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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 926851" data-attributes="member: 6533">I don't think there has ever been a satisfactory explanation for why 'progress' does or does not occur save that it is tied to organized distribution and education.  This isn't necessary for technological progress it simply makes it more persistent.You certainly don't need magic to prevent technological advancement.  Most of our existence as a species has not been a sterling example of rapid or consistent progress of any sort.I mean the rapid scientific 'progress' feel to the past couple hundred years certainly seems to be an aberration in human history perhaps only rivaled by the city building of the Fertile Crescent.  I don't think anybody has the frame to say whether or not magic would have or wouldn't have interfered with the factors that created our current state.My suggestion would be to find a theory for the scientific revolution that sounds appealing to you and work magic into it or out of it as suits your fancy.My only other specific point would be to approach this in a manner that recognizes that there is a lot of mythologizing that approaches the idea of scientific progresses when most of these issues are handled by people in a very pragmatic fashion.For instnace, much has been made of the flawed nature of a magical printing press in this thread already, but a magical printing press is going to have a lot of comparative advantages compared to a technological one.Wouldn't need as much maintenance, probably faster until you start to compare it with the really late model printing presses of this or the last century, only needs one guy or gal to create one even if it is an extraordinary guy, it's a much more easily perfectable technology than a non-magical one, and it's undoubtably even easier to control than a normal printing press.  Since the real success of a technology is generally measured by the extent to which the powerful institutions of a society come to believe in it, and one of the primary benefits of the early printing press was that it was an easily controllable way for a government to produce loads of stuff, there is a good argument for the idea that a magical printing press would easily dominate non-magical equivalents for some time if not indefinetely.</blockquote>

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