Well, the textbooks need to be not just destroyed but accessible, and many advanced physics textbooks depend on other math texts and the like. But most of those are wide spread, so this seems like a reasonable assumption. So it may be possible to avoid spending as much in experimentation. But until the 20th century, experimentation was for physics not a massive set of costs. A more serious issue is going to be engineering, but again, an assumption that basic textbooks will be accessible seems reasonable. The serious issue is more how much one can take advantage of economies of scale and comparative advantage in order to get to the point where one has enough free resources to do things like build solar panels and the like.
Moreover, there’s a large amount of what may be things like institutional knowledge or simply isn’t commonly written down in textbooks. For example, China for decades now has had trouble making their own high-performance jet engines (1), and during the cold war the USSR had a lot of trouble making high-perfomance microchips. In both cases there likely were other problems at play in addition to technical know-how. but this suggests that there may be more serious issues for many technologies than just basic textbooks.
On the other hand, future civilizations have the benefit of 20th century science unless the catastrophe also manages to destroy all physics textbooks.
Well, the textbooks need to be not just destroyed but accessible, and many advanced physics textbooks depend on other math texts and the like. But most of those are wide spread, so this seems like a reasonable assumption. So it may be possible to avoid spending as much in experimentation. But until the 20th century, experimentation was for physics not a massive set of costs. A more serious issue is going to be engineering, but again, an assumption that basic textbooks will be accessible seems reasonable. The serious issue is more how much one can take advantage of economies of scale and comparative advantage in order to get to the point where one has enough free resources to do things like build solar panels and the like.
Moreover, there’s a large amount of what may be things like institutional knowledge or simply isn’t commonly written down in textbooks. For example, China for decades now has had trouble making their own high-performance jet engines (1), and during the cold war the USSR had a lot of trouble making high-perfomance microchips. In both cases there likely were other problems at play in addition to technical know-how. but this suggests that there may be more serious issues for many technologies than just basic textbooks.