1 The Birth of Science - MSRI

118 4. Scientific Technology
industries, but supplemented by other control systems in Greek communities.
Thus it is not surprising that we know virtually nothing about, say, page 160
kiln techniques, weaving techniques, or methods used for producing perfumes
or particular types of glass.
Obviously, then, it cannot be claimed that direct traces of all relevant
Hellenistic technologies should be retrievable from the few sources that
have reached us.
The idea that the “Ancients” had very powerful technology lived on
throughout the Middle Ages. It is reasonable to think that the origin of this
tradition lay in memories of ancient knowledge, since technology really
had been in many cases superior to what it became in medieval Europe,
as we have seen, and also because this admiration for ancient technology
tended to be rekindled in times and places were ancient works were being
recovered and read. 139 That some medieval authors may have had access
to works no longer available today (see page 293) adds interest to their
testimony, although the pervasive contamination of elements grounded
in truth with other types of elements, often magical, 140 makes the use of
such testimonies problematic. Consider, for example, what Roger Bacon
wrote in the thirteenth century:
It is possible to make sailing devices without rowers, so that great
ships can move by river and sea with a single man in control, faster
than if they were full of men. Likewise it is possible to make cars
not pulled by any animal, which move with incalculable speed; we
think the currus falcati which the Ancients used in combat were of
this kind. It is possible to make flying machines where a man sits in
the middle turning some device by means of which artificial wings
flap through the air, like a bird in flight. It is also possible to make
instruments small in themselves, but able to raise and lower almost
infinite weights, whose usefulness on occasion cannot be surpassed.
. . . One might also easily make a device with which a single man
can drag to himself a thousand, against their will, and attract other
things as well. And devices can be made for walking in the sea or
in rivers, going down to the bottom without bodily harm: Alexander
the Great used them to look at the secrets of the sea, as Ethicus the
astronomer tells us. And these things were made in Antiquity and
have been made in our times, this much being certain — except for
the flying machine, which I have not seen, nor do I know any who
139 We will return to this point in Sections 11.1 and 11.2.
140 Two examples of this phenomenon in the area of optics: the belief in the magic powers of
crystal balls (probably arising from knowledge of the magnifying properties of spherical lenses)
and the name of “magic lantern” given to a simple projector that goes back at least to the Arabs.
Revision: 1.14 Date: 2002/10/24 04:25:47