If you had to go back in time and explain modern science to, I don't know, a templar...

If you had to go back in time and explain modern science to, I don't know, a templar, what would you choose to explain and how would you explain it?

Also, keep in mind that you have to convince him that it's actual science, and not magic, or you're going to get burned at the stake.

show him the mighty of the automatic assault rifle with extended magazines??

No dice. You were dumb enough to get sucked into a surprise time portal without an automatic weapon at hand. Your only option is to lead a scientific and technological revolution.

I don't know! I would maybe use a simple chart that explains opposites to them. Then try and work from this duality idea and teach them about numbers and letters and then about how to use nature to...

Oh wait...

Don't blame the oppressive grip of the church and early LSD fungi for your inability to suck up to the rich. Just don't be weird.

Good start, but keep going.

I rush to produce penicillin, because if I don't I'll be dead within a month, considering what they ate at the time

heal a bunch of ailments of the time with it, everybody will think you're Hippocratus resurrected.

Yes, good, but
a) how do you produce it
b) how do explain penicillin to the terrified peasants who want to burn you at the stake?

u wot m8? They had physicians at the time you know
just tell them you found it in a rare book from Aristotle

Yes...
Yes...
Do as much good as possible, earning you the love of the people...
It just might work!

>how do you produce it
moldy bread
cook ir for a weak at 75°

>implying they knew what bacteria were
they killed women for making tea that didn't kill people.
This is like pulling teeth, for fucks sake. I don't care about how you survive, I'm asking how you explain high concept science to people who don't know that the earth revolves around the sun.

I'm not sure what your question is about anymore. How to not get burned, or how to introduce modern science ab initio?

Didn't the egyptians use bread mold? They didn't have penicillin.

Okay. Real talk:
I'm writing a fucking SGA fanfiction. Yes, I am embarrassed about it. One of the characters (the super smart science guy) has to prove that science isn't magic, but I don't want it to be obvious that I'm a complete retard when I write it.

And because I'm mad about it, I can't just not do it, either.

I'd make do with a "science for retards" website, but I thought this would be more fun, I guess.

I would teach them how to apply physics to war. The crusades would be successful and no Allah akbar.

Well I guess the steam engine would be a fairly good introduction to the idea.
Everyone understand that a cooking pot lifts the lid, so there's nothing magic in using it to make a machine move.

If I got teleported to the dark ages, I would join in the raping and pillaging. No use trying to use science there.

Huh. Good idea. The go-to idea always seems to be gravity, but you can't see gravity. This is much better.

Got to get hired by somebody first.

How did we convince the world today that science isn't magic?

Oh right. Microscopes.

I would start very slowly with simple conversations and questions, asking why people hold certain believes about the natural order of things, and emphasizing the concept of evidence-based conclusions. start with very very basic fundamentals (scientific method) as a philosophy. much later, when people have started warming up to this new philosophy, I would begin organizing public demonstrations of experimental methods, cause and effect relationships, etc. Like a communal lecture series with group discussion, open Q&A, etc

really hammer into their minds that every effect has a logical or demonstrable cause directly associated with it, and go from there. If they still can't understand or observe the cause of something, that's when you tell them it's God (gap theory) so you avoid getting lynched by a superstitious community

>present this as a collective thing, a reflexion group of sort
>let them debate
>just very subtly orient the conversation
my philosophy of science teacher in graduate school did that, it was like 12 of us, and he just put a little remark here and there to guide us
but goddam you have to be a fricking master to do that, to think of the right arguments at the right time

i would tell them to buy bitcoin

>a templar

Why? They get slaughtered anyway. In fact, you going back and telling them shit may have been the real reason they get slaughtered. Thanks for that. The up side is that you most likely died from dysentery before anything else major could be attributed to you.

Exactly. Yes it's time consuming, difficult and requires patience but its the same sort of method employed in many MD, DO and PA medical programs today (Problem Based Learning).

Supply the group with information and scenarios, initiate and guide the discussion, and let them come to their own conclusions.

Humans are more likely to accept a radical idea if they are manipulated to feel that they themselves are the ones spontaneously generating the idea

Do you mean engineering? They had ballistas, catapults and trebuchets already

You don't explain science to templars as you don't explain science to chads. You'd have to look for some alchemists / astrologists.

What could save your ass would probably be usability, like making soap, gunpowder, photographs.

Or spiderwebs

le christian dark ages meem

people wernt all fucking fucking retards you know

wonderful insight, smartass.
it's a hypothetical question.

>Also, keep in mind that you have to convince him that it's actual science, and not magic, or you're going to get burned at the stake.

You're fucking retarded.

see

I like that thought experiment. It got me thinking: which scientific results can be reproduced experimentally with stoneage or medieval level technology.

for example, to show that light has finite speed, you only need a telescope (thats how it was first noticed)

curvature of the earth can probably be shown locally somehow

>curvature of the earth can probably be shown locally somehow
Yeah- I'm pretty sure somebody already knew how to do that, either the egyptians or greeks (I'm leaning towards egyptians) used long ass ropes and shadows to calculate curvature. No idea where I heard that.

enlightenment era, some dude calculated the circumference of the Earth pretty accurately (within 1000 km I think) using the leaning tower of Pisa's shadow

I've actually thought about this a little, you'd have to convince the boss man that you'd be useful. The most immediately useful thing you could create would be weapons. If they already had crossbows you'd have to invent gunpowder. Your best hope would be to be the king's captive inventor/idea man, and you could master chemistry so that everyone's too scared of possibly being poisoned by you to say anything about the ever-growing pile of used up milkmaids at the base of your tower. Find a way to bring water to the place, aqueducts or something. Solve problems. Improve their maps. Eventually they will allow your more "witchy" science ideas to creep in because hey, you were right about all those other things.

No, the first guy was Eratosthenes of Cyrene, 200 BC. He also did the axis.

>Eratosthenes calculated the circumference of the Earth without leaving Egypt.

he knew when the sun was directly overhead in a city in egypt, measured the angle the sun was at at the same time in Alexandria, then sketched a model and scaled it up.

So- it was a greek dude who did it in Egypt.

You'd probably want to tell someone like Roger Bacon. Still, I wouldn't imagine it would catch on that widely; not that people were "retarded", the historical conditions just weren't quite ripe. Scholasticism was more about reason in support of God, not reason as an end in itself. The feudal order would have also meant widespread illiteracy.

The Templars might have been interested in practical applications, though. They had quite a financial operation going on, before the French king got to them.

What are you alluding to? I'm intrigued.

He's alluding to the fact that math and science were considered "work of the devil". Most demons were actually teachers that taught sinners math and science and shit.

>Most demons were actually teachers that taught sinners math and science
Based on the tests my university professors compose that's pretty fucking accurate.

Just explain things as they are with good foundations but attribute everything to Christ so I don't get executed for heresy.

>The Templars might have been interested in practical applications, though. They had quite a financial operation going on, before the French king got to them.
They were also pretty into geometry, so if you could reduce some concepts to geometric representation they would probably be with you.

>Hey if you boil some water it creates steam what if you like make something that spins off of it
>Kickstart steam engines
>Steampunk fantasy world is now real

Things that would have great technological impact, like steam engines and electricity.

>electricity
What are they going to do with it then? Not like they need to charge their phones, and the lightbulb is still afew hundred years out.

Yeah. Electricity is only useful in context. Everything you need to use it (power plants, grids, wires, appliances) make it pretty useless all things considered.

The only thing you could use electricity for would be setting shit on fire, but it's still less useful than just plain fire.

I mean, lightning rods would be useful. The church would probably be real thankful too.

It depends on how long you spend there, they could probably make use of it after a few decades, once steam and maybe other engines are commonplace. For example, you could use it to create long-distance communication via telegraphs.

I would build some simple instruments that let them explore new areas of the physical universe for themselves and draw their own conclusions; a telescope, a microscope, a compass, and the one thing they'd be keenly interested in: advanced metallurgy.

Nothing because I actually don't know shit about how to build anything so I can't reproduce anything. I'm pretty sure I could make a legit pizza if all the raw materials and some tools were offered to me.

It might even be possible to build a crude firearm with the technology available at the time. Black powder isn't hard to make and a cast-iron cannon would be possible.

repeating the same steps give the same results
how well you can repeat the steps make the result more accurate
so better cooking, better booze
making a simple "micro"scope to explain small things you can't see like germs, and why certain plants do what they do when you cook and eat them
stop people from getting sick
work up into things that would seem like magic carefully, like predicting the paths of stars accurately

if you want to be a cunt you can do all the war stuff as well but it's not what I would do
some asshole will do that after I'm dead anyway

but really I think basic shit like washing your fuckin hands would go pretty far

if you want to go into it you could use mice to try to show why fuckin your cousin is a bad idea that would be good

explain that the natural world is a sphere and limited, so don't keep having unlimited kids

and NO FUCKIN JEWS OR MUSLIMS OR CHRISTIANS
remove the cult of Abraham and the simpleton 1 god shit doesn't fuckin exist

let them know that science doesn't yet know what happens after you die though it's pretty sure that you're dead as fuck and that's just it, and it's a bigtime bummer

>Knights Templar
>remove the cult of Abraham
You'd be dog-food within five minutes.

I thought we were going back to stone age times I got carried away
Anyone who likes the knights templar has some sort of gay bottom fantasy about that shit anyway
Babies first interest in history == templars
that or the nazis

Most of human history we have largely been against science but pro engineering. Even today the average human says "if it doesn't lead to the next iPhone it's a waste of money". You'd only be able to explain science to an intellectual or a top leader, but good luck even getting in the same room with a top leader. Your best chance would be to become a monk, buddy up with some higher ranking priests and subtly suggest certain things with proof.

A steam engine would have a lot of immediate applications, go to the low countries of Europe and give them a steam powered sump pump.
I would also teach someone how to innnoculate for small pox for a hefty price.

Yeah, a couple people suggested steam before, and that's what I ended up going with. Steam make sense because it's directly observable and applicable, without having to use any kind of special equipment or environment.

And yeah, everyone says they'd use medicine, but does anyone here know how to produce medicine, exactly? I mean, tea is one thing, but like, penicillin? Everyone knows it comes from mold, but how do you make it?

If I do all that how will I have time to invent the fedora for my new euphorically enlightened society?

Only explain the scientific method and maybe some basic math to help him along.

Idk what medicines would be easy to make, but just enlightening people of the germ theory of disease would have a huge positive impact in terms of lives saved, and it's kinda related to medicine.

>disease would have a huge positive impact in terms of lives saved,
True, but there are a lot of easier things that'd also save millions of lives, like, Mercury, arsenic and cyanide is poisonous, washing your hands with water before you interact with patients is good, boiling water kills germs, blood-letting is dumb and stupid-

>washing your hands with water before you interact with patients is good, boiling water kills germs
Those things are implied by the germ theory of disease, like if diseases are caused by microorganisms, it makes sense to get rid of them by boiling water or by washing your hands.

Most of the science you could teach them would have very obvious practical benefits, it's only relatively recent scientific advancements that get called useless (the classic "the money that was spent on the LHC could have been spent on helping the poor" argument comes to mind).

oh! I think he would really like the auto assault rifle...

I'd reintroduce lost roman technology, like soap and then give the the archemedes screw and the steam piston. Instant industrial revolution.

The guy who made the plague doctor getup had a hypothesis sort of like germ theory. He thought tiny animals jump from person to person, hence the wax coating on the coat.

Yeah, he also thought disease was transmitted by smell, hence the "beak" which they stuffed flowers and herbs into.
I mean, that's a start- the problem isn't that they didn't have an idea, it's that it was too simplistic to be right.

Can confirm.
> Had a science tutor who was basically known as "the devil"
> In an all Christian school

> Remove the fucking jews
YEAH!!! Great stuff!
> Remove the muslims
YEAH!!! GREAT STUFF!!!
> Remove Christin
BURN HIM! God wills it!

Lol I'm pretty sure I was down the street that night

I'm a brainlet who reads Veeky Forums to feel smart. I literally couldn't teach them anything, in fact they'd probably have to teach me how to stay alive.

Aw, don't sell yourself short, idiot.

(I'm an idiot too)

I have considered this question several times, there's plenty of inventions that you could blow people away with, radio, for example

Yeah, but how do you explain a radio?

> I read Veeky Forums to feel smart?
Wut?
When i get lost on Veeky Forums i get brainraped by concepts i sometimes have to google.

C'mon man, it's pretty simple electronics

Uh, yeah. In the 1920s.
We're talking, what, 1200s?

explain how to make a working radio
i'll let you skip the part on how to actually make the components from raw materials but you must know how/why each component works and how it works together to form a working radio

without using the internet

i'll wait

No, but if you don't understand an lcr circuit then maybe you should

I'd ask the Templar for the recipe to gold out of base metals and gift him a fidget spinner in return.

"Oi got me 'ere some finely 21st Century gubbins."

>SGA fanfiction
Yes, this is relevant to my int-
Oh, he's talking about algebraic geometry... nevermind.

what?

>i would tell them to buy bitcoin
>middle-ages peasants

Well, you do have the right target audience...

I'd really like to see medieval humans try and reverse engineer any kind of rifle.

I know steam engine and gun powder off the top of my head. Probably just go back and give the Romans canons.

although before 1600 I wouldn't be able to talk to anyone.

I would probably get branded as a witch right off the bat because I don't look like them (I'd be wearing modern clothes etc).