PlayRevolutionary344 t1_ivtsnnz wrote on November 10, 2022 at 3:42 PM

Does science just come in and out of fashion in history? How can great ideas just get scrapped?

Historically we had some seriously cool discoveries that just kinda got washed over. We had batteries and understanding of electric we had sewage and baths with Romans. We has things like early aviation theories and Chinese lanterns gun powder fireworks . I know c sections supposedly go back further than the 1200s and antibiotics.Traces of antibiotics were found in human skeletons from ancient times dating back to 350 – 550 CE and I've seen science articles claim cavemen did amputations and their subjects survived. Using milk of poppy for pain relief

Obviously outstanding engineering feats meant there was outstanding understanding of maths and architecture. and space. And yet it was all ignored for a long time

But there's just this huge period recently (or relatively recently 1700s onwards where all these old things were brought back and rediscovered. Eg sourcing plants for antibiotic properties. Or reinventing batteries bringing back plumbing as opposed to passing in a bucket etc

Even modern times sort of did this. The first ever invented car was electric. Then they got scrapped for unleaded and diesel engines and now its back to electric cars.

en43rs t1_ivu0ena wrote on November 10, 2022 at 4:33 PM

Simple answer: technology does not exist in a vacuum. It's not a civilization-like path towards progress. Technologies exist to solve a problem. If the problem doesn't exist (or isn't perceived as existing)... then why would you invest a lot of money to solve something that is not there? That's why for millennia we've had scientific knowledge of things and did nothing with it, because it was useless as far as people were concerned. If there is no incentive, there is no technological development.

I'm unfamiliar with a lot of examples you give but I know two well: Roman steam engines and ball bearing. Romans knew those existed... and only used them in very specific circumstances. There were no proto roman car or trains. They just thought it was neat and used it for doors and statues. Because they had no use for it, those were very inefficient products and they did not perceive their use outside of those circumstances.

Same thing with early electric cars... they worked. But were way more expansive and way less useful than oil based cars. So when oil came around... they all switched. Why would you invest a lot of money into perfecting something when there's a way better solution around the corner.

I would also say "I've seen science articles claim cavemen did amputations and their subjects survived", we never lost that. Amputations wasn't a death sentence, it was extremely risky but for centuries humanity developed skills to make it less lethal. It's not like prehistoric societies had a 100% survival rate and that a few millennia later we had only 2% survival rate.

Which lead me to an observation. A lot of your example make it seems that we had wonderful things we later forgot. While there are historical example of that (it took centuries for Europe to develop dome again in architecture after the fall of the Roman Empire, or how we invented closed toilet five times and each time it didn't take)... the example you quote are out of context and/or widely exaggerated. To go back to Roman steam engines... they had something using that principle but it's not like they had a research program looking into steamboats.

Again in short, no science doesn't come and go. It's just that if there is no incentive to develop something, just having the scientific knowledge of something does not lead to discoveries.