From the point of view of the development of natural sciences, Europe in the middle of the Middle Ages was a pitiful sight. The level of technology rarely reached even the time of the decline of the Roman Empire, most of the achievements and discoveries were safely forgotten and, in fact, were not really needed by anyone. Engineering developed more or less - and even then, only in terms of building fortresses …
Needless to say, if, for example, in the heyday of the Middle Ages, steel was more expensive than gold? There could be no talk of any achievements of Antiquity, such as a water supply system. Not to mention the sewers or public baths. The oblique sail, invented by the Romans, was safely forgotten and the ships sailed, as in the days of Homer and Odysseus …
"But spirituality!" - as the hero of one of the films put it. And it is true. The imbalance in the development of the natural sciences was more than paid off by a multitude of theosophical and humanitarian achievements, many of which have survived to our time.
If you look at that era, you will be dazzled by theologians and theologians. All kinds of Blessed Augustines, Thomas Aquinas, Hildegards - they have no account. In parallel with these thinkers are representatives of the "secular" humanitarian thought of that time - scholastics, later on the basis of whose teachings philosophy was born. Well, and all sorts of "Occam's razors" and "Nosifan's tripods" still "nightmares" students studying philosophy …
Why is it so skewed? After all, if the development of technology proceeded at the same pace as the "humanities", then perhaps we would have discovered America earlier, and went into space not in the 20th century, but already in the 17th … The explanation of this phenomenon is quite simple: a brake on development natural sciences was the church. Even the picture of the world discovered by the science of antiquity did not fit well with the description of the world in the Bible, therefore, naturally, in order not to drop the authority of religion, it was necessary to significantly limit access to knowledge for those who did not need it. The total control of the church over science (and, accordingly, technology) led Europe to the picture that could be observed in the 11th century.
And everyone was happy with everything: monks prayed, kings ruled, merchants earned their fat, and the peasants grew wheat. And it would go on like this forever, only the names of the kings and the names of the battles they won would change. However, at one point, everything suddenly changed.
The fact is that Europe wanted to fight in the Middle East. The Crusades began. The first of them did not have any significant influence on the course of life of a European, since they were, rather, in the nature of raids on the rear of the enemy, and not a serious war. But, when the war was already in full force, it suddenly became clear that the Arab army is not just "almost equal" in strength to the European, but, perhaps, even stronger than it.
And it was not only about the organization of hostilities, the Arab soldiers were even better armed. Many "defenders of the holy land", returning from the campaign, told terrible stories about Arab swords cutting a person in half, about huge barrels from which fire bursts out, about metal balls flying in different directions, killing all living things.
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Naturally, there were many hyperbolic descriptions in these stories, however, the military leaders and rulers of that time seriously thought about the situation. There was a significant technological lag of “enlightened Europe” from “wild hordes of infidels” from the East. What was the reason for this lag? Where was the mistake in the development of the Europeans?
And the reason was simple. The Arabs knew how to separate the divine from the earthly and never considered knowledge to be an obstacle or harm to religion. On the contrary: the spiritual leaders of Muslims of that time always and everywhere said that new knowledge is a benefit and a blessing, for it allows one to more accurately understand the plan of Allah.
In practice, this resulted in the fact that it was the Arabs who preserved the knowledge of Antiquity. Everything, or rather absolutely all the knowledge that modern civilization inherited from Ancient Greece and Rome, we managed to preserve thanks to the work of scientists of the first Arab caliphates. The works of Roman and Greek philosophers, mathematicians, engineers that we read now - for the most part, these are either translations from Arabic, or those manuscripts that the Arabs managed to preserve. Now it seems incredible, looking at the rather archaic order in the modern countries of the Middle East, however, it is so - at that time the civilization of the Arabs was really the most developed on our planet.
But, just keeping the knowledge of the ancients is not enough, it is also necessary to develop new ones. And the Arabs worked hard on this. In addition, thanks to trade with Southeast Asia, they had information about another important knowledge - that came from China. And these are, no less, such fundamental things as a compass, gunpowder, paper and a printing press. All this at that time (10-11 century) was already in China. And not just it was, but it was a long time ago. Moreover, gunpowder was not the latest novelty; the composition of the "mixture for fireworks" has been known in China for three hundred years …
Grains of this knowledge seeped into Europe, and local "leaders" were seriously concerned about the situation. If you do not take urgent measures, then, as soon as the Arabs want, they can easily take over Europe. As a result of numerous, as they say now, meetings and consultations, both military measures and some other measures were taken.
From a military point of view, everything was relatively simple - the capture of key fortresses in the Middle East and control over Constantinople gave Europe an opportunity to breathe freely for a fairly long time. And this time had to be used to make up for lost time. Beginning from the 11th-12th centuries, a number of different personalities were drawn to the East: travelers, missionaries, merchants, and even outright bandits, whose goal was one - technology.
At the same time, it should be noted that this was not of some frankly espionage nature, but many were well aware of the benefits of this or that knowledge. For example, it is believed that gunpowder in Europe was "invented" by Berthold Schwartz in the second half of the 14th century, but how then can one explain the appearance of the first firearms in the English army at the Battle of Crécy in 1346, about 5-10 years before its discovery?
Or another interesting fact: in one of the abbeys in Maine, a functioning miniature furnace for smelting steel was found, which appeared there, according to the records of the books of the abbey, already in the 11th century, when its monks went on one of the crusades along with the English knights.
A separate category was made up of engineers who made "sudden" discoveries during that period. For example, in Flanders, the first water mill with a hammer wheel appeared, the owner of which is a surprise! - was a member of the 4th crusade.
And so on and so forth. In less than 300 years, more than fifty engineering ideas and about the same number of samples of inventions themselves migrated from East to West. There were, of course, people like Marco Polo who honestly admitted that this was not the fruit of their activity, but honestly stolen / bought / exported from the East, but there were only a few of them …
Be that as it may, in a couple of hundred years, Europe managed to overcome the almost seven hundred-year difference in technology that separated it from the advanced thinkers of that time, and it began to vigorously master new knowledge. Already in 100-200 years, the Renaissance era will begin and the subsequent era of colonialism, which finally approved the Europeans as the most advanced civilization of this planet.
How long will European civilization and its descendants be the main ones on Earth? Will not the fate of the East befall them during the middle of the Middle Ages? Will the pendulum of history swing the other way? Time will tell.