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Lessons from the History of technology

We are confronting the 3rd millennium in a state of world-wide intermingling. During the last 50 years air transport has made long distance travel and emigration a possibility for hundreds of millions of people. Previously people lived in their own particular territory, the source of nourishment in ancient agrarian society, which we still jealously cherish as a memory. For the first time since the invention of sedentary agriculture, Chinese, Indians, Africans, Mexicans all find themselves nomads and part of a Diaspora spreading their chromosomes, their music and their cuisine throughout the world. From now on it is not a question of whether this or that civilization will be dominant in this particular region but of understanding how our variegated and unique world civilization will evolve. Already we all have the same cars, the same washing machines, the same telephones. However, we can learn much from the diversity of past experiences. By taking a look at the world of techniques and their relation to the civilizations in which they emerged, we can weigh up the chances of this world civilization, consider the mistakes not to be made and define the conditions for its success.

The 12th century mills in Toulouse were shareholder's companies

What's new in the last thousand years ?

If we travel back in time 1000 years to the 10th century, Europe was not the most advanced civilization. Islam had developed teaching, perfected medicine, invented algebra, translated and disseminated Greek philosophy, mobilized the best craftsmen in the construction of palaces and mosques, and spread the use of the compass, the manufacture of paper and advanced methods of irrigating crops. The Arabs tended to be transmitters of techniques between the various regions they controlled rather than innovators. Islam was admired by contemporary commentators for its science, its orchards and its gardens, and left prosperity everywhere in its wake.

At that period, the Chinese were even more creative. They had invented gunpowder, paper paste, the printing press four centuries before Gutemberg and had constructed the first clocks. Their empire was ruled by absolute power and the civil service consisted of the well educated, recruited by competition as objectively as possible. If one was to show a "Martian" expert the technology of the 20th century and the state of different civilizations in the 10th century, he would no doubt say that China was the most likely place where the modern world would arise. And yet this was not so ; why?

In posing this question we enter the heart of the debate concerning futurology. Lacking a historical analysis able to explain the rise and fall of civilizations, futurologists are in an awkward position in evaluating the chances of our civilization in future centuries and political leaders have to rely on dubious doctrines and irrational beliefs. The myriad of destructive ideologies which have occurred this century have led intellectuals to take refuge in scepticism acting as if the human mind is completely incapable of any profound analysis of the major movements within society. This mistrust is understandable but allow me not to share in this despondency which in the end is incapable of producing anything of a positive nature. I will therefore attempt an analysis or rather suggest a line of research which can show the way.

A mere description of conflicts and oppressions is far from enough to understand the development of humanity. A description of history's failures does not make History, and if attempts to explain the past have so far failed, this is undoubtedly due to a lack of relevant information. We try to understand but look in the wrong places. The substance of a civilization consists of daily events and is formed out of what allows people to survive : techniques. Official history, the history of princes, of their courts and their battles, precisely those events which have been made into a spectacle to be told, needs to be avoided. Instead we should look at what is happening backstage, even though little attention has been given to the development of techniques. This is a difficult, much fuller and less "visible" area which is however determinant and gives form to social structures.

A stable China, why?

Let us now consider the example of China in the 10th century, mentioned above. The Middle Kingdom Empire was centralized and its inventions (gunpowder, paper paste, printing, clocks) came from within the Court and were used for the requirements and pleasures of the imperial rulers. Gunpowder was for fireworks which the Chinese adored and paper and printing for circulating imperial decrees and instructions. As for the clock, it suffered a sad fate which is worth narrating.

From David S. Landes, Revolution in Time, Harvard Univ Press, 1983

The first clock was built by the tantric Buddhist monk and mathematician Yixing in 725. It was called "the map of the spherical sky, in the shape of a bird's eye, powered by water", and installed in the palace itself, in full view of ministers and mandarins. In 730, candidates in the official examination for the selection of officials had to write an essay about it but soon afterwards the mechanism began to rust. Unusable, it was removed to "the museum of the college of all sages". The largest Chinese clock was the "cosmic machine of Su Song" constructed in 1092. It was 10 metres high and topped by an armillary sphere from which one could observe the position of the stars. People said that the observations of the stars synchronized with the figures of the machine "like the 2 halves of a stone".

The clock of Su Song worked from 1092 to 1126. When the Song dynasty was forced to abandon its capital Kaifeng, the clock was dismantled and put together again in Peking where it continued functioning for another few years. However, members of the political faction in opposition to the faction to which Su Song had belonged (he was a conservative) demanded the destruction of the clock for political reasons, as it symbolized the preceding era (The Yuan You era of two years earlier). The assistant director of the Imperial Museum managed to delay the decision by appealing directly to the prime minister but when the new faction came to power soon afterwards no one could prevent the destruction of the machine. A text of the period comments "what a shame !" .

When technology is dependent upon the changes of mind and intrigues of those in power and is not rooted in the daily life of the ordinary population it can be forgotten or destroyed. The Chinese only rediscovered this mechanical device for measuring time when the Jesuits brought over European clocks.

China was a rural civilization and agriculture and irrigation were the only technical areas in which knowledge was passed on to "civil society", as it is nowadays termed. The more eminent emperors were proud to have written a treatise on water management as this area of knowledge put them in direct contact with the people. Other areas of knowledge were seen as trivial unless they concerned the maintenance of order, necessary to protect peasants from looting. Actually this turned out to be the weak link. Viewed over several millenniums, the history of China is a succession of oscillations between periods in which central power is strong and maintains justice and periods in which warlords, feudal outcasts or highwaymen reign, pillaging the countryside and exacting ransoms. If power remained centralized in China, it is because though exploitative it was a source of support. Imperial power was anchored in the Chinese mentality whereas Japan and Europe turned towards polycentric, feudal systems. China has for ever existed in a balance of ebb and flow ; the seasons, the harvests, power, Confucianism and Taoism, Yin & Yang, each phenomenon and its opposite coexisted and became active in turn. The cycle (of events) could not be broken and therefore the very concept of progress had no place.

The opening out and then the turning inwards of Islam, why?

The case of Islam is also revealing. At its onset this civilization was creative and lively, on the look-out for advances in Science, Technology and intellectual thought. For example, a Chinese captured in 751 at the battle of Talas taught the Arabs to manufacture paper. Paypyrus was becoming rare and expensive but the need to write and communicate was deep-rooted. The first press was set up in Baghdad in 795 and by the 10th century paper was becoming more prevalent than papyrus. At the time the population of Baghdad was over a million inhabitants while European cities such as Paris only reached 300,000 inhabitants in the 14th century. In the 12th century there were hundreds of paper mills functioning in the region of Fes in Morocco. Muslim society in the 10th century is already much more refined than European society and transmits to Europe algebra, philosophy, medicine, irrigation and navigational instruments. But then society became stilted and since the 12th century has taken delight in incantations, the absolute and repetition. Why ?

Middle Age School in Alep

On looking in more detail at the attitude of Arabs to technology one gets the feeling that, despite their interest in some new inventions, they were not in agreement with the idea of overall progress. Many technical treatises are primarily compilations of older works, often from Roman times. In the field of agriculture, regional customs continued to flourish. Persians used their traditional form of plough while Egyptians used theirs. Advances in irrigation technique in the south of Spain were not disseminated to other regions. Local variations were paramount and Islam had just been superimposed over a mosaic of tribal societies with static and cultures not open to compromise. Study and research were limited to a few centres of learning, in Persia, in Egypt and at Cordoba, without permeating the population.

In the 12th century Cordoba was the location for one of the most beautiful love stories the human soul has ever known. Maïmonides, the Jewish sage and philosopher and author of the guide for lost souls, Averroès, a fountain of scientific, philosophical and technical knowledge and Alfonso X, the most tolerant of Christian kings, so tolerant that he was to be killed by his own subjects, were all living there at the same time. Ibn Arabi, the mystic luminary of Islam, author of the sublime phrase heralding modern science "Man is the eye of God", also dwelt there. They all preached the same message. "Knowledge (in its fullest sense) should be accessible to all men whatever their origin, their faith, their attachments, their richness or poverty". These wise men, from out of their diversity, and yet in agreement over the essential, conceived the early beginnings of Human Rights.

I believe that this affinity between three such great minds was too powerful an experience for the time, a sort of spiritual earthquake. From fear an isolationist reaction was unleashed as the three communities turned their back on Love and went off in their own directions. The Spanish turned to the Reconquering their land, the Inquisition, and then departed to plunder South America. Since then, their songs of love are platitudes or despairing litanies.

The Muslims, carried away by the rantings of Al Ghazali against the philosophers (falsafa) with their doubts and discussions, proclaimed the end of the "ijtihâd" as a moratorium on study and research. They acted as if the world had come to a halt and could only continue existing in the remembrance of past glories. As for the Jews, they took up their wanderings again. Thus while for Christians, love was transformed into its opposite, destruction, Muslims projected it into the past and their society lost interest in the future.

Even now amongst Muslim traditionalists, important deeds carrying hopes for the future stay hidden. Revelation (i.e. creation) was perceived as close to blasphemy (bidda). This makes it difficult (though not impossible ), for innovation to flourish as to innovate is to reveal that which is not yet visible.

The Koran is often used to sanction the maintenance of archaic tribal (sexist) customs dating in reality from before the time of the prophet. Thus, while seeming to venerate Mohammed, his devotees in their actions deny that he transformed the world and ushered in a new era. According to the past critique of Ibn Khaldun the decline of Islamic civilization is the concrete rendition of the irreality of its leaders who prefer to chase their illusions rather than face up to reality. While people are suffering and becoming poorer, the rulers and their court are intoxicated by words and lavishness.

This behaviour is not confined to the Islamic world. Indeed it is seen so regularly in history that it could be called the "principle of irreality". This states that any ruling system, which becomes well established and secure, tends to lose interest in the practical everyday reality of the life of its citizens and in intellectual and technological developments. It devotes the majority of its time to internal intrigues and keeps to its habitual ways of thought and explanation despite all evidence to the contrary, except when its survival or preservation of power is threatened. Thus, power and progress are rarely good bedfellows, as we will see below in the case of Europe.

12th century Europe, the first lift off.

Having looked at the stability of China and the decline of Islam, we can now consider why the extraordinary explosion of technological creation of the modern world took place in Europe, a region which in the 10th century was inhabited by a rural population, governed over by an uncouth and energetic feudal class and plunged into uncertainty by the collapse of the Empire of Charlemagne. Nothing seemed to suggest this was likely to happen.

While civilizations tend towards stabilizing their technological system and can stay in harmony for several centuries without changing their technology, Europe experienced a major destabilization at the end of the 11th century, the great agricultural revolution of the Middle Ages and another in the 18th century, the industrial revolution and is now entering another, this time world-wide : the cognitive revolution.

After the departure of the chevalry at the crusades, iron is used for agriculture

I believe the weak point which allowed change to enter this civilization while others resisted was the absenteeism of power. Why for example did knights go off on the crusades. Not only for the official reasons given in the writings of the clergy of the era but also for very practical reasons related to the objective conditions of the time. From the 11th century onward disagreement was becoming apparent between the two components of the ruling class, temporal feudal power on the one hand, and the spiritual power of the church and the monasteries on the other hand. The over numerous, idle offspring of the knighthood engaged in pillage, ruining crops by riotous gallops through the fields and even ransacking monasteries. After various unsuccessful attempts to control these excesses, the Church came up with the idea of the crusades . What a brilliant idea to channel the excess energy and the thirst for ideals of these predatory young men. Initiatives began to flourish in the fortuitous absence of this feudal class. The administrators of rural holdings started to go to market (it had been forbidden), saved money, invested it, brought new land into cultivation and tried out new crops. Freed from its ruling class, Europe began to see a new entrepreneurial spirit emerge.

Concomitantly the monasteries found themselves in financial difficulties. They had gathered a sizeable population (some 25,000 monks in the Order of Cluny alone) and their lands were vast. But busy singing hymns and praying daily for seven hours and refusing to cultivate the land themselves they had confided its management to peasants. However, the peasants devoted their energies to hiding crops and even traces of ownership. So, Cluny for instance, without sufficient resources and burdened by excessive expenses, was no longer able to pay what it owed.

Financially vulnerable, the Church's spiritual hegemony was at the same time also under challenge. Brought by merchants, a heresy from the East spread through Northern Europe before gaining the support of the Count of Toulouse and the "Albigensians". The Inquisition was set up to fight against heresy. Heirs to a long-standing duellist tradition even earlier than Christianity, the Cathar heretics, claimed that one did not need the Church to be close to God and even more they suspected Rome to be a manifestation of evil, especially as it claimed to represent a poor God while itself hoarding immense riches. Indeed the bishops, abbots and monks of this period lived in great style, light-heartedly spending the income from their domains and engaging in varied escapades with little danger of being called to justice as their privileged and sacred status placed them above the law. Just as dangerous for the clerical institution was the growing internal controversy initiated by Abélard. This lively, spirited and turbulent monk took part in oratorical disputations in front of his students at the Montagne Sainte-Geneviève in Paris. He discussed sacred texts without always referring to the Church commentaries on them. While this can seem of little importance to us, it was a crucial issue at the time as the right to commentate freely meant no less than the advent of freedom of thought. Abélard's "disputations" were the foundations of the modern concept of a university, developed on from Averroes and the sages of Cordoba. The flame of philosophical doubt had caught light in Europe and would never again be extinguished.

The Church felt the need to turn to an ascete employing an iron fist. Bernard of Clairvaux, the future St. Bernard, imposed his ideas from 1117 onwards. The Cistercian revolution meant working with one's hands as the original rules laid down by St. Benoît had intended, fleeing the towns, the new Babylons, dens of corruption, getting rid of luxury and ornaments and helping the rural population practically. Knowledge accumulated in the manuscripts of the cluster of monastic orders, the sole medium at the time for the circulation of learning, was mobilized to save Cluny and ensured eventual success. Hundreds of monasteries rallied to the new doctrine and new establishments were constructed in virgin territory, or as was stated metaphorically, "in the desert". A total of 700 sister abbeys were built in two centuries with one a week during the highest period of growth (1145-50). They disseminated technical knowledge into the surrounding rural areas. The selection of seeds, breeding of animals and the spread of mills, not only as a source of energy for grinding but also for sawing wood, pressing cloth and activating the bellows of the forge date from this period. So do the iron plough and the horse's yoke necessary for wide-scale land clearing and cultivation. Markets developed and became international.

Cistercian Monastery of Thoronet in southern France

In the 13th century international trade, prefiguring the advent of capitalism , developed around the Baltic towns (Lübeck, Brême, Köln, Danzig, Goslar, Hamburg, Lunebourg, Reval, Riga, Rostock, Stralsund). This was the Hanseatic League which gave rise to a form of isonomic government and laid down strict rules for commercial activities. Improved navigational techniques were employed. The "cogges" could carry up to 120 tons and were equipped with the first stern post rudders. The wreck found in the port of Bremen in 1962 was 23.5 metres long, 7.5 metres wide with a waterline of 2 metres. The crew would have been 15-20 men. It sank just a short time after its completion around 1380.

These boats were the forerunners of the vessels which were to set out to conquer the Americas in the succeeding centuries. The affection of German cities for their fairs dates from this period. Prosperity burst out everywhere and the population doubled between 1100 and 1300.

The stern post rudder appeared on the seal of the town of Elbing in 1242.

Decline, Renaissance and Industrial Revolution

Unfortunately this growth ended disastrously. By the beginning of the 14th century population density had reached 40 inhabitants per square kilometre, the maximum sustainable by this rural technology. Climatic variations were enough to cause an initial famine (1316) and the great plague of 1348 took hold of an already weakened population. In one year it killed one third of the population of Europe. It kept recurring and was endemic up until about 1475 at which stage the One Hundred Years War commenced. In all, two centuries of misfortune which marked the European conscience. It seemed like some original, mysterious sin, a breach between people and the natural order which it was important to close. This collapse was accompanied by a hardening of society. Technology was once again no longer freely available, guilds re-emerged and areas of professional domination were delineated. Innovation became less and less possible as links in the chain of prohibitions were reinforced. The means of production were expropriated by existing institutions which none the less remained a recourse against misfortune for lack of any better alternative.

The population fell by a half between 1300 and 1500 returning to its former level prior to the period of great medieval prosperity. What we term the Renaissance in fact marks the end of this great, painful decline. The fundamentals had already been invented. Great engineers such as Leonardo da Vinci gave concrete form to designs already known and the basics of techniques did not change until the 18th century, except in two respects :

1) Space. An enlarging of the world, with the conquest of America and especially with the establishment of the first global trade routes. This represented the world-wide application of the system set up by the Hanseatic League in the Baltic.

The first world map : Cantino Atlas appears in 1502, only 10 years after Christopher Colombus crossing

2) Communication. Printing's first effect was on religion as despite the Inquisition the Church could now no longer prevent believers from reading and thinking about the sacred texts for themselves. Protestantism became uncontrollable as a result of the diffusion of the holy texts. Two centuries later printing had repercussions on technology. Through the publication of the Encyclopaedia (24,000 copies) knowledge previously jealously guarded by the guilds became available to the public and stimulated the extraordinary creativity of the Industrial Revolution. The scenario of this revolution in the 18th century has disconcerting similarities with that of the Middle Ages. From the time of Louis XIV onwards the ruling class was weak and divided. While still a youth, this monarch countered the Fronde by attracting the nobility to his court, a sumptuous diversion, and a wonderful decoy. By doing this he separated them from their lands which they were meant to administer and thus their stewards took advantage. By the time the nobility had been lost in the diversions of the court for two generations they had become incompetent and the clergy were little better. Within this ruling class, cut off from reality, living in a surreal world, emerged an innovating minority current calling for a return to fundamentals, just as the Cistercians of Saint Bernard had previously done. This was the movement of the philosophers whose ideas inspired the French Revolution. Here again the destructuration of power precedes technical innovation and its offshoot, economic prosperity.

In England where the industrial revolution preceded that of France, one observes the same weakening of central power exacerbated by an economic crisis. The competition of the Indian silk trade -already using cheap labour in those days - threatened the British wool trade. A whole economic chain from the sheep to rural weaving was endangered. Prohibitions and regulations were laid down and merchant cargoes were burnt. But the pressure remained, resulting in a restructuring of agricultural land holdings by the rising landlord class. This opened the way for industrial inventions, commencing initially in the textile industry with mechanical spinning and weaving. So the competition from India was defeated by technical advances in machinery.

A point of reference, the middle of the last century

In the Age of Enlightenment as in the 12th century, the ruling class was energised by a rescue plan. In the Middle Ages it involved channelling violence and rediscovering the true values of survival; a love of Nature and the art of living in harmony with it. In the 18th century the largely British inspired movement of the philosophers also had its grand plan; to mobilize science and its progeny, technology, to help humanity escape from the misery to which it had seemed tied for so many centuries. In both cases civilization stirs itself and technology makes a shift, but the people do not follow this movement.

Several decades having passed, the results are not those expected by the initiators. In the first half of the nineteenth century, industry grew and the countryside emptied to the advantage of the outskirts of large towns. Some individuals became rich but the mass had to face up to developments which made them even poorer and more dependent on others.

In the 1848 revolts in Europe, the ruling class lost its illusions. Faced with a proletariat living in appalling poverty and extremely unhealthy conditions, two currents of opinions emerged; one humanist and the other conservative.

The humanists said: "We can't let human beings live in such awful conditions, it's intolerable". They were right. And the conservatives added: "Watch out, they are becoming dangerous!" They were also right. Both arrived at the same conclusion, something had to be done.

Tremendous means were mobilized. From a frightened narrow-minded bourgeoisie, hoarding its money, engrossed in litigatious disputes, sending its debtors to prison, emerged a modern and powerful bourgeoisie looking to the future, investing massively, building railways, department stores, banks, heavy industry, roads, the Suez and Panama canals. They took enormous risks, demonstrated a world-wide vision and to fulfil their plans, created a pool of liquidity through the "transformation of credit".

Our ancestors structured towns and structured minds. Great-Britain under Queen Victoria, Germany during Bismarck's time and France under Napoleon III were seeing the same changes ; investments in urban development, education and social control on a tremendous scale. And it was successful ! Instead of the revolution foreseen by Marx, Europe in 1900 lights up the world and despite two world wars Western Europe in the 20th century prospered as never before in its history.

The major European cities reached the 1900s with thoroughfares wide enough for cars, though laid out well before their invention and a population educated to a standard sufficient for its role in the industrial economy. Europe's present development is the result of the urban structuring of the last century, which incidentally was envisaged with an eye on maintaining social order, and the educational structuring of that century which was not without thoughts of social control. Popular technical culture, out of synchronisation at the onset of the industrial revolution is once again in phase.

Panama Canal, one of the great public equipments of 19th century

The educational material of the period 1850-1900 reveals that the aim was not solely to teach reading, writing and counting. People were taught by projections of "magic lanterns", that they had to have a family, a home, send their children to school, be employed, give up drinking and conform to the middle class morality of the period. They were also taught the most practical and everyday results of science and technology via "practical lessons".

This reference to the past suggests a future rupture in society. If similar causes produce similar effects then when the situation becomes intolerable the ruling class will again be seized with fright and take the actions necessary to remedy the situation. The reaction of the last century presents a universal characteristic ; by structuring space, they structured mind. It was expressed in vast programmes and carried out with the most advanced technologies of the time. We can conjecture that the response to the increase in danger at the beginning of the next century will be similar, though relying on much more powerful techniques. History brings these visions of catastrophe into perspective, humanity has stood up to worse and survived.