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Courtiers replace knights As Mechanical Devices Proliferate
Medieval versus Renaissance (early modern) Collectivism/Standardization mentality, guilds were strong Preoccupied with the soul and death Feudalism In wars, knights were rarely killed; foot soldiers made up the bulk of the fatalities. Exaltation of the individual Appreciation of life; art, dance and music blossomed. Nationalism Gunpowder was used in warfare; it killed knights and foot soldiers alike. .
Chivalry takes on new forms For individuals For nations A set of ethical principles to guide kingdoms at war with one another • A code of honor and behavior for aspiring courtiers and gentleman • No longer reserved for armored warriors
Baldassare Castiglione • Book of the Courtier • Ideal courtier • Manners, skills, learning, and virtues
The Book of the Courtier • Culture: Italian • Time: 1528 CE • Genre: didactic prose “how to handbook”
Ideal Man—was well educated in the Classics; should be charming, witty, & smart; can dance, write poetry, & play music; should be physically fit • (called a“Renaissance Man”)
Ideal Woman—study Classics; write, dance, paint, make music well; but should not seek fame or political power (Renaissance women were far better educated but had fewer rights than Medieval women)
Court Life • Dominated by sprezzatura: the fine art of apparently effortless performance; or, nonchalance. • Castiglione grew up in court, as the son of a courtier. Became a diplomat in court of Urbino; made a count, then bishop. • Sack of Rome by Charles V shocked him into illness; he died in 1529.
Ideals of the Italian Renaissance The Book of the Courtier gives a deeply felt account of the qualities embodied by the complete and perfect courtier: discretion and decorum, nonchalance and gracefulness. Castiglione wrote it after the death of Duke Guidobaldo, wanting to honor & repay an emotional debt to the man who had created such a splendid court.
ancient versus medieval Ancient technology Medieval technology Energy for mills, transport still provided by Animals & humans Increased use of falling water & wind Handwritten & hand carried communication – increased use of signals More complex centralized systems for agriculture, manufacturing, construction of monumental architecture • Energy for mills, transport provided by Animals & humans (slavery) • Limited use of falling water & wind • Handwritten & hand carried communication – some use of signals • Centralized systems for organizing society – hydraulic agriculture, division of labor, construction of monumental architecture
In classical antiquity • the display of stunning artificial wonders was prioritized over their possible application to the necessities of life (in part, because Aristotle had forcibly downgraded ‘useful knowledge’ as a lower form of praxis and philosophical occupation). • Hero of Alexandria, the most prolific ancient writer on mechanical devices, who flourished in the first century CE, covered a wide range of topics, including some explicitly aimed at exciting wonder – like, for instance, an automatic theatre retrofitted with thunder and burning fire.
Archytas of Tarentum • as early as the fourth century BCE, constructed a flying mechanical dove, and there are reports that two second-century writers, Ctesibius and Philo, wrote on water-organs, water clocks and automata.
Mechanical clocks were first used in China, • More for astronomical and astrological purposes rather then for telling the time. About 725 CE, a Chinese engineer, Liang Ling-Tsan invented the mechanical escapement, which is a key device in all mechanical clocks. One of the most elaborate clock towers was built by Su Sung and his associates in 1088 CE. During the period beginning with the Mongol conquest of China by Kublai Khan, the Chinese Mongol rulers employed Muslim astronomers. These Muslim astronomers developed & improved astronomical instruments (McClellan & Dorn, 1999).
In Chinese, gunpowder is called huoyao, meaning flaming medicine. Gunpowder was first invented inadvertently by alchemists while attempting to make an elixir of immortality. ... by the end of the Tang Dynasty around 850 CE, gunpowder was being used in military affairs. The Chinese not only advanced the use of firing powder for weaponry but also for beautiful fireworks spectacles.
In Islam’s Golden Age Al-Jazari designed astounding mechanical creations. • According to his “Book of Knowledge of Ingenious Mechanical Devices,” published in 1206, he built a water-powered automaton orchestra that could float on a lake and provide music during parties.
After the 12th century • Medieval Europe saw radical changes in the rate of new inventions & innovations in the ways of managing traditional means of production, and economic growth.
Iron production • Was one of the most important developments in the Middle Ages. The above ground reduction furnace allowed for the easier creation of iron that could be forged by local smiths into "parts for plows, spades, pitchforks, and shoes for horses beginning to pull with the aid of the new horse collar" (Gies & Gies, 1994, pp. 80-81). Tapestry of Metalsmith, Gothic Anonymous, c.1500, Paris. Musee National des Thermes et de l'Hotel de Cluny
Medieval technology • The end of the medieval period saw major technological advances, including the adoption of gunpowder, the invention of vertical windmills, spectacles (eye-glasses), mechanical clocks, and greatly improved water mills, building techniques (Gothic architecture, medieval castles), and agriculture in general (three-field crop rotation).
In Europe • Mechanical clocks became widespread in the 14th century, when they began to be used in medieval monasteries to keep the regulated schedule of prayers. The clock continued to be improved, with the first pendulum clock being designed and built in the 17th century.
Large mechanical clocks • began to appear in the towers of large Italian cities also in the 14th century. Before the clock, people worked, ate, and slept according to the patterns of the sun and moon. • With the clock, time could be divided & regulated. • "time took on the character of an enclosed space: it could be divided, it could be filled up, it could even be expanded by the invention of labor-saving instruments" (Mumford, p. 328).
In the 15th century Leonardo Da Vinci • wrote about automatons & his personal notebooks are littered with ideas for mechanical creations ranging from a hydraulic water clock to a robotic lion. And, most extraordinary of all, his plan for an artificial man in the form of an armored Germanic knight.
According to Da Vinci’s sketches • the knight was to be powered by an external mechanical crank with the use cables and pulleys enabling it to sit, stand, turn its head, cross its arms and even liftup its metal visor. While no complete drawings of the automaton exist today, evidence suggests that Da Vinci may have built a prototype in 1495 while working under the patronage of the Duke of Milan.
In 2002, NASA roboticist Mark Rosheim • usedDa Vinci’s scattered notes and sketches to see if he could create his own version of the 15th century automaton. The Rosheim knight proved fully functional
By the end of the seventeenth century, • clocks were accurate enough to be used for serious astronomical observation. In 1676 Tompion finished two year-going clocks with 13-foot pendulums for the Royal Observatory in Greenwich, England. John Harrison’s (1693–1776) chronometer, familiarly known as H. 4, proved that it was possible to solve the age-old problem of finding the longitude at sea with the aid of an accurate timekeeper. By the early nineteenth century the chronometer had become a standard instrument of navigation.
Technical advances and superb workmanship • combined to place England at the forefront of clockmaking in the latter part of the seventeenth and into the eighteenth century, so much so that in 1711, in order to protect the French trade, King Louis XIV banned the importation of English clocks into France. French clockmakers, on the other hand, took full advantage of the luxury trade that flourished in Paris, providing domestic clocks in splendid cases
A New Way: The Scientific Method • Created by Sir Francis Bacon (1564 – 1626) • The method was to be inductive and experimental, amassing data on important subjects, classifying them, and developing from them wider rules and hypotheses.
The Steps of the Scientific Method • Observe a condition or behavior. • Make a “guess” as to why that condition or behavior exists. • Experiment to see if you can make it happen again. • Analyze the results. • New “guess” needed or not?
Modernity brought standardization aided by printing and the scientific method • Energy for mills, transport still provided by animals & humans, falling water & wind and soon enough by inanimate power sources such as coal for steam power • Handwritten, hand carried communication now augmented by advances in land and sea transport – complex use of signals, and the first wired communication • Ever more complex and interconnected centralized global systems for production & distribution of goods
Four centuries after the renaissance, the prefix “Cyber” is coined at the end of the second world war in the 1940s as the first computers are being built • Cybernetic refers to the standardization and centralization of systems for coordinated guidance that arise from advances in information sharing/communication & mechanical innovation – taken from kubernetes the Greek word for steersman • In ancient Greek kubernao meant "steer a ship" and kubernetes was a steersman. ... The normal Latin transliteration of kubernetes gives us "cybernetes" - practical seafaring Romans turned kubernao into guberno, from which we get "govern".
