• what spurs new technological ideas?
• openness to new ideas
• knowledge, whether from experience or education
• capital to build the new thing
• willingness to take risks on something new
  
• what do you need to translate technology into economic growth?
• interest in more efficient ways of doing practical work
• rewards, probably from capitalism making it possible to make money on something new
• belief that progress is possible
  

• the horse as an improvement in transportation, allowing more trade
• the chimney was only invented in the 12th century (before that houses had hearths but only a hole in the roof for the smoke to escape)
• emphasis that inventions came from ordinary people (workers, not scientists)
  

the Islamic world was most advanced in the early middle ages

• very good at finding ideas and putting them into use
• perhaps less good at coming up with new ideas
• why?  will be discussed later

p. 55: "It may be true, as Alfred North Whitehead has stated, that as far as science is concerned, Europe still knew less in 1500 than Archimedes knew in 212 B.C.  As far as technology is concerned, this assessment is definitely false."

What specifically was the character of technological creativity in medieval Europe?

Mokyr sees the renaissance as a time of less impressive technological change of economic importance (see the paragraph at the bottom of 57 and top of 58)

• mostly microinventions, small steady changes rather than radical new ideas
  
• agricultural practices were changing again (the changes that eventually led up to the industrial revolution)
• books began to be written about technology so knowledge could be shared more widely
• but skilled workers were still the key problem in adopting new technology

What slowed things down

• some reaction against change
• new industries grew up in rural areas (for example through the putting out system) because of restrictions in cities
• to what extent did religious leaders try to slow down science and technology
• they wanted to maintain traditional authority
• authority of the king, of traditional learning (Bible, Aristotle), traditional ways of doing things
• fear that new ideas will upend all that
  

The age of exploration brought new plants and products

• corn and potatoes provided lower cost food
• pottery and cloth industries developed new products to compete with imported goods
• industrial fishing provided cheaper protein

Scientific Revolution ( a somewhat more detailed overview ):

• Copernicus published De Revolutionibus Orbis Celestium in 1543.  He was a priest motivated by the need for calendar reform, but his argument that the earth goes around the sun (instead of vice versa) started the downfall of Aristotelian science
• Kepler published the theory that the planets move in elliptical orbits in 1609.
• Galileo published his defense of the Copernican system in 1632 and his new physics in 1638.  He did see science as practical; his physics treated force as a universal concept that could be used to understand all machines. Galileo is most important because he put into place a new scientific method in which scientists argued from experiment and from his observations with the telescope, not from logic alone.
• Newton published the law of universal gravitation in 1687.  He was slowed down a bit because he had to invent calculus in order to show that his theory worked.

 the telescope

The scientific revolution was not immediately practical, but scientists did make their own instruments
(more on what was new in science)