Progress in the name of Revolutions, Scientific and Otherwise

1
Progress in the name of Revolutions, Scientific
and Otherwise

• Transportation Revolution 900-1600s
• Renaissance 1300-1500s
• Reformation 1500s
• Scientific Revolution 1550-1700s
• Commercial Revolution 1600-1700s
• Agricultural Revolution 1700-1900s

2
Transportation Revolution 900-1600s

• Age of Reconnaissance and Norse Discoveries
  874-1400
• Martielogio Method using geometry and triangles
  for sailing Italian sailor first to use applied
  geometry, 1436
• Henry of Portugal founds navigation school, 1427
• Europeans permanently in the Americas, 1513
• God, Greed and Glory

3
Explorations

• Vikings to Iceland and Greenland
• Lack of skill in farming and herding
• Lack of women
• Skeletal crews
• Spain, England and the Dutch
• More successful
• Goals different from Norse
• Greater ratio of male to female

4
Renaissance 1300-1500s

• Expansion of Progress, Emotion and Passion
• Small revolution with the combination of the
  Reformation and the Renaissance
• Emphasis on human using the tool is now recast to
  an emphasis on the tool and ways the tool can be
  more effective
• Goal of efficiency reiterated and reified
• Saw birth of intellectual movements of rational
  techniques of measurement and drawing
• Creation now prerogative of man not just God
• Invention as a unique action of creativity, not
  part of evolutionary process
• Great inventions were seen as indicators of
  technical advance

5
Reformation 1500s

• Martin Luther 95 these on the Wittenberg door in
  1517
• Changed nature of relationship between God and
  man
• Changed worldview regarding progress
• Eventual goal of progress is now mans heavenly
  perfection on earth

6
Scientific Revolution 1550-1700s

• New ways of thinking about practical problems
• Reassessment of traditional ideas about the
  natural world
• Relevant to management and organization of
  technology
• Change from Ptolemaic world to Copernican world
• Galileos contention that earth is not center of
  the universe (Telescope in 1609)
• This changes the relationship between God and man
  by making man no longer the center of Gods eye
• Man becomes a rational animal instead of just a
  spiritual creature

7
A Transition in Worldviews
8
Commercial Revolution 1600-1700s

• Cottage industry and putting-out system
• Family Economy
• Development of automatic loom in London
• Rise of bourgeoisie and consolidation of absolute
  monarchies
• First traces of mercantilism State regulation
  and supervision trade
• Church begins losing grip on social structure and
  state begins to gain grip on social structure
• State begins to perform functions formerly
  administered by church
• Problems of social organization and public
  administration became objects of scientific
  analysis

9
Modern Agricultural Revolution 1700-1900s

• 7-12th Centuries
• Heavy Wooden Plow
• Irrigation Technologies Implemented
• Emphasis on maintaining community
• 13-14th Centuries
• Agriculture becomes more organized in West.
• Spring Wheat introduced
• Triennial rotation for fallow year
• Enclosure procedures and laws begin

10
Modern Agricultural Revolution 1700-1900s

• 15-19th Centuries Agriculture for profit
• Production of Surplus
• Commercial Production
• Agricultural Units increase in Size
• Improvements to Plow
• Using Animals to Replace Human Energy
• Focus on Tool instead of Human
• 20th Century Agriculture as an industry
• Industrial Methods
• Policies of Production
• Emphasis on profit replaces emphasis on agrarian
  way of life
• Characterized by mechanization, chemical farming
  and food manufacturing
• Reliance on science and engineering to increase
  productivity