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Message: <blockquote data-quote="fusangite" data-source="post: 4329250" data-attributes="member: 7240">The thesis that technological advancement is dependent upon a post-feudal centralized state is one that I think is made on little evidence. While it is true that recent spurts of industrial and technological development have been coupled with post-feudal nation states, it is a mistake to generalize this backwards and assume that periods of technological development have been associated with the same political conditions.Prior to the 18th century, we don't see such a correlation. In the first phase of the Scientific Revolution we find Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus outside of the emerging monarchical absolutist states. Spain, England and France were not the states that powered the pre-Newtonian phase of the Revolution.Similarly, the development of the heavy plow and water mill took place not during the stable High Medieval Period but during the so-called "Dark Ages" because one of the key forces that powers technological development is sudden shortages of cheap labour, something the Darkening of the Sun and barbarian invasions produced very effectively.So I just don't buy the idea that because our current phase of technological development has taken place in stable nation states that one can read this backwards into the historical record. Archimedes was a Greek living in a peripheral colony, not a Persian living in a powerful state.There is no doubt that political stability is a factor in scientific and technological development but I would suggest that it is not only not a sufficient condition; it's not even a necessary condition.So why was there more technological development in the three centuries following the fall of Rome than during the three centuries preceding the fall?I agree. It's a shame that the contractual nature of Germanic societies is minimized in fantasy worlds.</blockquote>

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