For a fictional exploration of the "doomed to recreate it all" phenomena, there's a nice novel called "Canticle for Leibowitz" where post-nuclear-armageddon sci

For a fictional exploration of the "doomed to recreate it all" phenomena, there's a nice novel called "Canticle for Leibowitz" where post-nuclear-armageddon scientists are in part blamed for the nuclear war and knowledge is explicitly culturally rejected... but then slowly crawls back into the picture.