alternatehistory.com

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?
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