What If: No Scientific Revolution

Say the Scientific Revolution gets butterflied away. How would technology develop differently compared to OTL, and what effects would this have on society, culture and geopolitics? Would, for example, no Scientific Revolution also butterfly away the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions? Would Europe still be the dominant continent? And what stage would technology be at in 2014?
 
Peoples often forgive that while Europe went far ahead later with that Revolution indeed, there was not just occidental savants... The contributions of the indian, chinese, muslim, etc savants was important... and with heavy butterflies, who know, science may have later flourished somewhere else...
 

RousseauX

Donor
Say the Scientific Revolution gets butterflied away. How would technology develop differently compared to OTL, and what effects would this have on society, culture and geopolitics? Would, for example, no Scientific Revolution also butterfly away the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions? Would Europe still be the dominant continent?

Why would lacking a scientific revolution butterfly away the agricultural/early industrial revolution? Those were not dependent on theoretical scientific concepts.

And what stage would technology be at in 2014?
1800s because by definition that's where the world would be without development of modern scientific concepts
 
Peoples often forgive that while Europe went far ahead later with that Revolution indeed, there was not just occidental savants... The contributions of the indian, chinese, muslim, etc savants was important... and with heavy butterflies, who know, science may have later flourished somewhere else...

Maybe, although since the scientific method as we understand it only really took off in Early Modern Europe I think those butterflies would have to be pretty heavy. Maybe if you make Al-Ghazali's philosophical ideas less influential in the Islamic world you might see something similar, although that's a few centuries before the POD for this thread.

Why would lacking a scientific revolution butterfly away the agricultural/early industrial revolution? Those were not dependent on theoretical scientific concepts.

I was under the impression that the agricultural revolution was based largely upon the principles of the scientific revolution, although now you mention it I can't think where I might have read such an idea.

1800s because by definition that's where the world would be without development of modern scientific concepts

So we'd have an early industrial revolution, but see it peter out sooner and not advance further?
 

RousseauX

Donor
I was under the impression that the agricultural revolution was based largely upon the principles of the scientific revolution, although now you mention it I can't think where I might have read such an idea.
There were multiple waves of agricultural revolutions from the early Middle Ages onward, I don't think any of them relied on the scientific revolution. The latest one I could find: the British agricultural revolution of the 1700, was mostly based off early patterns of agricultural development (i.e switching planting patterns etc) and the assignment of property rights.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/British_Agricultural_Revolution


So we'd have an early industrial revolution, but see it peter out sooner and not advance further?
The early industrial revolution was based on machinery which was developed based on engineering accomplishments of the late Medieval era, such as the mechanical clock. I don't think it's very plausible that nobody develops scientific concepts allowing the development of more advanced machines forever, but you would still have certain level slow advancement of technology even so.

I think once you have a critical mass of educated engineers/inventors and the appropriate conditions in terms of economic/finance some sort of scientific revolution was probably inevitable.
 
Say the Scientific Revolution gets butterflied away. How would technology develop differently compared to OTL, and what effects would this have on society, culture and geopolitics? Would, for example, no Scientific Revolution also butterfly away the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions? Would Europe still be the dominant continent? And what stage would technology be at in 2014?

It would take a hell of a POD to get rid of the Scientific Revolution altogether. Changing the specifics is easier, but there were quite a lot of people involved in a relatively large chunk of land.
Now, a Black Death level outbreak in Europe of plague around 1600 who happens to kill some of the key people involved and disrupt the societal framework they worked in might to the job, but you'd get a very different world from day 2.
 
Maybe, although since the scientific method as we understand it only really took off in Early Modern Europe I think those butterflies would have to be pretty heavy. Maybe if you make Al-Ghazali's philosophical ideas less influential in the Islamic world you might see something similar, although that's a few centuries before the POD for this thread.

Not relevant to the POD, but al-Ghazali's views, while hostile to Aristotelian philosophy, were not opposed to what we would understand as science as such.
Indeed, the Ghazalian framework coul be construed as even better for scientific development in that it could be used to eliminate some Aristotelian deadwood.
There are, of course, reasons why the actual Scientific revolution happened in seventeenth century Europe rather than thirteenth century Dar al-Islam, but they are very complex. Unmistakably, Europe built upon important Islamic developments, among other things.
 
You need to seriously screw Arab science here, and probably Chinese while you're at it.

Even that probably won't do it - the principles underlying the telescope were pretty widespread knowledge by 1600.
 
You need to seriously screw Arab science here, and probably Chinese while you're at it.

Even that probably won't do it - the principles underlying the telescope were pretty widespread knowledge by 1600.

This was not entirely clear - according to Feyerabend, Galileo's grasp of optics was nothing special and the reliability of the instrument was debated into the 1640s.
 
It would take a hell of a POD to get rid of the Scientific Revolution altogether. Changing the specifics is easier, but there were quite a lot of people involved in a relatively large chunk of land.
Now, a Black Death level outbreak in Europe of plague around 1600 who happens to kill some of the key people involved and disrupt the societal framework they worked in might to the job, but you'd get a very different world from day 2.

Well, getting rid of scientific advancement would be a big ask, and given rising population we'd expect more scientific discoveries to be made. On the other hand, the idea that science should be a separate discipline in its own right (as opposed to a subfield of philosophy) and focus mainly on gaining "mastery and dominion over nature" (as I think the phrase went) was AFAIK one that only arose in 17th century Europe, and was I think far from inevitable.

Not relevant to the POD, but al-Ghazali's views, while hostile to Aristotelian philosophy, were not opposed to what we would understand as science as such.
Indeed, the Ghazalian framework coul be construed as even better for scientific development in that it could be used to eliminate some Aristotelian deadwood.
There are, of course, reasons why the actual Scientific revolution happened in seventeenth century Europe rather than thirteenth century Dar al-Islam, but they are very complex. Unmistakably, Europe built upon important Islamic developments, among other things.

On the other hand, al-Ghazali's occasionalism, when combined with the theological voluntarism common in Islamic thought (though I'm not sure whether al-Ghazali himself followed it), did tend to make the physical universe seem rather mysterious. When you hold that every physical event is caused by God's direct action, and that nobody can hope to fathom God's inscrutable will, it's difficult to justify anything like the modern scientific method.
 
Well, getting rid of scientific advancement would be a big ask, and given rising population we'd expect more scientific discoveries to be made. On the other hand, the idea that science should be a separate discipline in its own right (as opposed to a subfield of philosophy) and focus mainly on gaining "mastery and dominion over nature" (as I think the phrase went) was AFAIK one that only arose in 17th century Europe, and was I think far from inevitable.



On the other hand, al-Ghazali's occasionalism, when combined with the theological voluntarism common in Islamic thought (though I'm not sure whether al-Ghazali himself followed it), did tend to make the physical universe seem rather mysterious. When you hold that every physical event is caused by God's direct action, and that nobody can hope to fathom God's inscrutable will, it's difficult to justify anything like the modern scientific method.

Well, the standard view was that God has "habits" which could be investigated. And yes, as far as I understand, al-Ghazali was a theological voluntarist. I think that he did not go as far as denying second causes, but IIRC he held that only could operate by direct divine decree.
 
since we have a big butterfly in the mix anyway I'm going to go out and say that we would in fact be more advanced:)

As indicated above Al-Ghazi already had a foundational scientific method in place and without the restrictions of materialism and rationalism that underlies Western Scientific theory we would not have the concentration on the directly observable material processes of Chemistry.

Rather the drive to understand God and spiritual mysticism underlying natural philosophy would have seen earlier development of Theoretical Physics - afterall Newton was first and foremost a Alchemist.

Would we have seen earlier splitting of the atom in order to peel back the veil and reveal heaven?
 
since we have a big butterfly in the mix anyway I'm going to go out and say that we would in fact be more advanced:)

As indicated above Al-Ghazi already had a foundational scientific method in place and without the restrictions of materialism and rationalism that underlies Western Scientific theory we would not have the concentration on the directly observable material processes of Chemistry.

Rather the drive to understand God and spiritual mysticism underlying natural philosophy would have seen earlier development of Theoretical Physics - afterall Newton was first and foremost a Alchemist.

Would we have seen earlier splitting of the atom in order to peel back the veil and reveal heaven?
Except if you can't build an atom-splitter, you ain't splitting any atoms.

More seriously, the key aspect of Science (as supposed to previous philosophical/theological musings) was that it produced things that worked and could be verified. Theoretical physics comes from a standpoint of predicting the natural world, and inherently attempts to tie in in that respect. Mysticism/spirituality may have value in its own right, but it's not going to be reproducible, and not going to give serious military/economic advantages to the people who adopt it. Science builds on itself, so without more modern advances, you won't get that process. To get back to my first point, no one will intuit the design of an atom-splitter; that's the result of centuries of development.
 
Other than a meteor or some disease wiping almost all of Eurasia I don't see how you can do prevent the Scientific Revolution.
 
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