[Dragaera] The New Palace

[Jon%20Lincicum]

----- "Scott Schultz" <scott at cjhunter.com> wrote: 
> 
> Other than the resemblance of the Court to a Renaissance court, do we have 
> any other indication that the Empire has any advanced understanding of 
> technology? Based purely on what we see in the books, I'm not sure there's 
> any evidence to support the idea of anything more advanced than medieval 
> technology, with sorcery taking up the slack where science might have 
> otherwise done so. It's telling that Mathematics is, if we take Paarfi at 
> face value, a mysterious craft and not a science. 

I would point to /Lord of Castle Black/ and /Sethra Lavode/ where Sethra has discussions with Morrolan in regards to the nature of sorcery. Sethra recommends books that describe the nature of matter, and how that relates to the complexity and power needed to perform certain spells. 

This seems to indicate a fairly high level of understand of things such as atomic theory, general relativity, energy conservation, and a number of other fairly advanced physics concepts... At least, advanced in terms of a feudal society. 

> In fact, I'm not sure that science as we think of it is even practiced. 

Likely it is not formally thought of the same way. I imagine much of the science is studied by Athyra wizards who would be more inclined to hoard the knowledge for their own ends. (Or by the Left Hand, which we know does this.) I don't see any direct evidence for a generally accepted "scientific method" or the same rigor that we would demand in experimentation. 

> Vallista, as the house of Building/Design, can be presumed to have a higher 
> understanding of architecture and construction than the other Houses. I'd 
> guess that the other houses grasp the basics but the finer points are 
> considered esoteric enough to be out of reach or simply uninteresting to 
> most non-Vallista. 

Is the House of Vallista perhaps similar to medieval Freemasonry? Hoarding trade secrets and secret handshakes for master builders and such? I doubt there's direct textev for this, but it would certainly seem to fit. 

> Is there any reference that can be used to judge the state of architecture? 
> I can only recall a reference to the design of arches, possibly in relation 
> to the death of one of the early Emperors. (Falling masonry killed him, and 
> if the Orb allowed that to happen, a sign of the Turn of the Cycle, so the 
> Vallista engineer took the Orb and declared himself Emperor, or so I 
> remember the story.) 

The only other major discussions about architecture that I recall are during the construction of Castle Black in /LoCB/, where they touch on some of the other projects built by Lord Carver previously. 

Majikjon