Great post. Another point I wanted to mention was the European university system. Oxford, Cambridge are close to a 1000 years old. By 1500 AD, Europe had over 30 universities (most of which are still existing today). Newton himself was a Cambridge student, where he became the Professor of Mathematics later. James Watt himself was affiliated with the University of Glasgow when he started working on steam engines.
Such a formalized education system didn't exist elsewhere in the world.
Yeah, good point. I have spent some time thinking about this but don't know enough yet. For instance China did in fact have formalized education and they had extensive use of merit based civil exams for bureaucrats. My understanding however is that the European system grew much more bottom up and thus offered much more variation in what was being taught. The first European universities were really just collections of students who polled money together to pay a teacher.
What I have wanted to explore more is the European guild system. My understand is that the European university system comes out of a mix of the tradition with monks and with guild system. The first universities were almost like guilds in terms of organization. As far as I know China did not have this kind of guild system widely used.
That may be because Chinese central government was much more powerful while in Europe the cities enjoyed a lot of autonomy which also gave rise to the powerful guilds and the institutions around them.
Ah yeah I have been reading Anton Howes a few times. He gets REALLY deep into the topic. I know this kind of things pops up often in science and engineering. Various phenomena often get explored first in a hands on manner before scientists start organizing and describing the topic. So, I concede that maybe this good understand of vacuum was not needed to make a simple version.
However I think it would be very hard to progress and improve designs without proper understanding of the physics. Also we cannot know whether the science was not known by others either.
When you read about science there are so often you find that various phenomena have been described earlier by somebody else but he didn't publish, wrote in an obscure language or something else.
The works we see survived today are top of the Iceberg. I think it has been mentioned about Leonardo da Vinci that we don't know exactly how prevalent many of the ideas he sketched out where. It might have been many others who knew that stuff.
Hence, I like to think that one way or the other a strong scientific culture mattered. I am not entirely convinced that a civilization without modern math notation, and ability to cheaply mass produce and distribute scientific works could really have evolved such a complex technical contraption as the steam engine.
But I admit I am quite ignorant of how Chinese mathematicians described their mathematics. Would be interesting to hear somebody with more insight give their thoughts on whether Chinese logograms and number systems would have made it practical to express things such as functions, derivation and integration.
I find the arguments you make compelling in many ways. With the exception of wheat vs rice. China has been growing wheat on a massive scale since the Tang dynasty. https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/chinese-farmers/
I know northern China has long grown wheat, but likewise they have also had water wheels and windmills. My argument was not really about China not being familiar with any of this but about prevalence. My understanding is that rice still dominated Chinese culture. But I am really deferring to well known Sinologist Christopher Cullen why made this argument. You might have seen me reference him. He makes this argument in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxYpnnrN2p0
What you say is a fair point though, so I would have loved to hear what response Christopher Cullen would have. Terje Tvedt of University of Oslo for instance never refer to rice growing as a reason there are less mills in China. His argument is primarily focused on the nature of Chinese rivers, variation in water flows and so on. I have basically combined arguments from a variety of people.
Great post. Another point I wanted to mention was the European university system. Oxford, Cambridge are close to a 1000 years old. By 1500 AD, Europe had over 30 universities (most of which are still existing today). Newton himself was a Cambridge student, where he became the Professor of Mathematics later. James Watt himself was affiliated with the University of Glasgow when he started working on steam engines.
Such a formalized education system didn't exist elsewhere in the world.
Yeah, good point. I have spent some time thinking about this but don't know enough yet. For instance China did in fact have formalized education and they had extensive use of merit based civil exams for bureaucrats. My understanding however is that the European system grew much more bottom up and thus offered much more variation in what was being taught. The first European universities were really just collections of students who polled money together to pay a teacher.
What I have wanted to explore more is the European guild system. My understand is that the European university system comes out of a mix of the tradition with monks and with guild system. The first universities were almost like guilds in terms of organization. As far as I know China did not have this kind of guild system widely used.
That may be because Chinese central government was much more powerful while in Europe the cities enjoyed a lot of autonomy which also gave rise to the powerful guilds and the institutions around them.
Great post Erik! Worth a note that Anton Howes pushes back on the claim that an understanding of the vacuum was essential for the invention of an atmospheric engine (https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-why-wasnt-the-steam ; https://antonhowes.substack.com/p/age-of-invention-why-wasnt-the-steam-cc8).
Salomon de Caus created a kind of atmospheric engine decades before Torricelli and Pascal's work.
Ah yeah I have been reading Anton Howes a few times. He gets REALLY deep into the topic. I know this kind of things pops up often in science and engineering. Various phenomena often get explored first in a hands on manner before scientists start organizing and describing the topic. So, I concede that maybe this good understand of vacuum was not needed to make a simple version.
However I think it would be very hard to progress and improve designs without proper understanding of the physics. Also we cannot know whether the science was not known by others either.
When you read about science there are so often you find that various phenomena have been described earlier by somebody else but he didn't publish, wrote in an obscure language or something else.
The works we see survived today are top of the Iceberg. I think it has been mentioned about Leonardo da Vinci that we don't know exactly how prevalent many of the ideas he sketched out where. It might have been many others who knew that stuff.
Hence, I like to think that one way or the other a strong scientific culture mattered. I am not entirely convinced that a civilization without modern math notation, and ability to cheaply mass produce and distribute scientific works could really have evolved such a complex technical contraption as the steam engine.
But I admit I am quite ignorant of how Chinese mathematicians described their mathematics. Would be interesting to hear somebody with more insight give their thoughts on whether Chinese logograms and number systems would have made it practical to express things such as functions, derivation and integration.
It might be that I utterly lack imagination ;-)
I find the arguments you make compelling in many ways. With the exception of wheat vs rice. China has been growing wheat on a massive scale since the Tang dynasty. https://www.sapiens.org/archaeology/chinese-farmers/
I know northern China has long grown wheat, but likewise they have also had water wheels and windmills. My argument was not really about China not being familiar with any of this but about prevalence. My understanding is that rice still dominated Chinese culture. But I am really deferring to well known Sinologist Christopher Cullen why made this argument. You might have seen me reference him. He makes this argument in the following video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YxYpnnrN2p0
What you say is a fair point though, so I would have loved to hear what response Christopher Cullen would have. Terje Tvedt of University of Oslo for instance never refer to rice growing as a reason there are less mills in China. His argument is primarily focused on the nature of Chinese rivers, variation in water flows and so on. I have basically combined arguments from a variety of people.