If You Could Change History

[Jo498]

The 1000 years setback is complete nonsense. Just look at the development between 500 BC and 500 AD. The Romans mostly excelled in stuff the Greeks were not so much interested in (or did not need because they had only smaller city states not a huge empire), namely law, administration, engineering etc. The Romans were almost completely parasitic on the Greek achievements in philosophy, maths and what passed for science and most of these achievements are from the BCs. And in that time (~0-500 AD) there was no unquestioned aristotelianism (like maybe in the high middle ages, although this is also not really true) because some the other schools that petered out in late antiquity were still going strong. The problem is that as far as science in the modern sense is concerned the Stoics, Epicureans, Platonists, Skeptics etc. were not really better than the Aristotelians, often worse... The only relevant field where Aristotle was obviously wrong was mechanics, but people were aware of that already in late antiquity (or earlier) and it did not keep them from building catapults or whatever (FWIW Aristotle himself was aware of spears and catapults...)

The setback in the West came because almost everything collapsed between the 5th and 8th century. The main problem was not lost knowledge but lost administrative and military power, infrastructure, cohesion etc. To change history it is not enough to save the libraries with philosophical speculation and Homer commentaries but to save the Western part of the Roman Empire.

Byzantium was still going strong then but I am not aware of any proto-scientific revolution or huge developments between 500 and 1000 AD in the Eastern Empire. And without denying the achievements of Byzantium or of the muslim scholars roughly at the same time they weren't game changers either. By the 11th century the West of Europe had recovered quite a bit, otherwise they would not have had spare energy and the engineering/tech for huge cathedrals and they would not have been so successful in the first Crusade (or later in the abominable plundering of Constantinople in the 4th Crusade) had they been hopelessly behind Byzantium or the muslim world in technology.

The techs that gave Europeans the edge in the 15th/16th century were those they developed or improved considerably in the middle ages vs. antiquity: shipbuilding, navigation and metallurgy (e.g. superior cheaper steel) and gunpowder. But that edge was mainly vs. indigenous cultures in the Americas and Africa. The power balance with the Ottoman Empire was still precarious in the 17th century (although in that naval battle at Lepanto in the late 16th century a slight edge in naval and weapons tech was a factor for the defeat of the Ottomans).

[maarsen]

The development of algebra by Arabic mathematicians was one of the reasons western cultures advanced technologically. The Romans were not great at mathematics and probably hindered scientific advancement. The Ottoman empire expanding brought this knowledge out of Baghdad into the wider world, including the Indian concept of "zero" as a number. Again my knowledge of Byzantium is limited but I do intend to rectify that. 

[GAROVORKIN]

13 hours ago, maarsen said:

The development of algebra by Arabic mathematicians was one of the reasons western cultures advanced technologically. The Romans were not great at mathematics and probably hindered scientific advancement. The Ottoman empire expanding brought this knowledge out of Baghdad into the wider world, including the Indian concept of "zero" as a number. Again my knowledge of Byzantium is limited but I do intend to rectify that. 

 

The Roman numbers system was very clumsy  and not very practical for  complex mathematics.

[mankytoes]

7 hours ago, GAROVORKIN said:

 

The Roman numbers system was very clumsy  and not very practical for  complex mathematics.

It's surprising they didn't reform it, but then again America won't go metric...

[A wilding]

Why should they have reformed it? They had plenty of slaves to do the counting for them.

 

[mankytoes]

21 hours ago, A wilding said:

Why should they have reformed it? They had plenty of slaves to do the counting for them.

 

Yeah, but eventually Lincoln freed them.

[HoodedCrow]

Julius Caesar reformed the calendar and look what happened to him.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

14 minutes ago, HoodedCrow said:

Julius Caesar reformed the calendar and look what happened to him.

It was that Leap Year thang. It threw him off when it was time to beware the Ides of March.

[Larry of the Lawn]

I would have had that fourth glass of manechewitz at my buddy's bar mitzvah back in seventh grade.  Would have made my 'horrendous' karoake rendition of stp's "big bang baby" even more epic.

[GAROVORKIN]

On 11/7/2017 at 7:04 PM, HoodedCrow said:

Julius Caesar reformed the calendar and look what happened to him.

 

It wasn't the calendar that caused his downfall. 

[Astromech]

On ‎11‎/‎7‎/‎2017 at 6:22 PM, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

It was that Leap Year thang. It threw him off when it was time to beware the Ides of March.

That would make for a fantastic skit.

[Manhole Eunuchsbane]

2 minutes ago, Astromech said:

That would make for a fantastic skit.

It's got potential, right?

[Astromech]

17 minutes ago, Manhole Eunuchsbane said:

It's got potential, right?

Yes. I could see it fitting perfectly into something like Mel Brooks' A History of the World Part I.

[Lany Freelove Cassandra]

I have often thought about this on a personal level. I know what emotional issues led to the decisions I made, and how wrong those decisions were for me in the long run.

I would pick a different job when I joined the army.  I would go into intelligence from the start, not transfer later in my career.

the biggest thing that would be different is I would not have met my 1st husband, and that is ok.  I picked a man (men really, as #2 is the same) that held the values I thought I was supposed to have, not one who understood me and my values. I didn't learn acceptance of myself until so much later in life.

I don't think there would be anything more than minor ripples in the world at large. Other than the husbands, the 2 other people who would be greatly affected by this decision are my nephews, as I would have kept them.

[GAROVORKIN]

I would advise  Ming Emperor Hongxi  of China (lived in the 15th Century )  not to burn is great fleet of ships.  I would tell him  that China needs to look outward and engage the  world  and not turn inward .  A different choice here would have made made a huge difference in world history. 

[mankytoes]

6 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

I would advise  Ming Emperor Hongxi  of China (lived in the 15th Century )  not to burn is great fleet of ships.  I would tell him  that China needs to look outward and engage the  world  and not turn inward .  A different choice here would have made made a huge difference in world history. 

Would it have been a good influence though? I guess there could be some pretty exciting technological innovation with Chinese influence into Europe, not sure I really would want their authoritarian political and social culture coming over to Europe.

[GAROVORKIN]

1 hour ago, mankytoes said:

Would it have been a good influence though? I guess there could be some pretty exciting technological innovation with Chinese influence into Europe, not sure I really would want their authoritarian political and social culture coming over to Europe.

 I don't think China would have necessarily ended up dominating Europe but it would've  curtailed its  expansion and influence to large degree.  It might have also prevented the Europe Slave Trade in Africa .  Very likely, China have would end up colonizing Australia and very possibly South America and a good part of North America.  In such an alternate timeline , history might have been rendered less bloody.

[mankytoes]

17 minutes ago, GAROVORKIN said:

 I don't think China would have necessarily ended up dominating Europe but it would've  curtailed its  expansion and influence to large degree.  It might have also prevented the Europe Slave Trade in Africa .  Very likely, China have would end up colonizing Australia and very possibly South America and a good part of North America.  In such an alternate timeline , history might have been rendered less bloody.

Why do you think that? There's nothing in China's colonisation of its' neighbours, or "centre of the world" ideology, that would lead me to think they would have been any more moderate colonists than the Europeans. It seems to me that another major power would have caused more conflict, and probably a large scale war between China and Europe.

I'm not sure that's overwhelmingly likely either. China's decision not to build itself up as a sea power wasn't just cultural, it was practical. Keeping such a massive area of land and number of people together has always been a huge challenge, so I'm not sure they would ever have been able to devote the same amount of resources to colonialism as England, for example. They might have made huge conquests for a time, but then when they fell into a civil war, those countries may well have either been taken by a rival or achieved independence.

[GAROVORKIN]

3 hours ago, mankytoes said:

Why do you think that? There's nothing in China's colonisation of its' neighbours, or "centre of the world" ideology, that would lead me to think they would have been any more moderate colonists than the Europeans. It seems to me that another major power would have caused more conflict, and probably a large scale war between China and Europe.

I'm not sure that's overwhelmingly likely either. China's decision not to build itself up as a sea power wasn't just cultural, it was practical. Keeping such a massive area of land and number of people together has always been a huge challenge, so I'm not sure they would ever have been able to devote the same amount of resources to colonialism as England, for example. They might have made huge conquests for a time, but then when they fell into a civil war, those countries may well have either been taken by a rival or achieved independence.

 

Speculation on my part, nothing more .

[Robin Of House Hill]

I'd prevent the extinction of dinosaurs.That ought to be sufficient to keep humans from overwhelming the world.