Science in High Middle Ages

[Quickleaf]

How do you represent science in a world based on the high middle ages, overall more advanced than western europe but behind the islamic world?

In my new D&D campaign I'm going for a bit of the "Brotherhood of the Wolf" / "The Witcher" vibe with heroes who have access to laboratories to conduct research. I envision a nascent science observed by a few as a foil to faith and magic, one in which optics, algebra, mechanics, chemistry, and the like play an important role to the educated.

I've thought of just modeling this with the Alchemy feat and thematic descriptions/DMing. However, I'm wondering if if would be even more interesting/effective to add a new Knowledge skill representing a body of scientific knowledge?

Have you done something similar in your campaign?

 

[Dr. Strangemonkey]

How do you represent science in a world based on the high middle ages, overall more advanced than western europe but behind the islamic world?

In my new D&D campaign I'm going for a bit of the "Brotherhood of the Wolf" / "The Witcher" vibe with heroes who have access to laboratories to conduct research. I envision a nascent science observed by a few as a foil to faith and magic, one in which optics, algebra, mechanics, chemistry, and the like play an important role to the educated.

I've thought of just modeling this with the Alchemy feat and thematic descriptions/DMing. However, I'm wondering if if would be even more interesting/effective to add a new Knowledge skill representing a body of scientific knowledge?

Have you done something similar in your campaign?

Umm, huh.

Given the actual intellectual structures of the period I don't know if you could use it as a foil to faith very effectively. The high medieval church was pretty pro-natural science. At least as it was understood at the time.

Or rather, you'd probably see small communities of people doing 'science' in different modes and some of these might be hostile to the church, but there would also be a lot of people involved in the church performing similar work with no agenda whatsoever beyond discovering more about god's creation and maybe doing a better job integrating Aristotelian and Arabic sources.

Which might be the operative mode to emphasize: that aside from technical and trade applications this science is going to be done more in the context of great works and books than it is in terms of other scientists.

On the other hand, herbalism and zoology is going to be huge, particularly where it combines with para or supernatural elements. Loads of people are going to be interested in various weird aspects of astronomy.

Optics is going to be a Greek thing that's slowly transmitting around, and, oddly, it's going to be pretty synonomous with engineering in a lot of ways.

Mechanically I would just run it off of the knowledge skills that are already in existence. There's not enough knowledge to form a seperate body and most scientific forms are going to be sub-disciplines in service to other bodies of knowledge.

So I suppose I'd divide it up between Nature, Arcane, Thievery, Religion, Healing, History, Dungeoneering, and Nature.

 

[Whimsical]

Wizards are the scientists of the D&D world. They explore the natural phenomenon of magic, discern and chart the laws of this aspect of their reality, experiment to qualify magical forces, then establish recipes for channeling this natural power source in a reliable predicable fashion.

Subsequently, because of the methodology of D&D wizards, I have scientific information included as part of the Arcane skill. Wizards are the ones who are the physicists of their reality.

They could explore ways to use non-magical forces and elements for their purposes, but why? It's like a modern-day engineer deciding to make a steam-powered computer. You could do it, but electricity would work much better. Such would be the case with magic in a D&D universe.

Previous to 3e D&D, I could see dwarves and gnomes pursuing non-magical inventions. But that was because they couldn't use magic, or couldn't use magic that wasn't illusionary in the case of gnomes.

 

[Mark]

You might want to pick up a book or two from the library on important inventions in history and decide where it is best to place your campaign. You also might want to fudge where certain inventions fall on the timeline. I ran a mostly ancient campaign once but decided I wanted the stirrup to already exist, for instance.

 

[Ed_Laprade]

There's a lot of practical/pragmatic architecture and mechanical engineering around, but not a whole lot of science behind it. It works because it works. More like magic really, so Wizards are probably your best bet.

 

[Jack7]

I like a lot of the comments already posted.

In my human world the Wizard actually is a scientist (a proto-physicist and natural scientist in this case) as the Mage is in other respects and fields of pursuit.

In that context though science is far less a "science" as it is thought of today (based upon purely physically testable hypotheses and theorems, empirically demonstrated with the intent of being replicable and provable to others) as it was the pursuit of curious individuals and of individual geniuses.

In other words proto-scientists (by today's standards) were not so much interested in proving scientific knowledge for the sake of dissemination and technological advance (or profit) as they were interested in delving into secrets, discovering the true working of God's universe, and of gaining power and knowledge over the forces of nature in a way that other's lacked.

In some ways, as the Doc pointed out many in the church were the leaders and developers in science because they saw it as both a religious method of studying nature and God, and they wanted to gain the ability to understand and manipulate the world as God did, so scientific knowledge and mastery also had an element of Theophany. As well as epiphany, and enthusiasm (as the Greeks meant the term en-theosim, "to be possessed by god").

I guess what I'm trying to say is that science at that point was an "arcane discipline" and for various reasons you didn't run around publicly disseminating all you knew, nor did you necessarily want others to know what you knew or to be able to replicate what you could demonstrate. Your fame, reputation, mastery, skill, and understanding were often closely guarded secrets.

So instead of a circulating body of knowledge you might consider making it a concealed or covert body of knowledge (of course one definition of arcane is secret knowledge. So in my opinion, as with Wizards in my world, scientific knowledge is closely guarded. (Though there are those in the church, among the nobility, and in general society who want such knowledge popularly disseminated, there are also those in the church, nobility, and society who want it suppressed, for obviously different religious, social, cultural, and political reasons.)

What I'm saying is I don't think of it as an open body of knowledge or skill, but a very covert and secretive opus, much like alchemy in particular, one which is passed along more by code, notation in obscure texts and by an apprentice like relationship, rather than freely disseminated.

But then again I personally think that Wizard or Wizard-like proto-science based characters are extremely versatile, interesting, fascinating, and fun to play character types. Especially when combined with inventive and engineering capabilities.

 

[Varianor Abroad]

What is the mechanical benefit to the player? Or the mechanical disadvantage (such as having to spend extra points on this skill)?

To the medieval mind, alchemy, science, mysticism and advanced thinking often fit under one category, that didn't necessarily have a label. Have you read Stephenson's semi-historical fiction, such as Quicksilver? It's a little after the period you describe, but it brings to life the origins of Natural Philosophy and other early scientific disciplines/explorations. The Philosophers did not distinguish at all between anything that they were interested in. It was all one subject. Look at the notebooks of Da Vinci. He explored dozens of different subjects without wondering how they fit together into a classification of skill.

The real issue is that D&D uses various Knowledge skills to categorize types of information, primarily to provide information to fight monsters and to solve puzzles. If "scientific" knowledge is the focus of the game, then I would suggest adding it to an existing skill as described up-thread. Or delete an unused skill and replace it with Knowledge: Science.

Now the laboratories part might also be relevant. Can they do more with scientific laboratories? Or is it just part of the flavor?

 

[Quickleaf]

Given the actual intellectual structures of the period I don't know if you could use it as a foil to faith very effectively. The high medieval church was pretty pro-natural science. At least as it was understood at the time.

Good point, much of the proto-sciences was seen as the ultimate act of faith to discover the secrets of God's creation. However, in a world with the supernatural, some of this (as you mention zoology and herbalism) could border on blasphemous or at least highly suspect and the church might prefer to see it supressed or at least contained.

In other words proto-scientists (by today's standards) were not so much interested in proving scientific knowledge for the sake of dissemination and technological advance (or profit) as they were interested in delving into secrets, discovering the true working of God's universe, and of gaining power and knowledge over the forces of nature in a way that other's lacked.

Yes, this is the approach I'm taking too. Proto-science (or whatever it is called) is practiced in secret by an elite few. While I can certainly see this being the province of wizards, the feel I'm going for allows martial and divine types access to this knowledge as well...though it should cost them something.

What is the mechanical benefit to the player? Or the mechanical disadvantage (such as having to spend extra points on this skill)?

Well, some of the things I'd like characters to be able to do might be better handled by skill challenges - for example, monstrous forensics. Alchemy is a new feat in 4th edition, so that along with Arcana covers alchemical lore.

Now the laboratories part might also be relevant. Can they do more with scientific laboratories? Or is it just part of the flavor?

Flavor, yes, but I envision it as the place where they brew potions (Brew Potion ritual), concoct alchemical solutions (Alchemy feat), perform monstrous forensics (bonus to monster knowledge skill check?), extract magic components (for rituals/magic item creaton) or poisons from monster corpses, create disguises out of a monster's skin or trophies/fetishes, silver coat weapons or apply other combat oils, develop unique ways to penetrate a monster's resistances or take advantage of their vulnerabilities, and probably a bunch more.

 

[ferratus]

A historical point of order here. Discoveries, experiments, and discussions of natural philosophy were rigorously cataloged as commentaries to larger works. While they had some notions of experiment as a proof (since they used them in their commentaries), they did not have the ideology of the scientific method but put more emphasis on logic and argument.

A lot of the "secret lore" and other stuff the posters are talking about did exist in the middle ages, but a lot of that was by pseudo-intellectuals pushing ideas that were a laughing stock among various institutions of authority (particularly universities) but were a smash hit among the fat bourgeois who were pleased to dabble in things that the Church "didn't want them to know". So you would have people writing stuff under Arab pseudonyms (since that made it exotic, mysterious and authoritative), occultism, alternate histories, and all the other flaky stuff you can find trying to pass itself off as history or science in your local large bookstores today.

One should also keep in mind that science was far more empirical in the High Middle Ages than it was afterward, when the scholastic method fell out of fashion and Platonism had a resurgence. Rene Descartes for example, wanted to put his faith in "pure reason" as he wanted to do without the deference to the authorities of the past.

The scholastic method and Aristotle stayed fashionable in England, where it morphed into the philosophy of empiricism with the Baconian method and other developments.

The best resource I've found for the history of science in the middle ages that is easily digestible is some TTC (The Teaching company) lectures. These are taped university lectures from a class called "History of Science - Antiquity to 1700." Put what's in quotation marks into Google and it should help you to find the TTC site they can be downloaded from.

 

[Kid Charlemagne]

You might want to take a look at the Northern Crown setting. Its set in a fictionalized New World, and one of the classes is the Natural Philosopher - he gets inventions instead of creating magic items, and they set the inventions at certain gold piece and level limits, so that as you get more skilled you can invent more stuff (flying ships, etc). It might be worth pillaging that class for your game.

You might also want to pick up Neil Stephenson's Baroque Cycle books. Its set in the late 17th century/early 18th century, and one of the major themes is the birth of what we would consider science from alchemy. Its a great trio of books, and it covers the same kind of ground that you are considering, though without magic.