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The Antikythera mechanism reveals new secrets

scientificamerican.com

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Re: The Antikythera mechanism reveals new secrets

#81

Post by sideshowb »

Baeocystin wrote: post #30
dougmwne wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This realization hit me after spending a few weeks in Italy seeing the remains of the Roman Empire. I had a building sense that they were awfully close to the industrial revolution, that there was no particular reason it couldn’t have happened thousands of years ago in the face of a highly organized, long lived, innovative empire with enormous resources. I think it’s an accident of history that it happened in England…

Not an accident. Energy. Rome as a meta-organism was limited by available energy- trees weren't enough, and denudation of forests was already a limiting factor. Meanwhile, Britain had plentiful coal in easily-accessible abundance. No point in developing steam and a theory of thermodynamics when you can't use the results.

I thought denudation of forest was a limiting factor in the UK too, indeed a motivating factor for https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abraham_Darby_I

Re: The Antikythera mechanism reveals new secrets

#82

Post by xyzzyz »

marcosdumay wrote: post #37
dougmwne wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This realization hit me after spending a few weeks in Italy seeing the remains of the Roman Empire. I had a building sense that they were awfully close to the industrial revolution, that there was no particular reason it couldn’t have happened thousands of years ago in the face of a highly organized, long lived, innovative empire with enormous resources. I think it’s an accident of history that it happened in England…

They had nothing like the Modern age's science. I can't imagine any reason for it not appearing there given enough time, but they didn't have the dispassionate questioning of every theory and total submission to empiricism that are fundamental to science today. Math advanced a huge amount during the Medieval age. They simply didn't have good tools for calculations, and nearly all of the Modern Age's math was based on…

You are giving way too much credit to science in the early phase of industrial revolution. Science has been extremely important in technological development from late 1800s onwards, but the most critical leaps of late 1700s and early 1800s had little to do with Newton-style science. Instead, they mostly about engineering improvements, combined with a newly widespread social attitude that technology actually can be significantly improved. Flying shuttle has not been based on some theoretical scientific model, but rather on experience with making looms and ingenuity in improving them. Similarly, Watt didn’t create his engine based on theory of thermodynamics, instead he just observed that repeatedly heating and cooling the cylinder is wasteful, and came up with a technique to avoid that.

If you follow the development Industrial Revolution, you’ll see that it’s mostly thanks to ingenious engineers, not smart scientists. The scientists did occasionally deliver something valuable, often in fact paradigm-changing, but importantly, this only became very relevant around the turn of 20th century.

Re: The Antikythera mechanism reveals new secrets

#83

Post by xenadu02 »

me_me_mu_mu wrote: post #57
skunkworker wrote: post #22

Every time I think about the Antikythera mechanism the quote by Arthur C. Clarke comes to mind "If the insight of the Greeks had matched their ingenuity…we would not merely be puttering around on the Moon, we would have reached the nearer stars." It's a little sensational but also makes me think of what could've been, if certain paths had been realized in past times, and also makes me put the technical knowledge of p…

Really dumb question, but one I must ask after reading this article and then your post. Could it be possible that humans had some pretty awesome technology even farther in the past than we know (beyond earliest recorded history), but due to some extinction event all records of society from that time were wiped out? For example if we had some crazy extinction event, the dark ages that would follow are pretty scary to…

We can be reasonably certain there were no such civilizations on Earth prior to modern human history, otherwise we'd see evidence in the archeological record or even fossil record. I don't mean finding silicon chips in a fossil or anything so advanced. I mean very simple things like ceramic chips or bits of worked glass that would survive for millions of years.

The only way a civilization at least as advanced as bronze-age humans existed 100k+ years ago is if it was visitors from a parent civilization on another world that died out. That's the only way you get advanced technology on a small enough scale that we wouldn't be able to find any clues because the clues would be localized to a tiny area we just haven't stumbled across yet (to be clear I don't think any such civilization ever existed).

Re: The Antikythera mechanism reveals new secrets

#84

Post by npunt »

areoform wrote: post #24

The Antikythera mechanism gives me nightmares. Just as the suggestion that a lack of transmissions from intelligent life means the existence of a great filter. The Antikythera mechanism is a strong indicator of technological regression in human beings. Perhaps more terrifying is the fact that it is not the first time we've regressed or collapsed. The mysterious Late Bronze Age Collapse is another example, https://en.…

If you're interested in the subject, I'd recommend the Fall of Civilizations podcast which digs into various civilizations and their decline: https://www.patreon.com/fallofcivilizations_podcast

Re: The Antikythera mechanism reveals new secrets

#85

Post by asdff »

JohnBooty wrote: post #59
areoform wrote: post #24

The Antikythera mechanism gives me nightmares. Just as the suggestion that a lack of transmissions from intelligent life means the existence of a great filter. The Antikythera mechanism is a strong indicator of technological regression in human beings. Perhaps more terrifying is the fact that it is not the first time we've regressed or collapsed. The mysterious Late Bronze Age Collapse is another example, https://en.…

Another renaissance to recreate our civilization from our published work would be nearly impossible. Or, take centuries to accomplish. It might not be possible at all. We've long since used up the "easy" sources of energy on this planet - all of the fossil fuels conveniently located near the earth's surface have long been depleted. By the time they could possibly be replenished, the Sun will be nearing the end of its…

Couldn't you just burn plastic directly? Mine a landfill and burn it up.

Re: The Antikythera mechanism reveals new secrets

#88

Post by nine_k »

areoform wrote: post #35
marcosdumay wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The Antikythera mechanism is a strong indicator of technological regression in human beings. Is it evidence of widespread technological regression, or "this small group with strong leadership did amazing things, too bad nobody can do that anymore", or just people not wanting it anymore? For centuries after it was built, there was no large scale collapse that could bring a widespread regression (there were many loca…

The mechanism suggests a strong "industrial" base to support it. They had to get the metals from somewhere, find the expert artisans to craft from somewhere else, source the parts, find the tooling etc. Just as a mass produced pencil isn't just a pencil, it is the capacity to produce the pencil. They had the capacity to create precision gearing, which suggests a level of mechanical prowess that isn't matched until a…

It's not that industrial base.

If devices like the antikythera were commonly produced, we'd find more of them, and descriptions of them. This looks like a one-off achievement.

I'd rather say that this maybe more like a Saturn-5 of the day: a top achievement that required extraordinary efforts, and not very reproducible because of that. Most things around and in its production chain were not nearly as advanced.

Re: The Antikythera mechanism reveals new secrets

#89

Post by bsenftner »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #76
dougmwne wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This realization hit me after spending a few weeks in Italy seeing the remains of the Roman Empire. I had a building sense that they were awfully close to the industrial revolution, that there was no particular reason it couldn’t have happened thousands of years ago in the face of a highly organized, long lived, innovative empire with enormous resources. I think it’s an accident of history that it happened in England…

L. Sprague De Camp had the same opinion https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lest_Darkness_Fall

Although other books claim the title today, for a few decades "Lest Darkness Fall" was considered the first distinctly science fiction novel.
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