Lack of technological progress in late Roman Empire

[Carlton Bach]

Hello Bach.
If possible I would be curious to know from you how you think it is possible to accomplish any "...understanding of complex physical processes, not necessarily in theory, but in practice."

I mean understanding such things as, for example, that seawater will corrode iron much faster than freshwater, that hot water corrosion can be a real threat to the stabiolity of a boiler without being visible on the surface, that different expansion/contraction rates of metals make certain combinations unsafe, that brass and iron do not combine well, that you get much better efficiency by increasing the surface of contact between the fire and the boiler, that water is practically incompressible while steam is easily compressible, and not least, that at a certain temperature, water will flash into steam no matter how confined. To successfully build and operate steam engines, you need to know all these things, but you can know them without understanding Brownian motion, elctrolysis, or molecular science. However, that kind of knowledge tends to accumulate slowly and is often dear-bought (the thing about flashpoint temperature took a long time and thousands of egineers' lives).