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It's a fun thought experiment to consider what you would be able to rediscover or reinvent from scratch millennia years ago. Perhaps the easiest and most likel

by taejo 7y ago

It's a fun thought experiment to consider what you would be able to rediscover or reinvent from scratch millennia years ago. Perhaps the easiest and most likely to promote scientific progress would be the telescope and microscope: though I don't know how to grind lenses, it seems there were several centuries where people knew how to make good spectacles, but hadn't figured out that putting two lenses in front of each other is really useful.

petercooper 7y ago
If someone with power would listen to you, I think the biggest advancements the average person could take back 500+ years would be related to hygiene and medicine. The mere introduction of hand washing in situations where people are intimately caring for one another has saved millions of lives. I also think the average person now has an amazing amount of knowledge about the body and its operation compared to even a qualified doctor of 200+ years ago.
mywittyname 7y ago
You could also promote Germ Theory, but the world would think you a nutcase you're entire life. Creating bacterial cultures using 1700s tech should be easy, especially since you know what the outcome should be. Pasteurization is just cooking stuff. "I cooked these peas sealed in a champagne bottle last summer and they ares still edible consumes grey peas" Penicillin was derived from mold. Once you can culture bacteria, you can demonstrate that penicillin is effective at killing it. One could easily transplant these ideas to the Roman era. They'd likely take hold too, because of the huge impact they have on conducting war.
rtkwe 7y ago
They weren't too far apart for their times, it took forever for techniques to spread back then, the big issue is the level of accuracy they could get in lens grinding. When you start stacking optical elements and defects in the primary element get compounded by all the elements after it so you need very good lenses to build a usable telescope.
- taejo 7y ago
  You're right, and I didn't mean to imply that a few centuries was a particularly long time (just that this is the time in which my scant knowledge is useful). Telescopes and microscopes also provided the motivation for improvements in lensmaking in the 17th and 18th centuries, but I don't know how much this had been limited by motivation vs technology before then.
  - rtkwe 7y ago
    > but I don't know how much this had been limited by motivation vs technology before then. The answer I've always found has been it's a bit of both. Motivation drives technological development but motivation is also very heavily driven by the available technology. You have to conceive that a thing is possible before you can think about what tech can be developed to do it for example.
philwelch 7y ago
If I could identify what the hell saltpeter was, gunpowder would be an option. Of course, without better metallurgy it’s not that useful by itself. Likewise for steam engines.
wcunning 7y ago
My favorite for this one is Whitworth's 3 plate method and the technique of scraping iron for precision and bearing. That and/or gauge blocks and lapping for standardized measurement would get you a long ways into guns if you were past the puddling furnace already.
unoti 7y ago
The Michael Crichton novel Timeline is basically about this. It’s good. Spoiler: saltpeter makes an appearance, as suggested by someone elsewhere in this thread.

by taejo 7y ago

petercooper 7y ago

If someone with power would listen to you, I think the biggest advancements the average person could take back 500+ years would be related to hygiene and medicine. The mere introduction of hand washing in situations where people are intimately caring for one another has saved millions of lives. I also think the average person now has an amazing amount of knowledge about the body and its operation compared to even a qualified doctor of 200+ years ago.

mywittyname 7y ago

You could also promote Germ Theory, but the world would think you a nutcase you're entire life. Creating bacterial cultures using 1700s tech should be easy, especially since you know what the outcome should be. Pasteurization is just cooking stuff. "I cooked these peas sealed in a champagne bottle last summer and they ares still edible consumes grey peas" Penicillin was derived from mold. Once you can culture bacteria, you can demonstrate that penicillin is effective at killing it. One could easily transplant these ideas to the Roman era. They'd likely take hold too, because of the huge impact they have on conducting war.

rtkwe 7y ago

They weren't too far apart for their times, it took forever for techniques to spread back then, the big issue is the level of accuracy they could get in lens grinding. When you start stacking optical elements and defects in the primary element get compounded by all the elements after it so you need very good lenses to build a usable telescope.

taejo 7y ago
You're right, and I didn't mean to imply that a few centuries was a particularly long time (just that this is the time in which my scant knowledge is useful). Telescopes and microscopes also provided the motivation for improvements in lensmaking in the 17th and 18th centuries, but I don't know how much this had been limited by motivation vs technology before then.
- rtkwe 7y ago
  > but I don't know how much this had been limited by motivation vs technology before then. The answer I've always found has been it's a bit of both. Motivation drives technological development but motivation is also very heavily driven by the available technology. You have to conceive that a thing is possible before you can think about what tech can be developed to do it for example.

philwelch 7y ago

If I could identify what the hell saltpeter was, gunpowder would be an option. Of course, without better metallurgy it’s not that useful by itself. Likewise for steam engines.

wcunning 7y ago

My favorite for this one is Whitworth's 3 plate method and the technique of scraping iron for precision and bearing. That and/or gauge blocks and lapping for standardized measurement would get you a long ways into guns if you were past the puddling furnace already.

unoti 7y ago

The Michael Crichton novel Timeline is basically about this. It’s good. Spoiler: saltpeter makes an appearance, as suggested by someone elsewhere in this thread.