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Old 06-20-2022, 06:35 AM   #11
whswhs
 
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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Originally Posted by Phil Masters View Post
Similarly, genetics would be comprehensible in principle, though the ideas involved hadn't been pulled together at this date, but explaining genetic engineering would be tricky, because you'd have to explain atomic theory in some detail to explain DNA, and while that doesn't violate many fundamental principles, it's just way, way beyond what's understood. I think you'd just have to label it "superscience" or imagine your 1822 SF writer working through two centuries of development in multiple fields, none of it absolutely incomprehensible but all overwhelming by sheer volume.
Where genetics is concerned, I have read a passage by William Bateson, an eminent biologist and the man who coined the word "genetics," reviewing the first studies of chromosomal function. He dismissed the idea that chromosomes were the locus of heredity out of hand, saying that they had no discernible fine structure and that the idea that they played a role in passing on inherited traits was simply not credible.

The supposition that particles of chromatin, indistinguishable from each other and indeed almost homogeneous under any known test, can by their material nature confer all the properties of life surpasses the range of even the most convinced maerialism.

From his perspective, at least, molecular genetics and the technologies based on it would be superscience.
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Old 06-20-2022, 08:47 AM   #12
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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So I don't think electromagnetic wavelengths beyond IR and UV need to count as "1822 superscience"; once you have the idea of EM radiation as a wave, playing with the idea of very long and very short wavelengths is simply building on what's known.
A quick look reinforced my idea that before Maxwell you didn't have such a thing. At 1822 you have wave theory of light pulling ahead of particle theory of light (which was championed by Newton) but it's not until well into the 1900s that you get the necessity of wave-particle duality and you're into quantum mechncis then.
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Old 06-20-2022, 10:03 AM   #13
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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Originally Posted by Fred Brackin View Post
A quick look reinforced my idea that before Maxwell you didn't have such a thing. At 1822 you have wave theory of light pulling ahead of particle theory of light (which was championed by Newton) but it's not until well into the 1900s that you get the necessity of wave-particle duality and you're into quantum mechncis then.
You don't need a concept of wave-particle duality to admit to radiation outside the visual spectrum. You won't be able to predict a number of its properties without quantum mechanics (e.g. they knew about Fraunhofer lines but had no idea what they meant) but the idea doesn't require anything but wave mechanics.

I think a lot of modern science in 1822 would fall into the "unobtainium" category rather than the "impossible" category -- i.e. "X would be possible if Y existed, but as far as we know Y doesn't exist".
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Old 06-20-2022, 10:52 AM   #14
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

Nuclear energy was considered to be "science fiction" all the way up to the beggining of the 20th century.

Anything Relativity or Quantum Mechanics is basically superscience for the 19th century. So, our GPS "it's like magic!"

Genetic Engineering in all forms. For the 19th century, our modern gene manipulation would be as "scientific" as the monster "Adam" of Dr. Frankeinstein.

Airplanes! Flight was considered impossible. Airplanes for the 19th century would be as "scientific" as Star Trek FTL Warp Drives to us. How does that work? Magic! Sending rockets out of our own atmosphere would be as ridiculous as flying carpets.
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Old 06-20-2022, 11:23 AM   #15
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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Nuclear energy was considered to be "science fiction" all the way up to the beggining of the 20th century.
As we understand it. "Nuclear energy" in the 19th century was more akin what we would call electron transfer/bonding than anything to do with the atom.

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Anything Relativity or Quantum Mechanics is basically superscience for the 19th century. So, our GPS "it's like magic!"
Depends on how GPS was explained. Triangulation via light sources was well known in 1822. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are so anti-newtonian that yes they would be regarded as Superscience.

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Genetic Engineering in all forms. For the 19th century, our modern gene manipulation would be as "scientific" as the monster "Adam" of Dr. Frankeinstein.
Genetic Engineering to someone of the 19th century would likely be viewed as another word for 'selective breeding'. (Star Trek's "Space Seed" originally used this mechanic before it was retconned in the movies and later shows)

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Airplanes! Flight was considered impossible.
Heavier than air powered flight was considered impossible. The first balloon went aloft November 21, 1783 and a glider was well within TL 5 technology. There was even an attempt by a monk (Eilmer of Malmesbury) in the 11th-century. Man-lifting kites go back to the 9th century and appeared in Europe in the 1820s (George Pocock used his own kids to test the things).

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How does that work? Magic! Sending rockets out of our own atmosphere would be as ridiculous as flying carpets.
Actually the story of a Chinese official who supposed tried to launch himself into space by having forty-seven rockets strapped to a chair and lit simultaneously could have been known in 1822 Europe. So the idea wouldn't have been seen as that off the wall bonkers.
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Old 06-20-2022, 11:29 AM   #16
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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You don't need a concept of wave-particle duality to admit to radiation outside the visual spectrum.
OK, how about radiation passing through a wall?

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Originally Posted by KarlKost View Post
Genetic Engineering in all forms. For the 19th century, our modern gene manipulation would be as "scientific" as the monster "Adam" of Dr. Frankeinstein.
Yeah well, I'm not if scientists at the time had ruled out whether something like Frankenstein's monster would be impossible or not.

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Airplanes! Flight was considered impossible.
They had hot air balloons and gliders. They understood Newtonian motion (action/reaction). The missing piece is energy density, and is that not one of the key features of futuristic tech levels?
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Old 06-20-2022, 11:41 AM   #17
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OK, how about radiation passing through a wall?
The idea of transparency, and selective transparency, was known, though they didn't understand how to determine it. As such, the idea of a wavelength that walls are transparent to would be unobtainium (not forbidden, but doesn't exist as far as we know).
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Old 06-20-2022, 11:53 AM   #18
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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Originally Posted by maximara View Post
As we understand it. "Nuclear energy" in the 19th century was more akin what we would call electron transfer/bonding than anything to do with the atom.
The electron was only discovered in 1897. Its discovery led to the "plum pudding model" in which electrons were floating about like raisins in a big sphere of positive charge. The idea of a separate nucleus dates to 1911, when experimental results showed that the plum pudding model didn't work. There was no concept of a "nucleus" in the 19th century. Nor was there any idea of the vast energy that atoms contained; Lord Kelvin rejected Darwinism because he had calculated the maximum possible energy content of the sun and estimated that it could only be a few tens of millions of years old, too short for the historical span geologists asserted.

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Depends on how GPS was explained. Triangulation via light sources was well known in 1822. Relativity and Quantum Mechanics are so anti-newtonian that yes they would be regarded as Superscience.
Relativity is a corollary to Maxwell's equations; it reformulates mechanics in terms that are consistent with the behavior of electromagnetic radiation. Maxwell first published in 1865. Before then, relativity wasn't even a problem for physicists.

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Genetic Engineering to someone of the 19th century would likely be viewed as another word for 'selective breeding'. (Star Trek's "Space Seed" originally used this mechanic before it was retconned in the movies and later shows)
That's consistent with Darwin's discussion of artificial selection in The Origin of Species. But no one would have calling it "genetic engineering"; the term genetics dates to the early 20th century.

Quote:
Heavier than air powered flight was considered impossible. The first balloon went aloft November 21, 1783 and a glider was well within TL 5 technology. There was even an attempt by a monk (Eilmer of Malmesbury) in the 11th-century. Man-lifting kites go back to the 9th century and appeared in Europe in the 1820s (George Pocock used his own kids to test the things).
Heavier than air powered flight was impossible. The power output of steam engines was too small in proportion to their mass to make an aeronef workable. And that was even more true before the invention of the steam turbine in the 1890s. It wasn't a lack of theory that was the issue; it was the low power-to-weight ratio of available engines. (Though admittedly how to control the flight path was a secondary issue.)
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Old 06-20-2022, 11:54 AM   #19
Fred Brackin
 
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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You don't need a concept of wave-particle duality to admit to radiation outside the visual spectrum.".
You need to more than admit to it when it is discovered. You need a coherent theory that predicts its' existence before it is discovered. You don't get that before Maxwell.
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Old 06-20-2022, 11:59 AM   #20
whswhs
 
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Default Re: 1822 superscience

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I think a lot of modern science in 1822 would fall into the "unobtainium" category rather than the "impossible" category -- i.e. "X would be possible if Y existed, but as far as we know Y doesn't exist".
A case might be made that unobtainium counts as superscience.

Consider, for example, undiscovered elements. Mendeleev made a big impression by pointing out gaps in his "periodic table," predicting that elements would be found to fill them, and estimating their properties, and having his predictions borne out. In popular fiction, this led to talk of "new elements" without any attempt to fit them into the periodic table, which of course is pure pseudoscience (kryptonite being the most famous example). But there were also stories about transuranic elements that postulated that they were more or less stable and had various useful properties. I don't think it was initially known that such elements had no stable forms. So were the postulated high-atomic-number elements pseudoscience (because we know now that they're impossible) or superscience (because finding stable forms would contradict now known science) or superscience in a broader sense (because at the time they simply hadn't been discovered)?
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