Reply #7: I think it would also be valuable to preserve some kind of living science.

[phantom power]

I'm guessing that nobody will be building any particle accelerators or moon-launches for some time after the Bottleneck. But it seems like a reasonable goal to preserve the ingredients of the enlightenment. Off the top of my head:

the scientific method
germ theory
anatomy
mathematics, at least through calculus
atomic theory
evolution
the printing press
numerical analysis

I don't know. The core insights about the natural world that we've worked so hard to obtain over the last 500 years. It will be so easy to lose it. Hell, we're losing a lot of it now in America, and things haven't even gotten bad yet.

I don't know. I'd love to believe, but really I'm dubious about attempts at social engineering. Likely as not, we'll end up like The Scientific People, dancing around a 200 year old Bunsen burner and chanting "Quant Suff! Quant Suff! Quant Suff..."