Despite the topic that presents the medieval epoch like a «dark age» and of scientific delay, from the XIIth century one lived in Europe through an authentic technological revolution that gave birth to innovations as the firearms or the mechanical clock.
From the year Thousand, the daily life of the Europeans began changing thanks to inventions like the clock, the gunpowder, the glasses or the mill, examples of the skill of the medieval makers. In the XIIIth century, Roger Bacon went so far as to define the "scientific method" as a cycle of four phases: observation, hypothesis, experimentation and cross-check. Being based on this method it developed studies of optics that led him, between other things, to design the first glasses and to prepare cameras obscure projects, the precedent of the camera.
Bacon felt a big admiration for his French contemporary Pierre de Maricourt, who carried out important investigations in the field of the magnetism. One century later, Nicolás de Oresme demonstrated that that was the Earth the one that was moving and not the stars on her, as till then it was thought. In the same century, the Frenchman Jean Burilan interpreted, by means of mathematical studies, the movement of the bullets. These examples show that, against the traditional vision of the Middle age as an epoch of delay and ignorance, in the medieval centuries the sciences never gave in. It is true that from the Vth century, with the fall of the Roman Empire and the Germanic invasions, a lot of knowledge of the ancient world got lost.
In accordance with the new mentality of the nations, everything unknown or not included it happened to provoke fear and to collaborate with the magic and the witchcraft, with the prohibited thing, with the demoniacal thing. The science was, this way, being left aside. But from the year Thousand everything changed and, in a way parallel to the economic deployment of the continent, the interest in the knowledge was reborn and, especially, for the practical application of the knowledge. Thanks to the contacts with the Islamic world, there took place the development of the rudder, the role and the compass, or the numbers indoarábigos, that progressively replaced the Romans, facilitating this way the advance of the calculation. What really defines the men of the Middle Age there are no discoveries nor advance them in the field of the theoretical knowledge, but the aptitude to apply these knowledges - developed by themselves or transmitted by other cultures - to the practical needs of the society in which they were living.
The answer to the new times was the European mechanical clock, documented concerning 1300, which replaced the previous hydraulic system with engines that were activated by means of weight hung by cylinders and by means of cogwheels, rollers and levers. On the other hand, the uses of the mills were variadísimos. The pólders, for example, surfaces of ground gained the sea in the Netherlands, arose from the construction of dikes and the drainage of the water by means of bombs activated by windmills. In parallel, the notable development of the metallurgy during the Middle age propitiated numerous technological innovations in addition to the mechanical clock: musical instruments, irons to print role, machines for the dressmaking of textiles, implements of farming, weapon of war and even automatons.
From the Xth century, and thanks to the heyday of the commerce and of the peregrinations, big cities arose in the marine ports, in the intersections of ways and in other mercantile enclaves. In them there were taking place drugs and cosmetics, garments and shoes, jewels and objects of gold and silver. But the novel thing there was the appearance of authentic industries of ceramics, glass, leather and, especially, textile matter. At present, almost there has been exiled that lugubrious and dark image of the medieval epoch. The modern historians have verified also that in this period the culture did not give in, but it evolved.
Route: historiang.com
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