Cistercian Industrial Revolution?

archaeogeek

Banned
I'll give you that, some orders were more more lenient than others. Anyhow the point of Alhazen is to say that Muslims as a whole contributed immensely to science and the scientific method and they are certainly a group who puts faith first back then. Historically there's nothing inherently at odds with a highly devout group also engaging in rigorous science. I characterize Jkay's formulation of scientific method putting facts before faith as flawed in this context.

You are highly mischaracterizing islam and muslims as a whole (and as a monolithic group) so this kind of fails as an argument.
 

archaeogeek

Banned
How is he mischaracterizing Islam and Muslims?

The Islamic world was historically a major preserver/spreader of knowledge.

No, he's mischaracterizing the religious fervour of the entire muslim world as though they were a monolithic society of ultra-religious people. Also I know Mendel was a monk, some orders were also very much anti-science: I'd trust the works of a jesuit to have scientific grounding far more than those of a dominican, for example.
 
You are highly mischaracterizing islam and muslims as a whole (and as a monolithic group) so this kind of fails as an argument.
How am I "highly" mis-characterizing Islam? Fine, I'll reformulate.

"Anyhow the point of Alhazen is to say that Muslims as a whole contributed immensely to science and the scientific method and a number of these scientists--including Alhazen--were very devout."

If you read his theological works (and I have as best you can in English) you will see that he was very serious about being a Muslim.
 
Additionally, in relation to fields such as agriculture, hydraulic engineering and metallurgy, the Cistercians became the main force of technological diffusion in medieval Europe.
- "Cistercians," Wikipedia

Until the Industrial Revolution, most of the technological advances in Europe were made in the monasteries.[79] According to the medievalist Jean Gimpel, their high level of industrial technology facilitated the diffusion of new techniques: "Every monastery had a model factory, often as large as the church and only several feet away, and waterpower drove the machinery of the various industries located on its floor."[80] Waterpower was used for crushing wheat, sieving flour, fulling cloth and tanning – a "level of technological achievement [that] could have been observed in practically all" of the Cistercian monasteries.[81]


The Cistercian order was innovative in developing techniques of hydraulic engineering for monasteries established in remote valleys.[60] In Spain, one of the earliest surviving Cistercian houses, the Real Monasterio de Nuestra Senora de Rueda in Aragon, is a good example of such early hydraulic engineering, using a large waterwheel for power and an elaborate water circulation system for central heating.

The Cistercians are known to have been skilled metallurgists, and knowledge of their technological advances was transmitted by the order.[82] Iron ore deposits were often donated to the monks along with forges to extract the iron, and within time surpluses were being offered for sale. The Cistercians became the leading iron producers in Champagne, from the mid-13th century to the 17th century, also using the phosphate-rich slag from their furnaces as an agricultural fertiliser.[83] As the historian Alain Erlande-Brandenburg writes:

"The quality of Cistercian architecture from the 1120s onwards is related directly to the Order's technological inventiveness..."
-"Cistercians: Commercial Enterprise and Technological Diffusion," Wikipedia. [emphasis added]

This should probably settle this both for the Cistercians and monks in general.
 
Cistercians, faith and Cardinal Wolsey...

Getting to be Pope had become an obsession for Wolsey that coloured his attempts to gain enough wealth. WI he realises that Cistercian cast iron will help by giving him guns? Unless his enemies in the Church stop him, this vigorous butcher's son might start an arsenal to give him the military power. More cannon could blunt French and Spanish influence...Butterflies, I hear butterflies...
 
I've been too busy to comment, I'm afraid. So here's my explanation.

The Caliphates had a strong intellectual tradition, as most freeish societies do, but most of its contributions were in math and institutions like universities, less in science and especially not engineering. Why not? They had editions of Hero of Alexandria - why not try aeleopiles themselves, to try pushing them beyond toy status? Why not mature early eyeglasses on the scene? Why not develop Kepler's Laws, and then Newton's as generalizations?

The only explanation I can think of that seems to fit the facts is that the scientific method - the mental habit of looking at facts before faith - had been lost since a century after the Roman Republic fell - with Hero of Alexandria having been the last great area scientist/engineer for a long time. Unchecked monarchies have a long history of hostility to technological advance, and the Roman Empire was no different.

The scientific method's been invented in several times and places. The first invention for which documentation persists was in Classical Greece - and that mostly in its results of several fields being creasted or revolutionized quickly, like astronomy, geometry, mapmaking, and our favorite history. I'd guess it also probably also happened in the Indian subcontinent and East Asia, at the least, but records in both places have been censored or destroyed.

That wiki page rather supports my case. It says Alhazen invented the scientific method - though, really, he was reinventing it. But, I'm thinking Alhazen must've sadly failed to convert many of his contemporaries, though, or physics and steam engines would've been far earlier. Maybe it's because he only had two students.
 

loughery111

Banned
I've been too busy to comment, I'm afraid. So here's my explanation.

The Caliphates had a strong intellectual tradition, as most freeish societies do, but most of its contributions were in math and institutions like universities, less in science and especially not engineering. Why not? They had editions of Hero of Alexandria - why not try aeleopiles themselves, to try pushing them beyond toy status? Why not mature early eyeglasses on the scene? Why not develop Kepler's Laws, and then Newton's as generalizations?

The only explanation I can think of that seems to fit the facts is that the scientific method - the mental habit of looking at facts before faith - had been lost since a century after the Roman Republic fell - with Hero of Alexandria having been the last great area scientist/engineer for a long time. Unchecked monarchies have a long history of hostility to technological advance, and the Roman Empire was no different.

The scientific method's been invented in several times and places. The first invention for which documentation persists was in Classical Greece - and that mostly in its results of several fields being creasted or revolutionized quickly, like astronomy, geometry, mapmaking, and our favorite history. I'd guess it also probably also happened in the Indian subcontinent and East Asia, at the least, but records in both places have been censored or destroyed.

That wiki page rather supports my case. It says Alhazen invented the scientific method - though, really, he was reinventing it. But, I'm thinking Alhazen must've sadly failed to convert many of his contemporaries, though, or physics and steam engines would've been far earlier. Maybe it's because he only had two students.

I agree with you that the monastic orders of Europe had mostly lost the scientific method. That, however, does not change one important fact; their being allowed to spread technology will speed its rediscovery. While they themselves will mostly bumble along, discovering things through trial-and-error, without a systematic reasoning system behind it, their ideas will not be confined to monasteries. And with a few butterflies, the conditions for an earlier Agricultural Revolution on the English model, or a more widespread one, could easily be laid. Say, for instance, that Henry allows them to help feed a continental adventure... a better-equipped English army has a chance of carving out a nice sphere of influence on the Continent, especially in the Low Countries or France. So instead of having the political conditions for the Agricultural Revolution exist only in England, those conditions could also exist in the Low Countries, which already have a mechanical and commercial
tradition.

So, while the monastic orders themselves will probably not become the focal point for a second rediscovery of the scientific method or an earlier Industrial Revolution, they will most likely speed the whole process just by being allowed to spread their advances.
 
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