The main issue I have is that there is this entire group of (essentially) engineers the Maestersbusily devoted to what amounts to critical scientific inquiry of things and who keep detailed historical notes, and yet there has been almost no technological or scientific progress in this world for thousands of years where everything has been stuck at a medieval level for countless centuries.
I know it’s S&S fantasy at the baseline but you would assume even a magic based story should have some internal consistency. If you are going to introduce an entire guild of what are essentially busily inquiring scientists and engineers that have existed for thousand(s) of years, and yet still then have society stuck at ye olde medieval level for eons it’s just kind of a plot hole.
Is there any plausible explanation for this that I missed in the books?
The laws of physics change based on the presence of dragons. Since the rebirth of the dragons, wildfire became more volatile and the magicians of Qarth more powerful. It definitely makes it difficult to study when magic is always permutating its laws.
Also the Doom of Valyria had far reaching effects on the world and presumably its magic.
If I were a Maester and someone asked me why we still don’t have electricity, I’d respond “Have you looked outside? The snowdrifts are higher than the castle! You’re lucky we had ten years worth of firewood and all that deer jerky.”
IOW, I’d blame the long winters. It’s hard to make progress when you’re just trying to survive. People lived and died without seeing a summer.
Hasn’t most scientific/engineering progress been accomplished in temperate climates?
Over the course of recorded history in Westeros they’ve gone from stone to bronze to steel weapons, so that’s some progress. I think that mass starvation every 20 years or so probably slow that progress down some too.
Take an average Roman peasant from 0 AD and drop them in a medieval village of 1000 AD. How much technological progress do you think they’re going to notice?
There will be a few improvements, but also several steps backward. Even things like firearms took hundreds of years of development before a musket was without question a better weapon than a bow or a sword.
And medical knowledge does seem to be more advanced than the medieval equivalent. I think given enough time it’s possible that there could be an industrial revolution in Westeros or Essos; which would greatly speed of the rate of progress.
It seems to me there is some squashing of radical experimentation, also. Qyburn was relieved of his chain for necromancy and some other weird shit. Not saying it was wrong, just that we don’t know how much advancement is allowed versus maintenance and preservation efforts.
Definitely that’s the impression I got. They’re not scientists, they’re librarians. And I love librarians, but their job isn’t the advancement of knowledge, it’s the preservation of knowledge.
I think in some sense, the order of Maesters is Martin’s analogue of the Church’s role of preserving and codifying knowledge in our own history.
The Maesters are a lot like the Church- they’re run from some distant ancient city, they’re kind of like librarians, and they are sent to advise and observe all over the place, much like churchmen did. The advantage of having the Maesters split out by Martin is that they can be in Pyke, Winterfell and Sunspear at the same time, despite the religious systems being wildly different, without Martin having to have the equivalent of 3 Vaticans.
Beyond that, I didn’t necessarily think they did a whole overwhelming amount of original research- there’s the Citadel which is much like a university, but I always thought that 99% of the maesters were out and about in the world, not hanging around Oldtown researching esoteric things.