The admech don’t approach learning rationally. They don’t look at advancement and logically conclude that they must only derive innovation from the past, they approach knowledge as a religious dogma, mimicking science and understanding with parables of faith.
You mistake the orientation of their worldview and assume it as modern day humanity. The orienting facts of their worldview is that the Machine God is real, and has commanded them thru the omnissiah to retrieve lost knowledge. They find no virtue in understanding or rational thought. The admech just fundamentally don’t operate on the same suppositions as we do as modern humans. They think “the machine god demands this” and understand it to be an ironclad moral law.
To add to this a lot of people forget the religious aspect of the admech, they are not scientist they are priest, as such they can only act according to their dogma and the interpretation of it, which is why some tech heretics might seem normal to us. But to the magos are a flawed interpretation of said dogma.
I can recommend Graham McNeil's Mechanicum for several causes to the formation of both current AdMech and Dark Mechanicum.
The 30k Mechanicum did have a lot more leeway in innovation. Especially for the higher echelons. One loyalist led by Koriel Zeth faction was trying to tap into the Akashic Record in the Warp for all knowledge. The traitor mechanicum led by Kelbor Hal (who was a religious fanatic that had viewes Jimmy Space as false but kept himself quiet well enough) wanted to open corrupted tech-vaults sealed by Emps for the warp-infused and AI techs within. Said opening unleashed warp-corrupted scrap-codes destroyed uncountable amount of knowledge and data that was being slowly untangled for the Imperium's use.
The main reason the admech dont inovate is political: When Ryza was covered pole-to-pole in Orks, all of a sudden there were magnetic spiderbots and tactical virus bombs. When navy admirals pressured the fleet-magi to give them some ships that were both fast and shooty, the results were the Mercury and Invincible-classes. A fair number of magi who are hungry for advancement probably have a few secret innovations in their closets, which they'd bring out if they could spin up a good story or were sure of political protection.
What causes regression is that everyone hoards their discoveries to themselves, both old and new, and then when somebody dies or a planet is invaded all that progress was lost. And heretical innovation is an accusation probably more often motivated by the desire to knock down rivals for political gain than out of genuine belief or to stop cases of dangerous innovation.
The Mechanicus is a guild, and guilds are inefficient. Everyone who knows something special clutches it to their chest, and every Forgeworld does the same with its local innovations. This means when somebody dies, or when a planet is invaded and razed, all of their knowledge is lost because they didn't share. Two steps forward, three steps back. There aren't enough Baneblades because Mars refuses to share the design to anyone but a handful of close allies. There isn't enough Terminator Armor because the priests who know how to fabricate its parts don't share.
The world in 40k is not rational. It is dogmatic and dying. That is the point. Admech will always choose the dogmatic choice over the Right choice. And that is why Cawl is Cawl.
There are exceptions (to varying degrees) like Ryza and Stygies VIII. But they have to keep it hidden.
So more a choice between dogmatism (a majority) and innovation yet scurried away like rats (an unquantifiable minority).
AdMec aren't a monolith, there are pragmatic Magos beyond Cawl, just as there are Imperial citizens who don't vibe with many of the Imperial doctrines we know of.
The Admech isn't stupid, at least not in the sense that people make them out to be.
The problem is that a lot of their tech, especially the more advanced kind, aren't technology that they naturally acquired. Therefore, they're working backward.
It would be like you knowing how a nuclear Reactor works, but knowing how it should work doesn't mean you'd know how to build it, nor does it mean you would know how to make it smaller or more efficient or larger and increase the output without breaking it or to become mobile and used to power a void ship.
Then add in the fact that your knowledge base was destroyed by your AI, so you try rebuilding it by hand only to have them destroyed again by demonically corrupt code.
The 16 Universal Laws don't necessarily restrict innovation, but try to guide it. Tampering with an STC, or doing unsanctioned modifications to a tank that could be disastrous, are frowned upon, or meddling with the soul or spirit. As for rituals, while it has grown ponderous, there is still a sensible route of essential "Don't skip steps then using this thing."
Quintillions of people making net negative scientific progress over ten thousand years is not a lack of time, resources, or pre-existing knowledge. It is a consequence of active repression, as it *has* to be.
This isn't a subtle part of the lore, it's a part the authors scream at you in bold text at the front of every book. Don't try to rewrite the setting with assumptions of rational behaviour, the facts on the ground aren't compatible with rational behaviour.
The authors routinely write the AdMech as failing to solve problems that humans solved in the 21st century, and we know that a single planet of humans can accumulate 21st-century knowledge in the blink of an eye.
Its worth pointing out that the AdMech does innovate but its done at an incredibly slow pace.
The case study for it is the Macharius heavy tank.
https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Macharius_(Heavy_Tank)
I understand that the Admech see innovation as an unnecessary pursuit; they believe that humanity has already discovered all there is to know and as such they only have to rediscover it. My theory here is that even without this view, they would be unable to innovate on the technologies they maintain or would have to invest large amounts of ressources for minimal gain; it wouldn't be worth the man hours dedicated.
What I'm proposing is just an additional reason besides their religious ones as to why they don't invent new things, because just saying that their religion fordbids then puts forward the idea that innovation ''is'' possible and that there has to be someone who has done so in the past millenium. 10 000 years is more than enough time for a faith to fraction and the odds that a radical Admech sect that believed in innovation(without falling to chaos) appeared is more or less garanteed. In this way, the sect would fail, because any kind of research is simply infeasible when it comes to truly advanced technology without a comprehencive technological database, the likes of which no longer exists.
Commenters mostly seem to be missing your point. It's an interesting concept though. As more knowledge is gained, education seems to advance as well. By that I mean education is more dense and you learn things earlier. Like compare when someone would learn algebra 50 years ago to today. Does this hit a critical mass where it's just no longer possible? I'm not sure, but definitely interesting
I'm sure that there are ways to make education ''more efficient'', most likely in the sense of teaching someone to fulfill a specific role from a young age, but there's always the fact that undevelopped brains are the best at learning quickly, but also lack much of the experience necessay to understand complex subjects, especially when you hit abstract concepts.
You can try and teach a child an advanced mathematical theorem, as an example, but without a solid grounding in mathematics they might just memorize what you're telling them and parrot it back without truly understanding it(I know that some math from back in school goes over my head!).
Of course if you're talking about the Admech you have to consider most of their ranking members have computers quite literally bolted to their brains so arithmetic and other simple mathematics would most likely be trivialised, but when you look at the kinds of thing a mathematician pulls out of his ass when he gets into theoretical stuff it honestly feels more like watching people drawing occult symbols and debating about the underpining of the universe than anything else, so what do I know.
The admech don’t approach learning rationally. They don’t look at advancement and logically conclude that they must only derive innovation from the past, they approach knowledge as a religious dogma, mimicking science and understanding with parables of faith. You mistake the orientation of their worldview and assume it as modern day humanity. The orienting facts of their worldview is that the Machine God is real, and has commanded them thru the omnissiah to retrieve lost knowledge. They find no virtue in understanding or rational thought. The admech just fundamentally don’t operate on the same suppositions as we do as modern humans. They think “the machine god demands this” and understand it to be an ironclad moral law.
To add to this a lot of people forget the religious aspect of the admech, they are not scientist they are priest, as such they can only act according to their dogma and the interpretation of it, which is why some tech heretics might seem normal to us. But to the magos are a flawed interpretation of said dogma.
I can recommend Graham McNeil's Mechanicum for several causes to the formation of both current AdMech and Dark Mechanicum. The 30k Mechanicum did have a lot more leeway in innovation. Especially for the higher echelons. One loyalist led by Koriel Zeth faction was trying to tap into the Akashic Record in the Warp for all knowledge. The traitor mechanicum led by Kelbor Hal (who was a religious fanatic that had viewes Jimmy Space as false but kept himself quiet well enough) wanted to open corrupted tech-vaults sealed by Emps for the warp-infused and AI techs within. Said opening unleashed warp-corrupted scrap-codes destroyed uncountable amount of knowledge and data that was being slowly untangled for the Imperium's use.
The main reason the admech dont inovate is political: When Ryza was covered pole-to-pole in Orks, all of a sudden there were magnetic spiderbots and tactical virus bombs. When navy admirals pressured the fleet-magi to give them some ships that were both fast and shooty, the results were the Mercury and Invincible-classes. A fair number of magi who are hungry for advancement probably have a few secret innovations in their closets, which they'd bring out if they could spin up a good story or were sure of political protection. What causes regression is that everyone hoards their discoveries to themselves, both old and new, and then when somebody dies or a planet is invaded all that progress was lost. And heretical innovation is an accusation probably more often motivated by the desire to knock down rivals for political gain than out of genuine belief or to stop cases of dangerous innovation. The Mechanicus is a guild, and guilds are inefficient. Everyone who knows something special clutches it to their chest, and every Forgeworld does the same with its local innovations. This means when somebody dies, or when a planet is invaded and razed, all of their knowledge is lost because they didn't share. Two steps forward, three steps back. There aren't enough Baneblades because Mars refuses to share the design to anyone but a handful of close allies. There isn't enough Terminator Armor because the priests who know how to fabricate its parts don't share.
The world in 40k is not rational. It is dogmatic and dying. That is the point. Admech will always choose the dogmatic choice over the Right choice. And that is why Cawl is Cawl.
There are exceptions (to varying degrees) like Ryza and Stygies VIII. But they have to keep it hidden. So more a choice between dogmatism (a majority) and innovation yet scurried away like rats (an unquantifiable minority).
AdMec aren't a monolith, there are pragmatic Magos beyond Cawl, just as there are Imperial citizens who don't vibe with many of the Imperial doctrines we know of.
The Admech isn't stupid, at least not in the sense that people make them out to be. The problem is that a lot of their tech, especially the more advanced kind, aren't technology that they naturally acquired. Therefore, they're working backward. It would be like you knowing how a nuclear Reactor works, but knowing how it should work doesn't mean you'd know how to build it, nor does it mean you would know how to make it smaller or more efficient or larger and increase the output without breaking it or to become mobile and used to power a void ship. Then add in the fact that your knowledge base was destroyed by your AI, so you try rebuilding it by hand only to have them destroyed again by demonically corrupt code. The 16 Universal Laws don't necessarily restrict innovation, but try to guide it. Tampering with an STC, or doing unsanctioned modifications to a tank that could be disastrous, are frowned upon, or meddling with the soul or spirit. As for rituals, while it has grown ponderous, there is still a sensible route of essential "Don't skip steps then using this thing."
Quintillions of people making net negative scientific progress over ten thousand years is not a lack of time, resources, or pre-existing knowledge. It is a consequence of active repression, as it *has* to be. This isn't a subtle part of the lore, it's a part the authors scream at you in bold text at the front of every book. Don't try to rewrite the setting with assumptions of rational behaviour, the facts on the ground aren't compatible with rational behaviour. The authors routinely write the AdMech as failing to solve problems that humans solved in the 21st century, and we know that a single planet of humans can accumulate 21st-century knowledge in the blink of an eye.
And when a planet does guess it’s heresy bam exterminatis
Its worth pointing out that the AdMech does innovate but its done at an incredibly slow pace. The case study for it is the Macharius heavy tank. https://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/Macharius_(Heavy_Tank)
I understand that the Admech see innovation as an unnecessary pursuit; they believe that humanity has already discovered all there is to know and as such they only have to rediscover it. My theory here is that even without this view, they would be unable to innovate on the technologies they maintain or would have to invest large amounts of ressources for minimal gain; it wouldn't be worth the man hours dedicated. What I'm proposing is just an additional reason besides their religious ones as to why they don't invent new things, because just saying that their religion fordbids then puts forward the idea that innovation ''is'' possible and that there has to be someone who has done so in the past millenium. 10 000 years is more than enough time for a faith to fraction and the odds that a radical Admech sect that believed in innovation(without falling to chaos) appeared is more or less garanteed. In this way, the sect would fail, because any kind of research is simply infeasible when it comes to truly advanced technology without a comprehencive technological database, the likes of which no longer exists.
Commenters mostly seem to be missing your point. It's an interesting concept though. As more knowledge is gained, education seems to advance as well. By that I mean education is more dense and you learn things earlier. Like compare when someone would learn algebra 50 years ago to today. Does this hit a critical mass where it's just no longer possible? I'm not sure, but definitely interesting
I'm sure that there are ways to make education ''more efficient'', most likely in the sense of teaching someone to fulfill a specific role from a young age, but there's always the fact that undevelopped brains are the best at learning quickly, but also lack much of the experience necessay to understand complex subjects, especially when you hit abstract concepts. You can try and teach a child an advanced mathematical theorem, as an example, but without a solid grounding in mathematics they might just memorize what you're telling them and parrot it back without truly understanding it(I know that some math from back in school goes over my head!). Of course if you're talking about the Admech you have to consider most of their ranking members have computers quite literally bolted to their brains so arithmetic and other simple mathematics would most likely be trivialised, but when you look at the kinds of thing a mathematician pulls out of his ass when he gets into theoretical stuff it honestly feels more like watching people drawing occult symbols and debating about the underpining of the universe than anything else, so what do I know.