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Message: <blockquote data-quote="UngainlyTitan" data-source="post: 8418640" data-attributes="member: 28487">The first bit of this sounds like David Brin's "The Practice Effect" where the more a thing was used the better it became at being that thing. So poor people were always wearing new shoes and the rich hat the oldest shoes. An consequence of this effect is that manufacturing innovation never occurred since all things got more useful at their function the more they were used.Now leaving this aside, in my opinion if magic existed and relatively common, it would stifle innovation. My reasoning is that humans, by default think in terms of agency. The rain falls because of action of water spirits and rivers flow for the same reason. Add in magic, where the will of the caster imposes effect on the real world and I think that would reinforce that thinking.  Add in that people were in the past persuaded that kings and emperors were divine  or at least divinely appointed and those beliefs would be reinforced. State bureaucracies already acted to stifle innovation that threatened the political status quo (You should read the fun and games Ottoman Sultans had in trying to bring in printing presses in to the Ottoman Empire) . A lot of historical innovation took place in societies out side the great empires.The machinations of gods are a wild card and can be used to justify pretty much any course of development you want.In my opinion, tech and science did not have much to do with each other until the ninetieth century or so. Stuff gets invented in time but usually to solve a problem that is known. The better the tech base and specialists with free time to much about with stuff all contribute to invention.My view of the development of science is as follows, Agriculture leads to a interest in calendars, tilling a field to make a seed bed is a lot of work and if you time it right, in some place you might get two crops in and in some other places timing it wrong could result in losing the crop to a late frost.Now I suspect that our ancestors knew about the regularity of the heavens even before the invention of agriculture but calendars, astronomy, architecture and trade all lead to development in mathematics. A big innovation was the Greek notion that the world could be understood by reason. This notion (and it took a long while lead to the scientific method. Magic complicated this and a lot depends on how magic is done. If magic is highly individualistic in practice then it would hinder the notion that the universe can be reasoned out. I suppose you decide where you want to end up and adjust your ideas to make that happen.</blockquote>

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