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5. The Middle Ages to the Renaissance (About 500 A.D. to About 1700)
[Note: World Population at the beginning of this period was about 250 million]
The mechanical clock of the Middle Ages evolved to meet two rather different demands. Originally a timepiece was not considered to be a clock unless it rang a bell to alert religious persons (especially monks) that it was time to perform their duties to God. Later the clock was used to regulate the hours of work in the home and the factory. On the other hand, astronomers required a device to use in conjunction with their astrolabes by which they could study the relative positions of the sun, moon, and stars. The first of these functions during the early Middle Ages was filled by some form of water clock or clepsydra, which eventually led to the development of the water operated escapement (a ratchet and pawl mechanism which acted as an internal regulator). Clocks with water escapements suffered from the problems of freezing and evaporation, as well as the erosion or clogging of their apertures by minerals from hard water.
It was not until the development of the mechanical escapement (which replaced the water operated escapement) in the early 1300s, that the hour became the modern hour, 1/24th of the time between noon of one day and noon the next. Galileo's (1564-1642) discovery in 1583 that the time of a swing of an altar lamp (a pendulum) varied not with the width of the swing, but with the length of the pendulum led to decreasing the average error in timepieces from fifteen minutes to only ten seconds per day. The enduring legacy of the clockmakers of the 1600s was the creation of the basic technology required for the manufacture of machine tools. By introducing the metallic gear, or toothed wheel, and the use of the screw in assembling their clocks, the pioneer clockmakers proved not only to be pioneer instrument makers but pioneer lathemakers as well.
At about the same time (the 14th Century) the mechanical clock was providing an absolute measure of time, the use of the magnetic compass offered the western world an absolute with respect to its sense of direction and location. Although the magnetized needle was first used by the Chinese around 1000 A.D., it was not until about 1500 that it was widely adopted as a navigational aid by European sailors. Meanwhile the compass had undergone two improvements. First, it was set in gimbal rings that allowed it to remain upright and steady, while a ship swayed at sea. Second, the wind rose or compass card was combined with the magnetic needle. It was this latter improvement, more than anything else, that made possible the explorations set in motion by the Portuguese, Prince Henry the Navigator (1394-1460). Prince Henry was primarily motivated by the challenge of discovering new lands and bringing from them merchandise which would enrich Portuguese commerce. His efforts eventually led to opening up the route to the Cape of Good Hope and the Far East, and ultimately to the discovery of the New World. By relying primarily on the compass and his skill for dead reckoning (judging the speed and direction of his ship), Columbus actually performed an astonishing navigational feat by returning to the site of his first discoveries in the New World. Neither the mariner's clock nor the ability to navigate by the stars were to come until two centuries later.
The lodestone and magnetic needle were at first subject to great ridicule by the mystics and neocheaters. It seemed to them that the inexplicable power of a magnetized needle to find north smacked of black magic. Even common seamen were suspicious of their captain's use of the compass, often forcing him to consult it secretly in the binnacle, or the little house, where it was kept. During the centuries in which the compass was considered an occult instrument (up until Columbus' time), the pilot who relied upon it might be accused of trafficking with Satan. Yet, once the explorers had shown that there was more to the world than just Europe and the Far East, the neocheaters were not far behind in claiming their share of the proceeds. In 1493, after Columbus' discovery was known in Rome, Pope Alexander VI (1431?-1503) issued a papal bull (one of four) in which the devious Pope gave to Spain all the newfound lands in the newly explored Indies. Machiavelli (1469-1527), the Italian statesmen best known for his own devious and unscrupulous political dealings, described Alexander VI in the following words: "Of all the pontiffs who have ever reigned, Alexander VI best showed how a Pope might prevail both by money and by force." This is a very clear example of how the neocheaters and mystics have expropriated the values produced by rational thinkers.
Eyeglasses could not be produced until a number of discoveries were made and techniques mastered. First, a basic understanding of optics and lenses had to be attained. It was also necessary to be able to produce clear glass, to know how to grind lenses, and to correct curvature. Most first historical reference to spectacles occurs around 1300 in Italy. By the middle of the 13th Century, many European scholars had familiarized themselves with optics by referring to the Latin translation of an Islamic treatise, first published in Egypt about 1040. Its author was an Arab, Ibn al-Haytham, Europeanized to Alhazan. The Venetians secured the ability to produce clear glass during the Fourth Crusade (1204), when they invaded Constantinople and carried off a number of key workers in the glass industry there. In order to secure the arts of glass polishing and cutting, the Venetian neocheaters not only resorted to plundering but kidnapping as well.
Concomitant with the development of spectacles, came the use of single lenses for magnification. It was not, however, for about three centuries, until the early 1600s, that two such lenses were combined to produce the compound microscope. The first inventors of the microscope were probably two brothers, Hans and Zacharias Janssen of Holland. Galileo helped popularize the microscope during the first half of the 17th Century, but it was not until Robert Hooke's book, Micrographia, was published in England in 1665, that men of science began to take a serious interest in the microscope. Even then, the same suspicions that made Galileo's critics unwilling to look through a telescope and then reluctant to believe what they saw, cursed the microscope. Without a science of optics to explain chromatic and spherical aberration, people were wary of optical illusions. It was not uncommon for mystics to claim that "any device standing between the senses and the object to be sensed could only mislead the God-given faculties." It was not until the l9th Century that improved microscopes and optical science evolved sufficiently to dispel these fears. These improvements in the microscope made possible many of the advances in modern medicine and hygiene.
The telescope was the product of the same age as the microscope. Nevertheless it had a far more dramatic impact on its time because of the hue and cry raised by the mystics and neocheaters of the 17th Century. They simply could not believe that the placement of two lenses in a cylindrical tube could yield such fantastic results as claimed by Galileo and other early builders of telescopes. A reputable instrument maker and professor of mathematics in Padua, Galileo (1564-1642) made his first instrument in 1609. He continued improving on it, until later that same year he produced a telescope of thirty power (which was the practicable limit for the lenses he was using). Originally the telescope was seen as an aid to commercial navigation and warfare, by making distant things seem close. But Galileo would not leave it at that. In January 1610, he turned one of his telescopes towards the heavens. That took both courage and imagination . To the churchmen and mystics of his day, to spy out the shape of God's territory was not only useless and presumptuous, but conducive to blasphemy. To these neocheaters, Galileo was no more than "a theological Peeping Tom."
While Galileo had been reluctant to support Copernicus' theory of the earth moving around the sun, proposed in 1543, his observations (especially his discovery of the moons rotating around the planet Jupiter) led him to publicly announce his sympathy for the idea of a heliocentric universe. On his first visit to Rome in 1611, he was greeted in royal fashion by Pope Paul V, and convinced several of the prelates to look through his telescope, even though they did not accept his interpretation of a moving earth. By 1616, Cardinal Robert Bellarmine and Paul V sniffed signs of heresy and called upon Galileo to explain himself. Galileo returned to Rome to defend himself. He did not succeed in preventing the church officials from condemning the idea that the earth moves, but yet neither was he personally condemned or his writings prohibited. It was this famous audience with the Pope which formed the basis of his trial before the Inquisition, some 17 years later.
It was largely the availability of the telescope in the hands of rational thinkers which gave a great boost to the Copernican theory, which had lain dormant for over half a century. Until the advent of the telescope, the defenders of Christian orthodoxy felt no need to proscribe the heliocentric theory of the universe. It was the telescope which short-circuited the Church's authority over man's mind. The Pope had no control over what people like Galileo saw in the telescope and had great difficulty in preventing him from speaking out and writing about what he saw. In 1632, Galileo published in Italian his Dialogue On The Two Chief World Systems. In this book he presented further evidence about the heliocentric nature of the universe. Subsequently in 1633, Galileo, ailing in bed and gravely ill, was summoned before Pope Urban VIII's Inquisition in Rome. He was threatened with torture (though it was never actually applied) to ensure the truthfulness of his answers regarding what he had understood to be Bellarmine's and Paul V's disapproval of his ideas in 1616. Urban VIII prohibited the appearance of Galileo's Dialogue, confined Galileo for an indefinite period, and forced him to make a public and formal abjuration of his position.
The mystics of the Inquisition wanted to prevent all rational thinkers from further exploring the mysteries of the skies. In this they could not succeed unless they destroyed every telescope and man's knowledge of how to fashion them. What they could do, however, was bring the weight of violence and neocheating methods to bear on the side of Authority and Ignorance. Truth would ultimately triumph because nature simply exists. It is whatever it is, regardless of man's false theories about it. Neocheaters and mystics forget that no compromise is possible between the rational and the irrational. Inventors, like Galileo, never forced their inventions upon anyone. Sailors and merchants on the seas, who could use the telescope to insure their safety and explore new lands were free to accept or question their theories and explanations. It was only the neocheaters, like those in the Inquisition, who took refuge behind a facade of authority backed violence. "If you do not agree with us, we will shut you up or kill you." Here we find the stark contrast between Neo-Tech and neocheating and a historical illustration of how those in power try to control society by choking off new developments in science and commerce.
By the end of the 16th Century, thermoscopes, devices to measure changes in temperature, presaged the development of the thermometer. Air thermoscopes consisted of a leaden or glass bulb filled with a liquid and attached to a tube, in which the liquid visibly rose or fell as the air surrounding the bulb became warmer or cooler. By 1612, Santorio Santorre, an Italian doctor, had affixed a scale to an air thermoscope, in order to provide some quantitative basis for measuring temperature. Air thermometers were well-known by the middle of the century, but they were unreliable due to changes in atmospheric pressure and this led experimenters to develop means of measuring the weight of the atmosphere (what we refer to today as barometric pressure). Eventually this led to the temperature measuring instrument we know today -- the sealed liquid-in-glass thermometer.
By 1666, glassblowers were regularly constructing these thermometers, but unless two thermometers were identical in construction, their readings would not agree. Further confusion was brought about by the multiplicity of measuring scales used -- some were calibrated in 50 degree gradations, others in terms of 100 or different figures. Robert Hooke (1635-1703), whose work was mentioned in conjunction with the microscope, suggested adopting a single fixed point for calibrating XXall thermometers. His recommendation, made during the 1660s, was to use the temperature at which water begins to freeze. When Gabriel Fahrenheit (1686-1736), an instrument maker in Amsterdam, brought thermometers filled with mercury into commercial production in 1717, he coupled Hooke's earlier suggestion with the idea of using the boiling point of water as another absolute calibration point. The temperatures at which water would freeze and boil would enable thermometers to be calibrated without reference to a master instrument.
Several years earlier, Isaac Newton had experimented with oil-filled thermometers, using a 12-degree temperature scale and having a fixed upper point based on the temperature of the human body (which he thought was constant). Fahrenheit accepted Newton's 12-degree scale, but extended it by simple linear measurement, above and below the fixed points Newton had established. Using this scale, Fahrenheit determined that the freezing point of water was 32 degrees and the boiling 212 degrees. Based on Fahrenheit's and Newton's original gradations, average body temperature should have been 96 degrees, but due to the imperfect construction of early thermometers, body temperature turned out to be 98.6 degrees.
Other instrument makers and experimenters devised their own scales, either being dissatisfied with Fahrenheit's or being unaware of it. In 1731, a French scientist, Remaumur, introduced a temperature scale with an interval of 80 degrees between boiling and freezing points. A Swedish astronomer, Anders Celsius (1701-1742), first proposed the decimal division of the scale in 1742, with an interval of 100 degrees between the two natural points. His freezing point was at 0 degrees and the boiling point at 100. A survey of thermometers in 1778, showed that there were 27 different temperature scales in use. Of these only two really survive by agreement of the scientific community and acceptance in general usage: our Fahrenheit scale and the metric gradients of Celsius, which evolved to coincide with the directional scale of Fahrenheit.
The atmospheric barometer was first set forth in an experiment described by Evangelista Torricelli (1608-1647) in 1644. A glass tube filled with mercury was inverted in a trough of mercury and allowed to seek its own level. Although Torricelli did not construct such an instrument he understood the physical principles involved (that atmospheric pressure will balance a vertical column of mercury, based upon the altitude at which the column is located). Robert Boyle (1627-1691), an Englishman, coined the label `barometer,' which first appeared in print in 1665. Soon thereafter scientists began to investigate the relationship between the fluctuations in the height of a mercury tube and changes in the weather. It was not, however, until the 19th Century that the rise of meteorological science led to radical improvements in the design and use of the barometer.
The development of the barometer and thermometer illustrate the true nature of neocheating in several different ways. First of all, neocheaters are at a loss to ever create any positive values. It is impossible for neocheaters to be in the vanguard of scientific advances. They can only expropriate the values and inventions created by Neo-Tech thinkers. Secondly, it indicates that the free play of market and scientific knowledge will determine the most appropriate standards of measurement. It was not the bureaucrats or State officials or Churchmen who designed the thermometer or decided that the Fahrenheit or Celsius scales were appropriate to use. Freethinking individuals decided what was best for them. There was no need to pass legislation decreeing that scientists or experimenters use the Fahrenheit scale on their thermometers. They naturally gravitated toward those standards which their reason showed to be most beneficial and easy to use. Scientists and inventors simply determined what was the most suitable standard for themselves and acted accordingly.
It seems strange that the origins of one of the most important inventions in the history of mankind remains shrouded in mystery. A weak form of gunpowder was used by the Chinese early in the 11th Century. In Europe by the early 1300s, propellant charges for cannons were composed of charcoal, saltpeter, and sulphur, the ingredients for gunpowder. From this time on, there was a continuous development of more efficient firearms and more effective gunpowder. Powder mills were usually state-run enterprises in Europe because of the military uses of gunpowder. Despite the fact that gunpowder has generally been applied to destructive purposes, its commercial and industrial applications have been far-reaching. Its development permitted the more economic exploitation of natural resources (for example, in mining and tunneling), than would have otherwise been possible with the crude tools available before the l9th Century. Gunpowder and the technologies associated with it are neutral. When used by Neo-Tech thinkers to overcome the difficult conditions presented by nature, gunpowder's explosive qualities have been a boon to mankind. But when used to arm soldiers for conquering and subduing other men, it has served in the destructive ways of neocheaters and politicians.
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