From Medieval to Modern

Criticism has left little unchallenged of the once popular view that scientific and technological progress was conspicuously lacking from the Middle Ages. On the contrary it is now clear that the period after the twelfth century was one of rapid and fairly continuous development, surmounting even the great demographic and economic crisis of the Black Death. Intellectually, the rise of the universities furnished centres for the study of natural science based largely (but not exclusively) on the works of the ancient Greeks. Technologically, the employment of power derived from water and wind, the adoption of textile machinery and a more efficient metallurgy (vol. II, pp. 408–13, 458–69), together with the spread of more recent inventions such as the mechanical clock, the compass, and gunpowder gave promise of a new era in production, trade, and warfare. It may indeed be argued that it was still necessary to clear away most of the doctrines of late medieval science and medicine in order that modern ideas and methods should take their place, and to revolutionize the practices of the medieval craftsman in order that they should support a modern society. Nevertheless, in each case what had been achieved by the end of the fifteenth century was as superior to the standards prevailing in Charlemagne's time, as it was in turn inferior to the science and technology of the nineteenth century. Without this intermediate stage neither the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, nor the industrial revolution of the eighteenth, could have occurred.