The Great Sailing Movement has brought a great impact on the thinking of Europeans. New plants, animals, new humans and human society have been discovered one after another. They are so different from everything that Europeans have become accustomed to, which stimulates Europeans to explore new problems. It is against this background that Europeans began their scientific revolution.
Not surprisingly, the scientific revolution mainly occurred in the fields of astronomy, mathematics and geography closely related to navigation. In order to carry out navigation activities, the Portuguese first established a navigation school. Although Prince Henry himself has no interest in learning, he enthusiastically supports these schools, and sailing activities are also inseparable from them. After the success of the Spanish and Portuguese, the Netherlands, Britain and France also sent their own expeditions, and at the same time established their own maritime schools to train maritime talents. In order to determine the orientation in the ocean, astronomy has practical value, so it has been carefully studied in navigation schools. The scientific revolution has just begun with astronomy. 1496, 23-year-old polish Coponic came to Bologna, Italy to study. After six years of study, he returned to his motherland, where he studied astronomy in his spare time while working as a doctor and priest. Columbus's discovery of the New World and Magellan's voyage around the world challenged the original knowledge about the earth. Many newly acquired data during the voyage could not be explained by the original theory, so Coe Bouhnik used these data to recalculate, initially completed his Heliocentrism in about 15 13, and wrote a short article to spread among friends. However, he didn't have the courage to challenge the authority of the church, and only published his research results when he was in his seventies. If we are not familiar with the name Coponic, then we must know his other name, and that is his Latin name Copernicus. After Copernicus, another Italian who had a great influence on the scientific revolution was Galileo. 1597, under the influence of Kepler, he began to believe in Heliocentrism. Later, he used a telescope to observe the starry sky, which supported Heliocentrism's practical evidence. 1642, Newton was born in the year when Galileo died. I think everyone is familiar with Newton's great contribution, but isn't his discovery the mathematics, mechanics and astronomy that the society needed at that time? Darwin, another great biologist we are familiar with, began to consider the issue of species evolution after he sailed around the world for five years and collected a large number of specimens. Therefore, we can see that great navigation has played a direct role in promoting the development of science. Without great navigation, science might still be stagnant.
However, despite the rapid development of science in the centuries after the great voyage, the production and lifestyle of human beings do not seem to have changed much. Sailing boats are still used for navigation, land transportation is still walking or cattle-drawn carriages, people still use candles for lighting, houses are still built of wood or stone, wool, linen and cotton cloth are still the main raw materials for human clothes, and everything we are familiar with today has not yet appeared. This situation did not change until the late18th century, and all this seems to have something to do with the deepening of navigation.
Unlike the scientific revolution widely carried out in Europe, the industrial revolution was originally a British affair; Unlike the scientific revolution, which was dominated by scientists, the industrial revolution was almost invisible, which can be said to be a revolution dominated by businessmen and craftsmen. The origin of this revolution has its own logic. The Portuguese who sailed for the first time in those years were for Asian spices. Later, the Dutch crowded out the Portuguese and monopolized Asian spices. When spices declined in the Eurasian trade, the Dutch successfully cultivated the habit of drinking coffee in Europe, but they still monopolized the coffee trade. Although after two Anglo-Dutch wars, the British successfully accepted the Dutch's sailing behavior, but they still did not shake the Dutch's position in Asia, so they had to settle for the second best and come to India to survive under the breath of Mughal people. At that time, Europeans were definitely not as original as Asians. When Britain began to trade with India, the British found that their own people liked cotton clothes from India very much and no longer liked wool and linen clothes from their own country. In order to prevent domestic craftsmen from being completely unemployed, the British had to ban the import of cotton-padded jacket from India, and then began the process of import substitution. Soon the British completed this process and were able to produce cotton-padded jacket by themselves. Because of its vast colonies and the extremely vast market in Britain, there is pressure on supply, so many businessmen are offering high-priced rewards for efficient production methods. Stimulated by high bonuses, craftsmen are trying their best to improve production efficiency, so craftsmen's inventions emerge one after another. Their inventions seem to follow certain rules. First, the direct market-oriented weaving production mode has been improved. 1733, Kay invented the flying shuttle, which doubled the weaving efficiency and caused the shortage of spinning supply. So the goal of technical improvement in the next few decades focused on spinning, and finally the water spinning machine was invented by Akelet in 1769. Since then, spinning technology has been out of control. The improvement of spinning machine has caused new imbalance, and the surplus of yarn has led to the further invention of textile machinery. 1785, Cartwright invented a power loom powered by horses, and after 1789, it was powered by steam. Of course, the development of textile technology requires power, which makes it profitable to use steam engines to provide power. So the existing newcomen steam engine with huge energy consumption was improved by Watt and became a practical power source, which was quickly popularized. The invention of steam engine put forward requirements for mining technology and steelmaking technology, and the transportation of coal and iron correspondingly required the revolution of transportation mode. Of course, the existence of the steam engine provides conditions for the revolution of the transportation industry. The first train in the world was produced by a miner who accidentally used a steam engine to transport coal. Unfortunately, we can't know the names of miners now, so the inventor of the train became Stevenson.
When all this started, our world entered a new era. Of course, later science began to combine with industry, creating a greater economic miracle. From this perspective, history does have its inherent logic. All the changes seem so natural. One change leads to another change, and one invention leads to another invention. However, all this seems so incredible that we can't judge in advance where changes will take place, and we can't assume that a change will happen if it is impossible in human history. It seems that today we still can't predict our future development according to the existing historical logic. So is it because we don't know enough about historical logic, or there is no such historical logic at all?