What if the Epicureans had prevailed?

[xpastor]

Judging from Lucretius' De rerum natura, I think we would have been centuries ahead in terms of science.

You must also contend with possibility that epicurean Rome culture would be less able to survive the subsequent barbarian incursion, as a result dark ages would last longer and we would now be centuries behind in terms of science.

Since we can't rerun history, we can never be confident about the answers to hypothetical questions like this. Maybe someone should write an alternative history novel on the theme of an Epicurean, non-Christian Roman Empire.

Nevertheless, I'm going to say that the rise of Christianity with its focus on otherworldly theology probably did more to set back science than the barbarian invasions.

In the first place, the barbarians often wanted to emulate the Romans and might have conquered and absorbed Roman science as the Romans did earlier with the Greeks. In the second place, the eastern Byzantine Empire did not fall to the barbarians. It lasted almost a thousand years after the Goths sacked Rome, and yet as far as I know, it produced no scientific or technological advances comparable to those in the golden age of Greco-Roman science with original thinkers like Archimedes, Heron and Galen. However, it did produce lots of theologians, lots of icons and lots of illuminated manuscripts of devotional literature.