Another Counterfactual Civilization with Science as its Central Project
Is a scientific civilization possible in an idyllic rural economy?
In Scientific Civilization: The Central Project I attempted to isolate the idea of a civilization with science as its central project and the idea of a civilization in which science is a means to an end, economically significant but not the central project of the civilization in question.
As a counterfactual example of a civilization with science as its central project, but in which science remains economically marginal, I constructed this scenario:
India has an unusually philosophical civilization, with countless traditions and a demographically significant portion of the population engaged in philosophically-related activities. If we imagine, as a counterfactual, the Indian subcontinent developing independently without contact with other civilizations, transitioning from a primarily agrarian-ecclesiastical civilization, to a philosophical civilization to a scientific civilization, without the underlying economic infrastructure dramatically changing, the result could be a scientific civilization in the sense of a civilization with science as its central project, though without what we would think of, after the advent of industrialization, as a civilization the economic structure of which is “scientific.”
Another counterfactual of economically marginal science as a central project of a civilization as a consequence of my recent post Counterfactuals in Planetary History, in which I considered the possibilities for Germany had the victorious Allies enforced the Morgenthau Plan of division and de-industrialization. In Counterfactuals in Planetary History I wrote:
One can even imagine this rural and agrarian Germany in the post-Cold War period, surviving under changed political and economic conditions. One can easily predict that the area would have become a major tourist draw because of its very different way of life, and once the restrictions on industrialization either became irrelevant or were gradually lifted, one could imagine many in the population wanting to keep the region rural and agricultural, partly because they had become familiar with the life, partly because of the tourist income from it, and partly because large industrial works are no longer the paradigm of economic development in the world at present. Whereas industries built on the scale of Stalinist gigantism were once the fetish of economic planners, this is no longer true. Cottage industries and craft traditions would have developed in a unique way in a Morgenthau Plan Germany, which might well have had a bright future in the 21st century.
There are many different ways in which de-industrialization might be enforced, and different degrees of severity in the enforcement. Morgenthau went into some detail of his plan for the de-industrialization of Germany in his book, Germany is Our Problem. Morgenthau’s vision for preventing Germany from every again engaging in industrialized warfare was to remove heavy industries from the country, though he did not go so far as to recommend de-electrification. His plan seems to have been aimed at the “commanding heights” of the industrial economy,
In the case of an enforced de-industrialization, a civilization might continue to be scientific, might even have science as its central project, but, as a condition of its enforced agrarian economy, would not possess an industrialized economy driven by scientific discovery. If schools and universities continued to operate, and the economy produced enough surplus value to support scholars who would not make a significant economic contribution, there is no reason that scientific research could not continue, though big science would not be possible. Here, then, is another form of civilization, another counterfactual, with science as its central project, but in which science is economically marginal. One could think of this as a socially engineered high level equilibrium trap.
It would be possible to formulate a variation on the theme of the zoo hypothesis according to which an entire planet might not only be observed, but might be forced to remain at some arrested state of economic development. Indeed, I have read several science fiction novels where this was the premise. Clifford Simak especially employed this theme in more than one novel. This suggests further counterfactuals.
What aspects of a civilization could be selectively repressed, i.e., subject to enforced limitations, and have the civilization remain intact? Science? Philosophy? Art? Politics? In a more Machiavellian formulation, and in a variation on the zoo hypothesis in which the zookeepers retain their invisibility, a civilization could be internally sabotaged by a highly advanced civilization that could selectively remove certain innovations to keep a civilization at a certain level of development (the antithesis of the familiar theme of alien technology transfers).
An advanced civilization might do this simply as a scientific experiment, to see what happens if a civilization is kept below a certain threshold of development indefinitely. This could be the source of a million-year-old civilization that never expands beyond its homeworld -- something I have speculated on in other posts (cf. e.g., The Globular Cluster Opportunity) -- that is to say, a million-year-old civilization that is not a supercivilization. This might be a question that a genuine supercivilization would want to study.
In a million-year-old civilization selectively limited to keep its development below a certain threshold, the landscape would be littered with ruins from hundreds if not thousands of past civilizations. (Claude Lorrain, Landscape with Apollo and the Cumaean Sibyl, 1645-49, Oil on canvas, The Hermitage, St. Petersburg)
