Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages Reprint Edition
Author(s): Joseph Gies (Author), Frances Gies (Author)
Publisher: Harper Perennial
Publication Date: January 6, 1995
Edition: Reprint
Language: English
Print length: 357 pages
ISBN-10: 0060925817
ISBN-13: 9780060925819
Book Description
From bestselling historians Joseph and Frances Gies, whose books have been used by George R.R. Martin as source material for Game of Thrones, comes a classic book on innovation and technological change in medieval Europe
In this account of Europe’s rise to world leadership in technology, Frances and Joseph Gies show how early modern technology and experimental science were direct outgrowths of the decisive innovations of medieval Europe, in the tools and techniques of agriculture, craft industry, metallurgy, building construction, navigation, and war. The Gieses report that many of Europe’s most important inventions—the horse harness, the stirrup, the magnetic compass, cotton and silk cultivation and manufacture, papermaking, firearms, and “Arabic” numerals—had their origins outside Europe, in China, India, and the Middle East. Europe synthesized its own innovations—the three-field system, water power in industry, the full-rigged ship, the putting-out system—into a powerful new combination of technology, economics, and politics.
Editorial Reviews
Amazon.com Review
Historians, write Frances and Joseph Gies, have long tended to view the Middle Ages as a period of intellectual and scientific stagnation, a long era of backwardness, ignorance, and inertia. Many scholars of the Renaissance era, however, thought otherwise; the mathematician Jerome Cardan, for one, held that three medieval inventions--the magnetic compass, the printing press, and gunpowder--were of such significance that "the whole of antiquity has nothing equal to show."
In their lively history of medieval technology, the Gies team writes of such advances as the heavy plow, the Gothic flying buttress, linen undergarments, water pumps, and the lateen sail. During the medieval millennium, they suggest, a great technological and social revolution occurred "with the disappearance of mass slavery, the shift to water- and wind-power, the introduction of the open-field system of agriculture, and the importation, adaptation, or invention of an array of devices, from the wheelbarrow to double-entry bookkeeping." Many of those inventions or adaptations, brought into Europe from China and the Middle East, have scarcely been improved on today.
The medieval technological revolution, the authors conclude, came at a cost: much of Europe was deforested to make room for cropland and to fire kilns and furnaces, and mechanization made obsolete many handicraft skills. Yet, they add, the workers and inventors of the Middle Ages "all transformed the world, on balance very much to the world's advantage." --Gregory McNamee
Review
"The Gieses here explode the myth of the Dark Ages, showing that the Fall of Rome did not plunge Europe into stagnation and lethargy.""--Booklist"
From the Back Cover
An illuminating look at the monumental inventions of the Middle Ages, by the authors of Life in a Medieval Castle.
About the Author
Frances (1915–2013) and Joseph (1916–2006) Gies were the world’s bestselling historians of medieval Europe. Together and separately, they wrote more than twenty books, which col-lectively have sold more than a million copies. They lived in Michigan.
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