I guess it would have been better ( scietifically ) if the antiquity just gave way to modernity, without this middle age interval.
Perhaps it would be better but that doesn't mean it would be possible. We have little evidence to think that Roman Empire would have it's own industrial revolution if Western Empire remained strong, it didn't happen in China or Byzantine Empire that continued to the end of middle ages or anywhere else in the world. Political situation and culture would be complitelly different and propably we wouldn't exist in such alternative universe.
But on the other hand large part of the medieval science was based on totally wrong axioms, for example the aristotelian physics
Inherited from the antiquity, perhaps in more "dogmatic" way but still. On the other hand there were philosophers and universities also many practical inventions were made from glasses to sophisticated mechanical clocks, in architecture few antique buildings could match with church towers when it comes to height in military there were plate armours but later also gunpowder etc. there were also innovations in agriculture and shipbuilding.
But there you have it, no I haven't extensively studied the middle ages, but know that science was not thought of in nearly the same light as it is today. Just claiming that without terrible epochs in history better methods would have never developed is putting the cart before the horse.
It boiled down to a religious, and warring mindset and like you just said the focus was on building military weapons, and I'm including that there were other more useful uses of emerging technologies like making glasses, and clocks, but I doubt they were really concerned nearly as much with diseases, as they didn't have to tools, obviously, to work on these things, and that wasn't the "collective thinking" at the time either.
There is no debate that religious oppression did stymie science, and in a big way. Some writings continued to be passed down throughout this dark time, and wars do give way to newer empires with societies better interests in mind, but if an emphasis on scientific and technological thinking/discoveries had been more the norm I firmly believe we would be much further a head than we are now.
Obviously there is no way of knowing how it could have played out differently, but 800 years of little to no science can not be dismissed, and it's called the dark ages for a good reason.
Just think of the money wasted during a long war, and think of the repercussions of those wars and how it stops short useful, scientific medical progress of any kind, at least for quite a while. and yes I'm considering that first aid and wound therapies for wounded soldiers was probably the state of most medicine, if you could even compare that with the types of medical wonders available today. Yes we'd have gotten to where we are now just faster, had it not been for blind ignorance and obstinate thinking, warring mindset, religious oppression of science, and emphasis on simply other things that we don't often even value today. I firmly believe this, you can call me ignorant or whatever, but this is the conclusion I've arrived at.
Im a firm believer, and this may be obvious, that people think in terms of health, and have a respect for science because the paradigm changed so radically when medicine, industrialization, came into the picture putting a now real focus on quality of life and the collective mindset simply changed, and I don't know how abruptly, but in the cases of some eras in history like the renaissance I would imagine quite abruptly and radically.
In short we think way differently today, and it's unfathomable that we ever thought the way we did in light of what we know today and the information at our disposal. Of course a change in mind set takes lots of time, but it could have happened far earlier. I can't positively make the claim that computers would have been invented 100 or so years ago if circumstances played out better, but I do think history was tumultuous at best, and obviously much of this has to do with the "imperfections of the human mind," to quote Obama, which obviously from an evolutionarily standpoint hasn't change one bit from a Darwinian perspective.
But education can do wonders, even if we can't undo presently "The metabolic pathways of pain and malaise..." and other maladaptive traits like hate, apathy, warring mindset, brute egotism, blind competition, that we've kept with our humanity since the dawn of humankind. That quote was from The Hedonist Imperative written by David Pearce, who believes that biotech advances in medicine will inevitably lead to nanotech and thus create better, wiser, and happier/well adjusted humans incapable of becoming the crazed dictators that history has given us. If you haven't already you may want to google hedweb, where Pearce talks of all of these things. Hedonic engineering may be the most useful way of ensuring society stays progressive, although it has its obvious drawbacks many would argue, such as the potential dangers of all transhumanist technologies. Sorry to segue!
As for present purposes, we are learning to change our values now, and have been since things like the enlightened epochs in history, I just see it as much more exponential now than it's ever been.
As for the slaves and human labor only leading to industrialization due to war, I again, respectfully disagree. Humans have shown throughout history, at least the progressive ones, that if there is an easier way to accomplish an important goal, we should get off our asses and do something to create that better way. Ok, yes uprisings in some cases do lead to favorable change, but it doesn't have to go that route is part of my main argument.
Edit: lots of progress was made throughout history like the emancipation of black slaves that the Civil War helped to end, the cessation from England to form America, and obviously so much more positives. Also I want to stress that healthy goal oriented competition in terms of things like manufacturing better products like we have with Macintosh pcs' vs IBM, competition wise, is obviously a good thing, so I'm not saying it's all bad. I think one of the cruxes of my arguments is the mindset, call it collective, or not, of people through history was mostly based on inflexible thinking based on lack of social networking, and the lack of the kind of educational resources we have now, and other inflexible thinking during those parts in history, and for other reasons that I have not began to include. But we are not warring in America right now like we did in the past, as in we've learned to agree to work together in so many ways, and yes the economy is terrible and things could still be vastly better, but that's a whole other subject. The point is we don't NEED war, at least not anymore, to accomplish higher quality of life, and achievement of goals. If we had the same frame of mind we did in yesteryears we would be going to war over everything.
Edited by dfowler, 05 May 2010 - 10:27 AM.
