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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Ned
Not true, the develement of technology began in earnest prior to the discovery of America in 1492. As I have pointed out before, patents were well-established in places like Venice as early as 1474, in English began granting patents as early as 1449. The age discovery and invention preceded the discovery of the New World and did not follow it. |
What great invention came about due to these patent laws before 1492? Anything worth mentioning? The only thing I can think of is the rinting press, and I doubt the sole motivation for Guttenberg was money. In fact, the vast majority of inventions in the world , including the most important, were not motivated solely by money, but by human curiosity.
You have pointed out the existance of patent law- you have failed to answer questions such as- what type of technology could be pattented- you ignore the lack of separation of judiciary from legislative and perhaps even exectuive, meaning if the powers that be wanted to take your invention, they would, and the patented inventor would have no legal recourse.
Try again Ned.
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Sikander
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Boulder, Colorado, United Snakes of America
Jan 2000
time: 22:32
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
The advance of European technology comes AFTER the discovery of the Americas. The one giant technical cahnge beforehand is the printing press- real serious change as far as technology and ideads about science don't start until the mid 16th and 17th century. Th thing is, all these men away in their labs doing experiements- who pays for it? Any sicnetist today can tell you what sience they can do depends on what grants they can get- well, this was not much different before. People had to 1. have an interest in adancement (thus a reason to care) and 2. the money to pay for it. These are changes not tied to culture but economics and politics, both of which saw an immense change in Europe come 1500. |
What percentage of European gdp came from the New World in 1500? Far less than 1% I can guarantee. The conquest of Mexico in the 1530s and the conquest of the Incas soon after did have a major impact in terms of cash, but what innovations were spurred by this? The money was spent largely on the aggrandizement of Hapsburg power, into the pockets of soldiers and the existing power structure where it was used to ravage a good chunk of Europe in warfare. Some certainly went to purchase luxuries, which did marginally improve the economies of other European states as well as increase the importance of traditional trade with the East. But the damage done to Europe by the Thirty Years War was far greater than the gold plundered by the Spanish in the Americas.
Previous to any of this the renaissance began in Italy. Knowledge of and trade with (indirectly at first) India and China were much more important than any impact the New World had in terms of technical improvements and economics for at least a century, and probably closer to two centuries. Stealing gold and silver from the New World did not require a lot of technical innovation apart from that already acquired or invented to take advantage of Eastern trade.
The military technologies (including doctrine, tactics etc.) were developed in Europe in very different ways than previously seen. Yes the Chinese invented the rudder, compass, perhaps gunpowder. But the Europeans turned these innovations into (at first) weak little ships that nonetheless proved to be very difficult to handle for the existing naval paradigms at the time, and over time the continuing innovation of these ships made them completely unassaillable by any other culture's naval forces. Likewise innovations in the use of artillery made every culture's fortresses vulnerable to European arms, with only European designed fortresses capable of significantly slowing the progress of a European siege train.
You seem to be saying that European technical innovation happened because of the discovery of the New World, but the only technical innovation that came directly from the New World and had a major impact on Europe was the potato. IMO contact with the East was much more important than contact with the New World in spurring innovation. Europe was primed to react to technical change because they were exposed to so much of it in such a short period of time from the Renaissance to the Voyages of Discovery. The tech pump was primed by trade with the East and it was internal European conditions that kept it pumping into entirely new innovations more than the impact of the New World.
quote:
Originally posted by GePap
Again, you are assuming they have access to Eurasian advantages (which the point of the experiement is to remove)- the Europeans, with 1000 ad tech, would have to adopt a new biota to farm, one far less capable of supporting large pops with 1000 ad tech- but still, they would have their culture, no? |
No I'm not assuming that either again or for the first time. Read my post again. I'm just shooting holes in your thought experiment, and saying even if the Europeans didn't simply starve into nothingness after being dumped without food, tools, animals, farms etc. into a wilderness, they would have not had any reason to re-discover Europe because there were more fertile fields closer to home.
quote:
Originally posted by GePap
The point is that Europe was nursed with immense advantages living in Eurasia- and its discovery and exploitation of a new rold made virgin by disease propelled them ahead of the competition. |
And in my opinion the impact of the New World on "Western" power is a much more recent phenomenon, and that the impact of the East was more important until at least the 17th or 18th century, especially in terms of technology. IMO internal European conditions were more important than the impact of the New World until the 19th century.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:32
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
The advance of European technology comes AFTER the discovery of the Americas. The one giant technical cahnge beforehand is the printing press- real serious change as far as technology and ideads about science don't start until the mid 16th and 17th century. |
GePap- not an exhaustive summary, but European inventions/(re)discoveries before Columbus’s voyage include:
first English sundial in Newcastle, 660-680
1220-1230: Arnold of Villanova prepares pure alcohol, and describes carbon monoxide.
1250 - astronomical tables ordered by Alfonso X, known as the Wise, king of Castile. Although the printed version appeared only in 1483, these tables saw use for three centuries.
1250-1260- Albertus Magnus publishes his findings on the dissections of animals and insects
1280: One of the claimants for manufacturing spectacles first, Salvino Degli Armati, does so.
1300-1310: Girolamo Savonarola instructs his patients in rudimentary anaesthesia
1304: Theodore of Freiburg experiments on water droplets and explains how and why they are formed.
1310-1320: Ramon Lull discovers ammonia.
1310-1319: Mondino de’Luzzi writes a book on human dissection- his Anatomia.
1350-1360: Frenchman Jean Buridan suggests that initial impetus moves the stars and the planets, not God and his angels.
1370: First steel crossbow used in Western Europe.
1370-1380: The port of Ragusa/Dubrovnik authorizes the first quarantine station (Ragusa gave the word argosy to the English language, plague being a great menace to a city whose wealth depends on trade and trading ships).
1400-1410: Oil based paints increasingly in use.
1410-1440: Benedetto Rinio describes and illustrates 440 plants with medicinal uses or properties.
1414: Influenza first described in Paris.
1420: The Hussites use armoured wagons against the forces of Sigismund, Holy Roman Emperor.
1440-1450: Nicholas of Cusa writes a book theorizing the idea of a continuous universe, that all heavenly bodies were alike, and suggests the heliocentric view of the solar system.
1450-1452: First association of midwives formed in Regensburg.
1470: Discovery of alum in Tuscany.
1474: First printed book in English.
Behind all of these lies a network of monastic institutes with (since Charlemagne’s decree) schools attached, tidal mills, windmills with sails, watermills, precursors of the modern day banking system in Germany and Italy, the medical school at Salerno in Italy, which had done much to further the increase of knowledge in Europe since the ninth century, systematic crop rotation, the Flemish ploughshare, the coulter and so on.
In and of themselves, some inventions may not seem earth-shattering, but as an instance, the watermill leads to interest in how fluids behave, hydraulics, and eventually the propeller.
The other thing to remember is the power of curiousity- Europe had been hemmed in (with some exceptions) by Islam, by the Magyars, the Mongols, and the desire for new things, tastes, exotica, places, is a great goad towards travel and invention.
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:32
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Interesting list, and honestly, generally useless things when it comes to controlling ther world, and I am willing to bet the same type of little inventions and discoveries were happening elsewhere in Eurasia as well being made by endlessly curios people who exist worldwide.
Basically this is a list of trivia; how did Ramon Lull's discovery of ammonia signify anything of significance..and was this knowledge widely circulateds and used?
quote:
In and of themselves, some inventions may not seem earth-shattering, but as an instance, the watermill leads to interest in how fluids behave, hydraulics, and eventually the propeller. |
Yes, propellors, which were not that widely used or vital until centuries later..again, like the Greeks discovery of steam power, an idead well beofre the time it might be important.
quote:
The other thing to remember is the power of curiousity- Europe had been hemmed in (with some exceptions) by Islam, by the Magyars, the Mongols, and the desire for new things, tastes, exotica, places, is a great goad towards travel and invention. |
And the Muslim were hemmed in by the MOngols, Moghuls, The Desertsm so forth and so one. People are universally curious. The question is whether society has any use for new knowledge and thus accepts it ans uses it like the Aztec knowing the priciple of the wheel but having no way to put it to use.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:32
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
Interesting list, and honestly, generally useless things when it comes to controlling ther world, and I am willing to bet the same type of little inventions and discoveries were happening elsewhere in Eurasia as well being made by endlessly curios people who exist worldwide.
Basically this is a list of trivia; how did Ramon Lull's discovery of ammonia signify anything of significance..and was this knowledge widely circulateds and used?
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Only if you persist in seeing them in isolation.
Take spectacles- behind the invention of spectacles you have optics, lenses, glassware, the production of better glass, you look forward to ophthalmology, refraction, and so on.
Quarantine- the idea that diseases may have something to do with not simply with miasma or bad air, or the conjunction of the planets, or bad humours, but transmissible agents and contact with infected humans, and the notion of incubation periods.
Ask yourself what uses do ammonia and alum have? What might an improved plough do? What effect, for instance, might the production of more tapestries (in order to seal up windows against the plague) have on the wool trade between England and Flanders, on dye research, on alchemy/chemistry, on the search for minerals, on banking?
Oil based paints- again, if your blue colouring comes mainly from lapis lazuli, might you not seek out new sources for blue? Grinding minerals for use in oils- alchemy, chemistry, mining, etc, etc.
One invention might be trivial- but you have yet to show how the New World had an effect on Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Kepler or Nicholas Copernicus, or William Harvey, to name but four.
Islam was hardly constrained by deserts- and the Moghuls were a Muslim power.
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:32
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First of all, there was no suh thing as unity between Islamic powers, and they did not have the same culture, so if te point is that culture matters, treating Islam as one is incorrect.
Second, as I said, I am sure this sort of incremental invention was going on elsewhere as well.
quote:
One invention might be trivial- but you have yet to show how the New World had an effect on Leonardo da Vinci, Johannes Kepler or Nicholas Copernicus, or William Harvey, to name but four. |
As I said in the post above, invention is only part of the equation. We know know of Copernicuses work becuase it was resurrected by others and spread- at the time his work was known and accepted by a very small group of people, and there is no reason to think that it was destined to be widely spread had it not been for chages in society that made it wiling to accept these new ideas. Dscovery of somehting new only matters if the person who discovers it, or a mechanism, finds a receptive audience. The Greeks knew of Steam Power- why no proto-industrial revolution then? Becuase society at large did not care back then, and thus the concept died out, and so did the possibility.
I always here people say that finding alien life would be the momentous event with great reprecussions for people's way of thinking..though in "reality" it would have no significance to the economis and politics of the day. Well, what do you think the dscovery of a "New World" was like for Europeans? And unlike that possible first scenerio, this did have imense political and economic consequences for Europe. I argue that the great socio-economic and political changes that the discovery of the America brought- plus new crops and industries and so forth made European society receptive to the ideas of these men, which in reality as as important as the fact these men came up with these ideas in the first place.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:32
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Gepap- what did the potato do for Leonardo? Or maize for Newton? The two main food crops of the Americas may have played a role in the explosive population growth of Europe but only long after the Renaissance. The potato for instance was crucial for the recovery of the population of Brandenburg-Prussia after the Seven Years' War- a war whose effect could have otherwise been like that of the Thirty Years' War on Frederick the Great's kingdom.
By that time however, we already had encyclopaedists at work in France, the Royal Society in Great Britain, and centuries of intellectual progress in Italy and the Netherlands. Crop rotation and an improved plough did more for population growth before the Americas were rediscovered- in fact it took centuries for Italy's population to get back to its pre-Black Death levels veen with new food crops. At the time of the plague there had been a massive growth in Europe's newly urbanized areas.
If you study mediaeval history you’ll discover talk of a ‘twelfth century renaissance’- a period when Christian states of Western Europe proposed to take ideological and military struggle to the Islamic world.
The beginning of the Reconquista in Spain, the launch of a series of crusades in the Middle East, the activities of the Teutonic Knights in Northern Europe, and an increase in the production of books and the collection of significant holdings of books into libraries.
Latin underwent a revival and refinement, and with it an interest in the works of Classical antiquity.
Canon law was systematized and the study of Hellenized Roman law went along with translations into Latin and Greek from Arabic, Jewish and ancient Greek originals.
More significant for the evolution of learning than the discovery of the New World were the schools of law and medicine founded at Salerno, Montpellier and Bologna, and the monastic schools of cities such as Paris and Chartres, and the foundation of universities.
Ibn Rushd’s commentaries on Aristotle, as transmitted through Christian scholars in Palermo and Toledo were fundamental in making Aristotle the presiding philosophical influence of the Middle Ages in Christian Western Europe, which had lagged behind Islam in that respect.
Again, much more important for invention, discovery and the dissemination of knowledge than the discovery of the New World, was the production of paper in Europe. It is first recorded as having taken place in 1144 at the Moorish settlement of Xativah, which is now called San Felipe, near modern day Valencia.
In all, it had taken approximately one thousand years for the craft of paper manufacture to reach Western Europe from China, through the capture of Chinese artisans by forces of militant Islam, and the further refinement of paper manufacturing in Baghdad and Cairo.
Only a century later in Italy, watermarks and dipping moulds were being pioneered, and paper replaced parchment, vellum and papyrus as the standard writing material, with paper mills being built at Ambert in Auvergne in 1326, Troyes in 1338, Nurnberg in 1390, Leira in Portugal in 1411, Hertford in England in the 1450s, Krakow in 1491. Naturally, demand for paper grew with the introduction of the printing press, and it was in the intellectual centre of Bologna that paper/book sizes were standardized in 1389.
‘Hail to the inventor of paper who did more for literature than all the monarchs on earth.’
-Herder
The twelfth century also saw the birth of the Gothic style in architecture- which came about through advances in building techniques, and the understanding of loads and stresses, and spurred research into improvements in glass and glass manufacturing and engineering.
In trade terms, the twelfth century saw the foundation of the first hansa at Visby on the isle of Gotland in 1161- within a century a network of trading cities spread from Finland to the Atlantic, and even inland, and the Hanseatic League, through its offices, linked cities as far apart as London and Novgorod, Bruges and Bergen, Dinant and Narva. In English, the term ‘sterling’ derives from Easterling, which was an epithet applied frequently to the Hanse merchants.
In the Mediterranean Venice was building up its trading network with merchant privileges granted
in Constantinople- ironically it would take up Constantinople’s position as the supplier of goods from Asia to the West.
In fact by the twelfth century, some of the main centres of the northern and Mediterranean renaissance were showing increased urbanization- Venice, Pisa and Genoa, the cities of Lombardy and the Rhineland, and Florence and Siena in Tuscany, and to the north, the textile manufacturing towns of Ypres, Bruges, and Ghent, which would also contribute to the growing wealth of England. London and Paris were now growing for economic as well as political reasons.
The years from the beginning of the twelfth century until Columbus’s return saw the foundation of 76 universities- as far apart as Palermo and Oxford, Salamanca and Krakow- which shows that there was a desire to have schools of learning dedicated to the acquisition of knowledge non-theological in nature.
I would argue that the translation and study of the works of Hellenic and Roman antiquity along with the transmission of new ideas such as algebra and decimal figures (both from Islam) contributed more to intellectual life than the silver mines of Potosi, or the ransom of Atahualpa.
Inventors and inventions on their own cannot change society- the reaping machine was first created in Gaul in Roman times by some anonymous clever Romanized Celts, but a society with a slave economy doesn’t need labour saving devices, and until an enterprising London-born emigrant to Australia ‘rediscovered’ it in the nineteenth century, the idea was lost. Similarly, the steam powered devices of Hero of Alexandria, the technology that lay behind the Antikythera device, labour saving devices in the Chinese Empire or Islam- if you have a ready supply of labour, why create idle hands?
As for Islamic powers not having the same culture- well neither did France and Hungary, or Poland-Lithuania and Spain. You do not have to have the same culture to transmit ideas- a lingua franca such as Arabic, Latin, Greek or numbers will do. The mathematics of Cordoban Islam was the mathematics of Abbasid Islam, after all. Sunni Islam united all of Islam except the minority Shi-ite states and communities- who were linked to Sunni Islam through Arabic.
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JimmyCracksCorn
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Macedonia - Sovereign country north of Greece.
Dec 2002
time: 05:32
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quote:
Originally posted by VetLegion
I was browsing through a list of significant inventions and discoveries of the last millenium and as we all know - the west is responsible for the majority of them.
As a result the west really dominated the last 500 years or so.
I'm not suggesting Europeans are superior or anything like that, but when they teach about world history say in China, how do they explain that? |
Well, basically, the west sets the bar, so everyone else is measured in relation to us on what we see as important. If we were to be judged on a scale set to measure, say, animal spiritualism, we'd get smoked.
Its all relative, and don't forget you're seeing the world as mediated by an entire life of western enculturation (I'm assuming you were raised in the west).
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JimmyCracksCorn
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Macedonia - Sovereign country north of Greece.
Dec 2002
time: 05:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Ned
Simply having a lot of capital to work with does not explain technical advance - as has been demonstrated here in this thread countless times. |
It doesn't, because other societies just don't see technical advances as a priority, like we do.
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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quote:
Originally posted by GePap
What great invention came about due to these patent laws before 1492? Anything worth mentioning? The only thing I can think of is the rinting press, and I doubt the sole motivation for Guttenberg was money. In fact, the vast majority of inventions in the world , including the most important, were not motivated solely by money, but by human curiosity.
You have pointed out the existance of patent law- you have failed to answer questions such as- what type of technology could be pattented- you ignore the lack of separation of judiciary from legislative and perhaps even exectuive, meaning if the powers that be wanted to take your invention, they would, and the patented inventor would have no legal recourse.
Try again Ned. |
The initial patents were, it seems, generally to processes like glass making, However, the other big area of research was weapons - that is what the Duke of Milan hired Leonardo da Vinci to do -- prior to the discovery of America. Guns are what conquered the world, after all.
The telescope was patented.
The steam engine was patented.
The telegraph was patented.
The last three, of course, after the discovery of the new world. But it shows that the climate of inventing an patenting did lead to major inventions well before modern times.
But, generally prior to the discovery of the new world, it created a climate of invention where people would actually list "inventor" as or in their job title. da Vinci was one of these inventors.
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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Molly Bloom, that was quite a rendition of the history of invention during the Middle Ages. I compliment you.
But it does show that the something very unique was going on in Europe during the late Middle Ages and early Rennaissance that was different that at any time and place before. The Romans may have discovered the battery and the steam engine, but nothing was done with these inventions of any importance, and they were lost to history when the Empire fell. In contrast, one invention piled on another in Europe.
I would just like to point out that the pattern of invention does seem to follow the development of patents. The first major inventions in your list are in the 1200's, which corresponds to the first patents. I believe early patents were granted by the Monarch or ruling body on an ad hoc basis. However, they did represent government approval of and encouragement of invention. It also meant that one could become rich (or at least find work like da Vinci did) if he invented something new and important.
But, nothing like this existed in the Roman Empire -- or any Empire anywhere else. The climate of invention, officially encouraged by patents, and enabled by paper and the printing press, brought Europe technology, and technology brought Europe dominance.
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debeest
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I consider molly bloom's list of pre-Columbian "inventions" to be unimpressive and perhaps inaccurate (since I think some of those things had previously been done/created elsewhere, but I make no claim of certainty there). More importantly, though, it has little to do with the initial question in the thread, "why has Western civ dominated in the last 500 years?" I'd still be interested in seeing the comprehensive list of world advances in the last 500 years, with dates and attribution, to see whether we agreed that most of them were initially generated by Western civ.
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:32
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quote:
Originally posted by Ned
Molly Bloom, that was quite a rendition of the history of invention during the Middle Ages. I compliment you.
But it does show that the something very unique was going on in Europe during the late Middle Ages and early Rennaissance that was different that at any time and place before. The Romans may have discovered the battery and the steam engine, but nothing was done with these inventions of any importance, and they were lost to history when the Empire fell. In contrast, one invention piled on another in Europe.
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Thank you for your kind words Ned. I am very much interested in the history of technology and the evolution and transmission of knowledge. As the Roman Empire, various Chinese empires and parts of the Islamic Empire indicate, inventions and devices are possible in slave economies, but labour saving devices are not a priority.
In Western Europe following the Black Death, there was a shortage of labour; there had been widespread famines, unemployment, and brigandage before the disease struck. After, you get peasant revolts, the beginnings of trade unions, the first recorded strike, and an interest in scepticism and enquiry, replacing acceptance of church absolutes and dogma. Coincidentally, we have all those paper mills, the network of universities spanning Europe from north to south and east to west, and trading networks from the Black Sea via Italy through transalpine routes into the County of Champagne and Burgundy, and Iceland, Norway and England through the Hanseatic League and Flanders reaching as far south as Spain and Tuscany.
You also have the rise of merchant banks, double entry bookkeeping (so much more efficient than abacuses), insurance, and improvements in agriculture such as crop rotation and horse drawn improved ploughs.
It has been estimated that pre-plague Europe of the thirteenth century reached a population level of 50 million, which is on a par with the peak of the Roman Empire- thanks in part to agricultural improvements, weather fluctuations and the absence of a widespread lethal disease of any sort for the better part of that century. There was also no great war in that century, between 1214 and 1296, but equally no great advancement in theoretical science- only in optics and clockmaking. The groundwork for Renaissance humanism was partly the pessimism and scepticism engendered by the social disorder of the Black Death, and partly the ideas (algebra, decimals, zero) transmitted through the hybrid cultures of Islamic Spain and the court of Frederick II, grandson of Barbarossa, in Sicily- another meeting point for the Islamic, Christian, and Jewish worlds, and the worlds of northern and Mediterranean Europe.
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debeest
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Dismissing capital as a critical factor in innovation is a serious mistake. Inventions can have little impact because they have no obvious use at the time (Greek steam engine or Celtic reaping machine), or because they have no market, but often it's because there is no capital to develop them. Even if the New World wealth initially constituted only a small fraction of European GDP, that wealth stimulated a whole lot of investment that led directly to some developments (e.g., clock-making). But far more importantly, that wealth allocould be invested in any innovative activity, whether related to the New World or not. To imagine that the value of the New World depended on corn and potatoes is absurd.
Far more important than the immediate value of the New World in 1500, and far more important than Spain's failure to seize and maintain a lead in innovation, was the growing impact of the New World itself. The "West" dominates nowadays because it includes North America and South America and Australia. Europe alone does not dominate the rest of the world in population, in economics, in military might, or probably in technological innovation. The fact that the New World and Europe are broadly culturally similar and politically friendly to one another (compared to other parts of the world) explains any domination by that inclusive grouping.
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debeest
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In answer to the original question in this thread, I have suggested that the answer lies very prominently in the geography of the natural world. Ned has suggested that it lies predominantly in patent law. Offhand, I don't recall anyone suggesting any other explanations. Anyone?
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molly bloom
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Lundenwic
Oct 2001
time: 15:32
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quote:
Originally posted by debeest
I consider molly bloom's list of pre-Columbian "inventions" to be unimpressive and perhaps inaccurate (since I think some of those things had previously been done/created elsewhere, but I make no claim of certainty there). More importantly, though, it has little to do with the initial question in the thread, "why has Western civ dominated in the last 500 years?" |
Well poor old Nicholas of Cusa and Ramon Llull. You're quite welcome to check the dates- I have.
I wasn't claiming that these were purely 'European' inventions, or discoveries; I actually used the word rediscovered in a post. Inventions and discoveries are always being forgotten and rediscovered- the Phaistos disc would indicate through its use of repeated identical characters that someone knew about moveable type in Classical antiquity. The Antikythera device indicates the Hellenic world 'knew' about complex astronomical computations and how to make cogwheels. Hero of Alexandria could utilise steampower.
All gone for centuries after their invention/discovery. You cannot isolate European invention and discovery from Islam, or India, or China. Marco Polo reported the use of oil from the Baku area for fuel and lamps, and indicated that it was not suitable for cooking purposes (presumably he meant as a cooking fuel). indian advances in steelmaking (ukku, or wootz steel) eventually reach Spain through Damascus, and we end up with Damascene and Toledo blades. Similarly with zero, and algebra, and all those other products of trade with the East that had nothing to do with Columbus. Improvements in Venetian glassmaking came about through the use of better quality soda/potash exported from Islamic Egypt- where there was already a sophisticated glass manufacturing industry.
Doesn't seem much in itself, but better glass=better lenses=advances in optics- the development of precision instruments, improved glass flasks, retorts and tubes=growth of alchemy, then chemistry. Glass cloches and greenhouses= improved market gardening.
Clear glass windows illuminate the interior of houses, spectacles increase the study time of scholars and monks, storm proof lanterns, watch glasses, enclosed coaches, all improve the quality of life.
From the humble pre-Columbian spectacles, improved glass and lenses eventually we get the microscope in 1590, the thermometer in 1593, the telescope in 1608, the barometer in 1644. And we get to see ourselves clearly with silvered mirrors, invented again in Murano.
Seemingly trivial things can have great consequences- just ask the flea that spread Yersinia pestis, or the Aedes aegypti mosquito- which caused France to make the sale of territory in North America known as the Louisiana purchase.
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GePap
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of the Big Apple
Nov 2001
time: 23:32
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Molly:
Again, on that list- you are correct, small inventions add up, and in fact, that is the way science moves. But as I and debeest have said, A receptive socio-economic climate is necessary- who cares about better optics unless someone has a reason to employ them- people are saying patent law leads to technology. Well, one, you cna patent devices but not ideas- so patent law has didly to do with the invention of broad concepts which can NOT be turned into economic gain- And besides, the most fundamental human iventions (agriculture, animal domestication) had nothing to do with individuals trying to get rich with patents.
Europe in the 16th century was a continent in upheaval- why was it in upheaval and what helped fuel this? Again, I find it beyind imagination that the opening of two continents to expliotation would have no consequence on the politics and society of Europe- and in afct they did- I don;t know if Leonardo ate corn- that is not the point of what I said- American crops and good revolutionized European diets, European trade routes, European balances of power, upset everything- and as debeest added, it made the Americas part of the West, as opposed to the "East".
If the West is victorious today, the exploitation of the Americas and thier beocming "the West" themselves in beyond central- it was paramount- and that conquest was the result NOT of some great technical knowledge held by Europe and no one else in Eurasia at the time, but geography (happens to be the bit of Eurasia closest to the Americas) and the general Eurasian legacy.
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debeest
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molly bloom, thanks for supporting my point. As you say, many of the items on your list were not "Western" discoveries, you "cannot isolate European invention and discovery from Islam, or India, or China," and "Western civilization" was not a particularly more inventive culture than many others of its time.
As to the importance of the items you list, I didn't mean they weren't important, and I fully understand the importance of small advance building on small advance -- one of my main points in this thread is that modern Western innovativeness could only have occurred when it did, because before then, world culture was not prepared to support it. I simply meant that, in the context of all of the myriad advances in human history or during that particular period, they don't stand out compared to those made elsewhere.
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01-01-2004 05:15
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