WI: No scientific revolution?

The scientific revolution is an extremely difficult concept to define, but for the purposes of this thread I'll simply define it as the notion that the natural world ought to be studied in order to bring about technological advances for human benefit. Before the scientific revolution, people studied nature primarily as a means of gaining insight into the nature of God, and technological progress was largely carried out by trial-and-error, without input from natural philosophers; since the scientific revolution, of course, scientific study has been a major driver of technological progress, and this is widely considered the proper and normal state of affairs.

So, what if people didn't start regarding natural philosophy as a means of driving technological progress? How far do you think technology would have advanced by 2019, and what would society look like?
 
The scientific revolution is an extremely difficult concept to define, but for the purposes of this thread I'll simply define it as the notion that the natural world ought to be studied in order to bring about technological advances for human benefit. Before the scientific revolution, people studied nature primarily as a means of gaining insight into the nature of God, and technological progress was largely carried out by trial-and-error, without input from natural philosophers; since the scientific revolution, of course, scientific study has been a major driver of technological progress, and this is widely considered the proper and normal state of affairs.

So, what if people didn't start regarding natural philosophy as a means of driving technological progress? How far do you think technology would have advanced by 2019, and what would society look like?

A hundred thousand 'Barbegal Mills' spread across six continents, world population one to three trillion.*** War with edged weapons. Weaving would advance and clothing improved but color 'chemistry' would stay limited to plants and the visual world to earth tone colors. It would be dark and fuel consumption would become the great resource crisis; coal would have to replace wood (by trial and error I guess) but would never advance to oil (combustion).

(Does the burning of coal allow for the steam engine to get engineered without a natural science foundation, via trial and error, or do they just burn coal to stay warm and continue to use only moving water for energy?)

No concept of conservation arises and they exploit several major resources to exhaustion; over fish and crash rivers and seas on a regular bases; over farm lands; limitations of natural fertilizers creates a population ceiling; Malthus scare is real but of course Malthus wouldn't notice.

Slavery, race based, economic, nationalistic, would be commonplace.

*** With no modern medicine the world population would swell and collapse at extremes; pandemics and epidemics take out 50% of existing populations at regular intervals, but with food production being what they are best at, they will recover the population quickly, only to repeat the tragedy. There would be times when you would just have to step over a whole lot of corpses.
 
A hundred thousand 'Barbegal Mills' spread across six continents, world population one to three trillion.*** War with edged weapons. Weaving would advance and clothing improved but color 'chemistry' would stay limited to plants and the visual world to earth tone colors. It would be dark and fuel consumption would become the great resource crisis; coal would have to replace wood (by trial and error I guess) but would never advance to oil (combustion).

Trillion? I highly doubt you could get a trillion people with even today's tech. A billion is about as much as you could get with earlier tech. And I don't see why edged weapons would still be a thing, outside of cavalry and maybe pikemen.

(Does the burning of coal allow for the steam engine to get engineered without a natural science foundation, via trial and error, or do they just burn coal to stay warm and continue to use only moving water for energy?)
Coal isn't too useful without steam engines, and without the advances made in mining in the 19th century (draining mines, dynamite, etc.) you can't get much coal at all.

Slavery, race based, economic, nationalistic, would be commonplace.

Wouldn't be economical in most places. You'd have to enslave free people which is just begging for a revolution.

*** With no modern medicine the world population would swell and collapse at extremes; pandemics and epidemics take out 50% of existing populations at regular intervals, but with food production being what they are best at, they will recover the population quickly, only to repeat the tragedy. There would be times when you would just have to step over a whole lot of corpses.

Without modern medicine or sanitation you can't have a large population since infant mortality remains high and cities are places of death. The main places of expansions of food production would be in the Americas, Siberia, and Australia, i.e where the locals had been cleared out by disease and the survivors staring down land-hungry settlers.
 
Coal isn't too useful without steam engines, and without the advances made in mining in the 19th century (draining mines, dynamite, etc.) you can't get much coal at all.


Very little of this was due to science, it is only with the rise of the German chemical industry in the late 1800s that we see science affecting industry.

Without modern medicine or sanitation you can't have a large population since infant mortality remains high and cities are places of death. The main places of expansions of food production would be in the Americas, Siberia, and Australia, i.e where the locals had been cleared out by disease and the survivors staring down land-hungry settlers.

We could debate what is the most important medicine or sanitation but I would argue we are looking at the late 1800s when it starts so we are looking at a world population of about 1.5 billion.
 
(Does the burning of coal allow for the steam engine to get engineered without a natural science foundation, via trial and error, or do they just burn coal to stay warm and continue to use only moving water for energy?)

Supposedly Newcomen had the idea for the steam engine when he saw steam coming out of his kettle. That's probably apocryphal, but you could have something similar happen without an explicit natural science foundation, so I'd say yes, it can get invented.
 
Sorry about the trillion, I meant one to three billion. I have deficit and national debt on the mind, sorry!

The rest I stand by, or if you like, stand corrected.
 
how does one go about denying the accumulation of scientific knowledge? With scientific knowledge comes the ability to gain further scientific knowledge.

religions have tried their best to limit science and the spread of science and knowledge in general, but failed. You're going to have to build a better god engine to be more effective at getting people to denounce science and remain focused on faith above all. As one who subscribes to, and makes a living at, the scientific world, I find the notion ASB.

I suppose we could have had an apocalypse which knocked the world apart/destroyed our knowledge level and/or events which delay the advance of science, but, IMO, once humans evolve beyond mere animal status, science and an ever increasing pace of advancement are inevitable.

For those into creationism, simply have God create a human missing the science gene, but that's hand wavium territory
 

Marc

Donor
I took the supposing suggested to mean what if the West hadn't undergone a comparatively very rapid advance in the sciences augmented by a increasing wiliness to take a secular approach about progress. Not a lack of development at all.

If you are in the Carlyle school of Great Men makes history, it wouldn't be hard to construct a much slower advance without the contributions of various foundational individuals.
 
how does one go about denying the accumulation of scientific knowledge? With scientific knowledge comes the ability to gain further scientific knowledge.

At the risk of coming across as rude, did you even read the OP?

The scientific revolution is an extremely difficult concept to define, but for the purposes of this thread I'll simply define it as the notion that the natural world ought to be studied in order to bring about technological advances for human benefit.

So, it's not at all about "the accumulation of scientific knowledge", it's about the reasons why people accumulate said knowledge. And given that the SR only seems to have occurred once, it's obviously not the case that it was fated to happen once humans evolved past animal status.
 
A few weeks ago read a piece on that on economist Brad Delong Grasping Reality website (not by Brad).The author figured the highest level we could probably reach would be gunpowder empires like Ottomans or Qing.
 
religions have tried their best to limit science and the spread of science and knowledge in general, but failed.
Which religions does that apply to? Because if it's the Catholic Church, that's ignoring the Church's patronage of the sciences, the Catholic world's contributions to the advancement of human knowledge, and the Church's own official stance on science in general. There might've been some periods of controversies regarding some fields (most avoid controversy, in any case. Hard to make acoustics or minerology into grounds for heresy) but it's not like the Pope was trying to send humanity back into the Stone Age at any point.

Islam too, it's having a rough patch but the Islamic Golden Age saw the preservation of Greco-Roman advances, like Hippocrates and Galen in medicine, and well as its own advances in major fields ("algebra" coming from an Arabic term meaning "the reunion of broken parts" and "algorithm" coming from Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī's name, al-Khwārizmī being patronised by the Abbasid Caliph
Al-Ma'mun).


It doesn't' quite seem like most of the world's major religions have made a continuous, concerted effort to stymie "science and the spread of science and knowledge in general" from their inception nor made it a goal or purpose, even going so far as to do the complete opposite and patronise it for long periods of time, so that premise seems flawed from the get-go.
 
At the risk of coming across as rude, did you even read the OP?



So, it's not at all about "the accumulation of scientific knowledge", it's about the reasons why people accumulate said knowledge. And given that the SR only seems to have occurred once, it's obviously not the case that it was fated to happen once humans evolved past animal status.
Sorry. I articulated poorly. I view science as an ever expanding accumulation of knowledge. the revolution occurred because we reached a tipping point of said knowledge base which allowed for a rapid increase in advancement.

certainly, alternative common outlook could have changed the timeframe of when the revolution occurred, but I view scientific knowledge as primarily driving the outlook change and not vice versa. You have to actively suppress science in order to prevent it from advancing. Once science advances to a certain point, it progresses at a much faster rate. You see such revolutions occur in microcosms all the while.

So, I'm probably still articulating poorly, but while I accept that a change in philosophy occurred along with the scientific revolution, I think the revolution was coming regardless unless a mechanism can be found to suppress it, and I can't envision such a mechanism.

If, however, you accept such a mechanism, or I'm wrong, and philosophy drove the SR, with such philosophy not changing, thus preventing the SR...simply freeze time just prior to the SR, with a very slow advancement of science, or slower than OTL. Earth's carrying capacity is greatly diminished, but medicine isn't allowing a population increase anyway.
 
Which religions does that apply to? Because if it's the Catholic Church, that's ignoring the Church's patronage of the sciences, the Catholic world's contributions to the advancement of human knowledge, and the Church's own official stance on science in general. There might've been some periods of controversies regarding some fields (most avoid controversy, in any case. Hard to make acoustics or minerology into grounds for heresy) but it's not like the Pope was trying to send humanity back into the Stone Age at any point.

Islam too, it's having a rough patch but the Islamic Golden Age saw the preservation of Greco-Roman advances, like Hippocrates and Galen in medicine, and well as its own advances in major fields ("algebra" coming from an Arabic term meaning "the reunion of broken parts" and "algorithm" coming from Muḥammad ibn Mūsā al-Khwārizmī's name, al-Khwārizmī being patronised by the Abbasid Caliph
Al-Ma'mun).


It doesn't' quite seem like most of the world's major r eligions have made a continuous, concerted effort to stymie "science and the spread of science and knowledge in general" from their inception nor made it a goal or purpose, even going so far as to do the complete opposite and patronise it for long periods of time, so that premise seems flawed from the get-go.
It's a copout for me to say 'agree to disagree', but it's far more likely I'd cross the line and insult others' faith, than actually get my point across. I generally find that the religions I'm reasonably acquainted with have not been best friends with the spread of scientific knowledge. That may be painting with too broad a brush, or I may be flat out wrong. I won't edit out/erase my original post, as it has been out there a while, but I'd rather anyone ignore it/consider it wrong than ask me to debate it and risk crossing the line.
 
It might not be a complete screw. Without natural philosophers, we could see an alternate version of science branching out from engineering and what was then called "the mechanical arts", which would be more practical than theoretical.
 
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