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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Dr. Strangemonkey" data-source="post: 929846" data-attributes="member: 6533">Ah, but it is our particular modern and logical perspective enables us to better understand the pseudo-middle ages and their subsequent history far more accurately than the poor enlightenment saps who chose to ignore and misconstrue the foundations of their own world.  We have only to take it up.  The class based society of the middle ages and the polytheistic - pantheistic being something present but distinct within Greek society - Greeks were two of the most dynamic societies in world history and arguably the two that contributed most to our current technical societies.  The middle ages are characterized by tremendous technical advances and achievements, not to mention fantastic new systems for preserving technology.  And the class based society is a lot of what makes that possible.And the Greeks certainly did have heroes who walked alongside their philosophers, unless you would care to characterize Alexander the Great as just another general.The elite became the elite by virtue of a desire to rule men, fighting is only an aspect of that.  The warriors work for the elite, just like the inventor works for the business man.  To the elite, strategic value is everything, noone is going to want a million vassals when they could have the grovelling loyalty of a hundred princes.The elites do not inadvertantly accelerate technology, they are responsible for it.  Lower-class innovators are simply an additional tool in this process.Look at the major technical powerhouses of this century and the last, America and Britain are certainly strong democracies, but they are also highly developed producers of untouchable and incredibly powerful elites.Elites who made the clever trade of allowing the people greater power in exchange for greater service and little responsibility to society as a whole save through taxation and the ancilliary benefits of their ceaseless competition.  Enabling them to harness democracy for their own ends.Not to say that it doesn't exist for other reasons, but societies that house a dissaproving elite certainly have a hard go of it.Technological progress is certainly not inevitable, it does happen, but it happens by fits and starts and in highly specific situations.  Look at the technological variance in our own world for proof of this, much less that of the nineteenth century.And one of the greatest producers of this variance is revolution,  revolutionary societies are very poor innovators.  Compare revolutionary France to Britain or even France well after the elite had been reinstated.  Compare the United States to the Soviet Union.My point is not that magic will or won't retard technological progress but that it has relatively equal potential to do both, as the real work for technological progress will be performed by a whole host of societal factors for whom Magic will simply be another tool.  And an argument that a magically reinforced elite will retard technological progress ignores the actuall dynamics of technologies relationship to the elite and their relationship to the rest of society.But as I said earlier, just pick a theory and run with it recognizing that there is no strong consensus on the dynamic of technology in history and that it's relevance to an actual historical scene will be just as fictional as the system of magic you create.</blockquote>

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