Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages

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Binding: Paperback Dewey Decimal Number: 909 EAN: 9780060925819 ISBN: 0060925817 Label: Harper Perennial Manufacturer: Harper Perennial Number Of Items: 1 Number Of Pages: 368 Publication Date: 1995-02-15 Publisher: Harper Perennial Release Date: 1995-01-06 Studio: Harper Perennial
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Editorial Reviews: An illuminating look at the monumental inventions of the Middle Ages, by the authors of Life in a Medieval Castle.
Spotlight customer reviews: Customer Rating: Summary: More than expected Comment: I originally purchased this book for research on Medieval metallurgy as relates to swords and armor. It completely changed my view of the "Dark" ages an how creative the European culture was during that time. It seems it was the Romans that were stuck in a rut! The idea of borrowing technologic concepts from other cultures, especially China, indirectly had never occurred to me and was fascinating. I found the book eminently readable and it changed my attitude about a lot. I definately got more than I expected for the modest price. Customer Rating: Summary: An interesting introduction to medieval technology and inventions Comment: My middle school son is learning about medieval times and is quite interested in technology and invention, so I thought this would be a good introduction to the topic both for him and me. I ended up reading the book and referring him to areas of particular interest as the reading was a bit over his head in spots, but I found it an interesting topic and an enjoyable read. Customer Rating: Summary: Good historical overview; short on technical detail Comment: As other reviewers mentioned, Franes Gies is also an author of this book. The historical material is very interesting, and succeeds in the authors' aim to inform the layperson about recent (i.e. the last 30-50 years) developments in the history of medieval technology. According to the bookjacket's inside flap, they aim to dispel two "time-honored myths": that European civilization stagnated during the middle ages, and that later European technological and political ascendency was solely due to European ingenuity. In reality, technological and scientific advances took place in Europe throughout the middle ages, building gradually toward the achievements of the renaissance. These advances were due to a combination of European inventiveness with borrowing and inspiration from China, India and the Islamic world. This book disappointed me because I was unable to understand many of the vague descriptions of the technology. Too often the authors either expect the reader to have background knowledge of the mechanisms and procedures that they describe; or else they only intend to impart a vague understanding of the way the mechanisms operated. I would expect that most readers of this book are interested in the details of the medieval technology. In addition, in a book that covers so many kinds of technology, such as architecture, shipping, textile manufacture, weaponry, etc., the authors ought to know that no reader will be familiar with every single kind of technology described. Illustrations can help a reader to understand the textual descriptions, but hardly any of the illustrations are technical drawings. They are mostly reproductions of artworks or photographs of objects. These are labeled only by captioning, not by labeling parts of the objects depicted. For example, a reproduction of a manuscript drawing/diagram of the water system of Canterbury, is printed upside-down, which makes the caption completely inaccurate. (Perhaps this has been corrected since the 1994 hardback edition.) In addition this illustration is reproduced too small for most of the labeling in the original to be legible. A glossary and timelines could also have been helpful for readers. The book is structured in chronological order, with each chapter covering several centuries. Each chapter is divided into sections about different kinds of technology. The sections are not listed in the table of contents, so if you are interested in a particular kind of technology, you must resort to skimming the chapters and the index. If you like historical trivia, you will love this book. It is full of little nuggets, such as the origin of the word "coach" and the pros and cons of different kinds of waterwheels. I enjoyed reading most of this book, but I was frustrated by its shortcomings. You will probably feel the same way if you want to understand the exact workings of the technology described. Customer Rating: Summary: Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages Comment: Very interesting piece of history for technology specialists. Customer Rating: Summary: From Roman Stagnation to Renaissance Dynamism Comment: This book by the husband and wife team of Joseph and Frances Gies is a labor of love, and it shows. It provides an overview of the history of technology from pre-classical times to the Renaissance. It is a secondary source textbook, which guides the reader to whatever primary source material may interest him. I can keep this text on my shelf at home, and if I wish to seek out some more detailed account of a contentious point by historians such as Edward Gibbon, Henri Pirenne, Lynn White, or Joseph Needham, the Gies' book will direct me to these more extensive works at my public library. I was led to this book by the argument over whether there ever was a "fall of Rome" of the sort described by Gibbon. Rodney Stark, for example, denies it in his "The Victory of Reason." Bryan Ward-Perkins, on the other hand, insists there really was a catastrophic collapse in the levels of population, literacy, and economic activity in the 5th Century Western Roman Empire. I am convinced by Ward-Perkin's evidence, yet I must agree with Stark that the Frankish "dark ages" were far more productive of inventions than was the entire world of classical civilization from 500BC to 500AD. The Franks invented (or at least perfected) the horse collar, the wheeled moldboard plow, three-field crop rotation, the stirrup, and the water wheel. The only original thing the Romans invented was concrete. The Gies' provided me with a way of putting these seemingly paradoxical facts into a consistent whole. The structures of high culture which would support populous urban centers and a literate Senatorial Roman class disappeared after the 5th Century. But the abolition of slavery and the efforts among lower class farmers to survive the chaos of the 6th and 7th Centuries motivated them to produce an astonishing amount of technological inventions. The Romans had no need for waterwheels, for example, since they had an almost limitless supply of slaves. The 6th Century Franks had to be more clever than that. This may explain the inventiveness of the Franks compared to the Romans. But what about the Muslims? The Muslims served more as transmitters of technology from East to West than as innovators in their own right. Why did they fall so far behind the West after their brilliant start during the 8th to 10th Centuries? I am grateful to the Gies' for showing me the continuities of technological development through the entire Middle Ages from the fall of Rome to the Renaissance. This has enriched my understanding of the discontinuities emphasized by Gibbon and Ward-Perkins. But much more needs to be done to explain the modern dominance of the West among world cultures. (Non-Western cultures have participated in this dominance only to the extent that they have successfully "Westernized.") Rodney Stark tried to explain this dominance of the West by reference to the alleged virtues of the Christian religion. I argued in my review of his book that his effort failed. But one needs a book like the "Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel" to even address these issues. That is why I am grateful to the Gies' for having created their book. More Reviews