@[email protected] looking into Foucault's ideas about then emerging disciplinary regimes on the body could be of interest, but perhaps that is a bit off from being a solid historical account
this post was submitted on 15 Sep 2024
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@[email protected] yeah, i know what you mean - and i think that strays beyond my immediate historical needs. i'm basically looking for someone to fill in a lot of the historical gaps that heidegger leaves wide open with his historical examples (grist mills, hydroelectric dams, etc). foucault is his own wilderness anyway 😅
answering my own question yesterday re: heideggerian technological change and the first industrial revolution:
there does not seem to be any specific agreed upon text that covers the above historical question - however, i've cobbled together a patchwork of related readings:
Miller, Adam. (Dissertation). Enframing and Enlightenment:
A Phenomenological History of Eighteenth-Century British Science, Technology, and Literature. https://ir.vanderbilt.edu/bitstream/handle/1803/13807/miller_adam.pdf?sequence=1
Finberg, H.P.R. Tavistock Abbey: A Study in the Social and Economic History of Devon.
Gies, Frances and Joseph. Life in a Medieval Village.
Gies, Frances and Joseph. Cathedral, Forge, and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages.
Gimpel, J. Medieval Machine: The Industrial Revolution of the Middle Ages.
Landes, David S. The Unbound Prometheus: Technological Change and Industrial Development in Western Europe from 1750 to the Present.
Mantoux, Paul. The Industrial Revolution in the Eighteenth Century.
McNeil, Ian. An Encyclopaedia of the history of technolology.
Toynbee, Arnold. Lectures on the industrial revolution of the 18th century in england. https://archive.org/details/LecturesOnTheIndustrialRevolutionOfThe18thCenturyInEngland
adding to the aforementioned bibliography of books concerning the intersection of the 15th-19th centuries and technological change. found them at a local used bookstore.
web searches for broad topics like this are often fruitless. a good library or academic bookstore already has this presorted by topic.
#bookstodon #books
adding two incredible finds to this medieval technology reading/research bibliography: Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel by Frances and Joseph Gies. The bookseller immediately recognized it and exclaimed “I appreciate a writer with the common touch!”
The second book - Tavistock Abbey: A Study in the Social and Economic History of Devon by HPR Finberg was an accidental find. While it does not speak to technological change in the late middle ages, it speaks to the social and cultural life of an abbey and its surrounding village.
#books #bookstodon
@[email protected] check out The Gutenberg Parenthesis by @[email protected] it starts in the late Medieval period with the earliest printed books and while it ends in the modern era discussing the internet I think you will find the early chapters very related to the bibliography your are building and that you will find his bibliography and the books he used useful for a further dive into the impact of printing on the late medieval / early modern era
how could i forget these two absolutely hilarious and informative illustrated texts on medieval and 18th century life.
i’ve had them sitting on the shelves for years, and realized they make a compelling visual reference
#bookstodon #illustration #books
@[email protected] !!! I'd completely forgotten that these existed!
@[email protected] i fear that most of the civilized world has forgotten too. i found them dirt cheap at thrift shops. i doubt they're still in print, but thankfully they are dirt cheap from used book sellers
@[email protected] Game artists really need to read this. Too many "realistic" games where the castles look like out of Disneyland and ships are shoeboxes with toothpick masts
two weeks ago i posed what i thought would be a rather straightforward historical research question, which went unanswered. i wondered: what did the people of the middle ages (peasants, villagers, blacksmiths, monks, abbots, knights, etc) think of technological change in their time? was it seen as a boon for replacing manual labour? a threat to everyday craftspeople and craftsmanship? a new evil at odds with moral duty to god?
just cobbling together a reading list to begin answering the question was itself a week's worth of work. finally, today i began finding direct answers to the question in Frances and Joseph Gies' "Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages."
while everyday people like serfs and peasants beliefs are not covered due to a lack of historical records, its early chapters provide some insight from the medieval monastic orders. the answer? the various churches were openly ambivalent, but *not* openly opposed to technological change and invention.
Why did the churches not openly embrace technologies?
... for many years monastic orders like the Benedictines and Cistercians saw manual labour as critical for self-sufficiency and spiritual development. When technologies that allowed for reduced manual labour became available, monastic orders began questioning their potential value in relation to their relation to God.
Why did monastic theologians not openly reject technologies that would relieve them of physical burdens?
... because most of these orders retained an old Greek suspicion and distaste for what Aristotle called "banaustic arts" (or utilitarian arts like crafting and manual labour. These were seen as important for living, but a distraction from intellectual life. Technology's promise was that it could relieve a monk from the banaustic realities of carpentry and millwork and stonemasonry, and let them practice prayer and writing and intellectual pursuits without time/energy-consuming distractions.
A picture of the middle ages is beginning to emerge that is not unlike our own in modernity: technology was seen in relation to its potential for reducing labour. what is different between then and now is that a person's relationship with God was at stake in the middle ages. few today believe that manual labour "keeps us honest".
in other words: technology in the middle ages was understood as both spiritual and instrumental