So,

The ancient Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Aztecs, etc, had high civilization, aquaducts, agriculture, metals, and highly intelligent people. Why did it take thousands of years of such civilization and then BAM! Industrial revolution and high technology in an eyeblink?

What societal forces caused this?

What societal forces caused this
More people probably(I have no idea).

"industrial revolution" is the key to technoligical advancement.

More people probably(I have no idea).
Me either. But it certainly begs the question, dosen't it?

"industrial revolution" is the key to technoligical advancement.
Right. But why such a long period when we had the tools and materials right in front of us?

Right. But why such a long period when we had the tools and materials right in front of us?

Waiting for the steam engine to be discovered.

"The wonderful progress of the present century is, in a very great degree, due to the invention and improvement of the steam engine, and to the ingenious application of its power to kinds of work that formerly taxed the physical energies of the human race."~Robert H. Thurston

http://campus.udayton.edu/~hume/Steam/steam.htm

Right. But why such a long period when we had the tools and materials right in front of us?

Dark ages and Middle ages, too much time waisted on warfare.

Waiting for the steam engine to be discovered.

"The wonderful progress of the present century is, in a very great degree, due to the invention and improvement of the steam engine, and to the ingenious application of its power to kinds of work that formerly taxed the physical energies of the human race."~Robert H. Thurston

http://campus.udayton.edu/~hume/Steam/steam.htmYes, but why wasn't that invented until fairly recently? The Greeks could probably have accomplished one.

Are you insane? We all would be dead by now had Greek discovered a steam engine. Thanks whoever is there for Dark Ages.

Yes, but why wasn't that invented until fairly recently? The Greeks could probably have accomplished one.

You could read the link. It gives the history.

Industrial age has not come out of nowhere, there was NO BAM. There were gradual advances in transportation, agriculture, sciences, etc., there were gradual social "advances", most important of them - rise of individualism, death of traditional communities and building hierarchy of wealth instead that of the birth.

Industrial age was born long before steam engine was invented. Presumably it has began at the times when british nobility has decided to evict peasants and raise sheep instead. Thus surplus of cheap desperate work force was created to be exploited by the first capitalists, owners of first manufactures utilizing division of labor.

The end of slavery might have had something to do with it...or perhaps it was an effect.

Yes, but why wasn't that invented until fairly recently? The Greeks could probably have accomplished one.

The primitive Steam Engine is at least as old as Heron of Alexandria, who used them as part of his designs (mostly as curiosities or amusing "gadgets" of their day).

In my opinion, the reasons for the advancement of technology are likely the result of a combination of factors. Some of it is dumb luck. You not only have to invent the steam engine, you need to realize their potential to do productive work. To some extent that requires you to have access to plentiful supplies of fuel (to keep them running) but also an understanding of the sorts of tasks that might be aided by such an engine. Newcomen's steam engine (and Watt's later on) were used as water pumps, particularly in mines. You needed to be aware of the problem of water collecting in mines for to begin the process of figuring out how to correct that problem.

I suspect (as a BS off the top of my head hypothesis) that the real impetus for the industrial revolution was a combination of (i) social structures that allowed for the upward mobility of a broad range of the population (something ancient China lacked), (ii) the printing press and (iii) feedback.

The printing press is what allowed knowledge to start spreading quickly, on those rare occasions that technological innovations were discovered, it was the vastly more efficient spread of information disseminated new technological, scientific and philosophical principles more widely, without having to transport the contraptions or experts themselves. There was a general increase in the level of education in Europe as a result, which meant there were more people with the technical knowledge needed to "invent" new technology. The more people, the more likely that genuine technological leaps will come about.

As technology started to build up (and spread, thanks again to the printing press), economic productivity increased as did national wealth. Higher wealth levels gave the educated more capital and free time which they could dedicate to new (and bigger) scientific and technological research. Plus, the rapid increase in technology allowed for a great degree of interaction. In order to invent the steam powered water pump, you need to see both the steam engine and the water pump and combine and refine them. The more technology there is, the more interactions there are to explore.

The odd thing is that printing press may have only come because Gutenberg failed in a venture to sell religious trinkets to pilgrims traveling to Aachen. Gutenberg evidently got the year wrong, and so there were no pilgrims. Under threat to repay the money he borrowed for the venture or else, he dreamt up the printing press. Or so the legend says. If true, that is a pretty random reason for so critical an advance in technology.

Industrial age has not come out of nowhere, there was NO BAM. There were gradual advances in transportation, agriculture, sciences, etc.,
I beg to differ. The radical difference between the world of post industrial revolution and pre is blatant and obvious.

You could read the link. It gives the history.
I read it. Look at the table at the end. Almost 1700 years(!) between the demonstration of steam power and the first rudimentary practial application. Why?

We were a horse and buggy species for almost all of our thousands of years of recorded history, up until less than 200 paltry years ago, then BAM! (yes, there was a big BAM sound) we became an internal combustion/jet engine/micro electronic/space travelling species. This is no trivial thing. Ther must have been some kind of dramatic phase change in our societies.

Advancement is exponential.
One discovery/breakthrough often leads to dozens more.

The primitive Steam Engine is at least as old as Heron of Alexandria, who used them as part of his designs (mostly as curiosities or amusing "gadgets" of their day).

In my opinion, the reasons for the advancement of technology are likely the result of a combination of factors. Some of it is dumb luck. You not only have to invent the steam engine, you need to realize their potential to do productive work.
Agreed. But nobody, for 1700 years+ realized this? All of the clever people were on vacation?

To some extent that requires you to have access to plentiful supplies of fuel (to keep them running) but also an understanding of the sorts of tasks that might be aided by such an engine. Newcomen's steam engine (and Watt's later on) were used as water pumps, particularly in mines. You needed to be aware of the problem of water collecting in mines for to begin the process of figuring out how to correct that problem.
Did not the ancients mine and need to move water to irrigate and supply their cities? The romans had aqueducts. They also had plentiful fuel, metals, and a need to move water.

I suspect the real impetus for the industrial revolution was a combination of (i) social structures that allowed for the upward mobility of a broad range of the population (something ancient China lacked) and (ii) the printing press. The printing press is what allowed knowledge to start spreading quickly, on those rare occasions that technological innovations were discovered, it was the vastly more efficient spread of information disseminated new technological, scientific and philosophical principles more widely, without having to transport the contraptions or experts themselves.
Agreed.

I still see a puzzle as to why we stagnated technologically for so long.

Welcome back, by the way.
I just noticed you.

Advancement is exponential.
One discovery/breakthrough often leads to dozens more.
Yes. But I still have a hard time accepting the "luck" or the "societal impetus" theories. Humans are curious innovators with a strong urge to improve things and make profit. No one saw the potential for this once the first steam driven device was demonstrated? Some of them must have exploded. The power and potential was obvious.

Welcome back, by the way.
I just noticed you.
Thanks. I just noticed myself(!) :m: ;)

I beg to differ. The radical difference between the world of post industrial revolution and pre is blatant and obvious.

Where would you draw a line between the world of pre and post? What year exactly? If it's so obvious and blatant, you should know. Sure, you can't date it, can you?

Explosion of industrial revolution could be dated to later decades of 19th century. However, industrial revolution was going on in 18 and even 17 centuries. Industrialism as a concept has been born somewhere in 15-16 centuries. There was no bam, even though the western life was distinctively different in 15 and 19 centuries.

Humans are curious innovators with a strong urge to improve things and make profit.

But it wasn't until fairly recently that people were free to make a profit and cross class borders.
The industrial revolution carried on its back a social revolution of empowerment of individuals and movements to abolish class systems.
Entrepreneurship could well have played a significant role in expediating these breakthroughs.

I still see a puzzle as to why we stagnated technologically for so long.

Well you have to bear in mind that the Greeks didn't have "printing", so the printing press was inconceivable. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, trade was greatly curtailed in western Europe...not to mention that there still was no upward mobolity. "Serfs" were really slaves by another name, unable to leave their land unless the landholder said they could.

Even if a serf came up with an innovation, it almost certainly would have been something directly related to his producing food, as he didn't have the free time and breadth of information needed to innovate in other areas. Those limited innovations ould have had to overcome significant obstancles to spread beyond the local area.

Populations living hand to mouth subsistence lives aren't the best for technological development. So you may need either a random burst of genius or a significant number of people with significant leisure time (and education) to enhance the likelihood of new technology being invented. (You also need a system of rewarding the inventors...if a serf invented a better plow, he couldn't "sell it" because he couldn't legally own property in medieval Europe. Everything he had belonged legally to the landowner.

Well you have to bear in mind that the Greeks didn't have "printing", so the printing press was inconceivable. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, trade was greatly curtailed in western Europe...not to mention that there still was no upward mobolity. "Serfs" were really slaves by another name, unable to leave their land unless the landholder said they could.
.
There was an explosion in the social mobility after the collapse of the Roman Empire. One should just have had guts and "iron fists" to carve a piece of pie. Moneymaking abilities would not have sent one far, that's true. Serfdom was not born by means of BAM either. Few centuries upon the collapse peasants were as free (except "taxes") as you can get, much freer than you btw.

Where would you draw a line between the world of pre and post? What year exactly? If it's so obvious and blatant, you should know. Sure, you can't date it, can you?

Explosion of industrial revolution could be dated to later decades of 19th century. However, industrial revolution was going on in 18 and even 17 centuries. Industrialism as a concept has been born somewhere in 15-16 centuries. There was no bam, even though the western life was distinctively different in 15 and 19 centuries.
Interesting. You apparently see a continuum of progress from 100AD to now with a steady, linear development from horse and manual power to space shuttles.

Interesting.

Well you have to bear in mind that the Greeks didn't have "printing", so the printing press was inconceivable. With the collapse of the Roman Empire, trade was greatly curtailed in western Europe...not to mention that there still was no upward mobolity. "Serfs" were really slaves by another name, unable to leave their land unless the landholder said they could.

Even if a serf came up with an innovation, it almost certainly would have been something directly related to his producing food, as he didn't have the free time and breadth of information needed to innovate in other areas. Those limited innovations ould have had to overcome significant obstancles to spread beyond the local area.

Populations living hand to mouth subsistence lives aren't the best for technological development. So you may need either a random burst of genius or a significant number of people with significant leisure time (and education) to enhance the likelihood of new technology being invented. (You also need a system of rewarding the inventors...if a serf invented a better plow, he couldn't "sell it" because he couldn't legally own property in medieval Europe. Everything he had belonged legally to the landowner.
This I can see... yes. Makes sense.

Interesting. You apparently see a continuum of progress from 100AD to now with a steady, linear development from horse and manual power to space shuttles.

Interesting.
First, what is progress? I don't think more techology=progress, I would call the things that industrialism has done to humans, society and nature a crime, not a progress.

Whatever progress is, I see a continuum of "advances", plateaus, downgrages, spikes from 100AD to now. What I don't see - two steps "before" and "after".

Waiting for the steam engine to be discovered.

"The wonderful progress of the present century is, in a very great degree, due to the invention and improvement of the steam engine, and to the ingenious application of its power to kinds of work that formerly taxed the physical energies of the human race."~Robert H. Thurston

http://campus.udayton.edu/~hume/Steam/steam.htm


Yes, but why wasn't that invented until fairly recently? The Greeks could probably have accomplished one.

Hypothetically speaking; What will happen if we go in past and show the Greeks the steam engine train and everything latest in technology that can be used in it with respect to powering it mechanically ?


-- --- - - - - --- -- - -- --- - - - - --- -- - -- --- - - - - --- --

BTW , are u lucky enough to have ASPM or ASP; or r u still hanging on Microcephalin :D

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microcephalin

the industrial revolution didn't really gear up untill the invention of the internal combustion engine.

yes, steam and water played a part but their major drawback was portability and to a lesser extent efficiency.

the industrial revolution didn't really gear up untill the invention of the internal combustion engine.

The industrial revolution was done and dusted by the time internal combustion arrived:

The Industrial Revolution was a major shift of technological, socioeconomic, and cultural conditions in the mid 18th century and early 19th century.
Wiki...

the first practical internal combustion engine was produced in 1860.

the first practical internal combustion engine was produced in 1860.

That would be the mid 19th century.

shutup! :bugeye: :D

Hypothetically speaking; What will happen if we go in past and show the Greeks the steam engine train and everything latest in technology that can be used in it with respect to powering it mechanically ?
The greeks actually did have a variety of surprisingly advanced gadgetry, like automatic doors and water vessels that automatically refilled if any water was withdrawn. (Would that I could post links...the curse of a n00b.) That is not to mention things like the Antikythera Mechanism, which seems to have been a surprisingly sophisticated analog computer using modern looking gears with triangular teeth. (Until recently it was thought that sort of gear was a modern invention.)

So,

The ancient Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Aztecs, etc, had high civilization, aquaducts, agriculture, metals, and highly intelligent people. Why did it take thousands of years of such civilization and then BAM! Industrial revolution and high technology in an eyeblink?

What societal forces caused this?

Religion=Dark Ages

A couple of things to add to the discussion:

I believe that the cultural advancements necessary for a new mindset have already been elucidated adequately. I will merely add that the sum of the cultural changes resulted in a society which incorporates change at a much faster pace than has ever been witnessed in human history. Humans (all animals really) tend to be somewhat conservative when they can get away with it. It's a much easier existence. Less consumptive of resources. The mind tends towards unconscious behavior. Living the same day over and over and over again. Humans, however, are an adaptive species and have the ability to escape this natural behavior.
Thankfully.

Did you know that the Oldowan toolkit (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oldowan_Industry) persisted virtually unchanged for over half a million years?
Looked at with this long view, we can see that the opening question of this thread is invalid. The changes that have taken place in human culture have actually transpired at a phenomenal rate.


Second:
There are many innovations which led to the rise of the industrial revolution. The steam engine has been mentioned. As has the printing press and the easy dissemination of knowledge (as well as the resulting rise in literacy).
Another innovation would be firearms. The repeating rifle, specifically.
Also modern food processing methods (stock yards, meat packing plants, etc.... as well as the rise of chemistry and the advancements in food preservation).

The list could go on and on and on.
I'll leave more innovations for other posters to follow. But I will mention one very important discovery.

The Bessemer Process (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bessemer_process) allowed for cheap mass production of steel without which the industrial revolution would have been practically impossible.


Interesting. You apparently see a continuum of progress from 100AD to now with a steady, linear development from horse and manual power to space shuttles.

Interesting.

More like punctuated equilibrium.

The Bessemer Process allowed for cheap mass production of steel without which the industrial revolution would have been practically impossible.

I certainly agree that Bessemer Steel as a major and important advance; however, the industrial revolution began in Britain nearly a century earlier. The industrial revolution was, no doubt, a major factor that led to the demand for steel that prompted Bessemer to develop the process. Benjamin Huntsman's crucible steel might be a better focal point for your argument, since it predated and was very important to the British Industrial Revolution.

(It is, to me, one of the incongruous facts of history that as the American Revolution as being fought, Britain was already in the throes of the early Industrial Revolution.)

Communication is the key.

It took the ideas from many cultures, communicated together, to fuel modern 'Western' technology as it developed in Europe.

The primary source of the revolution, in my view, was the information obtained by Marco Polo from the Chinese, which he transported back to Europe and disseminated. No, not just the Chinese noodle which they made into Italian spaghetti, but the more substantive information he obtained - rocks that burn.

For a brief introduction, go to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo

Until Marco Polo, no one in Europe knew that you could burn certain types of rocks, and not just wood. Marco Polo had observed the Chinese burning rocks, and was astounded. Such rocks were readily available in Europe, yet no one knew that they could burn.

He also observed the Chinese pulverizing those rocks and mixing it with other readily available chemicals (dried urine, for example), which then were used for military purposes such as to fire rockets at the enemy.

Upon taking that Chinese technology back to Europe circa 1295 A.D., it was not long before the idea that a rocket propelled projectile (bullet or cannonball) came into existence, completely revolutionizing warfare in Europe. Soon, each country strived for the latest advances, which ultimately shaped and reshaped the many countries in close proximity, which proximity allowed for a rapid communication of each new idea.

Anyway, that's my two cents worth.

There are plenty of forces alligned against intellectual advancement. Religion for one. The Vatican prevented the spread of knowledge, especially after the invention of the printing press. Before that, there was the burning of the Library of Alexandria (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria). This sort of thing is still going on today with pseudo-conservatives against funding stem cell research, denying global warming, denying evolution... Also, advanced civilizations tended to kill themselves by overexploiting environmental resources.

Communication is the key.

It took the ideas from many cultures, communicated together, to fuel modern 'Western' technology as it developed in Europe.

The primary source of the revolution, in my view, was the information obtained by Marco Polo from the Chinese, which he transported back to Europe and disseminated. No, not just the Chinese noodle which they made into Italian spaghetti, but the more substantive information he obtained - rocks that burn.

For a brief introduction, go to:

Until Marco Polo, no one in Europe knew that you could burn certain types of rocks, and not just wood. Marco Polo had observed the Chinese burning rocks, and was astounded. Such rocks were readily available in Europe, yet no one knew that they could burn.

He also observed the Chinese pulverizing those rocks and mixing it with other readily available chemicals (dried urine, for example), which then were used for military purposes such as to fire rockets at the enemy.

Upon taking that Chinese technology back to Europe circa 1295 A.D., it was not long before the idea that a rocket propelled projectile (bullet or cannonball) came into existence, completely revolutionizing warfare in Europe. Soon, each country strived for the latest advances, which ultimately shaped and reshaped the many countries in close proximity, which proximity allowed for a rapid communication of each new idea.

Very interesting. It should be noted that the earliest European reference to black powder and it's composition predates Marco Polo a bit (in 1234, by Roger Bacon in his "De nullitate magiæ"—with the first recipe for making it being written down by him in 1242/*). Still, my knowledge of Marco Polo is pretty limited and he may well have been key to really generating broader interest in gunpowder outside the alchemical community.

----
/* There was also a book called "Liber Ignum Per Comburandum Hostes" (the Book of Fire for Burning Enemies) by Marcus Graecus that may predate these, though the earliest copy that can be proven to have existed was from sometime around 1250.
----

The illuminatii!!!

So,

The ancient Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Aztecs, etc, had high civilization, aquaducts, agriculture, metals, and highly intelligent people. Why did it take thousands of years of such civilization and then BAM! Industrial revolution and high technology in an eyeblink?

What societal forces caused this?

Several reasons here. Firstly, we didn't get industrial revolution and high technology in an eyeblink. It's taken around 250 years. The groundwork for this was laid during the medieval period. For example, blast furnaces were operating in europe in the 15th and 16th centuries.
The scientific mindset necessary to take the correct approach to things also took shape over the perio from the 1400s to 1600's, although it didn't really triumph until the 19th century.
There is also population to consider. An increased population, utilising more of the available energy resources eg mills, can therefore have more people to invent more stuff. The effect is cumulative, and over the past few hundred years we reached teh stage where the addition of new knowledge happened faster and faster.

Very interesting. It should be noted that the earliest European reference to black powder and it's composition predates Marco Polo a bit (in 1234, by Roger Bacon in his "De nullitate magiæ"—with the first recipe for making it being written down by him in 1242/*). Still, my knowledge of Marco Polo is pretty limited and he may well have been key to really generating broader interest in gunpowder outside the alchemical community.

----
/* There was also a book called "Liber Ignum Per Comburandum Hostes" (the Book of Fire for Burning Enemies) by Marcus Graecus that may predate these, though the earliest copy that can be proven to have existed was from sometime around 1250.
----

INteresting. Where did you get this information from? These books are rather hard to come by.

There was also a thread on "Why didn't the greeks invent the steam engine" a year or two ago.
The answer was that making a working steam engine required a recognition of the work being done, and metallurgical capabilities which the ancients just did not have, as well as the ability to coordinate widespread industries to produce the necessary material.

I certainly agree that Bessemer Steel as a major and important advance; however, the industrial revolution began in Britain nearly a century earlier. The industrial revolution was, no doubt, a major factor that led to the demand for steel that prompted Bessemer to develop the process. Benjamin Huntsman's crucible steel might be a better focal point for your argument, since it predated and was very important to the British Industrial Revolution.

(It is, to me, one of the incongruous facts of history that as the American Revolution as being fought, Britain was already in the throes of the early Industrial Revolution.)
It appears with modern research that crucible steel was being produced in central Asia and possibly even Damascus hundreds of years before Huntsman. However, Huntsman had a ready market for his materials, and the ability to concentrate capital so as to produce what was necessary. The older producers were part of restrictive empires and lacked the facilities available to Huntsman.

INteresting. Where did you get this information from? These books are rather hard to come by.

I was a history major and once took a seminar run by Dr. Bert Hall, one of whose specialties is in the impact of firearms in Europe in the late middle ages. Admittedly, though, I had to check the names of the books online, as my Latin is non-existent, and my memory of the exact dates of publication fuzzy. :)

We went over in some detail the controversy of whether gunpowder was an oriental invention or independently discovered in the west (popular consensus suggests that it was oriental, and that knowledge of it passed to Europeans from the Arabs, though some historians dispute that and hold that it was independently discovered). We didn't cover Marco Polo's involvement, though we didn't really only discussed the debate on who *invented* it rather than who may have popularized its existence.

I don't see any problem with independent invetion- alchemists and metallurgists and other laboratory workers were playing about with all sorts of stuff for rather a long time. I'm interested in history of chemistry and technology and suchlike, so have begun accumulating some translations of old texts, and books about old texts and authors.

I just found translations online of the LEyden and Stockholm papyri.

Pandaemoni:

Thanks for the corrective information.

It is well documented, however, that Marco Polo indeed popularized much of what he learned in China. He was a "media sensation" as it existed at the time. He and his uncle 'returned from the dead', having been away for nearly two decades, everyone thought they were dead. Plus, he was relatively wealthy.

Perhaps some Europeans did know about gunpowder from earlier travels to China, by Arabs and others. However, coal was not in use in Europe (other than possibly medicinally), and I suspect that explosive powder that might have existed before Marco Polo would have been made from charcoal, and likely not quite as effective.

Marco Polo's fanciful descriptions were soon elaborated upon in his native Italy (Venice), and the mining of coal likely commenced not long afterwards.

As a historian, you might wish to google on coal mining, to see if they credit Marco Polo.

Greek Fire was, of course, known about, but the forumla had been lost by then, as I recall, and it was no longer being used militarily. England was famous for its archers (such as Robin Hood), and all of Europe was still in the bow-and-arrow stage of warfare (which is actually quite effective nevertheless) with seige towers. I believe gunpowder was first effectively used militarily for cannonballs to break fortress walls.

Walter

Coal was in use in the UK by I think the 13th century. I can't remember the reference for that though.

The importance of gunpowder was that it allowed poorer, cheaper troops to kill knights, the same as crossbowmen did. Cannons were in use by the early 14th century, and there were even some on the battlefield by then. Certainly they were being used effectively for sieges by the early 15th century, and by the early 16th century all fortified buildings were designed specifically to withstand bombardment by cannon.

Don't feed the trolls.

Hey, you just censored their contributions! You fascist!

Right. But why such a long period when we had the tools and materials right in front of us?That thousand years of ignorance and squalor, known as the Dark Ages, was the period when Christianity had a stranglehold on Europe. The resumption of progress when this hold was broken is heralded by many names such as the Renaissance (art), the Reformation (philosophy) and the Enlightenment (science). [A vastly oversimplified paradigm of course.]Yes, but why wasn't that invented until fairly recently? The Greeks could probably have accomplished one.The Greeks saw no need to invent labor-saving devices because they had unlimited slave labor. The people who gave us the word "democracy" were not very democratic.The end of slavery might have had something to do with it [industrialization] or perhaps it was an effect.A little of both. In the U.S., the northern states began industrializing, which reduced the economic value of slavery and ultimately gave it a negative value. The South was desperate to hang onto its medieval storybook lifestyle of grand balls, ladies in impractical clothing and estates staffed by dozens or hundreds of servants. Slavery was part of the fantasy and industry was not. With only the limited agricultural technology of the time, German immigrants who did not believe in slavery proved that free men could outproduce slave gangs in plantation work. Had Lincoln not gone to war to force the South to do his bidding, an independent Confederacy would have collapsed economically within a generation in the face of competition from the rest of the Western Hemisphere where slavery was abolished peacefully (except Haiti).I beg to differ. The radical difference between the world of post industrial revolution and pre is blatant and obvious.It's because you're looking at a compressed version of history. It wasn't until the 20th century that very many people began to notice substantive changes due to technology within a single lifetime. It wasn't until after WWII that children began to realize that the "wisdom of the elders" wasn't very applicable to the world they were growing up into, which was partially responsible for a historically new phenomenon called the "Generation Gap."I read it. Look at the table at the end. Almost 1700 years(!) between the demonstration of steam power and the first rudimentary practial application. Why?Most of time, most of the world was ruled by people whom we would today call despots. They just didn't care about improving the lives of their subjects.We were a horse and buggy species for almost all of our thousands of years of recorded history, up until less than 200 paltry years ago, then BAM! (yes, there was a big BAM sound) we became an internal combustion/jet engine/micro electronic/space travelling species. This is no trivial thing. Ther must have been some kind of dramatic phase change in our societies.Technology has an accelerating effect on itself. If you think the Industrial Revolution happened with a bam because it only took a few hundred years, wait until you see the blinding speed of the Information Technology Revolution. So much of this new technology is virtual that the world's information infrastructure is maturing, developing and expanding at a pace that industrialization could never have achieved. The West has already reached the point at which parents are largely unable to give useful advice to their children, because the children understand the world of today better than they do.Agreed. But nobody, for 1700 years+ realized this? All of the clever people were on vacation? Did not the ancients mine and need to move water to irrigate and supply their cities?Yes, and there was always a huge population of conquered people, or just serfs, to schlep it around. The number of serfs working for you was a measure of your status. Who would have wanted to replace serfs with machinery? You can see the same principle at work today. I'm convinced that most Americans have jobs that they could perform at home. But their managers will feel their power and status eroding if they don't have huge office buildings full of people under their direct control. So we continue to "go to work" every day, even though commuting accounts for something like 25-30 percent of our petroleum consumption. Corporate America would rather lead us into a Holy War over the Middle East oilfields than let us work at home, where we all happen to have telephones and computers just like the ones in the office. Does this help you understand the forces that work against technology?The romans had aqueducts. They also had plentiful fuel, metals, and a need to move water.The Romans were not, by any stretch of the imagination, a science-oriented people. They were people-oriented people. They nonetheless are credited with some important achievements, like sewers, aqueducts, and a well-managed civil government that brought about what we still call the Pax Romana over almost a whole continent. They showed us what can be done without whiz-bang technology. :)Hypothetically speaking; What will happen if we go in past and show the Greeks the steam engine train and everything latest in technology that can be used in it with respect to powering it mechanically ?You guys just don't get it. The Greeks didn't care. They thought that was interesting, but they had no motivation to seek a practical application for it. They couldn't possibly have understood why we think it's so important to move people and goods so much faster than horses travel when draft animals were a technology that worked satisfactorily for the Greek ruling class. You have to remember that the people we refer to as "the Greeks" were the ruling class, at a time when class was taken for granted. You would not have found them to be as noble as we give them credit for. You would probably have found them to be real jerks.

because technology builds upon itsself

Bad luck!

There is no reason why the printing press, the positional numbering system and the abacus could not have been invented during Roman times. Those 3 things would have triggered and accelerated lots of other things. Probably by at least 500 years.

psik

So,

The ancient Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Aztecs, etc, had high civilization, aquaducts, agriculture, metals, and highly intelligent people. Why did it take thousands of years of such civilization and then BAM! Industrial revolution and high technology in an eyeblink?

What societal forces caused this?
Two words: paper money.

Paper money allows for easy trade and can easily be managed by governments. Before the industrial revolution, paper money was not very popular. Once it became widely used, resources were more easily distributed and accumulated.

(Can you imagine accumulating millions of gold coins in your house? LOL! :D )

There is no reason why the printing press, the positional numbering system and the abacus could not have been invented during Roman times. Those 3 things would have triggered and accelerated lots of other things.The modern positional numbering system with zero was fully developed in India and spread to Arabia by 900CE at the latest, yet it was not used by anyone except mathematicians for hundreds of years. The same thing happened in Europe, it was brought there by Fibonacci in the 13th century but not adopted by the populace until the Enlightenment three centuries later. We're missing some cultural mindset that prevented the citizens from feeling a need to take that step beyond the arduous arithmetic using what we see as intolerably clumsy Greek or even Babylonian numerals. I suspect it's similar to the way we holdouts in the Colonies still feel about the Metric System. Pounds, feet, acres, gallons and Fahrenheit work for us. As we say, "If it ain't broke, don't fix it." The rest of the world thinks we're insane but most of us never even think about it, much less wish there were a better way.

As for the printing press, the Romans were disciplined administrators and clever civil engineers but they did not seem to be very inspired inventors. Again, there may have been some mental inertia that prevented anyone from imagining the utility of mass-produced copies of documents. After all, there were entire monasteries full of monks who would have suddenly lost their jobs as scroll copyists.

The abacus? Perhaps they could have managed that. It might have caused them to think in terms of positional decimals and inspired the invention of the number system. The Romans simply did not seem to be scientists, that's all I can say.Two words: paper money. Paper money allows for easy trade and can easily be managed by governments. Before the industrial revolution, paper money was not very popular. Once it became widely used, resources were more easily distributed and accumulated. (Can you imagine accumulating millions of gold coins in your house?)Paper money is rather more easily managed after inventing the printing press. And remember that money is merely the technology for representing surplus wealth. Industrial technology caused a quantum increase in the human race's surplus wealth, as the technology of civilization itself did before that. A relatively small surplus does not require a lot of cash for moving it around. Again, the mindset. Even today a lot of people can't shake the conviction that gold has intrinsic value. It's just a dangfool metal that comes out of the ground and isn't good for much except making rather flimsy trinkets! But when people have a box full of gold they're comforted by the idea that they've really got some wealth. Imagine convincing more primitive people that a drawer full of paper is wealth!

When we realize that "technology" is not just gadgets and machinery, but any concrete or abstract toolset including agriculture, writing, money and the entire organization of city life, the complex interaction between technologies becomes clearer and perhaps it starts to make more sense that they had to be invented in a certain order.

Yes, I heard the printing press is the most important invention ever...

I agree. Technology is not just gadgets. That's why I mentioned paper money.

The advent of corporation also seem to have boosted advancements dramatically in the past 50 years. Unfortunately, at the texpense of the environment and the well being of our species.

The advent of corporations also seems to have boosted advancements dramatically in the past 50 years. Unfortunately, at the expense of the environment and the well being of our species.Radical new technologies always do that. Look at agriculture. Humans became dependent on grain, which is not the best diet for our modified-ape digestive system. At the end of the Mesolithic Era, the life expectancy of a human who had survived childhood was up in the 40s. At the end of the Neolithic, when agriculture had completely replaced hunting and gathering, it dropped to around 30. By the Roman Era, when most people lived primarily on wheat (or just rice or just corn) and dairy products, it fell to about 20.

The technology of civilization itself was a disaster for public health and the environment. It took the Romans to invent sewers--the single accomplishment which qualifies them as the all-time world champions of civil engineering in my opinion. Municipal street cleaning wasn't practiced until quite recently in "the West," although the Japanese were doing it at least as far back as the 15th century.

We're stariting to be more cautious though. Hopefully not too late...

You guys just don't get it. The Greeks didn't care. They thought that was interesting, but they had no motivation to seek a practical application for it. They couldn't possibly have understood why we think it's so important to move people and goods so much faster than horses travel when draft animals were a technology that worked satisfactorily for the Greek ruling class.
As usual, Fraggle beat me to the punch. Science and technology couldn't advance at a decent rate until a lot of things were in place. Most importantly, a culture that was ready for it and organized in such a way as to take advantage.

It makes me wonder, how likely is an advanced technological society to develope among intellegent species? I think of Stargate and all the human societies they encounter stuck in the pre-industrial age.

Was the confluence of events that lead to our quantum leap forward inevitable? Or might we have remained a horse and buggy species indefinitely but for a few lucky breaks? Perhaps this is the answer to Enrico Fermi's paradox. Maybe the galaxy is teeming with intellegent alien species tooling around their planets on horses and buggies. Only a very few making the jump forward to high tech. And many of them, no doubt, destroying themselves.

So,

The ancient Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Aztecs, etc, had high civilization, aquaducts, agriculture, metals, and highly intelligent people. Why did it take thousands of years of such civilization and then BAM! Industrial revolution and high technology in an eyeblink?

What societal forces caused this?Aren’t all innovations and tools found in any particular time called “modern”?

post title: For most of history, human populations were far too small.

Because most people don't invent much at all.

Because technology growth is largely population-driven. So it takes huge human populations to naturally accelerate technology growth. Most people don't invent much, but when somebody does, more population means there are more people around to benefit from whatever, and then one invention feeds into other incremental inventions.

That's one of the many follies of radical "environmentalism," if the size of world population could somehow be more tightly "controlled" or stagnated ("stabilized"), the costs of such oppression would be far huger than imagined, giving up countless inventions, blessed children, friends, advancements in freedom and goodwill towards man, etc.

Or, we end up like Rwanda, overpopulated and at war with each other.
But we know that would never happen if we all converted to your particular brand of fundamentalism, right?

Or, we end up like Rwanda, overpopulated and at war with each other.
But we know that would never happen if we all converted to your particular brand of fundamentalism, right?

Of course not. Rwanda? Bad religion, poor development, UN meddling.

But look at Japan, or Singapore, or Tiawan? Dense human populations don't necessarily "cause" social problems.

Of course not. Rwanda? Bad religion, poor development, UN meddling.

But look at Japan, or Singapore, or Tiawan? Dense human populations don't necessarily "cause" social problems.


I would suggest that the cause of Rwanda was more "colonialism." The Hutus and Tutsis only hate one another because the Tutsi minority was disproportionately placed in power by prior European colonial governments and the Hutus (and the Twa) were discriminated against. In fact, the Hutu and Tutsi weren't even different tribes until the Belgians partitioned the country and separated them.

Of course not. Rwanda? Bad religion, poor development, UN meddling.

But look at Japan, or Singapore, or Tiawan? Dense human populations don't necessarily "cause" social problems.
But they can help, as Rwanda suggests. You will recall that Japan and Singapore are both highly authoritarian and regimented societies, seemingly in order to keep everything together.

Would you like to live in societies like them?

But they can help, as Rwanda suggests. You will recall that Japan and Singapore are both highly authoritarian and regimented societies, seemingly in order to keep everything together.

Would you like to live in societies like them?

So IYO, authoritarian and regimented societies are less likely to develop modern technology?

Rwanda was not over populated. They killed each other over ethnic tribalism. When Europeans divided up Africa during the colonial days that worked out their own border system that did not take into account the ethnicity of the dominant tribes.

I think if borders had been based along tribal lines the conflicts would be way less.

In Rwanda the Belgium colonials favoured one tribe over another... this lead to increased tribal tensions which was one of the precursors to the genocide.

Er, can we stick to modern technology?

Is moder technology sticky?

Now it is.

Oh! I see! You have the powers of a god!
Is this why you made this a sticky? To show us your great power!? :D

So IYO, authoritarian and regimented societies are less likely to develop modern technology?We Americans think so. We teach our children that too much respect for authority stifles creativity. Many of us believe this is the reason that our entire legal system seems designed to teach people to think up clever ways around it, rather than to conform to it. Everything from our welfare laws to our tax codes rewards creative cheating; we regard people who follow the rules as losers.

In the case of the Japanese, they honor the ideas of their elders so much that it makes it difficult to think of a new one that calls them into question. I have taught course material that openly ridicules the Japanese proverb: "The nail that sticks up will be hammered down."

In the case of the Germans, they simply don't want to be punished for questioning authority. :)

Both societies revere order so much that they don't want to upset it with new ideas. Both are legendary (Germany only in recent times of course) for excelling at the perfection of existing technologies, rather than the invention of new ones.

America became successful by embracing chaos. Many of us see that tradition breaking down, and with it our business and technical superiority.

So,

The ancient Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Aztecs, etc, had high civilization, aquaducts, agriculture, metals, and highly intelligent people. Why did it take thousands of years of such civilization and then BAM! Industrial revolution and high technology in an eyeblink? What societal forces caused this?

Myself, I don't see the problem. I spent years carefully studied every mainstream society going back into prehistory, and it seemed to me a natural flow of development that has gradually accelerated. If one realizes the scale of knowlege the Greek-Romans had compared to pre-history, one does not think big jumps in knowledge are unusual. Also, starting about 1500, the Reformation took place and it became possible for new ideas to be developed. Europe then borrowed heavily from what had been learned in Islam and from the Greek-Roman heritage. It all flowered in the centuries afterwards.

But as with all the past societies, it has become over-indulgent, soft, stressed up, and self-satisfied. What I see is that the next great age of science will be the product of a new society. Ours is weakening and returning to the past, to the old religions. This will eventually kill our scientific era and lead us on into a new one.

charles

So,

The ancient Romans, Greeks, Chinese, Aztecs, etc, had high civilization, aquaducts, agriculture, metals, and highly intelligent people. Why did it take thousands of years of such civilization and then BAM! Industrial revolution and high technology in an eyeblink?

What societal forces caused this?
A huge collection of people are not as smart as they think they are. Only a select few out of them are truely ingenuis and innovative. 99% of all inventions today are mere developments of what has previously existed with our ancestors for ages. Medicine, alchohol, politics, astromomy, quantitative analysis, infrastructure, e.t.c. What really happens is that we make improvements over hundreds of years, while the real genuises actually (sometimes) create something totally new.

one raven said it himself - the development of modern technology occurred on the basis of an expontential relationship. The technology builds slowly, but after a certain point, the growth skyrockets and keeps getting steeper and steeper (if you're picturing a slope).

one raven said it himself - the development of modern technology occurred on the basis of an expontential relationship. The technology builds slowly, but after a certain point, the growth skyrockets and keeps getting steeper and steeper (if you're picturing a slope).

I honestly believe that it's not a function of how much technology there is (and exponential growth based on that), but on number of technologists or inventors available to develop new technology. That, in turn is a function of the number of people in the society and the ability to educate them in the ways of technology. Roughly speaking, it seems like technology builds on itself in its own growth, but that's because:
(a) improved technology has led to advancement in education (both technologically as with the printing press) and culturally as education came to be viewed as an important means for the society as a whole and not just the elites; and

(b) as technology has advanced, population has been growing at roughly a similar rate.

The increase in the rate of technological advancement and relationship with the existing stock of technology is, in my opinion, a case where "correlation doesn't imply causation " becomes important. If a world wide plague wiped out 80% of the human race tomorrow, I'd expect to see a crash in the rate of technological development, notwithstanding the fact that the stock of existing technology remained unchanged.

It's a mixture of Communication and of course Consensus.

After all in religions heyday, anything that when against a particular set method of understanding was not just ridiculed by the religious but sort out and destroyed. It wasn't until better communication and the changes in the consensus was science allowed to regain ground that had been lost under the fundamentalist regimes.

When printing books other than the Bible occurred, it allowed the transmission of knowledge to begin. More and more people had the opportunity to read about, test and experiment in things that people believed to be the consensus and thus develop further what was understood.

As communication methods grew, so did the speed at which information traveled as well as the depth to the information. No longer was it just hearsay, but multi-volumes of pictures with vasts text allowed people to study things that they wouldn't have been able to do before in their wildest dreams.

Those methods have now evolved from vast encyclopedic libraries to the expanse of information available in various formats across the internet an cleverly depicted as "entertainment" over television and radio into peoples homes.

The more people working on the problem the faster the problem is solved (However it requires organization to stop a "Duplication of effort" where people do the same thing more than once)

I guess an overall example of what has occurred is working out the man hours of labour.

If it takes one man a week to cut a field of corn with a Scythe, how long does it take two men? Four men? Twelve men?

Theres no point having one man cut the corn and 11 men cut the stubs that have already been cut.

In most places of very rapid population growth, tech innovation stagnates - Rwanda the current example, a Christian country of family farms that ran out of land for its booming population.

The time of great tech innovation in Europe recently was also a time of recurrent plagues and bad wars - whole areas were abandoned, and grew to weeds, to be taken back as the populations recovered.

The great tech boom in the Americas was built on sparse populations, in a land essentially emptied of people by disease and war, and still not populated at Asian or European densities.

The connection between tech innovation and population is not simple. The large populations of China and India have historically produced proportionately little in the way of large tech leaps for centuries at a time, while the key innovations (and their established employment) seem to have come from marginal - especially trading - peoples, only afterwards migrating into the stable and populous centers.

Few peoples ahve been as sophisticatedly innovative as the aboriginal Inuit and other Arctic dwellers - their sea kayaks and whale hunting gear were the equal in subtlety and complexity and effective performance of any tool or weapon or watercraft in Europe or Asia at the time of their invention, yet their populations were never great or stable or literate.

Jared Diamond's book "Guns, Germs, and Steel" has maybe the most persuasive take on this matter.

I honestly believe that it's not a function of how much technology there is (and exponential growth based on that), but on number of technologists or inventors available to develop new technology. That, in turn is a function of the number of people in the society and the ability to educate them in the ways of technology. Roughly speaking, it seems like technology builds on itself in its own growth, but that's because:
(a) improved technology has led to advancement in education (both technologically as with the printing press) and culturally as education came to be viewed as an important means for the society as a whole and not just the elites; and

(b) as technology has advanced, population has been growing at roughly a similar rate.

The increase in the rate of technological advancement and relationship with the existing stock of technology is, in my opinion, a case where "correlation doesn't imply causation " becomes important. If a world wide plague wiped out 80% of the human race tomorrow, I'd expect to see a crash in the rate of technological development, notwithstanding the fact that the stock of existing technology remained unchanged.

You are free to believe what you please, and your thoughts make a lot of sense. I would just like to point out, though, that if technology was graphed, (x being time) and (y being technological advancements), it would very much resemble an exponential function.

that if technology was graphed, (x being time) and (y being technological advancements), it would very much resemble an exponential function. It would have some plateaus in it.

There is also the question of place, as well as time. Tech innovation not only happened in bursts, over small time spans, but in specific areas, over small distance spans, in human history.

Literacy helped abrogate the time span effect. Then transportation and communication tech shortcircuited the distance span effect. But historically, they will affect the shape of your graph.

The last time I saw the graph plotted it was exponential, and the rule of thumb "90% of all inventions ever made occurred in the current 10% of recorded history" is a good indicator.
Place doesn't come into it as we're discussing human invention, not English/ Chinese or whatever.

You are free to believe what you please, and your thoughts make a lot of sense. I would just like to point out, though, that if technology was graphed, (x being time) and (y being technological advancements), it would very much resemble an exponential function.

Fair enough, but I think your find that the growth in the number of inventors and scientists has grown at the same rate. Most of the scientists who have ever lived are alive today by most estimates. See, for example, here (http://www.its.caltech.edu/~dg/crunch_art.html), stating:
It may still be true that 90% of all the scientists who have ever lived are alive today, and that statement has been true at any given time for nearly 300 years.

Interestingly,the point of the professor's article is that the vast increase in the rate of technological change has to end pretty soon. Personally, I agree with that. The exponential growth has been possible because, not only has population been increasing, but the proportion of the population dedicated to science and technology has vastly increased. There comes a point where the proportion of the society entering scientific fields will level off, and the growth in the number of technologists will then be determined solely by the growth in the population, which is less than exponential.

The last time I saw the graph plotted it was exponential, and the rule of thumb "90% of all inventions ever made occurred in the current 10% of recorded history" is a good indicator. Yeah, I've seen the graph, i just don't think their method of counting inventions is reasonable.

For example: Place doesn't come into it as we're discussing human invention, not English/ Chinese or whatever. So if the Mayans invent a script, and the Romans invent a script, is that two inventions or one, worldwide?

Are the plants and animals humans bred into form "inventions" ?

There are hundreds of separate inventions in an Inuit kayak. How are they counted? How many times are multiply invented things like fired pottery and throwing sticks of various kinds counted?

If you look around, most of what you are looking at - most everything except for plastic material and electronic gear - dates back more than 10% of recorded history in some form.

It seems to me what you have is an unprecedented amalgamation of invention, brought about by tranpsort innovations. At one time the draft horse, harness, wheel, and plow blade were all invented - but not all in the same place. The potato was in one place, distillation apparatus elsewhere, the right yeast still further yonder. Genghis Khan found most of the parts for the seige engines his Horde invented already invented in separate places.

How do you count something like that?

I have just taken a look at this thread for the first time. Whilst I can find much to agree with in several of the posts, there is one propelling factor behind modern technology which I think is being neglected: the vital importance of precision engineering.

The Romans could NOT (as someone claimed) have invented the printing press -- they could not have manufactured movable type to the required precision. It was no accident that Gutenberg was a goldsmith; nor that he was German (though precision metalworking was equally advanced in Bohemia); nor that he lived in the fifteenth century. In the same century, the same advances in metalworking techniques were applied to clocks (which descended from the clocktower to become household items for the first time) and to personal firearms.

The popularity of these products spurred an explosion of precision craftsmanship through Western Europe during the sixteenth century. Without it, the mechanisation of spinning and weaving which set off the Industrial Revolution in England would not have been possible. Nor would steam power have replaced the waterwheel.

Whilst schools tend to teach something of the origins of physics and chemistry, the history of metalworking tends to be unexplored, untaught, and unregarded.

i am wrong or all (or close) "BAM" advancment come just befor and after a War ?

Which war caused the industrial revolution?

Which war caused the industrial revolution?

The good thing about the British, who kicked it off, is that they were in a war almost constantly with someone when the Industrial Revolution began, usually France: the Seven Years War, Pontiac's Rebellion, the various Anglo-Mysore Wars, the American Revolutionary War, the French Revolutionary Wars, the Napoleonic Wars, the Anglo-Dutch Java War, the American War of 1812, and there are plenty more.

I don't know to what extent one can argue that the wars were the spur that kicked off the Industrial Revolution. I'm sure there are some connections, but I doubt a strong case could be made that the wars were the sine qua non that brought the Industrial Revolution into existence.

What about today? War in Iraq? What kinds of advancements is it bringing? It's only skyrocketing the US's debt, making it more difficult for any new technology to be developed.

Dark ages and Middle ages, too much time waisted on warfare.

Neccesity is the Mother of invention. But War is the father of invention.

But War is the father of invention.

War is the father of certain types of inventions, not all inventions. Humans could still invent without war and inventions for war would be unnecessary and that's even better if humans could get past it. Trade is so much more efficient and less moronic, tragic, and primitive.

Yeah, I've seen the graph, i just don't think their method of counting inventions is reasonable. For example: Are the plants and animals humans bred into form "inventions" ?What you're talking about now are more than inventions. They are technologies. Agriculture is the key technology that ended the Mesolithic Era and ushered in the Neolithic Era. It required humans to build permanent settlements, which forced us to learn how to live in harmony and cooperation with people outside our own extended family, which had been the norm going millions of years back to our chimp- and gorilla-like ancestors, whose other descendants still live that way. It also allowed us to create more things than we could carry with us as nomadic hunter-gatherers, which gave rise to the first surpluses, including enormously important surplus food to weather hard times. Agriculture was the first step on the path to civilization. Of course it can be seen as two distinct technologies that were invented at different times: farming and animal husbandry. The point is that agriculture was invented by more than one people in more than one time and place. At least six, since six widespread independent civilizations arose on Earth, but perhaps more, since there may have been other people who never made the next step to civilization or who were assimilated by somebody else with a head start before they got the chance. We speak of agriculture as a technology, without regard to the number of different instances of its invention. In no case was it invented by a single person, since it obviously takes several generations to get it all right.So if the Mayans invent a script, and the Romans invent a script, is that two inventions or one, worldwide?Same thing. Written language is a technology, not really a single invention. At least in the Middle East where our own civilization arose, it started out as tick marks in clay to record business transactions: who got how many sheep, who owed whom how many jugs of olive oil. Like agriculture, it didn't manifest all at once as a system for recording spoken language, that evolved slowly. Like agriculture, it arose independently in multiple places. I'm not sure about the Incas, but each of the other five civilizations invented their own writing systems. So we speak of written language as a technology, not a gadget that was invented over and over again.

Also like agriculture, written language is one of the key technologies that got us here, since it allows knowledge to be passed on in more or less exactly its original form, without being memorized and recited with incremental errors over the generations. It's interesting to speculate at what stage civilization would have stalled without written records. As noted in another thread, astronomy is a bone fide science and it predates writing and perhaps even civilization. But it's hard to imagine Euclid, much less Newton, without writing.If you look around, most of what you are looking at - most everything except for plastic material and electronic gear - dates back more than 10% of recorded history in some form.Yes, I think that ten percent assertion was originally made by someone who wants to prove that we're superior to our ancestors. It does not take into account the importance of the inventions. Energy conversion, FTA (faster than animal) travel, mass production, the germ theory of medicine, electronics, there's no question that we have a lot to be proud of in the last half millennium. But spoken language, boats, farming, animal husbandry, government, metallurgy, written language, sewers... we wouldn't be here without these entire technologies, all of which came first. Note that most of them even occurred before the start of recorded history. :)

Took us awhile to get our hands on alien technology to be able to recycle their advance tech for our use. :m: