>>1711422>>1711426You mention things like solar panels, i.e. you're not jumping to primitivism right off the bat, so how do you suppose we make this sort of sustainability compatible with the institutions and industries that enable these sorts of technology? Is it only a temporary concession to moderninity before an ideal world-wide technological regression?
I've wondered recently how much of modern science - medicine, geology, chemistry, biology, physics - might still be useful or insightful in a low-tech world (like knowledge of microbial theory and disease). But do we accept our current scientific progress as the furthest we'll go, and simply take what we can and apply it to simpler ways of living? Ideologically and practically, is scientific progression compatible with sustainability?
Maybe the issue is that currently it's a matter of basing our scientific progression on the assumption that we'll always be able to increase scale, or that we'll always have some form of advanced tech to enable "routine" scientific methods. High energy physics seems to be on a trajectory of ever-increasing energy demands, facility sizes, personnel counts, etc. How many chemistry and biology laboratories could continue to pursue research as usual if we no longer had highly advanced factories producing imaging devices and high-precision tools? Are these hard impasses?
I went off course in my question, but in short: what does scientific progression look like for a sustainable society? Is there any?
