[Meme] things that didn't make it into stories

[edenfalling]

I am home and bored and "Secrets" is being frustrating, so... meme time!

Via askerian: Comment with a story I've written, and I will tell you one thing I knew, learned, or wondered about while writing the story that didn't make it onto the page.

Comments

[edenfalling]

Friday, 3/5/04
One interesting feature of the University is that different cultures have different attitudes toward research and philosophy; therefore, an exchange of information and beliefs between chapterhouses helps stimulate new ways of thought. Also, people in one area can perform experiments that people in other countries are forbidden to even think of. For example, the circulation of blood has been known for nearly a millennium, since dissection and experimental surgery were perfectly acceptable in Kerabada -- so long as the people in question were criminals of the lower castes -- though the mutilation of corpses or living bodies was abhorrent to Masters in the traditional University centers of Ohiyesa and Arina.

However, this flexibility also causes problems, since many cultures object to anything as opposed to dogmatism as the University. Therefore, though geographic proximity to Vinaeo makes the Kaitaru desert a logical seat for chapterhouses, the University first reached Arina via the much more northern region of Estaria. The Kaitaren peoples are strongly insular and distrust foreign institutions, especially in the highly stratified southern kingdoms.

Furthermore, there is often disagreement within the University itself over the value of particular knowledge, and even whether certain ideas should really be classed as knowledge or mere superstition. There isn't always a universally agreed-upon way to winnow truth from falsehood or coincidence, as the scientific method has not been clearly articulated, nor do all cultures involved in the University agree that reality conforms to such a method. Also, magic does work on Firsthome, which throws a spanner into any strictly scientific attempt to explain the world.

They have a decent grasp of the mechanical portions of medicine -- surgery, blood types, and so on -- but diseases are still a subject of contention, though the value of cleanliness and the existence of microscopic creatures has been proved to most people's satisfaction. Mathematics is advanced through the rough beginnings of calculus, and people have known for millennia that the world is round. They are also reasonably certain it travels around the sun, though some still object to that cosmology. Many mechanical arts are quite advanced, and there's some conception of a theory of elements, though nothing terribly useful.

Gunpowder exists, but is not always used in warfare -- wars tend to be more small-scale than in our world. The Estarin Empire was reasonably effective at imposing the philosophy of limited warfare, along with a worldwide trading language, before its bloody collapse.

Um. I will think out the reasons and implications involved in this some other day, as it's late and my brain has stopped working properly.