Dear James (& Krassimir, Jerry...) and all FIS colleagues,
I tend to disagree with James about the relatively minor role assigned
to monasteries in the development of medieval science and technology.
Let me ad a couple of further arguments:
1. Social complexity. Some FISers will remind Joseph Tainter session we
had several years ago on the cost of complexity in the development of
social structures (one of his most influential books concerns "Collapse
of Complex Societies", 1988, almost two decades before Jared Diamond
wrote his famous book on the same matter). Joseph's discussion on the
complexity crisis of the Roman Empire is unsurpassed, in a few words,
the Empire was based on a structure of 300.000 --500.000 soldiers, say
20 to 50 legions, plus a another similar "army" of tax bureaucrats
brutally and corruptly extolling everywhere. In spite of dramatic
efforts to re-structure the imperial administration system, only in the
wake of very few successful conquests (Egypt, Spain, France, Romania)
was economic stability achieved for very short spans. Military
over-stretching and the related social complexity and internecine
conflicts were making an unwieldy entity. So the East/West division, and
the further Barbarians' conquest and emergence of independent kingdoms
in the West... But this very catastrophic event gave opportunity to a
new social organization in Europe. Crucial to the emergence and
advancement of the new pan-European social order was the widespread
presence of monasteries created by the Benedictine Order. According to
Lewis Mumford (Technics and Civilization, 1934), 40.000 monastic
settlements were spreading throughout Western Europe at their historical
peak. Whether the figure is credible or not, it depends on the size (in
my own "La Rioja" region, very mountainous one, scores of ruined small
monastic sites can be found in most valleys, all two-three groups of
small villages were sustaining at least one of them, often of minimal
size, not beyond 10 or 12 monks).
2. Loci of codices and Scriptures, and of techniques. The Order of St.
Benedict was not created ex-nihilo. It fed on previous monastic
experiences, mostly of Egyptian ascent, and above all it developed by
taking as a model the project of Cassiodorus: a library-type community
with the mission of rescuing the vanishing Greek and Latin legacy in
papyrus format ("rolls") and to put it into the new Codex format (binded
"books" of parchment pages.) See "Avatars of the Word: from Papyrus to
Cyberspace" by James O'Donnell (1998). But the monks have to fend for
themselves in a time of barbarian-permanent invasions, and the legion
discipline was also instituted, and the manual work (to feed for
themselves). More and more activities of all kind were added: fantastic
wine making, musical notation, glass making, applied mechanics and
hydraulics, herreries and furnaces, glass-making, geometry and
algorithms... Not casual that the first written notation of "0" in
Christian Europe appeared in a Benedictine site (tenth century, in
Albelda, La Rioja!!!)
Beyond the accompanying and pretty eminent religious contents, the
overall social function performed by monasteries was the support of a
new civilization order in Western Europe. Had China counted with a
similar monastic network, they would have successfully built advanced
"recombination of knowledge" upon their superior technology and easily
defeated the Moorish (in the famous encounter between their expansive
imperialisms in Central Asia, the Talas River battle, won by the Moorish
cavalry in 751 AD) and easily extended into Europe...
I was willing to continue on Krassimir about modernity and Jerry's
logical-chemistry, but my admiration for the monastic system has taken
me too long. Just as a brief conclusion, the demolition of Medieval
order by nascent absolute states (Spain, France, U. Kingdom) and by the
religious crisis and schism, opened two dramatic centuries of
superimposed conflicts: the clash between modern state-centered
imperialisms amalgamated with the religious wars. As James says, very
few overall progress until Europe came to terms with herself, now with
the so called Enlightenment...
Thanking the patience!
---Pedro
--
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Pedro C. Marijuán
Grupo de Bioinformación / Bioinformation Group
Instituto Aragonés de Ciencias de la Salud
Avda. Gómez Laguna, 25, Pl. 11ª
50009 Zaragoza, Spain
Telf: 34 976 71 3526 (& 6818) Fax: 34 976 71 5554
pcmarijuan.i...@aragon.es
http://sites.google.com/site/pedrocmarijuan/
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