Cases where the scientific knowledge was actually lost and then rediscovered much later provide especially strong evidence w.r.t. the discovery counterfactuals. E.g. Hero’s eolipile or al-Kindi’s development of relative frequency analysis for decoding messages. Probably there are far more cases of this than we realize, because the evidence that someone somewhere once had the knowledge and then lost it has itself been lost; e.g. we could easily have just never rediscovered the Antikythera mechanism.
provide especially strong evidence w.r.t. the discovery counterfactuals.
I was a bit confused here. Do you mean the rediscovery provides evidence that the idea was ahead of its time, especially when the rediscovery was much later, because we have an actual counterfactual?
Cases where the scientific knowledge was actually lost and then rediscovered much later provide especially strong evidence w.r.t. the discovery counterfactuals. E.g. Hero’s eolipile or al-Kindi’s development of relative frequency analysis for decoding messages. Probably there are far more cases of this than we realize, because the evidence that someone somewhere once had the knowledge and then lost it has itself been lost; e.g. we could easily have just never rediscovered the Antikythera mechanism.
I was a bit confused here. Do you mean the rediscovery provides evidence that the idea was ahead of its time, especially when the rediscovery was much later, because we have an actual counterfactual?