In Sid Meier’s Civilization sure, but real history is a lot more complex than that. There were people who came to that conclusion since ancient times without it leading to a scientific and industrial revolution, because there were a lot more factors at play with those than just simply the idea of it.
The actual reason science took off is that there was a plague leading to a worker shortage leading to a wealth boom, while a lot of rich people had access to coffee and nothing to do.
While I, too, am a big fan of the Coffee hypothesis, it should be noted that lots of civilizations had access to caffeine and other stimulants, including the Arabs, Chinese and Incas and probably the Roman’s, Greeks and Persians too.
And there were a lot of plagues, but most of them happened long before the scientific revolution.
Free time and the wealth to have that time is what I also think the catalyst is. Same with arts. You can’t do experiments or spend time on art if your entire life is consumed by labor.
Did the Greeks not do experiments? They knew math. They even hypothetically knew about atoms.
The Greeks held themselves back because most of their intellectual elite considered abstract thought as more noble than hands-on experimenting.
Also Aristotle accidently killing atomic theory for over 2000 years
Same can be said of all the ancient civilizations.
But the key insight is that all of nature is predictable and behaves according to natural laws that can be deduced through experiments.
That leads to the scientific revolution which leads to the industrial revolution.
In Sid Meier’s Civilization sure, but real history is a lot more complex than that. There were people who came to that conclusion since ancient times without it leading to a scientific and industrial revolution, because there were a lot more factors at play with those than just simply the idea of it.
An idea has to be widely accepted to be useful.
Just having one person think about it while the rest of society doesn’t is insufficient.
The actual reason science took off is that there was a plague leading to a worker shortage leading to a wealth boom, while a lot of rich people had access to coffee and nothing to do.
While I, too, am a big fan of the Coffee hypothesis, it should be noted that lots of civilizations had access to caffeine and other stimulants, including the Arabs, Chinese and Incas and probably the Roman’s, Greeks and Persians too.
And there were a lot of plagues, but most of them happened long before the scientific revolution.
Free time and the wealth to have that time is what I also think the catalyst is. Same with arts. You can’t do experiments or spend time on art if your entire life is consumed by labor.
So the time traveler needs to have been exposed to COVID, got it.