James Burke : Connections, Episode 3, "Distant Voices", 3 of 5 (CC)

Watch Entire Show: http://www.youtube.com/view_play_list?p=A510D7DE860B2944&playnext=1

More Shows: http://www.youtube.com/profile?user=JamesBurkeWeb&view=playlists

Episode 3 of James Burke's most well-known series "Connections" which explores the surprising and unexpected ways that our modern technological world came into existence. Each episode investigates the background of usually one particular modern invention and how it came into being. These explorations are an attempt to locate the "connections" between various historical figures who seemingly had nothing to do with each other in their own times, however once connected, these same figures combined to produce some of the most profound impacts on our modern day world; in a "1+1=3" type of way.

It is this type of investigation that is the main idea behind the Knowledge Web project; whereby sophisticated software is used to attempt to discover these subtle interconnections automatically. See http://k-web.org.

See channel page for purchase options.

All over Europe, the medieval lower-classes
started doing something absolutely unheard-of:

They started enjoying themselves!

Some of them even started washing!

The reason for all this dynamic activity was because,

as Europe recovered from the chaos and confusion
of the 10th century,

prosperity ... [clears throat],

if I could just have your attention for a moment,

prosperity encouraged trade,

and merchants began to travel around
selling anything they could get people to buy.

Between 1150 and 1300 the population tripled.

Towns grew up.

So did the number of craftsmen and professions

and so did the paperwork

and the bureaucracy.

[♪ cheerful ♪]

If you think about it, these must have been
great days for most of them;

cash to buy things with,

paying the landlord rent, instead of forced-labor,

justice perhaps? at the new village law courts,

even a little "personalized medical-treatment".

May have been a bit rough,

but it was better than nothing!

Well ... almost...

Ok so a peasant couldn't get to be a prince

but he could expect his kids to grow up
to a better life.

Meanwhile as the rustic-rollicking continued,

in the King's palace,

it was "Lead-Balloon Time".

I mean, here were all these hayseeds committing
the *unforgivable sin* of not doing their duty!

which was to work till they dropped,
and practice the longbow on Sundays.

You remember the longbow?

It took a lot of practice to make a good archer,
who'd go out and get himself slaughtered for you,

and these idiots weren't getting the practice!

It began to look, to the Kings and Princes...

as if you couldn't go out and have yourself
a nice, old-fashioned war anymore!

And then good-old human ingenuity came out
with a less-demanding way to kill people.

Now to be fair to the Europeans,
they didn't actually invent it.

But they took to it's immense, destructive potential

with all the gay-abandon of an alcoholoc in a brewery.

And in case you're wondering why I'm telling you all this

with my pig friends here

It's because that one of the first places they found
the principle ingreedient for the new terror weapon

was in a pigsty.

Why?

Well, you see a pig's home, is also his toilet.

And you make gunpowder from urine and dung.

Using that kind of muck to get to this lethal powder

involved going through a bit of Chemistry first.

The urine became "ammonia"

and the bacteria in the dung,
turned the ammonia into a "nitrate".

Having mixed the mess with wood-ash
and then filtered water through it all,

boiling that water produced "saltpeter" crystals.

This powder is a mixture of saltpeter, sulphur,
and charcoal.

All you do now

is apply a flame,

stand *very far* back,

and...

[♪ oriental, ritualistic ♪]

Gunpowder was a Chinese invention

and they had it 700 years before we, in the west,
got our hands on it.

And it's very proabable we only got it,

because the Arabs picked it up in China
and brought it back with them,

like they did with so many Chinese ideas.

It's very likely that whoever it was,
(who invented gunpowder)

he was one of their "philosopher-chemists",

actually searching for the secret-recipe for immortality.

Ironic, isn't it?

[♪ oriental, ritualistic ♪, fire-crackers exploding]

[shouting] In the main, apart from the odd
rocket or granade,

that was how the chinese used their gunpoweder;

for fireworks in religious rituals.

[Buddhist chanting]

Which brings us for a minute or two,

to the business about the Chinese inventing everything.

And yet, not using it way we did.

This is part of the reason:

Their view of life.

[♪ oriental, ritualistic, chimes ♪]

The thing that's surprises us in the "West"

because we use everything we can get hold of,
to cause change to happen,

is that the Chinese had so much,

and changed so little.

What I mean by "so much",

is this:

They had gunpowder, you saw.

And look what we did with that.

And then 2000 years ago,

they used to spin magnetic spoons on
pictures of the earth and sky,

and, depending which way the spoon pointed,
when it stopped, they made a politcal prediction.

When we got hold of that,
in the form of the compass needle,

we used it to conquer the world,

to set up empires,

aided in our voyages by a Chinese rudder.

Chinese looms,

capeable of making complex patterns like that
helped to set up

the great 13th century, European textile industries.

A thousand years before us, the Chinese had

blast furnaces

steel

pistons

cranks

and... this:

Paper.

Part of the reason why,

in spite of all this, change didn't come in China
in the way it did when all this came to the West

was this:

Not printing,

although they invented that too...

no, this word:

Tao (道)

道 -

it means "the universal way",

the fundamental order of nature.

The Taoist scholars were a group who
looked for some rational order in things:

To see how the universe worked.

And because of their investigations

gave china what we would call

"technology".

[♪ oriental, somber ♪]

And yet, *explosive change*;

the kind *we in the west* went through,
when we got hold of what China had invented

didn't happen here.

And to explain why I'm going to have to
hit you with a bit more of... uhh

"inscrutable chinese philosophy".

You see the Chinese believed that
the universe was filled with "Shen" (神).

a... a spririt that was in everything.

And that all you could do was contemplate it.

Trees, mountains, birds, rivers, were all one,

and so you couldn't reproduce a model of
*a bit of* the universe, and examine it,

because you couldn't fill it with Shen.

Now, in the Christian West, we reckoned that

the universe was made of rational bits and pieces
by a rational God,

and if you were a rational human being,
you could make a model of a bit of the universe,

and then take it apart to see how it worked

and use what you learned.

The other fundamental reason why change
didn't happen here in China

was... that:

Water.

You see, about 5000 years ago

the very first great civilized act of the Chinese...

was irrigation.

On a vast scale.

And that needed centralized planning

and that needed a bureaucracy.

And what a bureaucracy!

They pigeonholed everybody,

and you stayed in your pigeonhole.

I mean, you were a merchant,

you saw a bit of technology and you thought, "ha!
this will give me a lead over the other fellow,"

"I'll rise in the world"

No way.

You were not permitted to rise in the world.

So you didn't bother.

No incentive?

No change.

Whereas in the medieval West...

you had a little money, you got ahead;

profit-motivate, you know?

And that is why we were able to do,
with technology,

what the Chinese could never have done.

Like... for instance,

putting gunpowder into one of these:

[bell rings]

Or, to be more accurate, one of those:

The fact that bell-making was a peaceful,
religious business,

didn't stop 13th century Europeans from
grabbing the idea!

Look how easy it was to adapt:

And the bell becomes a bombard.

Instant artillery!

For the Princes and Generals, happily,
it was business-as-usual once more.

[♪ church bells ♪]

This picturesque little town

called (inaudible), near the Yugoslav border,

was one of the first places where the exciting
new way of killing people was tried-out (1327)

by a bunch of passing Germans.

Now, early on,

the new guns made...