When and how did 'modernization' start?

[spin]

I think a more helpful question would be, when did the movers and shakers stop looking to the past to be the guide for where we are going? Answering that question will functionally also answer when modernization began, for modernization involves the conscious severing of our cultures' ties with the past.

 

[Clivedurdle]

But why did we start reifying the past over observation and experiment?

 

[steve_bnk]

Historians divide human history intoperiods.


http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_by_period




I imagine all civilizations had idiomspertaining to being modern or up to date.


I believe organized civilization beganwith ancient Zog figuring out how top make and control fire, makeweapons, and store/preserve food.


If you look around the world todaythere are a few essential tools.


To me primarily two tools other thanour modern forms lof fire ike electoral power. Edged tools andcontainers. Edged tools means making other tools and hunting.Containers in the form of baskets and forms of solid containers meansstoring and transporting water and food.


We have knives, scissors, power saws,power drills...all of which are just advanced edged tools.


Containers are everywhere. Canned food.Gas tanks in cars. Cardboard boxes. Jars. Plastic containers in thekitchen.




We are on larger scale, but ild imagineearly organized civilization was not functionally not much different.Specialization of work means more efficiency and allowing enoughexcess resources to support innovation.


Some ancient thinker needed a societythat has enough extra resources like food to support his work infiguring out stabilizing arrows with feathers and testing thedesigns. For hunting spin stabilized arrows would have been a majoradvance. Greater accuracy at longer distances.


Edged tools, containers, andcontrolling heat.

I watched a great show on Meerkats .They have a complex cooperative society They share and rotateresponsibilities. Building and maintaining tunnels, watching andcaring for young, food gathering and watching for predators.


In the show there was a symbioticrelationship with a bird species. The birds made a warning sound ifit saw a predator like a snake, and the Meerkats would put out food.

I think the short answer is a combination of biological and social evolution that maximized survival.

 

[steve_bnk]

But why did we start reifying the past over observation and experiment?

By virtue of the combination of ourbrains, capacity for articulate speech, and our physical form we doit better than the rest of the critters, but we are notunique.

Chimps make tools including a primitive stone toolthat is worked into shape by chipping. Monkeys figure out how tocrack nuts with rocks. Birds place nuts in streets so cars will crackthem. Seagulls drop shelled sea food to crack them.


There are diving birds in the area thatwill line up on the water, and as if on que will all dive underwaterto fish. I once watched a seagull line up and try to go underwaterwith them.

 

[Cheerful Charlie]

I think a more helpful question would be, when did the movers and shakers stop looking to the past to be the guide for where we are going? Answering that question will functionally also answer when modernization began, for modernization involves the conscious severing of our cultures' ties with the past.

With the rise of the renaissance and the slow death of scholasticism. Humanism and the rediscovery of Greek skepticism. The invention of things like telescopes and microscopes that demonstrate an entire unexpected Universe out there not hinted at in the Bible or the ancient church fathers or Greek philosophers. Nor explainable by them. Discovery of new lands, destroying old dogmas, There are antipodes with life. With all of this, looking to the opinions of ancient thinkers was just useless. The founding of scientific organizations such as the Royal Society to propagate knowledge of all these new discoveries.

 

[spin]

With the rise of the renaissance and the slow death of scholasticism. Humanism and the rediscovery of Greek skepticism. The invention of things like telescopes and microscopes that demonstrate an entire unexpected Universe out there not hinted at in the Bible or the ancient church fathers or Greek philosophers. Nor explainable by them. Discovery of new lands, destroying old dogmas, There are antipodes with life. With all of this, looking to the opinions of ancient thinkers was just useless. The founding of scientific organizations such as the Royal Society to propagate knowledge of all these new discoveries.

I think we have a seesaw with society at one end and you are placing stones on the other which will eventually bring society to face the other way. You keep placing stones on the end, but when exactly does it tip?

 

[avi]

You keep placing stones on the end, but when exactly does it tip?

Contemplating stones, and the claim that one needs draft animals, and the idea that one waits for the Greek civilization to examine the solar system, I am inclined to think less of a seesaw, and more of Stonehenge.

How did they move those huge stones? How did they lift them? Where did they place them, in relation to various astronomical entities?

 

[steve_bnk]

Egyptian building techniques have been demonstrated in small scale.

Note there were several attempts at pyramid building that failed....progress is part trial and error.

The Romans had figured out rectangular beams were stronger than square ones , without science of materials.

 

[avi]

Egyptian building techniques have been demonstrated in small scale.

Note there were several attempts at pyramid building that failed....progress is part trial and error.

The Romans had figured out rectangular beams were stronger than square ones , without science of materials.

Thanks for that reminder, Steve, well written.

...moving material away from the
neutral plane makes an object stiffer. That's why a tube is stiffer than a rod
where both have the same cross-sectional area of material, and that's why
the joist under a floor is made higher than it is wide rather than square in
cross section.

What about other ancient cultures, for example Mycenaens? Didn't they have indoor plumbing? Did they construct their abodes using rectangular beams? I have observed some nifty bridges, constructed in ancient times, using stone arches. Looks like they ought to collapse, but they don't. Here's the Arkadiko bridge:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkadiko_bridge
from 3500 years ago.

 

[steve_bnk]

There were the Incas who built phenomenal mountain road systems and walls/structures that were so tight on the fit you can't fit paper between the stones. There are quarries and half built structures that were abandoned apparently in progress remain. They carefully worked stones to fit.

But for some reason they never fully exploited the wheel and water power.

It is an innate human brain capacity.

 

[avi]

There were the Incas who built phenomenal mountain road systems and walls/structures that were so tight on the fit you can't fit paper between the stones. There are quarries and half built structures that were abandoned apparently in progress remain. They carefully worked stones to fit.

But for some reason they never fully exploited the wheel and water power.

It is an innate human brain capacity.

All good stuff here, Steve, until the last bit.

The reason why Einstein did not speak to Tesla using mobile telephones, is not because either man had a limited "brain capacity".

Lots of people can read music. Why can't everyone compose works like Bach, or Prokofiev, or Jehan Alain?

The Incas' ancestors crossed the Siberian land bridge from Asia, and migrated south, like all of the other folks in the Americas. They were as human as you or me. Their "brain capacity", measured in terms of skull dimensions, was similar to that of all other humans.