What if the Scientific Revolution had gone differently?

Observation and mathematics displace inherited authority as the test of truth.

If it had gone differently: Natural philosophy stays deferential to the ancients; no method, no acceleration.

1. 1660The Royal Society, Science stays a private correspondence between gentlemen; results spread slowly and die with their authors.
2. 1687Newton's Principia, There is no unified mathematical physics; the study of motion stays a bag of rules of thumb for another century.
3. 1712The practical steam engine, Power stays tied to water, wind and muscle; factories cluster on rivers and stay small.
4. 1720The Enlightenment, Absolutism keeps its intellectual cover; 'rights of man' never enters common speech.
5. 1859On the Origin of Species, Life stays something designed rather than evolved; biology and half of modern thought lose their organising principle.
6. 1865Germ theory of disease, Doctors keep blaming bad air; surgery stays a death sentence and cities stay killing grounds.
7. 1865Maxwell's equations, The link between electricity, magnetism and light is never made; radio, radar and the electromagnetic century are delayed.
8. 1869The periodic table, Chemistry stays a catalogue of unrelated substances; the logic of the atom is worked out much later.
9. 1882Electric power grids, Factories stay chained to their own steam plants; there is no clean power in the home and no electronics to come.
10. 1905Einstein's relativity, Physics keeps Newton's absolute space and time; the road to nuclear energy, GPS and modern cosmology is blocked.