Dear James and FIS colleagues,Thanks for the scholarly text! I much appreciate allthe contents of your well-framed essay –so the task of establishing adiscussion on its contents is not easy at all. Given my general agreement with the structureof “presences” you have established, Iwill go for the “absences”.Along with the reasons you provide on why science andtechnology did flourish in medieval times, my contention is that that milestonein Paris 1277 you mention would not have been crossed (neither the technologicaladvances you also mention) without the previous contribution of the Monastic Institution.In a few words (some references later) it is in the monastic environment of the high medieval periodwhere a new informational order is born, around the “codex” on the one side andaround the “mechanical arts” on the other. What the “ora et labora” means is adefinite dignification of technological and manual work, now put at the samelevel than the bookish work. As anhistorical novelty in the Western world, a number of monastic codices appearwith humble technical-manual contents. The “workshop” tied to the “bookshop”… that strange union had occurred only in verybrief periods of the Alexandrian Library and Museum history. Now it was occurring in anumber of humble European monasteries, symbiotically linked to their environment andnot parasitizing upon it as the Alexandrian institution was unfortunatelyestablished. Somehow “universities” will be created later on in the wake ofsuch a highly successful monastic institution, now translated into the urban milieu… But the next informational-ordertransition, from hand-written codices to printing press (the “Gutenberg Galaxy”)was the clarion end for the Monastic mission, and its definite decline in favorof the universities and the urban bourgeoisie clerks and intellectuals.In the above disordered barrage I have been liberally mixing ideas and influences from the great Marshall McLuhan,James O’Donnell, Michael Hobart, Zachary Schiffman, Alex Wright, etc. So tospeak these authors have been the founders of the field “social-information-history”.One day, perhaps not too far away, a discussion on the “informational history”of societies will be firmly grounded. And the second leg of my “absences” comments to James concernsthe sheer magnitude of the silent “technological transfer” that occurred fromOrient to Occident, from China to Western Europe. Paper making, printing press,gunpowder, magnetic compass… directly propelled Western science and technology;plus very probable influences occurred in horse harnessing, distillation, clockescapement, porcelain and mosaics, textiles and silk manufactures, glassmaking, etc. (I am following just by heart the readings I made on our distinguishedcolleague Joseph Needham, “Science and Civilization in China”; to be honest there is some good discussion on the above in James' book, but not enough for my taste). Obviously Chinese colleaguesof our list will comment far better than me on this important matter.The big question unanswered yet, also put andpartially responded in James’ book: Why the scientific-technological revolutionoccurred in a few small Western territories and not before in more advanced medieval societiessuch as China or even in Moorish Andalusia? To return to James’ terse opening, I have to ask for hisbenevolence about my rushed comments on this couple of absences, both in the presentessay and in the (splendid!) book itself.Best wishes---Pedro
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