Quick followup, having read through some of your Flynn article, I see that theories of motion made your list of things we can’t be sure the ancients did or didn’t write about. So, the pendulum and it’s influence on theories of motion certainly falls under in that category. I happily concede the point.

With respect to suitability of papyrus for printing, that was my guess, not Burke’s, he doesn’t address that question.

Aside from applications of the pendulum, I was thinking of it as an exemplar of a simple dynamic system with some nice mathematical properties that would be easy to observe but hard to explain from Aristotelian principles. One could imagine a world in which Aristotle or one of his contemporaries noticed these properties and how that might have sped up progress in physics.

James Burke argues that the printing press doesn’t make economic sense in the absence of a cheap and abundant supply of paper.

That’s nonsense. The cost of the paper is not the issue. The press reduces the cost of human labor (one worker operating one press can produce over one hundred times the output over one worker hand-copying each unit, a massive increase in productivity). It also improves quality (fewer transcription errors). And achieves outcomes that cannot be met any other way (accurate reproduction of maps, schematics, and scientific drawings, a problem actually remarked upon in ancient Greek science treatises, so they were actually interested in solving it–Hero was even moved to invent the pantograph for the purpose, a clunky and quality-poor solution).

Also, vellum was in wide use in antiquity (it was the major competing material, by which Syria competed with Egypt). Papyrus was simply cheaper (but note that when the printing press made it to Europe, countless books were printed on vellum; paper was just cheaper and thus more commonly used, but if even they could see the merit of printing on vellum…). And even papyrus can receive type (I do not believe the claim that it is more fragile–fresh papyrus is actually stronger than paper–I can only assume he meant it is rougher, especially on the verso, but that’s not a major obstacle, in fact, the screw press was already in use in antiquity to solve it, the very device later recruited to the printing press, to push type onto the papyrus rather than just flatten the papyrus).

The pendulum is less surprising, insofar as the use for it is not as obvious. But it’s also a good example of an incredibly simple machine that they still didn’t think of. Although one should be wary of “they didn’t think of it” arguments; many of those are false and many more, though true, overstate the gain the technology provided over its predecessors (and these kinds of claims are used in Christian apologetics), so we should always check to be sure first, e.g. Flynn’s Pile of Boners and Lynn White on Horse Stuff.

On the example of the printing press being a surprisingly late idea. James Burke argues that the printing press doesn’t make economic sense in the absence of a cheap and abundant supply of paper. AFAIK, papyrus is more fragile and difficult to work with than paper, so that may explain the lack of a press starting up in ancient Alexandria (Burke doesn’t address papyrus).But since there’s no evidence they even tried, your point still stands, I think.

A similar example that always gets me is the pendulum. It seems like the sort of simple mechanical phenomena the Ancient Greeks should have really grooved on, but it passed right by them.

And it was truly good. I highly recommend it.

Moore sounds interesting, too. Sounds a bit inspired by Stoppard’s treatment of Shakespeare, maybe? (In the sense of other “characters’ perspectives”.)

Oh, thanks! I couldn’t find anything on that myself.