Now that I think about it, computing machines might be another good example. To the Wikipedia-mobile, Batman !
Abacuses (or abacii or however you spell them) existed in ancient Babylon, but were obviously quite primitive. Mechanical calculators were developed in the 17th century AD. Charles Babbage designed his Difference Engine in 1822, but the technology to build one did not yet exist (or if it did, it was more expensive than a battleship, which amounts to the same thing). Convergent improvements in computing technology as well as mechanical engineering led to the building of mechanical analytical engines a few decades later. Electronic computers began showing up in the 20th century; and today, we have the Internet for people to twitter on.
I don’t think anywhere along the line though, anyone said “with sufficiently advanced engineering we might create a network of electrical difference engines capable of communicating complex packages of information across the world, but this would take hundreds of years to develop.”
Some technologies are the results of long chains of developments, but I’m not aware of any cases of people conceiving of specific technologies hundreds of years down the chain based on any meaningful understanding of the principles at work.
I’m not aware of any cases of people conceiving of specific technologies hundreds of years down the chain based on any meaningful understanding of the principles at work.
I would assume that’s because, when you’re working hundreds of years down the chain, chances are very high that you’ll run in to some unexpected obstacle, and the final result will look sufficiently different that we dismiss the previous idea as having missed the true target (for instance, 1800s “space cannons” vs modern rocket ships).
That said, Tesla and Fermat both strike me as potential examples. It’s unclear whether they were making assertions without evidence to back themselves up, or if they really had a decent insight in to what we’d be doing centuries down the road, though. Tesla is largely considered crazy, but Fermat fascinated people long enough that they spent a few hundred years proving his last theorum (hey, an example of a 200 year waiting period!)
You might have a point about information networks; I don’t know enough about the history of computing to know whether Babbage or Turing or someone of that caliber ever proposed them. But there was definitely a need for difference engines and automated calculators, for use in financial and navigational calculations. This is why the technology developed so quickly (relatively speaking) once funding became available and mechanical engineering improved to the point where difference engines could actually be built.
Certainly, I would expect that if I follow the chain of thoughts that led to a technology back through time, the understanding of the underlying principles will grow less and less meaningful.
I don’t have a principled way of establishing where to draw the line along that continuum, and in the absence of such a principled threshold I am not certain how to distinguish this from a “No True Scotsman” argument.
For anyone else to distinguish it from a No True Scotsman argument would probably require me to have been much more precise than I’m in the habit of being in regular conversation, but I have a pretty solid idea of what I meant when I made my original claim, and I’d be able to tell if a particular example met my specifications. Of course, if there were anything really obvious that qualified, I’d be likely to have thought of it before and not made the claim in the first place.
Anyway, it’s possible that there are specific technologies that were conceived of hundreds of years in advance of the point where it was possible to implement them according to the specifications I have in mind, and I’m not aware of it, but if they were conceived of before the industrial revolution, I don’t think we can take it as a very meaningful precedent to generalize from now.
Now that I think about it, computing machines might be another good example. To the Wikipedia-mobile, Batman !
Abacuses (or abacii or however you spell them) existed in ancient Babylon, but were obviously quite primitive. Mechanical calculators were developed in the 17th century AD. Charles Babbage designed his Difference Engine in 1822, but the technology to build one did not yet exist (or if it did, it was more expensive than a battleship, which amounts to the same thing). Convergent improvements in computing technology as well as mechanical engineering led to the building of mechanical analytical engines a few decades later. Electronic computers began showing up in the 20th century; and today, we have the Internet for people to twitter on.
I don’t think anywhere along the line though, anyone said “with sufficiently advanced engineering we might create a network of electrical difference engines capable of communicating complex packages of information across the world, but this would take hundreds of years to develop.”
Some technologies are the results of long chains of developments, but I’m not aware of any cases of people conceiving of specific technologies hundreds of years down the chain based on any meaningful understanding of the principles at work.
I would assume that’s because, when you’re working hundreds of years down the chain, chances are very high that you’ll run in to some unexpected obstacle, and the final result will look sufficiently different that we dismiss the previous idea as having missed the true target (for instance, 1800s “space cannons” vs modern rocket ships).
That said, Tesla and Fermat both strike me as potential examples. It’s unclear whether they were making assertions without evidence to back themselves up, or if they really had a decent insight in to what we’d be doing centuries down the road, though. Tesla is largely considered crazy, but Fermat fascinated people long enough that they spent a few hundred years proving his last theorum (hey, an example of a 200 year waiting period!)
You might have a point about information networks; I don’t know enough about the history of computing to know whether Babbage or Turing or someone of that caliber ever proposed them. But there was definitely a need for difference engines and automated calculators, for use in financial and navigational calculations. This is why the technology developed so quickly (relatively speaking) once funding became available and mechanical engineering improved to the point where difference engines could actually be built.
Certainly, I would expect that if I follow the chain of thoughts that led to a technology back through time, the understanding of the underlying principles will grow less and less meaningful.
I don’t have a principled way of establishing where to draw the line along that continuum, and in the absence of such a principled threshold I am not certain how to distinguish this from a “No True Scotsman” argument.
For anyone else to distinguish it from a No True Scotsman argument would probably require me to have been much more precise than I’m in the habit of being in regular conversation, but I have a pretty solid idea of what I meant when I made my original claim, and I’d be able to tell if a particular example met my specifications. Of course, if there were anything really obvious that qualified, I’d be likely to have thought of it before and not made the claim in the first place.
Anyway, it’s possible that there are specific technologies that were conceived of hundreds of years in advance of the point where it was possible to implement them according to the specifications I have in mind, and I’m not aware of it, but if they were conceived of before the industrial revolution, I don’t think we can take it as a very meaningful precedent to generalize from now.