The Renaissance

Antitechnologists, academic and other snoots, and neo-Luddites equate technology with the erosion of culture and civilization. A neat little book by Paul Johnson details how technology helped spark the Renaissance, which is an interesting perspective. One day historians may be writing similiar books about this time.

The Renaissance author Paul Johnson pages 197 publisher Modern Library Chronicles rating 7/10 reviewer Jon Katz ISBN 00679-64086-X summary how technology helped re-invent culture

The Renaissance is a short history of the period considered a high-water mark of humanity's relationship with the imagination. Historian Paul Johnson goes back to the Dark Ages to write about how the growth of intermediate technology sparked one of the greatest periods of cultural growth and invention, the Renaissance.

Technology made it possible, he concludes.

"This was," he writes, "the invention, followed by the extraordinarily rapid diffusion, of printing. The Romans produced a large literature. But in publishing it they were, as in many other fields, markedly conservative." The Romans, writes Johnson, knew about the codex -- a collection of folded and cut sheets, sewn together and enclosed within a binding. But they clung to the old-fashioned scroll as the normative form of the book.

In the Middle Ages, the spread of paper and the invention of printing by movable type was the central technological event leading the Renaissance, the spark that triggered an explosion in art, teaching, research and writing, Johnson writes. The invention of movable type for letterpress had three enormous advantages: it could be easily renewed, being cast from a mold; it could be used repeatedly until worn out; it introduced strict uniformity of lettering. (In a way, sounds like the Net's early architecture.)

Technology also had a profound affect on art, perspective, architecture and design, as Johnson also points out in this readable book.

The rest is, as they say history. Johnson tells it with authority, clarity and brevity. This is a neat book to give a teacher or parent muttering about all that time online, or lamenting the high culture of times past and the fact that kids have all gone to cultural Hell.

Sometimes unwittingly, "The Renaissance" connects the flowering of that period with the extraordinary outpouring of ideas, stories and culture made possible by the invention of the Net and the Web. Future historians may be writing about the history of this period in much the way Johnson takes on that one. It's always nice to know where we come from, as well as where we might be headed.

You can purchase this book at ThinkGeek.

Comments

Re:How original...

[Eccles]

Yet another book about how the printing press sparked the rennaisance, how original.

The iron plow was probably at least as important.

The Roman scratch plow didn't make deep furrows, so planting had to wait until the weather was warmer and frost wouldn't kill the seedlings as often. With the iron plow (which itself was possible thanks to the metallurgical improvements made in the quest for better armor), farmers could be more productive and fewer farmers were needed. So more people were able to do non-farming things, including inventing the printing press.

Books 500 years from now?

[billstewart]

If the historians 500 years from now are writing anything resembling the modern book, I'll be quite surprised*.

* (er, well, depending on your views of theology and/or nanotech life extension, I'll probably actually be dead, and if I'm not dead, then probably there will have been enough big surprises that this one won't jump way out of the pack, plus I'll have had 500 years of watching the evolution of communications, but nonetheless, I certainly don't expect now that what historians will be doing 500 years from now will necessarily resemble current books.)

There are other more important lessons

[matthew_gream]

The criticism levelled against Katz is partially deserved, and partially not. It is fairly obvious to most intelligent people that there are similarities between the development of writing and the development of computing. Both provided humanity with greater freedom of expression, all of which gave rise to phenomenal changes in the world landscape.

Katz could discuss more pertinent issues such as how precisely can we learn from the renaissance, other than realising that what is happening now is approximately similar.

Also, reading up on the Medici family and the history of Florence, one would realise that a large reason for the flowering of arts was due to the patronage of the ruling families (Cosimo I and Lorenzo). Now if the present day wealth of the United States is squandered away, then humanity won't be left with great things, but will be squandered on suburban acreage.

Improved eyesight important

[ciaohound]

It's well-known that the invention of eyeglasses in Florence greatly improved worker productivity. I wonder what future historians will say about lasik, which seems to be very popular with people in information technology.

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Technology isnt everything - competition drives

[idot]

The chinese had the movable letter printing technique and the paper technique for maybe 500 years before the europeans invented it. Still, it did not lead to this takeoff of culture, the explosion of scientific breakthroughs etc.

Technology is shurely a conditio sine qua no, however a second important point is the climate of competition which reigned in europe from these days on. Contrary to China, europe and especially Italy at that time was shattered to small independent states each competing for advances in whealth, culture etc. After the loss of the churches position as the guardian of truth, the influx of the arabian knowledge together with the newly found technology of books enabled the dissemination of the newly found empirical insights and their discussion throughout europe (italy). This europe-wide discussion was facilitated by the common scientific language latin.

The important point was, that whenever the scientist or artist had a problem with the local authority, he could leave and find a different state in which he could complete his work, because a higher central political authority was largely absent (the church however was still there).

I forgot from which book I took this.

The Middle Ages weren't the Dark Ages

[bfinuc]

The Roman Empire fell in the West about 500 AD (probably because of the Black Death). The Dark Ages followed, but after say 1066 Europe entered an era of unprecedented economic growth and technological development.

Contrary to popular belief, European civilisation was vastly farther in 1200 than in say 300. The Romans didn't even have real plows, let alone stirrups, wind and (good) watermills, buttons, and more other basic technologies than are worth mentioning here.

The next crash came in 1348 (the Black Death again). The Renaissance didn't come from nowhere, it was solidly based on three thousand years of steady European growth.

Obviously the Roman Empire was a high point, but just as an example, Slavic Celtic and Germanic languages (including the ancestors of English) begin being written in the late ages of Rome. The rest is history.

Worldly Goods

[drooling-dog]

Another good read in this regard is Lisa Jardine's Worldly Goods - A New History of the Renaissance (1996). She traces the origins of the renaissance not to any single technological development (like the printing press), but to the spread of commerce and the resulting rise of a mercantile class. The new demand for works of art - and, to a large extent, books - was driven by the need to gain social status by exhibiting one's wealth. Much like today!

Re:This is NOT the Renaissance

[Actinophrys]

Even more importantly, renaissance refers to a rebirth of learning. At the time, most people felt they weren't doing anything new, just rediscovering what the ancients had (it took people a while to realize it once they started surpassing them).
I don't think Rome had anything like the technology we have now...

This is NOT the Renaissance

[grovertime]

Sometimes unwittingly, "The Renaissance" connects the flowering of that period with the extraordinary outpouring of ideas, stories and culture made possible by the invention of the Net and the Web. Future historians may be writing about the history of this period in much the way Johnson takes on that one.

While I appreciate Johnson's writing, and his notions are told in a lucid, authoritative and often times clever manner, to assume this conclusion from the text and indeed from the time would be off-base. I don't like the music of the 50s or 80s much, but I'm not yet prepared to say that the Internet Generation was sparked from the rubble of a "Dark Ages"-type time. The pre-computer era was one of the most technologically imaginitive in our history and if we truly are too get a glimpse into where we are headed, maybe we should tell the events of the past with greater accuracy.

1. 
   humor for the clinically insane
   

So what?

[Rage_Matrix]

Why is there all this Katz bashing here? Okay, so you might not agree with what the guy is saying and stuff, but honestly, so what? At least Katz is contributing something. Personally, I don't agree with a lot of what he says, but I find "Katz articles" very entertaining. If you've got something better/more intelligent/whatever, then write in instead. Jeez...

How original...

[joshv]

Yet another book about how the printing press sparked the rennaisance, how original. This seems a rather pedestrian and obvious observation, that I am sure has been written about ad nauseum - do we really need another book about it.

Oh, and Katz really shows me his insight with the little teaser 'perhaps someday someone will write the same of our time...' Wow, Katz's mind just makes all these cool little connections I would never see on my own... Now I know why I continue to masochistically read every one of his articles.

-josh

Why does it all involve...?

[Faulty Dreamer]

I hate to jump on the "Katz Sucks" bandwagon, but I have got to ask this. Why does everything revolve around the Internet or "new technology" when it comes to Katz?

(In a way, sounds like the Net's early architecture.)

OK, now, I understand drawing some parrallel conclusions, but I really, seriously doubt that anyone writing a book about the classical Renaissance is trying to go out of their way to justify the current Internet revolution through the "hindsight of the classical period". I'm sorry, it just doesn't seem that way to me.

While I agree that we should always strive to remember the lessons of the past, I ask that we have the right to draw our own conclusions. Jon Katz reviews a book, and he tells us what we are supposed to take out of it. I thought it was the job of the reviewer to say whether ( in the case of an historical book) the author has managed to cover the subject matter well, not to try and tell the reader how to read the book, or what conclusions to draw.

Is Katz really this entrenched in the technology sector? I mean, surely no one can truly be that one dimensional. Yes, I want to learn the lessons of the past, but when I read about the history of the Greek or Roman empires, I do not go out of my way to try and link that history with anything that I am currently working on. It just seems daft to assume that whatever you are working on is automatically to be considered as important, in an historical context, as something as big and powerful (at the time) as the Roman Empire, or the Renaissance and the intellectual revolution that evolved from it.

It is possible that we are in such a time. But we have a long way to go before we can say that all humanity will benifit from this whole Internet thing in the same way all humanity benifited from that time. And frankly, I'm not real interested in having all of my history lessons applied to the Internet. There are other things happening in the world, even now, that aren't directly tied up in the Internet. Perhaps Katz should step away from his job for a while and check some of those things out? Just a suggestion. A vacation never hurt anybody.

Printing Press Did Not Bring About Renaissance

[heinzkeinz]

I haven't read the book, but I can tell you for certain that the printing press was not the major cause of the Renaissance. I don't know if this is a distortion of Johnson's words by Katz, or a gross error by the author, but the Renaissance (as conventionally defined) predated the printing press by at least a hundred years.

Gutenberg produced the first Bible c. 1455, but the Italian Renaissance was in full swing by then, largely an outcome of the mercantile culture of the Italian city-states. The later European Renaissance movements were more outgrowths of the Italian one than spawned by the printing press. They too seem to have been caused mostly by the growth of town culture and the rise of the middle class.

A solid argument can be made for the printing press as the greatest single cause for the Reformation. However, it is incorrect to name it as the primary cause of the Renaissance. I'm not saying that it had no effect, but other factors were at play.