Hi, so I've been thinking on what branches of science and engineering that would get affected by magic and to what extent.

Chemistry: magical potions absolutely would stump chemistry, however it could progress to industrial scale given proper study, as modern chemistry itself is descended from the sam potion brewing.

Physics: I think the study of physics would be hampered by magic since you can't easily come up with things like newtonian physics or relativity when the world is seemingly arbitrary. It would probably progress out of the study of magic much like chemistry and physics separated in the late 1800s

Math: Math is math, this would progress regardless of magic.

Materials science: this would be tricky. materials science is as much an art as a science, even today many theory work is either increadibly dense or based on observation. I think magic would unlock certain materials first since you could use magic to selectively make materials and their properties, but at the same time materials that can't be worked by magic or things that replace magic would suffer.

Medicine: the study of pony physiology may advance greatly but it will be magically driven instead of scientifically driven, biochemistry would be held back as there isn't a need for advanced medicines with healing spells and potions.

Geology: this would remain pretty much the same, in the show we see Equestria is about on par with earh geology, though without oil drilling technology it would lag behind our own science

Social Sciences: this would be interesting as they can use mind control/mind altering spells and in general use magic to study things we cannot do, though pony ethics might just hold all that back. In general it might advance in a different direction than our own given their vastly different culture but it would still be a fairly similar in approach.

thermodynamics: constant head scratching holds back this field until physics explains magic

in general, life sciences and social sciences would advance more rapidly than on earth,

pure sciences such as physics would require much more elaborate work than our own thus may be held back, or biased by magic

natural sciences would in my opinion advance but it would be difficult.

math and logic should remain the same

let me know what you guys think though

6503891
The concept of evolution/survival of the fittest would likely never have been developed in ponies specifically, but likely would have been encountered in Changelings due to their rapid reproductive cycles. Pony magic would also slow the development of alternatives to magic, as it would widely be believed that there would be no need for technological/mechanical advancement. This is addressed quite nicely in 'Diaries of a Madman' where the main character presents the technology of humans to Twilight, only for her to scoff at it as either an impossibility without magic, or unnecessary because of magic. However, when he takes his knowledge elsewhere, it is much better received, due to the alternate group having considerably more limited magic reserves for use. Specific areas of science that would be limited would be anything to do with atomic theory, all theoretical physics, most chemistry, and electrical development.

6503908
well I've always thought the other less magical races would be more reliant on technology, griffins and minotaurs have been shown to have things ponies don't (ponies are OK with this apparently)

chemistry I'd think would still advance, much of the underlying theories of modern day chemistry were unnessicary to the development of chemistry and chemical engineering to begin with. with magic a part of chemistry I'd think someone would develop large scale separation and processing techniques as in real life those just scaled up from lab experiments.

not to plug but I hope to explore this in My Second Life further (if I can keep to a schedule for once...)

6504161
to be fair, in regards to medical science, being able to know how something works would allow one to improve on how they work with it.

6503891
So, this is one of my pet peeves. People always act like magic and science/tech are incompatible and opposites. Like you can have one, but not the either. Science is the study of the world around us. If magic is real, it is inherently part of science and technology. For us, this isn't the case, but in Equestria magic is real and would be an inherent part of equestrian science and engineering (which I think you're talking about, let me know if i'm wrong). I'm not saying that their science would be the same. Lots of it would likely not be understandable to us and all we can really do is speculate. But to them, it would be perfectly natural. magic wouldn't break chemistry or physics, it wouldn't stump them (at least not more than say dark energy is to us).

you can't easily come up with things like newtonian physics

actually, I don't think newtonian physics needs to change that much, if at all. It says what happens, not why or how. Newtonian physics says that if I push on a weight it'll accelerate. It doesn't say what the force is or how it works. It can be a spring, gravity, electromagnetism, or magic, it doesn't matter.

when the world is seemingly arbitrary

but it's not. You can't have things like spells with arbitrary magic.

It would probably progress out of the study of magic much like chemistry and physics separated in the late 1800s

based on my admittedly limited knowledge on science history. I think that they would start out seperate and then overlap. Kind of like what happened with chemistry. There was a split (I actually thought they developed seperately) but they eventually overlapped a lot with atomic and subatomic physics. As I understand it, if you get detailed enough it's all physics.

Medicine: the study of pony physiology may advance greatly but it will be magically driven instead of scientifically driven, biochemistry would be held back as there isn't a need for advanced medicines with healing spells and potions.

i actually have a headcanon that things you can't just use magic and poof, they're better. It's based on gene therapy. one of the reasons gene therapy is so hard is that your body can't determine the difference between the gene therapy and a virus. I applied this to healing magic. A ponies body can't tell the difference between a healing spell and an organism trying to harm the pony.

thermodynamics: constant head scratching holds back this field until physics explains magic

there's two types of thermodynamics. Engineering thermo and physics thermo. The engineering thermo I don't think would change much. It's kind of like with Newtonian physics, it's the what, not the why or how. Physics thermo is the why and how and would probably change a lot.

pure sciences such as physics would require much more elaborate work than our own thus may be held back, or biased by magic

again, I don't think this is the case.

natural sciences would in my opinion advance but it would be difficult.

I actually think it's the opposite. Magic can allow you to bypass the conventional restrictions and requirements on experiments. I don't know if you've read the Eragon series, but there's a scene where a scientist gets hold of a mage. Over the course of an afternoon they discover three new gases in a really sparse lab. They completely bypassed the methods and equipment we would use, allowing them to discover the gases centuries before they had the same level of conventional technology.

You mentioned engineering, but didn't really talk about it so I'll take a minute and give my thoughts.

Arcane Engineering: I'm still figuring out the details, but it makes sense that there would be a field of engineering devoted to things like spells and enchantments.

Mechanical Engineering: I think the fundamentals stay the same, it's all based around Newtonian mechanics. That being said, there's a bunch that I think would change. We'd get a bunch of fancy new tools and equipment and that would likely change things. As an example, we might get magic based pumps instead of conventional ones.

Civil Engineering: same as mechanical.

Electrical Engineering: this one might be reduced or completely eliminated. It's possible to recreate analog and digital electronics with magic. And I think it's probable that Equestrian tech would be magic based instead of electrical based.

Computer Engineering: this one is up in the air. It depends on how exactly you implement Equestrian tech. Personally, I think it's more equivalent to our analog tech than digital, so this one is weaker in my headcanon. But if you just give them magical computers, it'd likely remain strong.

Computer Science (i'm calling it engineering): similar to computer engineering.

I don't really know enough about the minor branches to really guess how'd they change. I think some, like nuclear engineering would likely drastically change. Biomedical i don't think would change a whole lot (it also might be the main use of electrical engineering).

6503908

The concept of evolution/survival of the fittest would likely never have been developed in ponies specifically

... you're going to have to explain that one to me. That doesn't really make sense to me.

6504411
bird pony, pointy magic pony, pony pony, how that works who knows.

but more to the point, they would have a hard time demonstrating evolution, but it could be done as the thestrals are a relative of the pegasi or vice versa.

I wanted to elaborate on thermodynamics given how Equestria does have steam power. for all intensive purposes you can build a steam engine that is fairly reliable without having any prior knowledge of how a steam engine works or any theoretical knowledge. the development of the tube boiler steam engine is a great example as conceptually more surface area should equate to better heat transfer, yet it took decades from the first primitive steam locomotives to get the tube boiler. as the first steam engine didn't use one and it only was improved upon itteratively.

where things go wrong is on the theoretical side where much like in the late 1800s with vacuums and light, magic would begin to become a road block until wider theory could explain magic better.

6504411
Other than the evolution to becoming alicorns, all ponies are more or less the same genetically, other than various colors of fur, manes, and eyes, with rare exceptions for height and bulk, largely in the earth pony population, with these being uncommon. As far as it is known, even from thousands of years prior, this was still the case. Celestia and Luna are old enough that they should have seen at least SOME genetic drift, but the only drift that I can tell had ever happened was the loss of beards in the male population, which may have been a single isolated case of a male pony growing a beard, that being Starswirl. Other than colors and stunted wings, there does not seem to be any genetic differences, and cutie marks don't seem to be tied strongly to genetics. Also, due to the ponies herbivorous nature, the only way they would come up with the theory of evolution would be through the observation of plants, and would likely assume it only applied to plants.

6504161
Most of what I said was in regards to a world exactly like in the show, at least technologically, and then a human gets thrown into the mix and screws it up. In lieu of the human working in a field that requires intimate knowledge of tech, what would most likely happen is the human would start trying to reverse engineer tech, which could work well or fail spectacularly. Other than this, my response was strictly in regards to ponies, as they are the only race to my knowledge that has ready access to spells and magic through roughly a third of their population.

6503908

6504660
to make a case for cutie marks being hereditary, I use the apple family. but there's some deterministic thing about that as well.

its certainly more of a social science than a biology issue though today there's a lot of stuff muddying the line between nature and nurture

6504690
I don't really keep up with the series, so I stand corrected.

6504723
Cutie Marks also have to do with naming, so in the apple family, naming the child Apple-something or something-Apple creates a definite line, since nearly every name in the series has to do with the respective character's cutie mark. Only noble families and families like the Apples really keep a specific name theme going instead of just naming their child something else.

6504500

bird pony, pointy magic pony, pony pony, how that works who knows.

by selection pressures and reproduction with variation. Same as literally any other lifeform.

but more to the point, they would have a hard time demonstrating evolution

I don't think they'd have any harder of a time than we have.

but it could be done as the thestrals are a relative of the pegasi or vice versa.

I always thought they were artificial. We only see the in one situation and even more than that we know that pegasi can become thestrals. This one seems pretty obvious to me.

I wanted to elaborate on thermodynamics given how Equestria does have steam power. for all intensive purposes you can build a steam engine that is fairly reliable without having any prior knowledge of how a steam engine works or any theoretical knowledge. the development of the tube boiler steam engine is a great example as conceptually more surface area should equate to better heat transfer, yet it took decades from the first primitive steam locomotives to get the tube boiler. as the first steam engine didn't use one and it only was improved upon itteratively.

I'm very familiar with thermodynamics and engineering design. I don't really see what that has to do with anything. What I was getting at is that at a macroscopic level, magic doesn't really have an effect. The first law doesn't specify any heat source, it could be magic as easily as fire.

where things go wrong is on the theoretical side where much like in the late 1800s with vacuums and light, magic would begin to become a road block until wider theory could explain magic better.

but your just stating that, i'm asking you to explain why. Because that makes less than zero sense to me. I don't see how not understanding magic stops you from understanding light. I'd also expect to see the scientific understanding of magic co develop along with everything else. It's not like they completely ignored magic until they got to where we were in the late 1800s and only then start to understand magic.

6504660
oh boy, there's a lot wrong with this.

Other than the evolution to becoming alicorns

what makes you think that's whats happening?

all ponies are more or less the same genetically, other than various colors of fur, manes, and eyes, with rare exceptions for height and bulk

you could say the exact same thing about humans.

As far as it is known, even from thousands of years prior, this was still the case. Celestia and Luna are old enough that they should have seen at least SOME genetic drift

1000 years is nothing. The last big change for humans (to my knowledge) was lactose tolerance and that was about 10,000 years ago. And even then, it's patchy, there are populations that don't really show this trait. At 1,000 years, i'd expect a small change in gene frequency in a small region. Look at humans in the 1000s, were pretty similar.

but the only drift that I can tell had ever happened was the loss of beards in the male population

so basically you couldn't find any obvious physical changes in a really small timeframe, so evolution didn't happen?

Also, due to the ponies herbivorous nature, the only way they would come up with the theory of evolution would be through the observation of plants, and would likely assume it only applied to plants.

What? That doesn't even begin to make sense.