Why bother about old technology?

Why study old techniques?

• Certainly a valid question. For sure it is easier to comply to the current demands of the industry.

Analytical & problem-solving mindset

• Compared to 2000 years ago, the functioning of our brain has evolved little, and the analytical & problem-solving mindset of the past and present show surprising parallels.
• How do you build a torsion catapult without understanding the underlying physical laws of inertia and acceleration? The same question holds for metalworking and its underlying chemical processes.
• Despite their limited resources and knowledge, the ancient achieved ambitious goals. Driven by necessity, the Greek/Roman engineer/architect had to be pragmatic.
• Currently, the knowledge economy of Europe faces major challenges for finding an answer to the fierce competition with the low-wage countries. A pragmatic approach will be part of the solution.

Hunger for power: impact on our environment

• Man has no built-in compass for the conservation of nature. His hunger for power feeds greed and shortsightedness, and if words and manipulation do not achieve his ambitions, then war will feed the money machine of technological innovations.
• Even after more than 2000 years, the abuse of natural resources in ancient times is still visible. In Las Medulas (Spain), gold mining was carried out for hundreds of years and the impact is still etched on the landscape (see photo below). The insatiable hunger for wood from the metal industry and the associated rampant logging still characterize the Greek mainland today.
• One of the early advocates, striving for an ecological balance between man and his living home planet, was Jacques-Yves Cousteau. He aptly expressed the core of the problem:

It is not the inventions of science or the industry that are responsible for the terrible threat that now weighs on man and his environment, but the careless way in which they are used.

Division of disciplines

• Sometimes we are so close to the books, we forget about how arbitrary the division into disciplines is.
• For a long time, the only application of complex mathematics was astronomy, and this is why both were seen as one discipline. Due to the growing number of applications of complex mathematics (actually an explosion in modern times), the complex mathematics and astronomy became separate disciplines.
• Astrology (assigning meaning to astronomical observations) and astronomy (making objective astronomical observations) also became separate disciplines over time.

Cultural glue

• Many European countries share a bond with classical antiquity. Born from neoclassicism, monumental public buildings found their inspiration in ancient heritage, such as the 'Sint-Jacob-op-Koudenberg' in Brussels (Belgium) and the 'University Museum/aquarium' in Liège (Belgium). Sometimes remains of an ancient building got integrated into a new building, such as the 'Santa Maria sopra Minerva' church in Assisi (Italy), which integrates the facade of the ancient Temple of Minerva.
• Because of their technical ingenuity the remains of the buildings of yesteryear can still capture our imagination. These silent stone witnesses are our anchor points against the volatility of our common cultural heritage.

Evolution of thinking patterns

• In science, a truth is a truth until it is refuted by another truth.
• The Greeks believed in the smallest building blocks of life (atoms) and that the shape of these particles was based on the perfect geometry of the Platonic figures. When I was i school, the smallest particle was the atom, later this became the quark.
• Euclid was sidelined when the flat two-dimensional plane in Euclidean geometry got replaced by hyperbolic geometry (with several godfathers, including Lobachevsky) and later by elliptic geometry (Riemann).

Just because

• Because it's fun and creative ;-)