I've been working on a few books to publish and It got me thinking about how much science would be common knowledge and if some of the things would even be true in the basin. Would an educated person in the basin of life know about the following things?

Rust being caused by oxidition.
Animals breathe oxygen while plants breathe CO2.
Living things are composed of cells.
Fire is a result of a chemical reaction.
The uses and workings of major organs.
Acids and bases reacting with eachother.
Living tisue needs blood flow and why.
Germ theory of disease.
Classical mechanics, gears and projectiles.
Electricty, magnets and lightning.
What radiation is and why it isn't good for you.
What causes mutations.
Meteorology, weather and clouds and such.
Geology, mountain forming, craters, caves.

As someone who's played a mad scientist for quite some time now, here's my answers:

Rust being caused by oxidition.
- No, metal changes (iron rusts, copper tarnishes) over time, moreso when exposed to water. This can be considered a property of metal.
Animals breathe oxygen while plants breathe CO2.
- Plants breathe? They have no lungs. Oxygen is unknown, there are only varying qualities of air.
Living things are composed of cells.
- Creatures are composed of meat, bone, and skin.
Fire is a result of a chemical reaction.
- No, fire is an element, as is earth, water, and air.
The uses and workings of major organs.
- Only the organs with extremely obvious uses (lungs, heart, stomach) are vaguely understood, the rest is assumed to regulate the humors. All "medical" science is either based around auras (Healing) or around correcting balances in the humors (Alchemy).
Acids and bases reacting with eachother.
- Acids are likely known, bases are not, and certainly not put together. Chemistry is nonexistent, as alchemy works very well in Lusternia.
Living tisue needs blood flow and why.
- Creatures need blood, as evidenced by what happens when there is a lack of it. Why, however, is unknown.
Germ theory of disease.
- The only real disease we've had, the recent plague, was auric in nature. The most I've done in terms of disease science is claim that imbalances of humors were sympathetic, and a healthy person that is overexposed to an unhealthy person may develop the same imbalance of the humors and, thus, the same symptoms. The means of transmission is unknown.
Classical mechanics, gears and projectiles.
- Definitely. However, bows and other personally launched projectiles have been deemed impractical due to the superiority of magical attacks at a range.
Electricty, magnets and lightning.
- Some materials attract metals, and lightning strikes from the skies and from angry gods. Electricity might have been known at one point, but has been lost. The terms "power" and "energy" are interchangeable, and both refer to aetheric power, used by nexuses, aetherships, and people for various reasons.
What radiation is and why it isn't good for you.
- Definitely not conventional radiation.
What causes mutations.
- Magic causes mutations.
Meteorology, weather and clouds and such.
- As far as I know, weather is observed but not studied, especially because nobody in the entire Basin is bothered by it in the slightest.
Geology, mountain forming, craters, caves.
- The Gods made the land the way it is. We can study how they appear now, but their origins are unquestionably clear.

That was an awesome reply. Very helpful. Thanks for posting it!

yes, Science is a lot different in Lusty then it is IRL. Most scientis are really historians or magicians. Ladantine, arguably the greatests modern Lusternian scientist we know of, only studied magic and Planar stuff. Especially the harvesting and manipulation of energy.

That was a pretty good post indeed. Accurate the way I see it as well.

While I agree with Blastron's post, one point that could possibly be contended is the knowledge of cells.
The psymet skill Celladjustment at least hints of knowledge of cells, if you take the name of the skill as an IC term.

At some point, my character's going to be looking at the brain differences between (male) kephera and "normal" races, in addition to other things, as per Elostian's suggestion. So part of the organs issue is going to be addressed, eventually, but it may not yield the same results as what would be "scientifically correct".

You should pay a visit to Xislia (Gah, is that her name? Someone correct me if I'm wrong) in the Presidio of the Damned. She's somewhat of a scientist and studies bodies (in order to create a monster, but that's beside the point)

To be honest, from an IC perspective, things can be viewed in a number of ways. Such as:


Germ theory of disease.
There is belief in such, we have poxes, stomach worms, dysentery, allergies to the sun, sick tae'daes.
There must also be some knowledge as to their cures, because you can remedy the tae'dae children with pills and there are various roots/herbs known to cure these illnesses. But for say, healers, diseases and afflictions might be nothing more than a distorted aura. So whether the sickness comes from a distorted aura, or merely that aura's are a side-effect of illness is something that could be debated.

Classical mechanics, gears and projectiles.
---Sure. There's gears and chains and pulleys and all manner of mechanical wonders. The Great Gizmo, elevators on the Gnome Facility Aetherbubble


What radiation is and why it isn't good for you.
--The closest thing to such is probably that of the taint, and the changes it can instill in those exposed too greatly to it. No nuclear material in Lusternia as of yet.

What causes mutations.
--Some might be explained as magic, while for others mutations are largely caused by the presence of taint, or for Glomdorians the infestation of the Wyrd.

I think I remember reading a book with "experiments" differentiating lucidian from more normal persons tissue. I don't remember if it went quite so far as to talk about cells, but it was rather detailed. I'd recommend finding it and taking a look. I think it started with looking at crystals and resonance and such, and worked its way up to lucidian tissue. The crystals book may be a different book, though. I'm not sure what people have published recently, but before I was GM I had read and rated every book in Celest's library for Neerth. I was a good Japhielite.

I think the book Creslin mentioned is "Experiments with Crystal" by Nihmriel Goldwyne, and it does mentioned cells -- specifically the difference between plant, humanoid with skin , and lucidian.

A follow-up on my previous post:

Science in Lusternia is practically nonexistent. Any "scientific" discoveries were purely by accident, and no real effort has been made to understand the laws of physics, properties of chemistry, or the process of biology. Given that, in Lusternia, magic exists and medieval pseudo-sciences (alchemy, astrology, herbal cures) work, no explanation is needed for why things work the way they do: "magic does it" and "the gods did it" are perfectly reasonable answers. Lusternia does not know about the scientific method, and many of the most basic scientific tools (the microscope, for one) do not exist, and the smallest thing we can see depends on how good of a magnifying glass we have. There are no standard units of mass, volume, velocity, or distance. Magic is less of a structured, scientific, ritualized thing and more of an intuitive or learned-by-rote art. The gnomes are probably the most scientific organization we've got now, but they don't talk about it much.

I checked out and read the Experiments with Crystal book, and I rather despise it. The book seems to exist to establish many real-life scientific properties with no explanation for why they exist, and then extend them shakily onto other things. While I don't want to sound particularly elitist (my arpee is more true tehn ur arpee so stfu), I don't think

I will once again repeat what estarra has said countless times, namely that lusternia's scientific level is comparable to that of the real world.

That's right, you're not stupid, there are various books out there (experiments on crystal being only one of them) which take their own way into redefining modern science in a fantasy way. This is considered perfectly acceptable. There are various areas which provide people with means for such research, Xion being the biggest example of this, which contains various microscopes and other structures whose primary function is to research metals, tissues and perhaps even molecules. Hell, there are even computers in Xion.

I am aware that many players have a problem with 'high science' as it is sometimes referred to, but in lusternia, the scientific method is in fact used regularly, the various projects of old Celest and even more so by Hallifax make use of whole committees of researchers and scientists who have a great understanding of planar systems, laws and interactions. Some current examples of this include the lucidian observatory, the gnome world, and xion.

To return to the original question of this thread, yes, you could use any of these systems in your research, as long as you provide proper argumentation of your theories (such as any scientific process does, or risk being laughed at by their peers). Structures such as Xion were built to a certain extend to -allow- players to take science in lusternia a step further than it is considered to be in the other IRE games.

Even if you wish to doubt that Lusternia is quite as advanced as our current society, the various structures leave no doubt whatsoever that Lusternia is definitely far post-renaissance. As such, conclusions such as heriditary traits, cells, organ function, advanced physics, engineering, advanced maths and advanced chemistry are not really stretches at all.

Interesting. This opens up whole new facets of exploration for Gaetele then. Niiice.

For Mimi too! WOWZA!

So why do we have warriors with medieval weapons and armor? Surely with advanced chemistry we'd have gunpowder by now. Also, how are the "primitive" communes supposed to fit in to this?

I hope this doesn't sound antagonistic, I'm just curious.

Why mess around with gunpowder when you can just have a mage throw a fireball? The armour is used to protect people and the weapons are there because it is difficult to cast while your arms are getting chopped off. The communes I'm not sure what you mean.

The communes aren't primitive. They have access to the same technology as the cities. They just choose not too use it. They as a whole (in the history at least) believe that the cities shouldn't mess with the higher planes. advanced science, etc. They could start building roads and metal and stone buildings if they want to, they just don't.

My real complaint about saying science in the basin is the same as science in RL is that it isn't. It may be the same on the basic level, scientific process for example, but once you start exploring you will realize that things function differently. RL Physics and Physics in the basin should be different as matter, energy, space, and time do function differently in the basin. This also applies for other sciences.

I don't understand your statement to be quite honest. The world in lusternia does not function differently at a basic level, we've got cells, newton's first law, DNA, corrosion.

You state science works differently but provide no argument as to why, apparently 'once we start exploring' we will have no choice but to come to the same conclusion. I'm afraid I must admit that up to now, I have not yet, and I have done a lot of exploring, you wouldn't believe some the topics people want to philosophise with Elostian about.

And to reply to Cere's question, yes, communes (according to the history, this is not a statement of current player politics or reasons) feel that messing with things such as planes is a bad thing and that man is better off staying as close to the world as the Elders made it as possible.

It is also true that we have no things such as harrier jump jets in Lusternia, as Estarra meant it, the science in lusternia has progressed to a point where it is the -equivalent- of our modern day society, just built on magical systems, understanding of planar interaction, cosmic energies and all the other forces used daily in Lusternia that we might have a hard time coping with in our own little society.

You actually repeated what I was trying to say. Science in the basin does function on the same on a basic level, it will have different conclusions though. I was trying to say that some things will work on a different system then in RL because of magic and the different planes.