4 ms·

Could such advances have been possible if fueled by an extremely wealthy family? It only takes one person w/ resources & ambition to say "I want <something>" t

Could such advances have been possible if fueled by an extremely wealthy family? It only takes one person w/ resources & ambition to say "I want <something>" to kickstart a movement. Say Marcus Licinius Crassus [1], Roman bajillionaire, dreams of a steam-powered engine in 73 BC, 20-ish years before his death. And instead of duking it out with Spartacus, Crassus decides to make building a steam engine his singular focus in life. In the best of cases, could he have meaningfully invested in R&D that would make meaningful progress towards building a steam engine? Was R&D even a thing in that era? [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marcus_Licinius_Crassus

empath75 9y ago
One guy building a steam engine isn’t a revolution. One guy building a steam engine and publishing a book on steam engines and having a university to train steam engine builders is.
- WalterBright 9y ago
  More than that. It took a while for the telegraph to take hold because Morse couldn't explain why fast communication was necessary, and people thought his demonstrations were a scam.
AnimalMuppet 9y ago
Possibly Crassus could have gotten a toy out of it. A steam engine working enough to start an industrial revolution? I doubt it. I think (but I am not a historian) that the Roman mind-set wasn't turned toward progress in the form of machines. I think that was because they didn't have real science. And I think that was because of their gods. Oppenheimer, in his history of science, said that science couldn't have begun outside of Christianity. The Christian perspective was that, because God is there, and God is someone who uses reason, and God created the universe, therefore the universe could be understood through reason. That was the soil in which the scientific revolution started. But the Roman gods were too arbitrary and capricious to give any certainty of a reasonable universe, and so the Romans never developed real science (despite knowing many of the facts that Europeans knew by 1500).
- eropple 9y ago
  The existence of thoroughly reasoned and empirical fields such as architecture (and is implementation with regards to civic engineering) in the Roman world is an obvious disproof with regards to this sort of Christian-centric worldview being a necessary factor. If they as a thinking culture believed the universe was not consistent and reliable, there is little reason to believe that the lessons learned that made Roman aqueducts stand to this day would have stuck the way they did. And, similarly, this lesson holds for societies not so comfortingly Western; there's little reason to believe that "but gods!" held back the the Chinese or the Indians, either. The ancient world--not just Rome, but across the board--didn't have what you have chosen to provincially define as "real science" because not having the tools to build the tools to disprove theories tends to put a damper on things. Instead they had sciences based on what they could and did measure: geometry and astronomy are explicitly called out by Vitruvius as being necessary topics for an architect to understand. I mean, hell. Greek and Roman thinkers (and, indeed, most Roman science was Greek) defined the scientific method as being a deterministic thing, induction via observation, in the first place.
  - AnimalMuppet 9y ago
    Why then did Oppenheimer (not a Christian, BTW) say that science could not have begun without Christianity? How much of your example is survivor bias? How many roman aqueducts didn't stand to this day (and in fact failed in use)? Well, we'd only know if someone made a record of it, and the record survived, or if we found the remains in an archaelogical exploration. Did they have the science to build aqueducts (and bridges, and buildings) that survived, or did they have some experience and some rules of thumb, and some of it was done well enough to survive 2 millenia? And you point me back to the Greeks as originators of the scientific method. A quick glance at Wikipedia reveals the claim that Aristotle originated that way of thinking. But that would be the same Aristotle who claimed that it was philosophically or logically obvious that men had more teeth than women but who, despite being married twice, never actually bothered to check. (That may be to say, induction via observation is fine, but I think the real scientific method requires experimental verification, and I don't think Aristotle was very big on that.)
QAPereo 9y ago
I don’t know, but that family would be upending the fabric of society, and I would guess while possible, it would be risky. See: Caesar

empath75 9y ago

One guy building a steam engine isn’t a revolution. One guy building a steam engine and publishing a book on steam engines and having a university to train steam engine builders is.

WalterBright 9y ago
More than that. It took a while for the telegraph to take hold because Morse couldn't explain why fast communication was necessary, and people thought his demonstrations were a scam.

AnimalMuppet 9y ago

Possibly Crassus could have gotten a toy out of it. A steam engine working enough to start an industrial revolution? I doubt it. I think (but I am not a historian) that the Roman mind-set wasn't turned toward progress in the form of machines. I think that was because they didn't have real science. And I think that was because of their gods. Oppenheimer, in his history of science, said that science couldn't have begun outside of Christianity. The Christian perspective was that, because God is there, and God is someone who uses reason, and God created the universe, therefore the universe could be understood through reason. That was the soil in which the scientific revolution started. But the Roman gods were too arbitrary and capricious to give any certainty of a reasonable universe, and so the Romans never developed real science (despite knowing many of the facts that Europeans knew by 1500).

eropple 9y ago
The existence of thoroughly reasoned and empirical fields such as architecture (and is implementation with regards to civic engineering) in the Roman world is an obvious disproof with regards to this sort of Christian-centric worldview being a necessary factor. If they as a thinking culture believed the universe was not consistent and reliable, there is little reason to believe that the lessons learned that made Roman aqueducts stand to this day would have stuck the way they did. And, similarly, this lesson holds for societies not so comfortingly Western; there's little reason to believe that "but gods!" held back the the Chinese or the Indians, either. The ancient world--not just Rome, but across the board--didn't have what you have chosen to provincially define as "real science" because not having the tools to build the tools to disprove theories tends to put a damper on things. Instead they had sciences based on what they could and did measure: geometry and astronomy are explicitly called out by Vitruvius as being necessary topics for an architect to understand. I mean, hell. Greek and Roman thinkers (and, indeed, most Roman science was Greek) defined the scientific method as being a deterministic thing, induction via observation, in the first place.
- AnimalMuppet 9y ago
  Why then did Oppenheimer (not a Christian, BTW) say that science could not have begun without Christianity? How much of your example is survivor bias? How many roman aqueducts didn't stand to this day (and in fact failed in use)? Well, we'd only know if someone made a record of it, and the record survived, or if we found the remains in an archaelogical exploration. Did they have the science to build aqueducts (and bridges, and buildings) that survived, or did they have some experience and some rules of thumb, and some of it was done well enough to survive 2 millenia? And you point me back to the Greeks as originators of the scientific method. A quick glance at Wikipedia reveals the claim that Aristotle originated that way of thinking. But that would be the same Aristotle who claimed that it was philosophically or logically obvious that men had more teeth than women but who, despite being married twice, never actually bothered to check. (That may be to say, induction via observation is fine, but I think the real scientific method requires experimental verification, and I don't think Aristotle was very big on that.)

QAPereo 9y ago

I don’t know, but that family would be upending the fabric of society, and I would guess while possible, it would be risky. See: Caesar