Indeed it is amazing to see how long humanity remained, with the tools of technological innovation at its disposal, but not using them ; Alexandria in the time of the Ptolemees was on the brink of it already.
Also, the Black Plague killed over a third of the population, but it was only the catalysor of a crisis that had been brewing for half a century ; a crisis of overpopulation as forest cuttings were leading to diminishing returns ; Eastern Europe was conquered, and the political tensions caused by a contradiction in the centrifugal tendencies of feodalism and the centripetal actions of the monarchs also had a large part in Europe's crisis at the time. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
The question why they didn't and then they did apply knowledge to industrial processes...and where and why industrial processes arose...vast topics!
I (in my ignorance!) would link it to clockwork. The ships did the trading, the trading made money, money was abstract but meant real-world benefit in goods and land, the more money the more benefits, the better the clocks the more effective the exchanges (the quicker, I mean; no room for being a week or two out--business went to the fastest ships), and...and...vast topics!
...give those rich people's children time and wealth...centres of learning. Codify (encyclopedias!) the knowledge in a form that can be taken out of academia...and the church on the wane...so no more having to hide your learning from the clergy.
Interesting (for me!) that the original inventions were few but decisive in terms of speeding up production
Textiles - Cotton spinning using Richard Arkwright's water frame. This was patented in 1769 and so came out of patent in 1783. The end of the patent was rapidly followed by the erection of many cotton mills. Similar technology was subsequently applied to spinning worsted yarn for various textiles and flax for linen. Steam power - The improved steam engine invented by James Watt was initially mainly used for pumping out mines, but from the 1780s was applied to power machines. This enabled rapid development of efficient semi-automated factories on a previously unimaginable scale in places where waterpower was not available. Iron founding - In the Iron industry, coke was finally applied to all stages of iron smelting, replacing charcoal. This had been achieved much earlier for lead and copper as well as for producing pig iron in a blast furnace, but the second stage in the production of bar iron depended on the use of potting and stamping (for which a patent expired in 1786) or puddling (patented by Henry Cort in 1783 and 1784.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
Not to mention luddites...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luddites
enclosure, politics, kings, queens...
Hey! My mind now boggleth Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Universities were created by the move of intellectual life, only as an effect of the move of spiritual importance, and thus economic importance (at the time a major economic process was the giving of wealth to spiritual centers), from the monastery typical of the high middle age to the cathedral ; a move from a closed place in the countryside to the center, and often governing body, of the city.
This led to a concentration of intellectuals, and as cities are interrelated in hierachical relations, whereas monasteries were members of a network of equals, further concentration was possible to large cities. The best way to get insightful thought process is to put enough smart people in the same place...
It seems the same process may have been at work in Islam, as the oldest university in the world was founded along a Mosque : University of Al Karaouine
This is how Arab (and Berber and Persian) science is linked with Islam ; because Islam sparkled centralisation and re-urbanization. Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/City-state#The_Middle_Ages_and_the_early-modern_era
So...your suggestion is that in the creation of a larger structure than the city state you create the conditions for major advances in human knowledge?
Here is what I have been told: In Egypt (the prototype?) "nation without walls" as opposed to the walled city--birth of systematic knowledge (but what about the indians? I don't know enough to know); then you had the greek-persian peace (not that I know much about that at all)...then...the romans...(on wikipedia there is a page called greek inventors; no page for roman inventors...; and then the collapse of Rome--lo those many years after...so there be dark ages...science-wise. Applied sciences maybe.
...and christianity was (according to the gospel of Thomas--the twin) an idea conceived by John the Baptist to link all the "working classes" together, because they were the poor indigenous, but the jews had a policy of separation (chosen people), so...
cough cough cough cough!
...so then we move forward a couple of hundred yeares and islam is constituted and becomes an empire, one language, peace in the lands--but an empire...boom! Knowledge.
Then the atrophying of that empire...well...I did a search and maybe it was the Mongols that ended the peace love and understanding.
The Muslims inflicted their first defeat on the Mongols in 1221 at the Battle of Parwan, in present-day Afghanistan, under the leadership of Jalal al-Din, son of a Central Asian Muslim ruler. The victory provided a temporary morale boost for the Muslim army, but the Mongols soon regrouped and devastated Jalal's troops later that year. After that initial setback, the Mongols swept through Central Asia into Persia and Iraq. The Persian city of Isfahan fell in 1237, and the Mongols gradually moved closer to Baghdad, the centre of the Abbasid caliphate.
http://www.ucalgary.ca/applied_history/tutor/islam/mongols/ilkhanate.html
...and to tie up the strange knot....
Whether or not this hypothesis is accurate, it is clear that several pre-existing conditions such as war, famine, and weather contributed to the severity of the Black Death. A devastating civil war in China between the established Chinese population and the Mongol hordes raged between 1205 and 1353. This war disrupted farming and trading patterns, and led to episodes of widespread famine. The so-called "Little Ice Age" had begun at the end of the thirteenth century. The disastrous weather reached a peak in the first half of the fourteenth century with severe results worldwide.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Black_Death
Boom!
Good to read your words, Linca. Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
After the Renaissance, the city slowly lost its political independence, but by that time it was ruling the world : in the middle age the nobility was living in its castle in the countryside ; in the 18th century it was living in luxurious hostels in the city.
Indeed the first intellectual evolutions appeared in Mesopotamia, at the time of the Sumerians which seems to have been of the city state ; Greeks were organized along city-state lines but the Hellenistic period (i.e. empires left over after the death of Alexander the Great) had the emperor-as-deity, yet saw the summits of Greek thoughts.
Romans are boring, have little litterature and next to no philosophy and science. It's not amazing the Roman intelligentsia spoke in Greek, not in Latin.
As for the mongols, because they had destroyed the Arab middleman between Europe and China, and instituted peace in Central Asia, they made possible the coming of Europeans in Cambaluk ; i.e. Marco Polo. Europeans who brought back the plague when coming back... Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Concrete#History
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vault_(architecture)#Dome
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acqueduct
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road#History
(Hey, you got me thinking...) Don't fight forces, use them R. Buckminster Fuller.
Also, the Black Plague killed over a third of the population, but it was only the catalysor of a crisis that had been brewing for half a century ; a crisis of overpopulation as forest cuttings were leading to diminishing returns ; Eastern Europe was conquered, and the political tensions caused by a contradiction in the centrifugal tendencies of feodalism and the centripetal actions of the monarchs also had a large part in Europe's crisis at the time.
