately fell apart. If Carthage had won the Second Punic War, then finished off Rome in the Third, they could have done for Africa what Rome did for Europe in terms of linguistic roots, civilization, and religion. Africa could have turned into the colonial power with Europe still barbarous like the real Africa. They could have crossed the Atlantic, settled America, and started a triangle trade with the slave point in Europe. Disturbing, eh? Also- I apologize to anyone who I may offend- with Jesus out of the picture, the Church wouldn't have held back progress for 1000 years in the name of God and innovation could have continued in a linear manner right through the dark ages. Although without Christian morality, organized society could have collapsed. There's something to imagine- nuclear war in 1500 AD. But assuming that did not happen, purely mathematically, that would mean we would today have technology that will be developed in 3000 AD(ever read 3001 by Arthur C. Clarke?). Also, would Judiasm or Islam have come to dominate Europe in the same way? Or, going even further back, I once read an alternate history short story titled Eutopia, by Paul Anderson. Give it a look.
I seem to have raised more questions than answers.

Brennan the Great said:

Romans were not innovative- they did one thing and stuck to it, which was why the empire ultimately fell apart. If Carthage had won the Second Punic War, then finished off Rome in the Third, they could have done for Africa what Rome did for Europe in terms of linguistic roots, civilization, and religion. Africa could have turned into the colonial power with Europe still barbarous like the real Africa. They could have crossed the Atlantic, settled America, and started a triangle trade with the slave point in Europe. Disturbing, eh? Also- I apologize to anyone who I may offend- with Jesus out of the picture, the Church wouldn't have held back progress for 1000 years in the name of God and innovation could have continued in a linear manner right through the dark ages. Although without Christian morality, organized society could have collapsed. There's something to imagine- nuclear war in 1500 AD. But assuming that did not happen, purely mathematically, that would mean we would today have technology that will be developed in 3000 AD(ever read 3001 by Arthur C. Clarke?). Also, would Judiasm or Islam have come to dominate Europe in the same way? Or, going even further back, I once read an alternate history short story titled Eutopia, by Paul Anderson. Give it a look.
I seem to have raised more questions than answers.

Click to expand...

Carthage was a Mediterranean power, with a desert sort of separating them from subsaharan Africa.

archaeogeek said:

Carthage was a Mediterranean power, with a desert sort of separating them from subsaharan Africa.

Click to expand...

"Sort of" in that it's the largest desert in the world.

Well, apart from Antarctica.

Carthage also wasn't really intent on empire-building the way Rome was. I don't think it would have had the same impact on civilization.

Can I say that technological advancement can be relative? For example, having laptops but still using steam locomotives, things like that where technology is lopsided.

Oh I'm really amazed the discussions are getting more interesting,

Generally, I suspect a few developments that could affect the big picture would be
- earlier printing, in a literate society (Helleistic or Roman antiquity or the Islamic middle ages are good for this)
- earlier statistics (my favourite POD is the empirical school prevailing in Classical medicine)
- earlier salt-glazed pottery
- earlier plastics

Click to expand...

What do you say Carlton_Beach regarding Newtonian Physics? And could I know more about earlier statistics you're talking about.

Rogue Shadows said:

Sticking to just the things that interest me -

- No War of the Currents between Tesla and Edison in the 1880s. Have Tesla's alternating currents trump Edison's direct currents years earlier than they did OTL, and you'll get more people with more electricity as their disposal faster and safer, which certainly would have an effect. This would have the secondary benefit of not having Edison discredit Tesla, and so Tesla would get more money and funding for his inventions. I predict the Internet is up and running by 1960 as a result.
In fact, you know what? Thomas Edison has a stroke, dies, and Tesla takes over his company. BOOM! Star Trek: Enterprise-level tech by 2010.

Click to expand...

Not trying to promote anything, but I've actually tried to make more use of Tesla in my Universum TL using a realistic level as possible. Could you look at my TL if you have time later on?

I'm very interested with this topic and I hope the discussion could go on.

Emperor Norton I said:

Can I say that technological advancement can be relative? For example, having laptops but still using steam locomotives, things like that where technology is lopsided.

Click to expand...

To a ddgree, yes. The problem is that technologies interrelate, and that they require certain mindsets. That's whatmakes poorly thought-out scenarios so irritating.

Looking at your example: barring some catastrophic economic imbalance(many African countries today combine laptops and steam locomotoves, but that's becaiuse they can't afford more modern rolling stock), a steam locomotive in a laptop world is going to look very different from what we think of when we hear the word. that is because in order to have a laptop, you need:

- miniaturisation
- machining to extremely fine tolerances
- advanced industrial chemisty, especially plastics
- advanced mathematics and statistical models so a computer will actually be good for anything
- and, of course, microelectronics.

You won't get these things without having:

- modern science
- industrial R&D
- a desire for efficiency and savings
- a developed consumer goods market

With all of that in place, a steam locomotive designed by people who want to save energy and maximise comfort and speed, and who have access to IT with its abilities to create and test mathematical models, will look a lot like a modern locomotove. It will very likely use a closed-cycle engine, burn a compact, easily managed fuel (diesel, or gas, or maybe fluidised coal), have a filtered exhaust and be fully encased in a streamlined body. Not doing so would need explanations.

Mauser said:

Oh I'm really amazed the discussions are getting more interesting,



What do you say Carlton_Beach regarding Newtonian Physics? And could I know more about earlier statistics you're talking about.

Click to expand...

I don't know enough about physics to comment on how early and with what alternate antecedents Newtonian physics could emerge.

As to statistics, this is one of the great underestimated cultural technologies. When you have empirical observation on an individual basis, gut feeling is a good eough guide for most events (though exceptional ones will still produce perfectly reasonable results like "my computer only crashes if I don't wash my hands before switching it on" or "crops fail if they are planted at new moon"). When you have collected observations from many points, you need statistics. Much the same is true for advanced economics. Calculating opportunity costs, return-on-investment, actuarial tables, all of these things require modern statistical methods. They produce huge efficiency gains and allow the management of much larger organisations. And if you need a historical example of this working out pretty damn well, google 'US Army' and 'World War II'. Arguably the largest-scale application yet of modern statistical management theory.

Would an earlier fall of Constantinople trigger an early Renaissance? I mean 100 years early, not Constantinople falling in the 8th century.

Same thing with the printing press.

Is a protestantism analogue a requisite for scientific development?

Better contacts with China would also help, but it might be difficult (however the Arabs were trading with China for much longer than Europeans did)

To make real scientific progress one needs calculus: I don't know enough about the development of calculus but I cannot believe the world had to wait for Newton.

Shorter dark ages? I believe that the fall of Rome was ultimately beneficial (in the long run), since a static empire would have not be in favor of scientific progress; same thing for the Black Death, which had a positive impact in terms of social mobility. However I also think that the 5-century hiatus was excessive. What about no Gothic wars?

An early industrial revolution would need scientific background and calculus again, and in any case has to start with steam. Which means England or Flanders.

LordKalvan said:

To make real scientific progress one needs calculus: I don't know enough about the development of calculus but I cannot believe the world had to wait for Newton.

An early industrial revolution would need scientific background and calculus again, and in any case has to start with steam. Which means England or Flanders.

Click to expand...

I beg to differ, I think if Newtonian Physics and Calculus work are very much related to each other. If we do not see the need to have a better understanding of how the world and the heavenly body works, Calculus will not come into place or will not be seen as very significant. (Newton and Leibnitz both found the Calculus at nearly the same time and I think they both deserve a mention) But again if there's no Calculus, one could not clearly explain Newtonian physics.

I also read that with Newtonian physics, how matters that at a glance look very complicated such as how planets move around the planet could actually be explained with several simple laws. It was one of the reason I think that brought the Enlightenment to Europe. Newton proved that many things could be reasoned in a scientific way. If there's no Newton I think it would be difficult for the rest of Western scholars to progress, moreover to develop steam engine. (Advance application of steam engine will eventually require the understanding of Thermodynamics)

It depends on the POD - if by some chance better stone tool technology or early agriculture had come a few thousand years earlier, humans or their genetically engineered/cybernetic/AI descendants might be in a number of other star systems by now. On the other hand, humans might still be pre-industrial, if the right conditions for an industrial revolution had never come along.

Paul Spring said:

It depends on the POD - if by some chance better stone tool technology or early agriculture had come a few thousand years earlier, humans or their genetically engineered/cybernetic/AI descendants might be in a number of other star systems by now. On the other hand, humans might still be pre-industrial, if the right conditions for an industrial revolution had never come along.

Click to expand...

Sorry but the "Orion's arm" type stuff is bordering on ASB - a lot of the scientific models involved are verging on outdated, as is the assumption of linearity in development, and as usual the social currents involved are firmly in their century rather than in the future, a bit like how "utopia" for medieval people was a place where food is never lacking.

Also carlton_bach: that would still make for awesome schizo tech

archaeogeek said:

Sorry but the "Orion's arm" type stuff is bordering on ASB - a lot of the scientific models involved are verging on outdated, as is the assumption of linearity in development, and as usual the social currents involved are firmly in their century rather than in the future, a bit like how "utopia" for medieval people was a place where food is never lacking.

Also carlton_bach: that would still make for awesome schizo tech

Click to expand...

I didn't get that specifically from Orion's Arm, I just think that it seems logical that the people of thousands of years in the future may be quite different in a number of ways from people today. I tried to cover my posterior by listing several different options and using "might".

I agree that Orion's Arm is heavily informed by technologies and social currents that have been trendy in the last decade or so, but that is a problem with every projection of the future, and the reason why such projections are rarely very accurate. It seems that the development of human society and technology is too complex a subject for any one person or small group, no matter how intelligent, to predict with much reliability.