Wheels within wheels.

[Kinser79]

(03-12-2017, 02:26 PM)Mikebert Wrote: Why believed that something like a megasaeculum exists when it can never be demonstrated due to small sample size?  

For example you makes this assertion: Did not the Late Medieval Saeculum (using S&H's terminology here) not bring on line major advances in production usually indicative of R/E turnings? Off the top of my head I can think of crop rotation, water and wind powered machinery and the printing press.
 
Water and wind power machinery pre-date the Late Medieval Saeculum as does crop rotation. The printing press was developed at that time.

If you re-read my post I said "off the top of my head" which means Mike I didn't bother to look it up.  But use of heavy water and wind power machinery (apart from the Romans) was mostly absent until after the Black Death in Europe.  But yes the printing press was definitely invented at that time. 

As to sample size--I would argue that the sample size is small just due to the shear lack of data for prior to the 1400s. 

We don't know how the Ancient Egyptians built the pyramids, it isn't like we have Kufu's blue prints or anything, but we do know that they built them from the evidence of our own eyes. And we do know that given the general level of technology it required detailed organization to pull off--meaning they had have at least some writing somewhere (but unfortunately the sands of time have swallowed them up). Much the same problem exists with Egyptology, and so forth.

Probably also explains why you come out with a new model every week, whereas I've been working down this path mythodically for months.

If you look at the thread title I used "Wheels within wheels".  I'm going to go out on a limb here and assume you understand that that is a biblical reference.  (I'm assuming you've at least heard of the book of Ezekiel).  But it could just as easily apply to a gyroscope.

The point is that the mega-saeculum is how history progresses through its historical cycle, and it ran on a time frame of around 500 years (which older historians have pointed toward), but due to changes in the saecula (for some reason though I believe it to be mass literacy) it shortened from 100-120ish years to 80ish years.

Did the maximum lifespan of humans change?  No.  The maximum lifespan of a human seems to be fairly constant at around 120 years.  Did the average lifespan change?  Prior to the 20th century not really--or at least not on a level where one would expect it to wreck havoc with the saeculum.  And in the 20th century when the average lifespan jumped up from 47 years in 1900 to 75 years in 2000* one would expect the saeculum to actually "slow down" or perhaps "stretch out" would be better.  But did that happen?  No.  Why not?  What was different? 

Mass literacy, mass production of diaries, journals, scribbling and so forth.

It is possible that "Saeculum A" as I call it is a product of an absence of evidence compared to more recent saecula.

https://www.elderweb.com/book/appendix/1...ted-states


*note Used the figures for white men for simplicity.

ETA:

Mike you really should do all your editing before posting, particularly when making a major point. To do otherwise makes you look like an ass. I'm sure other's have told you this before. *coughcoughJordancoughcough*

mike Wrote:Again you have the dating wrong for constitution monarchy.

But it goes deeper. You imply "ideology" vs "culture" as orthogonal, when the former is a subset of the later. Also ideology I believe is a recent development. I'm not sure it can be meaningfully applied to a period before the Enlightenment.

I would argue that Ideology informs culture as culture informs ideology. Neither is a "subset" of the other.

As to your assertion that ideology is a recent development, I disagree. Ideology would encompass not only political ideologies as we moderns would think on them but also theological precepts such as medieval persons would think of them.

Your last comment is unimportant quibbling and will be ignored of course.

As to the term "Constitutional Monarchy" I mean a monarchy that is limited either by a written or unwritten constitution. And I mean by more than a sheet of paper that asserts Barons have the feudal rights of barons.