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debeest
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"As Molly points out, one invention led to another at an ever increasing rate."
Actually, I pointed this out first. It's one of my main points in this thread. If modern Western civilization has contributed a disproportion of advances, it's mainly because the greatest portion of those advances inevitably are recent, and Western civilization has recently dominated economically and militarily.
"Leonardo was employed to "invent." Did such a thing ever happen before?"
It's possible that no one had ever been given that job title before, but certainly it happened. One of Diamond's theses is that advances happen because food production allows population growth. which allows specialization, which leads to invention. And again, you can't invent advanced things before a period in history when simpler things have already been invented.
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:32
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quote:
The idea that the industrial know how is included in the patent is a pure joke. The patent makes public a theoretical idea and describes practical means to produce the item subject of the patent, but it does not give any guarantee to succeed. |
Currently, yes, because patents are no longer used for their original purpose. In past times, it wasn't so.
Patents have been invented to allow inventors to publish their work and gain royalties from others who would reuse their invention.
Currently, they are used as a weapon to prevent other firms from doing the same thing as you. This is not done to provide knowledge for the future generations, but to prevent competitors from using the same techniques and to keep a tech lead in a given area, which would be lost one year or two later.
Thus today, patents as a way to promote innovation are mostly useless, as they are mostly used to hinder competition. It doesn't mean in past times it was that way.
An example of patent use: Russian researchers looked at all the U.S. patents (at first manually, then electronically) and extracted from that a 'theory of invention' and a software called invention machine (actually invention machine corp is american). They used the patents at a 'meta' level (how to invent an invention). The product they sell has been used to create new patents and technological solutions. Usually from old patents applied to a new domain with adequate modifications. So reuse of patents exists, but it will probably become less and less common as patents are straying more and more from their reusability background to a "let's keep our one year tech advance for 30 years thanks to anticompetitive intellectual property laws".
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LDiCesare
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La Ferté sous Jouarre France
Jan 2001
time: 05:32
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quote:
Obviously you are from France and understand French patents. |
Rude and silly. It's much harder to have a patent allowed in France/Europe than in the U.S. (at least in computers) because the patent offices do a better job of checking the patents.
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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LDiCaesare, you make some valid points about today's patents. But historically, the monopoly grant was in exchange for teaching others how to practice the invention.
Somehow, we have lost sight of the original purpose for patents.
Last edited by Ned on 04-01-2004 at 00:15
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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
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.
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Actually debeest, I don’t think I do support your argument. As I said before, the reasons for the ascendance of Western influence post-Renaissance are too complex to be reduced to geography, or exploitation of the Americas.
Europe was already wealthy by the time the Americas were discovered- the extensive trading networks not only spanned the Baltic and North seas, but went across land to Iran, down rivers to the Crimea and the Black Sea, through transalpine routes enriching the Dukes of Burgundy and the Holy Roman Emperors, and made wealthy whole areas such as Flanders and the south-east of England and the Rhineland.
In modern day terms, men such as England’s John of Gaunt or Henry de Grosmont, or Florentine bankers such as the Peruzzi, the Bardi and the Acciaiuoli were multi millionaires and billionaires- and this without access to the gold, silver, novelties and foodstuffs of the Americas.
I would say that several things combined to enable the expansion of the states in Western Europe that went on to exploit the Americas-
i. the Black Death, and all its economic, philosophical and social ramifications,
ii. the beginning of the Reconquista, which put Christianity in the Iberian peninsula on an equal footing with Islam after some time, and thus made scholars more ready to learn from the Islamic world,
iii. the new learning which resulted from the rediscovery of the science and philosophy of Classical antiquity (and the advances Islamic science had made on those),
iv. the notion of Western Christianity as a unity of sorts, and its identification with Europe and the legacy of the Graeco-Roman world
v. paper, paper mills and a network of monastic schools and universities
vi. extensive trading routes.
I think it is no coincidence that the Mediterranean Renaissance can reliably be said to have its epicentre in Florence, and this despite the fact (as we read in contemporary accounts and in the works of Boccaccio) that Florence had been particularly hard hit by the Black Death, by the bankruptcy of several of its banking houses, and by civil unrest.
Equally, the northern Renaissance can be said to have its epicentre in Flanders, the Low Countries, southeastern England and the Rhineland. All of these places also saw massive depopulation, civil strife, war and famine, and yet by the fifteenth century Oxford, Paris and Bologna had replaced Baghdad, Cairo, and Constantinople as centres of learning and intellectual ferment. By this time European technology, taken as a whole, had outstripped its Islamic rival, and with the exceptions of specialized fields (such as porcelain) had effectively equalled or surpassed China.
None of the learning and technology would have counted for much, if as in China, there had been no enthusiasm or perceived need for it. The social conditions created by the Black Death- a decline in serfdom, the beginning of the end of the feudal system in Western Europe, greatly enriched merchants, bankers, guilds and churches and monarchs, meant that labour saving devices were sought (thanks to a decline in population), that a significant learned cosmopolitan section of society had a greater disposable income, that the nouveaux riches wanted to emulate the aristocracy, and that thanks to the social and philosophical upheavals of death on a massive scale, old wisdom and authority (be it Ptolemy, Galen, or Aristotle or the Church itself) were growing more likely to be questioned, than blindly accepted.
I think it’s no coincidence that the first European state to travel south to sub-Saharan Africa, was Portugal, which had an Islamo-Iberian intellectual heritage, and a ship that combined Islamic and European shipbuilding and design. It also enjoyed trade links with both the Mediterranean and northern Europe, and Africa.
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debeest
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Ned, I'm not arguing that patents don't enhance innovation (although LDiCesare's argument seems quite reasonable to me). I just don't think that patent law is a significant explanation for why innovation might occur more in one civilization than in another. I don't think you've presented any real basis for believing that. (I'll grant that it would be unreasonable to expect any actual evidence; still, I'd want to see a more reasoned argument.)
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debeest
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molly b, I'll readily grant your greater knowledge of history, but it seems to me that some of what you've just said does, in fact, support my reasoning.
For example, you greatly emphasize the importance of bubonic plague. The plague occurred in Europe, at the time that it did, for some reasonably specific geographic reasons. It wasn't a random occurrence, and it wasn't significantly the result of cultural differences. I base this statement on information in the book Plagues and Peoples, and I haven't heard any counter-argument.
You refer repeatedly to Europeans catching up with and learning from Islamic cultures, and making discoveries in conjunction with them or by using their technologies. That reinforces my belief that there was no great cultural difference in inventiveness. If Western culture had been more prone to innovation, it wouldn't have been behind in the first place. What explains its backwardness? What explains its catching up and surpassing?
Regarding European trade, I think you are not suggesting that Europe was unique in the world. Trade routes passed through the Middle East and the steppes and to China and India, distributing wealth all along the way, I would suppose. Again, this would support my belief that Europe stood among the world leaders (as compared to the populations of Africa, the Americas, and Australia), but not ahead of them.
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Bereta_Eder
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Croats and eastern Europe is not the "west" as defined by whoemever bothered to describe a loose explanation anytime he fancied. The very lose meaning of "west" is just another reason why it never existed.
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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Molly, the Black Death cannot be the only explanation or even a primary cause of innovation, even though it might have incented the search for labor saving devices. The reason I say this that Rome had at least two major encounters with plague that reduced its population at least as much as at the time of the Black Death. This did not change Rome's culture to seek out innovation.
Besides, as you noted, many of the key innovations were in areas that had nothing to do with labor savings. New chemicals, better glass making processes, and machines built on cogs and clock work devices.
debeest, patents were not necessary to spread knowledge of new machines, for they could be disassembled and copied by others. But this is not the case for processes that are critical for making glass, chemicals and better metal alloys. One cannot determine from observing a bit of glass or a lens how it was made. Once cannot determine how to make a chemical or metal alloy by holding it.
Historically, people who had knowledge of glass or chemical making kept it to themselves and passed it on to their apprentices. By keeping it a secret, they inhibited competition and enhanced their own fortunes.
But a problem developed especially when the scale manufacturing required more than just a few apprentices. The problem was the disloyal worker who knew of the secret process and left to work for a competitor. When approached by the betrayed trade secret owner, government and first was that loss at what to do. One could hang the disloyal worker. But that did not solve the problem entirely because the competitor could still employ the trade secret in competition. One could tell the competitor that he could not use the trade secret, but this was of little value because by then the secret was out and would spread to still further competitors. The solution that the government came up with was to give a monopoly on the process to the original owner of the trade secret thereby preventing all competition. But they limited their injunction to a period time such as 10 years.
Once this legal remedy was firmly established in a region, the next evolution was to apply for a monopoly on processes that were not generally known to others before they were disclosed by faithless employees. The patent document had to describe with some detail what the process was in order to distinguish that which was patented from that which was not. But as these were public documents, their competitors could read the patents to learn of the secret process even though they could not employ it until monopoly had expired. The original patents in the 1200s were for 10 years.
Once the legal system was in place in a region, the risk of expending resources to deliberately develop new and better processes was lessened because one could protect new developments with patents. Once patents began to be used, however, a second benefit soon developed. New and better processes were legally spread to the competition after the period of monopoly had expired. This gradually raised the the average level of process technology in regions that had patents. Moreover, because the technology was published at the time the patent was issued rather than at the time that monopoly expired, the new technique was available to others for them to improve upon themselves, especially when they received permission from the patent holder to practice the invention under license.
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debeest
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Ned, Rome had slaves from all over the greater vicinity. Labor-saving devices weren't as major a consideration for them as for later Europeans, even after the plague.
I think I've had about all I can take of this talk of patents constituting a major reason for technological advances. Patents, once published, can be read by anyone anywhere in the world, so I can't see any reason why they would only benefit the region with the patent laws. I would expect that publishing your patent in Italy would have ensured that any other competent culture could readily adopt it -- either immediately, if they wanted to obey your patent laws, or at any rate, as soon as it expired -- so that patents should have ensured the advance of technology all over the world, not just where patent laws obtained. In fact, it should have ensured that no one anywhere would fall significantly behind, because everyone could have nearly up-to-date tech.
Moreover, you can only patent technology, while I think most people would agree that many of the most important advances are not technological but social. Patents don't explain those.
I don't think anyone but Ned has expressed any significant support for the idea that patent laws explain Western dominance.
Does anyone have any other ideas besides geography and patent law?
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Ned
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of Aptos, CA
Oct 1999
time: 21:32
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Also, debeest, the role of patents in the Middle Ages has only recently been appreciated. The first I even knew about this was from reading a law review article on the topic around ten years ago, where the evolution of trade secret law led to the first patents in Venice was described, although monopolies were granted earlier. Most patent attorneys believe that patents began with the English Statute of Monopolies in 1609. They actually began in Venice in 1474.
Since even patent attorneys do not know this history, I am not surprised the average historian doesn't know it either.
Last edited by Ned on 04-01-2004 at 15:22
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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
molly b, I'll readily grant your greater knowledge of history, but it seems to me that some of what you've just said does, in fact, support my reasoning.
For example, you greatly emphasize the importance of bubonic plague. The plague occurred in Europe, at the time that it did, for some reasonably specific geographic reasons. It wasn't a random occurrence, and it wasn't significantly the result of cultural differences. I base this statement on information in the book Plagues and Peoples, and I haven't heard any counter-argument.
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Well, again, debeest, I don’t think geography alone explains the Black Death; what caused the disease to erupt at the time it did? Where did it originate?
I find it very interesting, for instance, that when the disease struck European Russia, it reached Moscow and Novgorod not up the rivers from the Crimea, or across the steppe, geographically the most obvious routes, but in a roundabout way, via the Hanseatic trading routes in the Baltic, in virtually the same way it affected Bergen in Norway from England across the North Sea.
For the disease to spread as it did required trading routes; for those routes to exist you need not just navigable rivers, and seaports, but also markets, supply, demand, the ability to trade (no civil strife or embargoes) and so on.
The disease also had a different effect on Christian Western Europe from the effect it had in India, or Islam, and that had to do with the existing religious and social structures in those places. So yes, geography plays a part in explaining the success of some of Europe’s states, but there’s much, much more to their stories than a fertile plain, a river carrying loess or a magnificent harbour and equitable climate.
Ned- read the part in my posts about trade unions and guilds and the first recorded strike in Europe- all during a period of epidemics of the plague. Fewer workers meant that after a period when population soared, the surviving labourers could charge more for their hire. Along with this, the social structure was changing from serfdom/feudalism, so labour saving devices were necessary in post-plague Europe. Europe was fortunate in its reliance on wheat too- a civilization more reliant on a labour intensive crop (such as rice) would not necessarily seek out devices that ‘liberated’ large numbers of workers. The ensuing social disorder might have unfortunate long lasting consequences for the ruling classes.
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debeest
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molly b, my knowledge of the history of bubonic plague comes mainly from William McNeill's book Plagues and People, originally published in 1975. I'm no historian, and even I can see some leaps of assumption in his work. Nevertheless I think it holds together quite well.
IIRC, McNeill guesses that plague might have originated in northern India, well before the Christian era. McNeill found little in the way of historical records to elucidate its early history. I think it's safe to say that the initial appearance of plague had everything to do with natural geography and nothing to do with human culture.
Certainly, once the plague began to infect humans, its main avenue for spreading was via trade caravans. Again, that supports my point. China, India, the Middle East, and Europe were capable of participating in long-distance trade. Other civilizations were not (and were not devastated by the plague). Diamond convincingly argues that that was largely a function of geography.
Over time, chronically exposed populations adapt to plague, such that people die but major epidemics rarely occur. Plague probably devastated populations in India and the Middle East when it first appeared, but McNeill could not find records adequate to verify that. When plague arrived in the Roman empire around 200 (260?) AD, the empire was devastated by major epidemics, and McNeill argues that this was a major cause of the fall of the empire.
Europe continued to experience major epidemics every so often through the Dark Ages and for over a millennium. The famous pandemic of (1346-1353?) probably resulted from the greatly increased passage of trade caravans through the Eurasian steppes, where plague found a rodent host in which it could become endemic. That's geography -- and of course I realize there's more to it than geography alone, but a different geographic situation would certainly have produced a different result.
As trade increased, European exposure became more and more chronic, and major epidemics became rarer.
This provides a potential explanation for the fall of Rome, for the cultural and technological retreats of the Dark Ages, and for the massive reappearance in 1346 to which you rightly attribute great importance. Not only the geography, but the timing, is critical. The devastating plagues which must have occurred in India and the Middle East could hardly stunt technological growth much, because they occurred before major technological growth was possible anywhere in the world. Same for Rome, and for early China (which suffered comparable plague epidemics during about the same period as Europe did). But when devastating plague hit in the 1300s, technology was on the verge of exploding.
I'm curious what you mean by "The disease also had a different effect on Christian Western Europe from the effect it had in India, or Islam, and that had to do with the existing religious and social structures in those places." I'm not disagreeing, I'm just not sure what differences you have in mind.
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debeest
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Correcting myself, having checked the book:
McNeill thinks plague originated either in the Himalayas between India and China, or possibly in central Africa, two places where it has clearly been present for a long time.
Plague probably first appeared in Europe in 542 AD. The major Roman epidemic in about 260 AD probably was something else, maybe smallpox. For the purposes of this thread, I guess it doesn't matter what the epidemic was; geography still underlay it.
To clarify: plague in Europe depended on the black rat as a flea host, but plague killed off the rats just like the people, so it couldn't maintain itself endemically. Plague kept getting reintroduced from the Eurasian steppes, where it had found a burrowing rodent host that it didn't kill off. That's why epidemics eased off as trade expanded, allowing more frequent introductions. McNeill thinks plague didn't infest the steppes until a modest while before the massive 1346 plague.
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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, I think the locations where the Black Death hit hardest were probably the places of highest town population density - indicating an already higher level of civilization.
Also, I don't think that labor savings devices were the kind of inventions that were critical to development of European technology. Most of the new developments came in area of processes, like glass making and chemicals, ship design to handle the high seas, and weapons development due to the constant arms race that was underway in Europe. Clearly the former were influence by the development of law. The latter two were caused by the need to trade with the new world and the wars that resulted from colonization. |
Ned- the Venetians hung on to their expertise in glassmaking by the simple expedient of forbidding any of their people involved in glass manufacturing from leaving Venice. Any who did so were hunted down and killed.
Portugal led the way in new ship design- not to trade with the New World, but with India, China and anywhere that produced spices. They wanted to circumvent the Islamic stranglehold on trade with the East, and avoid the dues charged by Venice.
Think of the rich trading powers- Venice had convoys of ships involved in the passenger trade (it profited immensely from three of the Crusades, gaining Zara on the Dalmatian coast and getting the Crusaders to deal a knock out blow to its trading rival Constantinople), in the shipping of woods, dyes, cloth, jewels, spices, and the Hanseatic League shipped Baltic grain, herring, wood, tar, furs, ivory, amber, the area of Flanders grew rich not simply through tapestry and cloth manufacturing, but also acting as an area of exchange for the goods from northern and southern Europe, and northern Italy grew rich for similar reasons, but also because of the supply of banking services to European monarchs and merchants. Venice's shipyards were some of the most famous and busiest in Europe- and didn't rely on New World trade to stimulate innovation. Similarly, Hanseatic ships didn't need the stimulus of New World trade- simply the demands of an extensive pan-European trading network.
The Black Death hit not only the newly urbanized areas of Europe (basically a broad 'avenue' from southern England, through Flanders, northern France, parts of Burgundy and into northern Italy) but also rural Europe. The rural and urban populations had reached heights that would not be matched until the nineteenth century- and that's with better medicine, a knowledge of infection, better diets and better drainage.
Spain under Phillip II received five times the revenue from taxes in the Spanish Netherlands and the old Burgundian holdings there of the Habsburgs, than it did from the New World bullion it amassed. Spain notably did not contribute to the scientific revolution post-renaissance (or even during)- hard to, when you're busy enforcing doctrinal rigidity and compliance. Instead of chemical light, Spain had the lights of the autos da fe.
Ned- if you have a smaller workforce, and if say, like England with wine from France, the demand for a product remains the same post-plague as it did pre-plague, then what do you do? The demand for tapestries as well went up during and after the plague.
The impact of the epidemic affected society in many differing subtle and not so subtle ways- especially in regard to enabling people to doubt accepted ortthodoxies. If the plague didn't cause many of the social changes (there is evidence suggesting that serfdom was declining in Western Christian countries, that labour was being substituted with cash payments) then it certainly acted as an accelerant.
debeest- you seem to be using geography in such a loose way, that it encompasses epidemiology, human activity, trade and chance.
Let's imagine that bubonic plague doesn't affect humans. Let's imagine that bubonic plague is so virulent it calls everyone it comes intocontact with. Let's imagine that the activities of the steppes cultures, or the Ottoman Turks have meant to European trade with the East, or that Constantinople refused passage for Genoese or Venetian ships. Let's imagine that the plague couldn't assume three different forms, bubonic, pneumonic and septicaemic. Let's imagine that sanitation or quarantine is better in European countries, or that fleas can't live for six months after a single feed, so can survive from one oasis city to the next.
Not all of the above are functions of geography- and plague in Europe does not seem to have depended solely on the black rat as a host. It reached Iceland in the 14th century, and yet there are apparently no records of black rats in Iceland until the 17th Century.
Bubonic plague has several areas where it is quietly endemic- Central and East Africa, Kurdistan and Libya, Western Arabia, Central Asia, and it has a zoonotic reservoir in Californian ground squirrels and prairie dogs. Obviously, it didn't reach epidemic or pandemic proportions all the time, and the idiosyncrasies of human activity play a preponderant role in finding out why- not just geography.
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debeest
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I guess I'm using "geography" to refer broadly to the natural world -- the aspects of the world that aren't dependent on human beings, but affect humans in one area differently from humans in another area. That includes physical geography, terrain, barriers, climate, the natural ecology of plants and animals, and such.
The broad sweep of human history has been largely a function of those broad natural features. Whatever differences arose between different populations grew mainly out of those natural features. Human beings in groups are not so innately different from one another; on a large scale, if you took one group of early humans and switched them with another group in a different place, their differing successes would depend hugely on place.
For example, Old World germs destroyed New World populations because humans occupied the Old World far sooner. Germs and populations there had many millennia to adapt to one another so that people could maintain endemic infections without catastrophe. The New World, sparsely inhabited until shortly before the Europeans arrived, and divided by deserts, jungles, the mountainous Central American isthmus, and a very long north-south-north climate axis that all made migration difficult, and with not a single domesticable herd animal, had very little opportunity to develop endemic diseases of its own.
Of course in a way it's futile to discuss whether a culture's success or failure stems from its place in the world or from its own characteristics, just as it's futile to discuss whether we are defined more by our DNA or by our environments -- or which came first, the chicken or the egg. But in some sense, the natural world came first, and produced humans; and long before human culture became important, the natural world had determined where humans would be able to farm successfully, where domesticable flora and fauna would occur most, where humans wouldn't be able to go until millennia later than they went elsewhere, where large populations could grow, and thus where people could specialize in invention and develop endemic diseases deadly to other people.
I guess what I'm saying is, whatever cultural differences there are between modern "Western civilization" and the rest of the world, I think the broad brush of the natural world painted the picture; human culture really just filled in the details.
If I'm focusing too closely on the chicken and not the egg, it's because I think most people think there's nothing but the egg.
Regarding what Western Civilization gained by conquering the New World: 16th-century taxes, bullion, potatoes, and all of that are of negligible consequence compared to the simple fact that the entire American continents are part of "Western Civilization." Imagine that the Chinese had skipped across a narrow little ocean and colonized the Americas, and think about what the balance of Western and non-Western civilizations would look like now.
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03-01-2004 01:36
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