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Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

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Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#351

Post by [deleted] »

danjac wrote: post #238
timoth3y wrote: post #190

The article presents an engineering answer to s sociological question. The reason technology did not advance in Middle Earth is because innovation was not rewarded. Innovation and experimentation were punished. Mine a little too deeply? You awaken a balrog that kills you an everyone you have ever known. Want to expand into that verdant area across the river? You didn't expect giant spiders, did you? Build a disruptiv…

How is that different from real world history? Grow some crops? An invading army will come and steal and trample them. Mine for coal? A coal heap will bury your town or you'll die in a collapse. Start a trading enterprise? Your ship will get raided by pirates or you die of tropical diseases.

[deleted]

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#352

Post by karencarits »

CrazyStat wrote: post #297
peace4all wrote: post #246

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I should add that Kirill Yeskov is a paleontologist and science popularizer. Here's his own explanation how he wrote "The Last Ringbearer": one of the reasons he mentions is that Middle Earth was impossible geologically: https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x... In which he also mentions another famous book: "It would hardly occur to anyone to seriously analyze the functioning of the ecosystem o…

>Being a paleoantologist, he made a question to Tolkien's book: why the Middle Earth had such strange land mass distribution, which is geologically impossible. And this started the "Last Ringbearer" book. Unfortunately he missed the answer: at the time Tolkien was writing, plate tectonics was still considered an absurd hypothesis, the subject of mockery by "serious" geologists. As such the understanding of "geologica…

If I recall correctly, the geography of Middle Earth was heavily changed during the wars between Morgoth and the Valas. I.e., it wasn't entirely shaped by natural processes but also by the willfull acts of semi-Gods

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#353

Post by intrasight »

Easy to answer by asking this question: why did the west have an industrial revolution. The answer is that we first had a financial revolution. Modern finance precipitated the industrial revolution. So the question should be: why hadn't Middle Earth invented finance? My answer is that it wasn't an obvious or given revolution in the real world. You may as well ask why didn't Eukaryotes arrive 10 million years earlier. Some things are just random and improbable.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#354

Post by featherlesbiped »

tablespoon wrote: post #316
zahllos wrote: post #301

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is also clear that the author hasn't actually read the lord of the rings. It doesn't feature in the films but the scouring of the Shire happens after the defeat of Sauron, in which Saruman and Wormtongue take over the Shire and push the same industrialization they were pushing at Orthanc. They have a small battle, Saruman is killed by Wormtongue, who is killed by Hobbits and then everything is right again for the…

> It is also clear that the author hasn't actually read the lord of the rings. He even says so in one of the early paragraphs. Also this substank "Launched 15 days ago". Feels like clickbait self-promotion. I'm not sure why anyone's wasting time with this nonsense question while not-high.

Will remain neutral on all other opinions, but to be clear, I use the substack as a home for my reddit shitposts, some random person put it on here and it blew up

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#355

Post by peace4all »

CrazyStat wrote: post #349
peace4all wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here's Kirill Yeskov's own explanation how he wrote it, Google-translated: https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x...

Here's a proper human translation of the same essay: https://www.salon.com/2011/02/23/last_ringbearer_explanation... Note how he discusses plate tectonics and Tolkein's ignorance, having forgotten (or never realized) that plate tectonics was not taken seriously in Tolkein's time.

He has written a big book on evolution of Earth and theories around it. [1]

It includes a whole chapter on plate tectonics, the preceding theories, and how plate tectonics itself was gradually accepted. In the book, there's also a large review on other scientific problems, like where the Sun gets energy from, why the Earth has magnetic field, where does internal the heat of the Earth come from, etc. Lots of "how do we know that..." questions. A great review, highly recommend.

So he's 100% aware what status plate tectonics had in Tolkien's time. I think he also mentions that as a linguist he wasn't a geologist, and could draw the land whichever way he imagined.

[1] Kirill Yeskov. History of Earth and Life On It. (in Russian) https://readli.net/istoriya-zemli-i-zhizni-na-ney/

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#356

Post by erikpukinskis »

throwaway4aday wrote: post #277
simonh wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's a lot more than just Orcs. Bilbo and the Dwarves almost get eaten by trolls in The Hobbit. There's intelligent giant spiders. The occasional Dragon. But frankly Orcs are bad enough. They're cunning, actually genuinely intelligent tool using predators. They're mainly carnivorous by preference, but can probably survive on stuff that would make you sicken and die if they have to. As soon as a rural population ge…

I think the predator-prey cycle is the correct explanation. Pre-industrial societies have enough problems with food production and disease limiting population growth, add in the equivalent of sapient wolves and it's a miracle that there are any intelligent populations left in Middle Earth at all. I think you could add to your reply to the parent comment that the reason the Orcs don't take over and establish their own…

> The Shire is truly an anomaly

Probably has a magical bubble around it. Seems like Gandalf’s little terrarium tbh.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#357

Post by caycep »

peace4all wrote: post #246
Angostura wrote: post #241

I highly recommend "The Last Ring Bearer" for people who like to have a bit of fun with Tokien. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_Ringbearer Eskov's version of the story describes Mordor as a peaceful constitutional monarchy on the verge of an industrial revolution, that poses a threat to the war-mongering and imperialistic faction represented by Gandalf (whose attitude has been described by Saruman as "crafting…

I should add that Kirill Yeskov is a paleontologist and science popularizer. Here's his own explanation how he wrote "The Last Ringbearer": one of the reasons he mentions is that Middle Earth was impossible geologically: https://fan-lib-ru.translate.goog/e/eskov/text_0150.shtml?_x... In which he also mentions another famous book: "It would hardly occur to anyone to seriously analyze the functioning of the ecosystem o…

one can argue that perhaps the reason is paracausal! (apologies to Bungie...)

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#358

Post by pavel_lishin »

boringg wrote: post #341
timoth3y wrote: post #190

The article presents an engineering answer to s sociological question. The reason technology did not advance in Middle Earth is because innovation was not rewarded. Innovation and experimentation were punished. Mine a little too deeply? You awaken a balrog that kills you an everyone you have ever known. Want to expand into that verdant area across the river? You didn't expect giant spiders, did you? Build a disruptiv…

There just wasn't any need - they had a world filled with magic. Why would you ruin the natural world for industrial gains? In fact the Orkai and the white wizard was quite industrious with their forges and their war machine production and the natural world pushed back. That and I don't see the start up world being that different from a risk perspective just the outcomes are different. And maybe middle earth was stil…

Any calculation of risk must include the outcomes.

In the real world, the worst case realistic scenario for a startup is that you fail and lose all your money, and maybe face lawsuits.

In a fantasy setting, the worst case realistic scenario is that your skin is flayed from your bones and you spend the rest of existence serving a liche as a skeleton warrior.

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#359

Post by peeters »

Psyladine wrote: post #273
tomgp wrote: post #184

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could you expand on that? To me the second quote seems to support the reading of LOTR etc. as part of an attempt to create/ codify an English myth cycle

The last sentence is Tolkien admitting he aborted the project. He wrote The Hobbit as something of a children's tale in a bout of inspiration, and the LoTR when his publisher was weirded out by the alien nature of the silmarillion, asking instead for "more fun stuff with hobbits." This can best be seen in the history of middle earth, his son's chronicle of the writing process for his father's work; volume VI covers t…

> Anyway he wasn't trying to build english myths when he wrote the books he is famous for, that was more a young & ambitious college student's feverdream.

If that feverish worldbuilding formed the ultimate setting of LoTR, would it not be relevant in evaluating that world?

Re: Why hasn't Middle Earth had an Industrial Revolution?

#360

Post by agentultra »

agentultra wrote: post #327

Hilarious. I think the major thematic element of the story is that the industrial revolution was already happening and the societies that rejected it were failing. The hobbits were basically isolationists and it simply took the scouring to reach them. The Rohirrim were basically obsolete. Living in wooden houses in the hills and plains raising horses and sheep. Gondor, once the great home of civilization and a beacon…

Characterization of Sauron is a bit off.

Mordor essentially rose to power without him and industrialization happened mostly in his absence.

Saruman tried to found his own nation on his own and used much of the technology developed by Mordor to do so.

Sauron arose out of his ghostly form and tried to take over Mordor from the religious angle and force his dominance through the Ring.

Had the Ring remained hidden I don’t doubt that Gondor would have eventually fell, Orthanc may have risen to take its place, and the Elves, dwarves, and Hobbits would simply be forced to comply with the new world order. So vast and established was the revolution at the point the story began.

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