This question has definitely been asked on the Straight Dope boards before, but never really answered to my full satisfaction, though each time the responses did arouse my interest. Every time, the OP has proposed some inane hypothetical scenario to explain the question, which then leads the debate to devolve into nitpicking the finer points of their proposal. So, to put it bluntly:
How much faster would humanity have achieved the modern level of technological and economic advancement if scientific knowledge had never been a limiting factor?
For clarification: When I say scientific knowledge, I mean all types of things that are useful to know; not just engineering, but political science, metallurgy, finance, taxidermy, whatever people might need to know. Use modern America as a standard of socio-economic advancement (or another first world country if you choose speculate on a different social model).
My own hypothesis is that it would take about 500 years to go from the state of nature to modern life. Assuming that people’s understanding of political science and economics would lead to good, efficient governance, the only thing holding humans back would the pace at which they can make tools, and then use those tools to make ever better tools.
I wanna get your input, and see what you guys think we could achieve and how fast we could achieve it.
How can it NOT be a limiting factor? If we don’t know how to do something, we can’t do it until we figure it out and that can take time depending on what we are trying to do/figure out.
500 years is clearly too long. You could probably build most machines of 1900 with your bare hands, given the raw materials. It’s only been the 20th and 21st century where you need machines to make machines. The Romans could have built the first airplane, given the right knowledge and a couple of years to gather resources.
How long to repeat everything we’ve accomplished in the last century? I’d go 20 years. Factories take a long time to build, even if you know exactly what you want, and you’d have to go through a couple of iterations.
I thought technology was just applied knowledge, myself, but if I read the OP right, he’s asking what if all humans had instant access to all human knowledge. That said, it would still take some decades of practice for any specific human to acquire sufficient skills to build precision machines, which are needed to build still more precise machines, which are required to build still more precise machines… It’s not like someone could study a bunch of blueprints and start assembling a reactor from scratch.
My impression of your OP is you are asking ‘if we had the knowledge of the 21st century but were living in a stone age lifestyle, how long would it take to advance until we are 21st century again’.
If that if your question, I think it would take far shorter than 500 years. When wealthy developed countries invented and initiated new technologies their GDP growth rates were about 2-3% a year. Developing countries that just have to play catch up grow at 6-10% a year. China doesn’t have in invent the internet and cell phones the way the US and Europe did to experience the GDP growth they provide, they just have to buy them. China, growing at 10% a year, sees its GDP double every 7 years. In a 30 year period their GDP is 1600% bigger than it was originally. If the growth rates keep up within 70 years GDP is 102,400% bigger.
Also the first industrial revolution only started about 250 years ago. So going from that level of tech to what we have now would be far shorter than 250 years if we are just copying and pasting designs from a book rather than innovating them as we go like we did the first time. So the starting point would be roughly where we are before the industrial revolution. Tech advanced from the stone age to the 1700s, but I think the advances were mostly knowledge base advances, not advances that required complex infrastructure.
I’d wager 100-150 years.
This question has been asked before and more than one person has said that they can built remedial manufacturing tools like lathes by hand using tools in nature. So you’d assume the first things we’d build would be basic steel mills and manufacturing plants, then use the parts from those to build better mills and plants, etc.
Perhaps the OP is referring to a situation where stone age humanity suddenly acquires all of today’s scientific and technological knowledge, but without any of the actual hardware. Its like giving the inhabitants of Lascaux access to the internet and unlimited technical manuals, but no tools. (Oh, yes, and the ability to read, of course).
I’d guess fifty years would be long enough to get from neolithic tech to spaceflight and genetic engineering, but that might be either optimistic or pessimistic, according to your preference.
In the modern world several east asian nations did go from relatively historic lifestyles to modern development levels in about 50 years. South Korea, Japan, Taiwan, etc.
In 1950 the GDP per capita of places like Taiwan and South Korea was about $900 per person. It is now about $30,000 per person.
But those nations also had more wealthy trading partners that they could export to, which the nations in the OP wouldn’t have.
But modern nations have gone from near destitute poverty to first world status in 50 years when they didn’t have to invent the technology as they went like the OECD nations had to do.
What’s the starting point? If it was at the dawn of our species, we might well have just destroyed ourselves completely, since there were so few of us concentrated in a relatively small area.
If you mean from about the time of the Romans, then a few hundred years is reasonable. It takes a certain amount of time to build up the working capital to build a modern society, but if you have all the knowledge, you can grow at a pretty fast clip-- say 10-12% per year. It only takes about 150 years at that growth rate to match what you get with 500 years of 3% growth.
The limiting factor is going to be the time to breed modern agricultural species. At least with the technology we have, you can’t really speed up the generation time for a cow or a field of wheat.
That said,
How exactly do you intend to build a steam engine with your bare hands? You’ll need foundries to refine the metals, mills and machine shops to shape them, riveting and welding machines to attach the pieces together… I doubt you could even make any of the tools needed with your bare hands. Unless you mean that you can make the tools to make the tools to make the tools… to make a steam engine with your bare hands, but in that case the statement is trivial.