"Reading is a pure land, and closing the door is a deep mountain. ”
Du Junli carved these two sentences with two old wooden boards and hung them at the door of the study.
He is a well-known writer who writes widely, most notably The Details of History.
Reading his newly published four-volume book "The Course of Modernity", I can feel his "calmness" and his "long stream".
In 2016, "Modern History" was published for the first time, more than 800 pages, with a preface by the historian Mr. Xu Zhuoyun, who commented on the author: Mr. Du himself stated that he is not a professional historian, and it is precisely because he is an intellectual who cares for his life, not an expert, that he can care about bigger issues than experts, so we have such a good book.
This is indeed a good book, in the noise, hustle and bustle, anxiety, can make people calm down, follow the author's pen tip to wander in the "needle and thread brain" of history, to find "we are in the **?".will go to the ** to the "deep subconscious problem".
The whole set of books consists of four volumes, each of which is titled "The Course of Modernity - Machines Change the World", and each volume is "The Age of Enlightenment", "The Industrial Age", "The Age of the State" and "The Global Age".
I had the pleasure of reading the second volume of The Course of Modern Times, "The Industrial Age."
The second volume is a continuation of the first volume, written from chapter 6 to chapter 13, from the Wood Age, the Textile Revolution, the Iron Age, to how machines led us into the Industrial Age.
Mr. Du Junli takes time as the warp, major events as the weft, and social changes as the main body of the narrative, showing the roar of the wheels of the times.
The invention of machines brought about the improvement of efficiency, but also brought about the innovation of work mode, and the industrial revolution became the foundation of modern urban society.
Textile machines and steam engines bring powerful power, and also give birth to a greater yearning for human beings to infinitely amplify their own energy.
After reading it, you will definitely agree with what Mr. Du Junli said, "I am the organizer of knowledge".
The historical materials in the text are detailed, the reasoning is clear, and the characteristics of each era emerge one by one.
Through this book, you can truly understand that being a knowledge porter is also not an easy thing, and it is by no means a simple pile-up and copying.
Spoiler the interesting events and some of his opinions.
In the book he excerpts from the Oxford History of Technology definitions of tools and machines:
Tools are the physical strength of man, and machines are still some kind of natural force."
He believed that the first machine invented by man was the bow and arrow. Because the bow and arrow have the three elements of the machine that Marx said: power, the work done by man, and the transformation into potential energy.
This is an interesting observation and point of view of the author.
For example, clocks and watches, as well as Chinese overturned cars, are more typical wooden machines. There are also waterwheels and windmills, so it cannot be said that there were no machines in the Middle Ages, but there were, but the kinetic energy efficiency was not as visible to the naked eye as the effect brought by the steam engine.
Based on historical sources, he also concluded that it was cotton rather than wool that gave rise to the Industrial Revolution.
The abundant production of cotton wool led to the birth of textile machines and iron looms.
What is even more unexpected is that the godfather of the machine age is actually a 23-year-old Whitney who has just walked out of school, he spent ten days building the world's first powerful cotton gin, and also put it into production, completely changing the machine model of the American South, becoming "the most important invention in American agriculture".
How did machines advance historical evolution?In this book, the logic is rigorous, the layers are clear, and there are many interesting and interesting stories, and the author's views are often praised.
For example, when was the first bicycle invented?
Another example is what was written in the Queen's diary when Britain hosted the first World Fair?The birth of the railroad and so on.
The second half of the book deals with the changes in "Western society" after entering the industrial age, from the changes in the social division of labor, political innovation, rapid economic development, and even the emergence and expansion of the "company" as a form of social organization, and the birth of the commercial society, etc., to help readers trace their origins and understand what they look like from scratch and from 0 to 1.
I think this book can be used as a dictionary of machine and human or business history.
After reading this book, I can't get enough of it, and I am eager to continue reading, looking forward to reading the other three volumes...