SOCI 235 Lecture Notes - Lecture 2: Ideogram, Ancient Rites, Woodblock Printing
26 Nov 2017
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Gunpowder: i) developed in china in powder form - improved in europe through. The access to technology tended to be restricted. The chinese treated time and knowledge of time as a confidential aspect of sovereignty, not to be shared with the people (p. 50, landes). In constantinople in 1560 if they established public clocks, they think that the authority of their muezzins and their ancient rites would suffer diminution (p. 51, landes). The chinese government regulated the production of printed work with some success. It viewed printing as a potential source of dissent. Islam appears to have a religious objection to printing: the idea of a printed koran was unacceptable (p. 52, landes): in terms of technology europe overtook china and islam. Culture/the judeo-christian tradition? i) respect for manual labour; ii) the idea that nature should properly be subordinated to humans; iii) a linear rather than cyclical sense of time - which was compatible with the idea of progress.
