The thing that would break my suspension of disbelief is if they were to use the computer in a way that's unexpected for the Victorian mindset (edit after I finished this thought: unless the computers were shown to change their mindset to post-victorian).
In 1884, from a scientific perspective (and I apologize if this is all obvious or known), people don't understand the basics of how atoms really look. The greatest thinkers of that time, though, are moving toward a "modern" understanding of the world (and from a history of science perspective the period from about 1890-1920 is VERY significant). Some highlights:
speed of light is shown to be independant of motion in 1887 electromagnetism is discovered in 1887 the electron is discovered in 1897 Geiger-Marsden, which verified the atomic model was done in 1909 quantum mechanics is first "defined" in the 1920s (which is generations ahead, I know)
Cantor also did some work on transfinite numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1892_in_science is a series which has lots of neat stuff) which we really couldn't do anything useful with until computers. Turn him loose with a computer and you could see Chaos Theory a century early.
Now, this might be significant because from the 20s until the 80s, scientists weren't (strictly speaking) deterministic, but they made problems deterministic because they couldn't really solve them otherwise. Chaos Theory which rose from the first attempts to do computer models of complex things finally shattered the deterministic world (though we still think that way, high level quantum mechanics gets very counter-intuitive) and led to a new way of approaching and solving problems, as well as the ability to solve 'interesting' problems.
It's also at this time that we begin to isolate bacteria and develop vaccines.
Previous to this, we lived in the world of LaPlace's demon.
I could be interesting, and not too implausible, for people pushing forward computer science to leapfrog in understanding of physics and then chemistry. The big development of early 20th century physics, though, is nuclear power/weapons.
I know it's a bit scattered, but I've spent a lot of time studying history of science, so I'd be happy to clarify or expand on any of these thoughts.
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yati
no subject
Date: 2010-06-04 01:42 pm (UTC)In 1884, from a scientific perspective (and I apologize if this is all obvious or known), people don't understand the basics of how atoms really look. The greatest thinkers of that time, though, are moving toward a "modern" understanding of the world (and from a history of science perspective the period from about 1890-1920 is VERY significant). Some highlights:
speed of light is shown to be independant of motion in 1887
electromagnetism is discovered in 1887
the electron is discovered in 1897
Geiger-Marsden, which verified the atomic model was done in 1909
quantum mechanics is first "defined" in the 1920s (which is generations ahead, I know)
Cantor also did some work on transfinite numbers (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1892_in_science is a series which has lots of neat stuff) which we really couldn't do anything useful with until computers. Turn him loose with a computer and you could see Chaos Theory a century early.
Now, this might be significant because from the 20s until the 80s, scientists weren't (strictly speaking) deterministic, but they made problems deterministic because they couldn't really solve them otherwise. Chaos Theory which rose from the first attempts to do computer models of complex things finally shattered the deterministic world (though we still think that way, high level quantum mechanics gets very counter-intuitive) and led to a new way of approaching and solving problems, as well as the ability to solve 'interesting' problems.
It's also at this time that we begin to isolate bacteria and develop vaccines.
Previous to this, we lived in the world of LaPlace's demon.
I could be interesting, and not too implausible, for people pushing forward computer science to leapfrog in understanding of physics and then chemistry. The big development of early 20th century physics, though, is nuclear power/weapons.
I know it's a bit scattered, but I've spent a lot of time studying history of science, so I'd be happy to clarify or expand on any of these thoughts.