The Meycans have not made any vessels to resist air attacks because they:
"'...don't know how to make a fabric which will hold the lifting-gas long enough, or how to control the flight...." (p. 35)
Ruori retorts:
"'And being a nonscientific culture, you never thought of doing systematic research to learn those tricks...'" (ibid.)
I would not have a clue how to begin systematic research on fabrics or flight. I am a philosopher, not a scientist. But I do want to be part of a society where someone does know how to conduct scientific research.
Tresa replies that her people:
Tresa's reply is no good. If the Meycans know how to build canals and aqueducts, then they can learn how to build something else. The struggle for existence cannot possibly be so time-consuming that it leaves no time for research. Meycan society supports nobles and clergy so it can certainly also support scientists.
(The attached cover image shows Tresa, Ruori and an air attack.)
2 comments:
If R&D isn't part of the cultural baggage, people don't do it systematically. Nobody did until historically quite recently -- roughly 400-500 years for West Europeans, starting slowly and accelerating. Other people learned it from us.
Note on what this can mean:
When the British stormed the Taku Forts in the First Opium War, they found plenty of cannon -- the Chinese invented both gunpowder and cannon in the first place.
But the cannon were simple tubes fixed to baulks of timber, and couldn't be aimed; they were equivalent to the bombards Europeans had been making in the 1400's.
There were bronze guns with trunnions on carriages similar to those Europeans used; they'd been cast by Jesuit missionaries in the 1600's. That meant they could be elevated and traversed to direct the fall of shot.
They weren't as good as early 19th century European artillery, but they were a hell of a lot closer than any of the other pieces.
The Chinese were perfectly capable of making guns and carriages like that; the Jesuits had used local metalworkers and artisans to make them in the first place. Chinese metalworking had been ahead of the world until about 1600 (the Chinese were smelting iron with coal 800 years before the British independently reinvented the technique) and even in the early 1800's they weren't that far behind.
It just didn't -occur- to the Chinese to copy those Jesuit cannon.
Likewise, the Chinese had originally invented gunpowder small-arms, but when the Third Opium War was fought in the 1860's, they were still using matchlocks -- and most of their troops had bows or bladed weapons, not firearms.
And this was after they'd been in contact with Europeans and their constantly improving firearms for about 300 years.
And the Chinese were -more- open to innovation and -more- technologically curious than most non-Europeans.
Kaor, Mr. Stirling!
And THAT explains why the Meycans of Amderson's story "The Sky People" were falling so far behind: lacking the right kind of MINDSET for the kind of systematic, scientific R & D needed for finding ways of counteracting these attacks from their enemies.
Apparently, tho, their alliance with the Maurai provided them with the means needed for gaining that kind of mindset.
It does seem odd for China to have fallen so catastrophically behind the Europeans when, up till about 1600, it seems to have roughly been on a par with Europe, technologically. Again, we have to think of mindsets and cultural/political factors.
Ad astra! Sean
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