Suppose the Crisis of the Third century never happened, Christianity never became the state religion of the Empire, and Rome (including the West) never fell up to the year 2016. Is it really probable that we'd have advanced further technologically by now? Or did conditions in the empire create stagnation and we actually needed the conditions of the Early Modern Period to advance like we did?
>>505158
>Suppose the Crisis of the Third century never happened, Christianity never became the state religion of the Empire, and Rome (including the West) never fell up to the year 2016. Is it really probable that we'd have advanced further technologically by now?
No. Modernity and the search for "new shit every week" wasn't invented until the 16th century. Your question is retarded anyway.
>>505158
The existence or eventual lack-there-of of the Roman state had very little weight on the pace of technological progress through the centuries (not that it would be quantifiable anyways). Rather, the empire simply allowed for the scale and application of certain existing technologies to flourish due to their civil or military applications, while others technologies become footnotes.
I suppose the only real advantage that a united empire might have brought was better diffusion of ideas from east to west and vice versa.
>>505158
>Or did conditions in the empire create stagnation
yep. employment, not innovation, was the order of the day, so technological advancement was not a priority
>>505158
We'd be subject to the same dumbfuck whims of whatever clown was in power that plagued the Chinese. Fragmentation helped fuel competition, which gives greater innovation and advancement.
If the crisis of the third century did not happen, then it means that Rome would have had to make the economic connection between supply and demand.
The last major economic reform before Diocletian happened under Nero. Had Rome made that connection, then the State finances would have been in much better shape, thereby leading to any number of different laws and taxes.
If Rome were thus able to assess accurately her population via taxes or by marketplace consumption/demand, the most notable change I think would have been in the attitude towards the declining population. That had been a concern since the principate of Augustus, but Rome never really figured out a way to increase the local Italian population, so as to keep Italy as the hub of most banking transactions. (On that note, there is an incredibly interesting article in the Journal of Roman Studies 96 (2006), by WV Harris on actually the logistics of the banking system—looking at questions like, 'how did Cicero manage to buy art from Greece? Did he schlep the gold over there?')
Anyways, I think that with a better grasp of, and therefore regulation of the finances, provincial dissatisfaction (in the form of Christianity or otherwise) could have been easier to assuage (panem et circenses, &c. &c.), and the Empire would have had a more uniform/even progression in many areas—technology included, for it was the Princeps who personally sponsored the sciences, arts, and exploration.
>>505158
>what if thread
Is this the new /his/ meme?
>>>/harryturtledove/
>>505493
This one actually does have a basic question that it's asking through a historical "what if" example: what role do large states/empires play in the advancement/propagation of technology.
>>505511
I agree. It is a good question as well. The state has historically funded the development of military and perhaps some agricultural technology. But more importantly, a large state or empire provides a sense of safety and availability of resources that allows individuals to spend their days innovating and not struggling to survive.
>>505615
Then why do so many claim that Rome caused technology to stagnate
>>505642
Because it did
>>505189
I think there was an instance of a Roman emperor declining to use the technology planned by an engineer for a building project on the grounds that it would deprive the masses of employment.
>>505642
It did in some areas, and advanced them in others. 'Technology' isn't some monolithic blanket term, it's possible to be backwards in one area and advanced in another.
The technology advanced most by Romans involved areas they were interested in, namely military sciences and maintaining huge infrastructure projects to keep the empire running. They weren't interested in other areas like primitive steam engines or waterwheels that would have saved on labor because labor was in abundance. There was no shortage of slaves captured in war as long as the empire kept running smoothly.
>>505158
People forget that the Roman empire was not all that scientifically progressive, nor even technologically.
