> Let's say we could somehow train an LLM on all written and spoken language from the western Roman civilization (Republic + Western Empire, up until 476 AD/CE,

> Let's say we could somehow train an LLM on all written and spoken language from the western Roman civilization (Republic + Western Empire, up until 476 AD/CE, just so I don't muddy the experiment with near-modern timelines). Would it, without novel information from humans, ever be able to spit out a correct predecessor of modern science like atomic theory? Funny example - depending on how close the predecessor has to be, the answer is maybe: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomism