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Post by Otto Kretschmer on Mar 3, 2023 12:21:32 GMT
You are SI as the Roman emperor in 27 BC and your role is to maximize scientific and technological progress of Rome.
What do you do?
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Mar 3, 2023 13:51:44 GMT
You are SI as the Roman emperor in 27 BC and your role is to maximize scientific and technological progress of Rome. What do you do?
Difficult. The long wars have largely completed the destruction of the citizen soldiers that were the basis of the old republic and both urban and rural activities are dominated by wealthy elites. Coupled with Augustus's desire for peace and stability this gives an incentive not to rock the boat. Plus with for the moment a lot of cheap labour in terms of slaves there is little incentive for any sort of mechanization even if you had the technological basis for it. Also Roman culture is still strongly conservative socially and religiously.
The best bet might be to identify problems, possibly in terms of areas where infrastructure could be improved - roads, canals etc and also in terms possibly of water supply and other health issues. Then seek to encourage ways of solving those problems. Basically appealing to the practical engineering/problem solving aspect rather than a more scientific approach. This might possibly develop later. Also to set up some institutions for: a) educating such engineers - to try and establish a culture supporting such attributes.
& b) for studying theoretical science. - To establish a basis that might expand the capacities of the engineers.
I think its going to be a long and difficult task converting the empire into any sort of scientific stronghold, especially now it has no real external threats to incentivize changes.
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Post by Otto Kretschmer on Mar 3, 2023 14:09:56 GMT
What about creating something akin to a university but focuses on natural sciences? There is already a solid base of knowledge in the Greek speaking part of the empire which will be the starting point for furher study.
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stevep
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Post by stevep on Mar 3, 2023 15:17:38 GMT
What about creating something akin to a university but focuses on natural sciences? There is already a solid base of knowledge in the Greek speaking part of the empire which will be the starting point for furher study.
Well its partly what I was thinking of in the option b in my previous post. However a lot of the education of the elite - which is to a degree who it needs to affect to gain and retrain influence rather than just seem a toy of a single emperor - was in things like philosophy, rhetoric and the like which doesn't really fit in with that. By all means try it but its going to be an uphill task I suspect. Plus also if they start digging too deep into laws of science and the like they could end up clashing with religious ideas. While faith wasn't as big a bugbear as in Christian times people still had to be careful to avoid challenging the authority of religion to a degree.
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Post by Carolus Orlandus on Mar 3, 2023 16:43:33 GMT
You are SI as the Roman emperor in 27 BC and your role is to maximize scientific and technological progress of Rome. What do you do? I do not know, maybe try discovering gunpowder meaning a much earlier use of primitive firearms and cannons than IOTL? |
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Post by Otto Kretschmer on Mar 3, 2023 16:46:21 GMT
You are SI as the Roman emperor in 27 BC and your role is to maximize scientific and technological progress of Rome. What do you do? I do not know, maybe try discovering gunpowder meaning a much earlier use of primitive firearms and cannons than IOTL? That would not work IMO. The key to this is to establish an fmpire wide network of intellectuals focused on natural sciences rather than just philosophy anf rhetorics. |
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