AHC: Reach 2000 tech-levels by 1950.

Look I made a mistake on Galileo. Its fair to call me out on that.
And while yes, going by the factual history with his written rhetoric towards the Church, he may have been digging his own grave (metaphorically)

But there's no way anyone can argue that the 16th Century Catholic Church, even with its history of support for the natural sciences and what not, had a nasty habit of burning contemporary scientists and philosophers and scholars.

This is the wrong place to argue this sort of thing. For a multitude a reasons, one of which is that this board almost unanimously rejects the "dark ages" myth and the oh so great "chart" that has shows development.

Anyway.... If you have the mongols not become as pronounced, by this I mean enough to challenge and shake up the Chinese, but not enough to conquer them. Further more if you make their contact with the Islamic world more limited that would help. The sacking of Baghdad is a good example point. Maybe the mongols never get past Iran? And while it's extremely difficult the development of Russian society would go a lot better without the 200+ years of tribute to the Golden Horde would help. And yet by having an empire that stretches from Mongolia to Iran you have inroads for the silk road to further knowledge transfer
 
The chain of events required is too long and related butterflies are too extensive to really pull this off - at least in this venue. Even if you get the age of enlightenment and industrial revolution kicked off earlier you still need the equivalent of an Einstein and Tesla, to give just two examples. And the Americas arent likely to develop too much faster so American contributions wont be as pronounced. There's no reason one cant do this in a TL but a good one would have to address so many potential divergences that it really would be a major effort.
 

Asami

Banned
Accelerating the development of humanity's technological power with us having things like computers that have immense power (the UNIVAC 1101 barely able to do much at all, while the Pentium III 450MHz is a 32 bit processor, which can efficiently do jobs exponentially better than any computer available in OTL 1950. You're talking a large metal box less than a foot high, being able to outperform machines that take up entire rooms), advanced medicine and other advanced technological feats.

It's a tall order, and I'm not sure where to go with it, maybe the more intellectual sects of mainstream Islam succeed, prolonging the golden age of innovation and technological progress that ended up falling apart after the conservative movements began to win out in the religion? Islam was a major contributer to science and mathematics before Europe exploded with intellectual pursuits.

Maybe prevent the overbearing nature of religion meddling in intellectualism in general? Prolong Rome, but prevent it from decaying into a mess of Christian and pagan conflict?
 
China industrializes .....

Yeah, if China can do that and Europe can somehow avoid the apocalypse that was the wars of the reformation (both sides being equally heinous in my opinion) it might work. Of course earlier industrialization could lead to nuclear war in the 1880s, making that TLs 2000 more like 1500.
 
It all began one day when Sargon of Akkad was playing around with some salpeter and sulphur........

But yeah, what you need to have happen is get rid of most or at least halt and impede most of the social upheavals of the past. Bronze Age crisis, any number of epidemics, steppe invasions city sackings. The goal is to have far more continuity between the past and present which with lowered destruction overall leads to a more advanced civilization which has grown in all the time spent in OTL recovering.


You don't have to go that far back, but averting most of the shit from Akkad on can't hurt, my personal POD is a surviving Persian Empire, not the Sassanids but Achaemenid or Argead Persia. Contiguous land empire, politically unified, wealthy, populous it's the perfect state and if you manage to hold it together you might just see a more unified and prosperous region which in time can further science and technology to the point of the OP.
 
Michael Servetus - Discovered Pulmonary Circulation (Burned)

Galileo - Astronomer (Burned)

Giordano Bruno- Astronomer (Burned)

Cecco d'Ascoli - Astronomer (Burned)

John Wycliffe - Oxford Scholar (Burned)

Besides the Galileo error, you do realize Servetus was executed by the Protestant Genevan government? Wycliffe wasn't executed either.
 

Deleted member 67076

Prevent the Mongols, thats the easiest way to do it IMO. More people, more infrastructure to work with, less nomads to disrupt progress and of course larger economies.
 

Cueg

Banned
In regards to the Catholic debate I personlly have a few questions. We're Catholic countries generally more or less literate in relation to reformed countries. Beyond that, what role did literacry rates play in the early industrialization of nations.
 
Have the Big Bang happen a century earlier. Of course no one from this ATL will know its 1900.

Its how they are "Travelling through Time" in my Crime Across Time timeline.
 
Butterfly away the 30 Years War and turn it into long series of political maneuvers that results in the Westphalian System without all the bloodshed. Killing 35% of Germany is definitely a setback.

Earlier proliferation of paper money and joint stock companies, borrowed from the Song Dynasty through the Mongols. May not qualify for post-1500 criterion though. Earlier establishment of limited liability companies also a plus.

Earlier suppression of guilds. Alternatively, guilds become more open to new membership and less restrictive of trades. Less granting of royal monopolies.

Greater state support for universities and gentlemen scientists.

Earlier development of coal mines--perhaps Europe is deforested earlier for wood/grazing land? The latter would also help with enclosure movements to provide extra labor.
 
Pff, I do it all the time in Civilization. Just trade techs like crazy; become practically the world's technology broker. And then boom, I get my Alpha Centauri ship built in 1813.


Jokes aside I wonder if all you really need is just to put more incentive (as much as possible really) into scientific research and national cooperation...
 
If you knew the particulars of the Galileo affair, you would know that the Church was far more measured and justified in its response to him than is usually acknowledged. The Church wanted time to figure out how to incorporate his findings into its theology, Galileo said fine, I'll wait, and then went ahead and published anyway. It wanted an answer to their concern about Stellar Parallax. Galileo didn't have one.

Ever notice how nobody talks of the Copernicus Affair? Thats because Copernicus wasn't a jackass like Galileo was. When you consider how many friends and admirers Galileo had in the Church to begin with, its truly tragic that he was able to alienate them all so easily.
That happens in pretty much every whistleblower situation. People who used to be your friend find a reason, often a "moral" reason, to do something other than to stand by your side. And even when a person is fired for entirely normal reasons, other people tend to distance themselves to avoid guilt by association. This is one of the not so flattering traits of us human beings as social animals.

Okay, so Galileo was hard to work with. So be it. People who are very creative and/or intense often are. Heck, just people in general.

I would be interested in the issue of whether Protestants re-started after Catholics had largely stopped persecutions of women suspected of being witches. And I'm sure most of us have heard that many of the woman so accused were different in some regard, maybe herbalists, or bipolar, or holders of property, or outspoken. During the Salem witch trials, I've heard that one woman was a barkeep with the gift of banter (isn't that true of most barkeeps?). Another was a woman in her late thirties married to a guy in his early twenties who I think used to be her servant. May have been a love match, or may not have been, but sad that it came to an unnecessary end either way. And I don't recommend we push the different hypothesis too much, for I'm sure there's all kind of random flux not explained by this or any other generalization. I bet in some cases the accused was a thoroughly average woman. In fact, that's kind of a scary narrative, too, played at various times by either the authorities or citizens, of the good woman no one would ever, ever suspect.
 
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