My argument is the the Romans had a really good understanding of the macro forces, but minimal knowledge of the micro forces. I would also expect long-run event

My argument is the the Romans had a really good understanding of the macro forces, but minimal knowledge of the micro forces. I would also expect long-run events would be more difficult to parse. The floodlines of Egypt, for instance, required a modern engineer decades of work to model because there is a complex system of dependency undergirding the processes determining them. Prior years flooding determined the latter years, this wasn't integrated into the reasoning when it came to constructing dams, instead they used 100-years floodlines to determine how high to build the dams, which was inadequate for the safety margin. I suspect such errant features of nature might explain failures, and material issues, but I'm definitely confident Romans had a highly intimate understanding of the high-visibility macro forces, because you really just can't miss broken sticks and falling bricks, can you?