Science and Advancement
Contents
How Far We've Come
The technological and scientific advancement of Promise is lacking. Many things taken for granted by the Creators as well as the player in the real world are totally absent or extremely uncommon on Promise. This article intends to address such things, with the exception of magic - that has its own page.
Industry
Where we are now
The most recent invention has been the wheel lock pistol, which in the real world was invented c. 1500 and replaced in common use by the snaphance (c. 1560) and the flintlock (c. 1600). With the continued use of magic, various aspects of industry are supplemented by magical means. As an example, if you have a powerful enough magic user a crane is an unneeded device, as with earth, air, or some combination of such math, heavy lifting is possible without mechanical means.
What is lacked
Automation. Without the standardization of parts among merchants, craftsman, and smiths there is no way to automate any part of the development process. While a wheel lock is a wheel lock, if the trigger of your wheel lock breaks you have only two real choices. One, get a new one. Or two, have a new trigger smithed and crafted specifically for use with your wheel lock.
It is not possible to go to a corner store and pick up replacement parts, as they would not fit properly due to there being no standardization of those parts. It should be noted that some areas, particularly Cliffside, do have 'factories', but these are more advanced craft houses, guilds or companies with many artisans all working to create products to be sold.
Biology and Medicine
Where we are now
There is a lack of understanding about how biology and medicine actually work. Journeyman and Priests work with what they have: knowledge passed down from master to apprentice about what plants, herbs and techniques work. It is well known by anyone with medical knowledge that pressure and a cloth will help stop bleeding; those with more knowledge know which roots and herbs that they can find that help dull pain and may assist in reducing the odds of infection.
There are also various creator devices that can do much more miraculous things. While your advanced Journeyman might be able to pop a bone back into place and provide a cast, a Machine Priest can use a device to actually mend it. The Machine Priest doesn't have any clue how the device did what it did, only how to make it do so.
While the cause of disease and illness is not known, some methods of its prevention are. Just as the Machine Priest doesn't know how his or her device worked, the Trauma Mage doesn't understand exactly why heat slows the spread of disease, nor the Journeyman why alcohol is needed to clean tools. Most of this information found in the First Text, though the reason for it lost to time.
What is lacked
Any real 'medicines' in the sense of modern pharmaceuticals. Things like aspirin, antibiotics, and so forth are nonexistant. There may be apothecaries you can visit who have notes and lots of experience in what they have found to work and could provide something that may help, but it is far not a pharmacy.
While use of magic, particularly activated herbs can assist in healing in addition to the use of water and earth magic one can produce a vague analogy to traditional eastern medicine, none of it is an exact science and there is no standardization.
In short, as far as biology and medicine goes, these are fledgling sciences if they are even to be considered such.
Possible Explanations
Beings in general were designed to be fit and resilient, being colonists of myriad worlds. The Creators would naturally have required them to operate on biological heuristics in response to a wide array of pathogens, especially unknown forms which might have appeared on alien planets beings were sent to. They also generally bounce back from injuries at an accelerated pace compared to Creators. Hence, with a lessened need for medicine save that of injuries sustained in combat, there has been considerably less drive to look into medicine as a science.
Mathematics
Where we are now
With magic, mathematics is a very difficult subject, but not impossible. There is a good deal of understanding of basic math. After all, you need to be able to add, subtract, multiply, and divide to run a business and have commerce!
As far as standardization goes, commerce is about the only place to have any significant progress. While it may vary from day to day and from merchant to merchant, crown always has a specific value. Units of measurements are standard among the highly skilled and very advanced and were handed down from the time of landing.
However, unless you are an exceptional scholar or a master artisan, it is unlikely you will have anything like a ruler.
Weights and Measures exist for barter, and any merchant worth his or her salt will have that. Anything else is left to the highest up in the knowledge and crafting world. For example, if you need a piece of wood of a certain size, holding up your hands and saying 'It needs to be about this big,' is what will suffice and be produced.
What is lacked
Standardization. A chart of some description that has meaning to one scholar who studied under a certain master may mean absolutely nothing to another scholar, let alone your average being. While the numbers are universal, the interpretation of them is not.
There is no such thing as 'statistically significant' because no one has ever even thought up such a concept, let alone attempted to apply it.
Possible explanations
The standard explanation for the retardation of mathematics in and of itself is the fugue state beings enter when using mathemagic, which prevents doing math as math. The more powerful a being is at mathemagic, the less powerful their mathematical abilities and vice versa. Since powerful mathemagicians are quite unlikely to lack for potential mates any time soon, Darwinistic tendencies suggest it is likely that this will mean Promise's technological development will diverge from that of Earth's.
