Note that the telescope and microscope (based on the principle of putting two lenses, not just one, in front of the eye, are attributed respectively to Galileo Galilei and Anton van Leeuvenhoek in the first third of the 17th century.

Actually, I surmise that, in a dystopian future, knowledge of Fermat's Principle (later 17th Century) would allow people to design optical instruments more easily than by the trial and error that was probably involved in the construction of spectacles in the middle ages.

Can the last politician to go out the revolving door please turn the lights off?

advances in the water wheel, spectacles, the mechanical clock, printing and gunpowder

There's a reasonable stack of evidence relating these advances to increasing trade with China, which reached higher levels than before in the Middle Ages, largely due to changes in Central Asia around that time.

The large cycles where essentially, after the fall of the Roman Empire, and the continuing descent of the Merovingian, a Carolingian renaissance that started a population and technology growth that was stopped in the middle of the 14th century by a combination of the Black Plague and the Hundred Years War. However, growth had all but stopped by the end of the 13th century.

The high point of that period was higher than is usually thought of ; European population in 1300 was in many places equivalent to that of the 18th century. (Although warmer weather helped population level in the middle ages compared to the 18th century).

The renaissance was really the rebirth of wealth after the 14th century crisis ; it is more understandable to us because the society it gave birth to is still essentially ours, whereas Medieval society was radically different.

Using the concept of capitalism to explain that society is a bit preposterous, although it saw the rise of modern banking concepts (the trading fairs in Champaign, in the middle of the road between textile producing Flandres and Northern Italy, had concepts of clearing houses, credit letters, that are probably closer to the modern concept of money than the government backed paper money of China).

The local lord's rights on his land were not necessarily those of the owner ; those lands that had a cash-fixed rent saw this rent made ridiculous by inflation, for example.

The general economy was ruled more by pillaging and the king redistributing conquered land to those serving him than by barter and commerce. Such concepts may be alien to us, but show other, completely different ways of organising the global economy than the modern capitalistic one, which is dubbed "natural" by its proponents.

Religion and personal link to the patron where the defining concepts for social relationships, not money and nationality. Rational thought wasn't as important as tradition and symbols, except for a few theologians in universities. Gothic art doesn't use perspective not because the artists couldn't do it but rather because it was unimportant.

As for innovation, there were many, such as the new way to attach the horses and the beef to the chariot, which allowed for a much more productive use of animal labor ; the decreasing importance of slave labor (all bought out by the Sarrazins down south, and supply was limited as turning christians into slaves was frowned upon) meant that animal labor was in the process of substituing to human labor. The real move from innovation appearing somehow, in a semi random manner, to rational discovery and application of scientific knowledge, didn't happen with the renaissance but much later.

Un roi sans divertissement est un homme plein de misères

On documentary shoots one might be out in the field days at a time, in all conditions. And the cameras, and lenses, took a bashing. Using a collimator is not so difficult - doing something to correct misalignments was more tricky.

BTW - if you have interchangeable lenses, the very best and finest grease to lubricate the sleeves of lens mounts can be found be rubbing your finger by the side of your nose where the nostril touches the cheek. ;-)

You can't be me, I'm taken

1. Who is David E. Landes? When I google the term the only links I get are to this site and the SouthSeaRepublic site mentioned in the x-post. Is this actually David S. Landes, who is emeritus professor of economics at Harvard?

2. Where is Landes advancing the arguements mentioned by the OP? None of the books listed at Amazon for David S. Landes seem to be focused on correcting the popular impression of medieval backwardness.

3. In what way are these arguments anything more than a mild rehash of what Gies & Gies wrote in 'Cathedral, Forge & waterwheel' over 10 years ago?