Let me call your attention to a truly superlative little book. That is, if you have a love for historical technology bordering on the obsessive. Joel Mokyr's immensely informative "The Lever of Riches" poses the question, how does an economy grow? It goes on to define the different modes of economic expansion, and explores in depth the mode nearest to my heart, innovation and invention. I thought it would be fun to get Professor Mokyr's take on Classical Technical Values, so without further ado, here he is:

Until recently, the consensus on classical civilizations (Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman) was that these societies were not very successful technologically. As some recent critics have pointed out such a judgment is overly harsh….In the areas that mattered most to THEM, the Greeks and Romans achieved huge successes....Some of the important achievements of classical technology were in those aspects of technology that were nonphysical in nature: coinage, alphabetization, stenography, and geometry were part of the information processing sphere rather than the physical production sphere of the economy. Even when their achievements were in the physical sphere, they were mostly in construction and architecture, rather than in mechanical devices. Nonetheless, the judgment reflects our instinctive disappointment with a civilization that celebrated such triumphs in literature, science, mathematics, medicine, and political organization. Even in nonmechanical aspects of technology, such as chemistry and farming, the record of the classical world seems to fall short of what appears to have been its potential.

pp 19-20

Well, that's rather disappointing. We here at CV have a vested interest. Sad. But perhaps a strong dose of European Exceptionalism will buck us up, eh?

Early medieval Europe, sometimes still referred to as a “dark” age, managed to break through a number of technological barriers that held the Romans back. The achievements of early medieval Europe are all the more amazing because many of the ingredients that are usually thought of as essential to technological progress were absent. Particularly between 500 and 800 A.D., the economic and cultural environment in Europe was primitive compared to the classical period. Literacy had become rare…Commerce and communications…declined to almost nothing. The roads, bridges, aqueducts, ports, villas, and cities of the Roman Empire fell into disrepair. Law enforcement and the security of life and property became precarious. And yet toward the end of the Dark Ages, in the eighth and ninth centuries, European society began to show the first signs of what eventually became a torrent of technological creativity. Not the amusing toys of Alexandria’s engineers or the war machines of Archimedes, but useful tools and ideas that reduced daily toil and increased the comfort of the masses…When we compare the technological progress achieved in the seven centuries between 300 B.C. and 400 A.D., with that of the seven centuries between 700 and 1400, the prejudice against the Middle Ages dissipates rapidly.

p 35

Now, when I was just a tad, it was not uncommon to hear creaky old fossils espousing the old paradigm. In that venerable recounting, the Roman Empire was a bastion of civilized behavior, which upon becoming decadent and suffering wave after wave of barbarian invasion, fell totally to ruin and savagery. Byzantium gets discounted as insular and declining and somehow "Not really Roman". Funny thing, THEY certainly thought they were.

Key though, to the old standard version, is the belief that Europe lost ground on all fronts in terms of sophistication and ability, when compared to the old Empire.I love revisionism when it's well done. The more you look, the more you see, and old Europe has apparently been getting something of a makeover.

The later Middle Ages also witnessed the increasing usage of chemicals in Europe’s economy. The Moslems had been better chemists; it was a long time before Europe produced a chemist of the stature of Rhazes or Avicenna. But whatever the Europeans knew and learned about chemicals, they used in production. Alcohol, dyes, alum, saltpeter, mercury, and acids were all used wherever possible and necessary. Gunpowder may not have been a European invention, but the Europeans soon designed and built guns that left Islam and the Orient at their mercy. Most chemicals were used for peaceful ends, such as staining windows, dyeing, tanning, oil painting, medicine, and metallurgy. It was progress without science, chemicals without chemistry, but it worked. Progress was attained by thousands of forgotten tinkerers and craftsman, often replicating each other, many of them wasting their creative energy in the fruitless pursuit of alchemy and other dead ends. Yet progress there was: slow perhaps, but inexorable in the long run. It may well be true, as Alfred North Whitehead has stated, that as far as science is concerned, Europe still knew less in 1500 than Archimedes knew in 212 B.C. As far as technology is concerned this assessment is definitely false. By 1500, technology in Europe had advanced far beyond anything known in antiquity. Although Europeans may not have been wiser or more enlightened in 1500 than in 600, they had become incomparably better at producing the goods and services that determine material living standards.

p 55

I remember poring over a book of ancient arms and armor when I was eleven, and being struck by how superior medieval plate armor was to, say the average Roman Centurion's. There really is no contest. Of course, the stirrups helped too. So, I got a great deal of vindicatory pleasure reading about the early European knack for power tools.

In terms of their direct contribution to agricultural output, changes in agricultural technology were particularly important…A second area in which early medieval Europe was successful was energy utilization. Energy takes two forms, kinetic and thermal. Kinetic energy could be derived from animate power (including human muscles), transmitting the energy of sun through living bodies, and nonanimate power, using solar power directly, through water or wind motion. Wind power had been used in sailing ships, but had not been harnessed in the west in other ways until the first windmills were built there in the twelfth century. In waterpower, radical improvements came early. During the Merovingian and Carolingian eras (seventh to twelfth centuries) better and bigger waterfalls spread through Europe. Medieval Europe not only produced the more efficient overshot wheel, but also adapted and improved the gearing of both horizontal and vertical waterwheels, making it possible to use wheels on both rapidly flowing and slower flowing streams. Medieval engineers made much progress in the construction of dams, allowing controlled usage of water power through storage, and diverted streams to mill races. They applied cams, and later cranks, to convert the circular motion of waterwheels into the reciprocating motion needed for hammering, fulling, and crushing. The cam had been known in antiquity but had apparently not been combined with the waterwheel. The crank was in all likelihood a medieval invention. The result was that the waterwheel was transformed from an occasional device used for grinding flour into a ubiquitous source of energy operating on rivers of every type. By about 1100, waterpower was used to drive fulling mills, breweries (to prepare beer mash), trip hammers, bellows, bark crushers, hemp treatment mills, cutlery grinders, wire drawers, and sawmills. In 1086, Domesday Book listed 5,624 watermills in England south of the Severn river, or roughly 1 for every 50 households. Unlike their Roman ancestors, medieval men and women were surrounded by water-driven machines doing their more arduous work for them. The waterwheel may not have been invented in medieval Europe, but it was there that its use spread beyond anything seen in earlier times. As Lynn White has remarked, medieval Europe was perhaps the first society to build an economy on nonhuman power rather than on the backs of slaves and coolies.

p 34

To paraphrase Heinlein, "I guess our Dark Age ancestors weren't such dummies after all."

By 1500, Europe had more or less achieved technological parity with the most advanced parts of the Islamic and Oriental worlds. Indeed, in the assessment of some historians, by that time Europeans already controlled more energy, machinery, and organizational skill than any civilization, ancient or contemporary. It was soon to turn from borrower to lender. Much of the achievement in technology preceded the beginning of European science. Systematic learning had little to do with technological progress. Medieval technology differed from classical and modern technology in another important respect. Cardwell has pointed out that unlike classical technology, medieval technology was not grandiose or extravagant. Apart from a few imposing church buildings and castles, it was concentrated in the private sector. It was carried by peasants, wheelwrights, masons, silversmiths, miners, and monks. It was above all, practical, aimed at modest goals that eventually transformed daily existence. It produced more and better food, transportation, clothes, gadgets, and shelter.

pp 55-56

Chapter four of "The Wealth and Poverty of Nations" references Mokyr, and paints a very similar picture. I enjoy Landes. He comes across as erudite but snarky, rather like your favorite bad tempered uncle.

Important in all this was the Church as custodian of knowledge and school for technicians. One might have expected otherwise: that organized spirituality, with its emphasis on prayer and contemplation, would have had little interest in technology. Surely the Church, with its view of labor as penalty for original sin, would not seek to ease the judgment. And yet everything worked in the opposite direction: the desire to free clerics from time-consuming earthly tasks led to the introduction and diffusion of power machinery and, beginning with the Cistercians, to the hiring of lay brothers (conversii) to do the dirty work. Employment fostered in turn attention to time and productivity. All of this gave rise on monastic estates to remarkable assemblages of powered machinery—complex sequences designed to make the most of the waterpower available and distribute it through a series of industrial operations. A description of the work in the abbey of Clairvaux in the mid-twelfth century exults in this versatility: "cooking, straining, mixing, rubbing [polishing], transmitting [the energy], washing, milling, bending." The author, clearly proud of these achievements, further tells his readers that he will take the liberty of joking: the fulling hammers, he says, seem to have dispensed the fullers of the penalty of their sins; and he thanks God that such devices can mitigate the oppressive labor of men and spare the backs of the horses.

White, Medieval Religion and Technology, pp 245-246

I think this might be a good place to indulge in a random interjection of idiotic counterpoint. No one expects the Rifkin Inquisition!

Imagine a time warp that could put us face to face with a medieval Christian serf. The thirteenth century is not so very long ago….Still, even without a language barrier we and the serf would have very little to say to each other after the usual chitchat about the weather. That’s because we would probably be interested in finding out what his goals in life were….Of course, we shouldn’t expect much in the way of a response. In fact, if all we see in his eyes is a blank expression, it’s not because we’re talking over his head, or because his mind isn’t developed enough for the exchange of ideas. It’s just that his ideas about life, history, and reality are so utterly different from our own. The Christian view of history, which dominated western Europe throughout the Middle Ages, perceived life in this world as a mere stopover in preparation for the next….the doctrine of original sin precluded the possibility of humanity ever improving its lot in life….There were no personal goals, no desires to get ahead or leave something behind. There were only God’s decrees to be faithfully carried out.

Jeremy Rifkin "Entropy: Into The Greenhouse World", pp 27-28

Bit of a broad brush there, eh what? What do the locals have to say?

Not all the arts have been found; we shall never see an end to finding them. Every day one could discover a new art….It is not twenty years since there was discovered the art of making spectacles that help one to see well, an art that is one of the best and most necessary in the world. And that is such a short time ago that a new art that never before existed was invented….I myself saw the man who discovered and practiced it and I talked with him myself.

Fra Giordano of Pisa 1306 A.D.