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8
25 000
20 000
15 000
10 000
5000
Number of European scholars
the 18th century still seem to influence attitudes in
this area, despite a great number of new studies and
historical sources formerly not available to scholars.
Fortunately, groundbreaking works by e.g. Lynn
White, Gimpel, Cipolla, Kranzberg and Dumas have
contributed to a major shift in the scholarly world in
the last half of the 20th century, even if some of these
scholars now are somewhat outdated and they did not
take a sufficiently global view.
It has become clear that the technological and scientific
leadership of Europe has far older roots than the
“Industrial Revolution” of the 18th century or the
“Scientific Revolution” of the 17th century. In fact,
even these terms are no longer very useful and
obscure what really happened. In reality the first
industrial revolution – which was culturally more significant
than what happened seven hundred years
later – started at the latest around the year 1000.
It was even perhaps “200 years earlier that the West
began to apply water power to industrial processes
other than milling grain. This was followed in the late
12th century by the harnessing of wind power. From
simple beginnings, but with remarkable consistency
of style, the West rapidly expanded its skills in the
development of power machinery, labor-saving
devices, and automation. Those who doubt should
contemplate that most monumental achievement in
the history of automation: the weight-driven mechanical
clock, which appeared in two forms in the early
14th century. Not in craftsmanship but in basic
technological capacity, the Latin West of the later
Middle Ages far outstripped its elaborate, sophisticated,
and esthetically magnificent sister cultures,
Byzantium and Islam” (White, 1969).
1125 1200 1275 1375 1450 1525
Note that the growth rate from around 1050 has been fairly constant, except for the sharp decline
by the Black Death. By the time of Copernicus, the number of scientists had again grown to the
same level as before The Plague, and scientific activity could again start to flower (from Mclellan
III and Dorn).
ISSN 0085-7130 © Telenor ASA 2004
Also modern natural science has older roots; in the
Islamic world 4) , in the work of Abelard (1049–
1142) 5) , and even more in the revolutionary natural
philosophy of a Buridan and Oresme in Paris around
1300 6) , who took the first major steps toward discarding
Aristotle’s physics. This was to lead the way for
the physics of Newton. Studies on the development
of the Physical Sciences have to face up to why the
three great ancient cultures (China, India, and Egypt)
display, independently of one another, a similar pattern
vis-a-vis Physical Science. The pattern is about
still-births, that some kind of Physical Science gets
started, and then stops after some years, even if they
all had the talents, the social organization, and peace
which make up the standard explanatory framework
for sociologies of science. The great historian on
China, Joseph Needham, takes considerable time to
discuss this, as he realizes that “Broadly speaking,
the climate of the Chinese culture-area is similar to
that of the European. It is not possible for anyone to
say (as has been maintained in the Indian case) that
the environment of an exceptionally hot climate
inhibited the rise of modern natural science”. Hence
he finds that “The answer to all such questions lies, I
now believe, primarily in the social, intellectual and
economic structures of the different civilizations”
(Needham, p. 190) 7) . It is interesting that he concludes
some hundred pages of discussions on the Chinese
and European modes of thought with focusing
on the difference in their view on the Laws of Nature,
“historically, the question remains whether natural
science could ever have reached its present state of
development without passing through a ‘theological’
state” (Needham, p. 330).
The high growth rate in the number of scholars since
before 1100 also meant an increase in the number of
possible contacts between researchers. A 3-fold
increase in scholars results in a 9-fold increase in
their possible contacts, as we see for the period from
1100 to 1300. The dramatic fall in the number of
scholars during the Black Death then led to an even
more dramatic fall in the number of possible contacts.
It was not until the time Copernicus started his university
studies in the late 1400s that the number of
scholars exceeded the level of the mid 1300s.
A European mutation?
While in no way downplaying the genius of Greek,
Roman, Chinese, Indian or Arabic cultures, not to
mention that of Africa and South America, it is possible
to find major differences between these cultures
and Europe after the Roman period. Some has even
called it a mutation.
“Such, in fact, was the precocity, diversity and
importance of medieval technics that one is inclined
Telektronikk 2.2004