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by toasterlovin
2486 days ago
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Thanks for that most excellent answer! It gets at the industrial revolution (and the importance of coal deposits), but the scientific revolution preceded the industrial revolution by quite some time and was not dependent on coal. Something was happening around the English Channel and what is now Germany starting in around the 1600s. Why there and not somewhere else? |
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The Renaissance, printing, the Reformation, the Enlightenment, and the breaking of uniform Catholic control over thought and science. That's an area I've been exploring (I'm exploring a lot of areas, progress is slow), and it's fascinating.
The Bacons (Francis and Roger, no relation), free-thought movements especially in the north (Amsterdam and Copenhagen), and relative political freedom of inquiry in England all seem to have helped. It's interesting that the Enlightenment itself played heavily in Scotland, otherwise a hinterland (Adam Smith travelled to London for an education he didn't think much of, taking six weeks to make the journey by coach or on horseback, in the 1740s or 50s).
James Burke's television series Connections and The Day the Universe Changed cover much of this development (as well as earlier and later periods), and have been useful, though I'm starting to find holes in Burke's treatments (he wholly ignores Joseph Needham's work and Chinese invention, as examples).
Gregory Clark, mentioned above, has a generally excellent treatment of the question, one of the best I've read yet, though there's much I've yet to read.
Another excellent resource is the History of Information website. It's a useful place to explore questions such as this.
http://www.historyofinformation.com/index.php