The Clock and the Camshaft, J. W. Farrell

According to Protestant-Atheist-Muslim propaganda the world of the Medieval European Christian was so dark, one could see nothing.  It was a blinding, raging, never ending sea of black, no light, no reason, no understanding, no innovations, no initiatives, never mind science, mathematics, technology or even books.  Squatting, hairy, dirty, senseless, filthy, mired in abject ignorance, unable to speak properly, disavowing the greatness of pagan slave-based Rome or the slave-owning, largely illiterate Greek empires, unmindful of hygiene, nutrition, health, no encounters with a bath; the medieval Christian was a half-naked savage, less worthy than the human-sacrificing Mayans and Aztecs, probably on par with your average African Bushman, who at least has the redeeming quality of being good with a spear.  The era was parlous, full of squalor and stupid, good for nothing except as a bad memory of illiterate barbarism, Gothic in every way.

So runs the current propaganda in train since the 17^th century (or 15^th if we include the arrogant and quite talentless Petrarch), manufactured in the main by people who could not, and cannot do anything.  They did not, nor do they now, invent, create, build, fabricate, improve, or even deign to understand complexity.  The complicated nature of medieval life and its attendant progress, wealth, innovation, is like the created world, plain to see, if one has the eyes and open mind for it.  Without medieval Christendom there is no European world-mastery.  Culture is king, not geography, husbandry, seasonal changes, or luck.

Take the camshaft.  No camshaft no manufacturing.  You only find the invention of the camshaft in Medieval Europe as early as the 9^th century.  As Farrell writes, ‘’The camshaft was the key to powering the mass production of cloth, iron, hemp, leather, and paper, all of which benefitted from the repeated force of heavy pounding….As Jeremy Naydler argues, the camshaft represented the first example of machine programming in human history.  By adjusting the cams on a shaft, the millwright could ‘program’ both in what order and at what speed the mill’s trip-hammers would operate….Paper was certainly the result of a fortuitous conjunction of cam and gearing.’

Nothing fortuitous about the interplay of gears and cams.  It was designed and modelled as such.  Tonnes of vellum and parchment gave way to mass produced paper starting in the 15^th century.  But long before the 15^th century the tools and institutional developments and related processes had been establish for modern science and math.  The Medieval invention of paper and book making simply hastened that on-going initiative.  ‘…a vast intellectual and legal revolution occurred in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in the West, transforming medieval society so that it became a receptive ground for the rise and growth of modern science’.

Innovations in math and science were protected by the creation of Universities funded by the Church and cities through their merchant classes.  The Age of Discovery was one built on such progress including the perfection of the astrolabe and other technologies related to long-distance travel (ship building, the Viking longship, sail power, map making, logistics).  Farrell like most academics wrongly places the Astrolabe as a Muslim creation.  This is ahistorical.  The astrolabe was known to the ancient Romans and Byzantine Greek Christians and was adopted by Muslims through the Jihad and destruction of Christian Levantine and Byzantium territory.  There is no evidence that Muslims improved on the original design confirmed by the fact that Muslims were never to engage in an Age of oceanic Discovery.  The Vikings also invented an astrolabe based on lodestars no later than the 9^th century, giving them the confidence to sail to North America.  Different types of astrolabes were common in Europe in the medieval era, some ‘cut down’ to provide portability.  They were widely used no later than the 10^th century and abetted the early period of discovery from the savagery of Viking exploration to the first forays in the 15^th century around Africa and in the wider Atlantic.

The compass surpassed and replaced the astrolabe no later than the late 13^th or early 14^th century, again made and developed in Christian Europe, perfected in Amalfi Italy.  This was a round container that protected a mounted magnetic pointer which could rotate around a compass card that featured eight designated directions.  With the compass, portable, easy to use, on board the astrolabe and fear of bad weather or overcast conditions, was greatly reduced.  Accuracy of distance navigation improved considerably.  Detailed charts were made based on the magnetic attraction of the north pole, providing common maps and routes.  Allied with improvements in European ship building the Age of Discovery became a reality. 

The camshaft and the compass are just two of many Medieval Christian innovations.  But you won’t hear much about them.  For those religious dedicated to opposing Europe’s Christian past, these and hundreds of other inventions are just ignored, given to the Muslims, Chinese or non-White Christians as their innovative product, or simply moved into the ‘early modern period’ as an example of the ‘rational, scientific, revolution’, created no doubt by smart, clever people like those ascribing 1000 years of variegated progress the appellation ‘dark’.

There is however, very little that is ‘light’ or clever which is based on dissimulation and ignorance.