Really interesting Dwarkesh podcast episode with Ada Palmer, a history Professor at the University of Chicago. They talk about Renaissance Florence, Gutenberg’s printing press business, and the Inquisition. A couple of highlights from the conversation that stuck with me:

• One reason why Florentine merchants rediscovered and promoted Ancient Roman and Greek culture was to show off to European nobility. It gave those merchants diplomatic power and something to trade with noblemen.
• Gutenberg went bankrupt with his printing press business, because the distribution network for his product (printed bibles) didn’t yet exist. Not many people in his city were able to read Latin. The printing business really took off 40 years laters in Venice because the product could more easily be distributed via its port and connectivity to many other urban places.
• The loss of ancient knowledge from e.g. Egypt was in part due to the brittle nature of the used papyrus. Western monks had only access to very expensive parchment, which is essentially made from animal skin. This meant they had to choose what information they copied and they often chose holy texts over ancient texts (thereby filtering knowledge).
• The Catholic Church’s Inquisition accidentally developed the first scientific peer-review system. They built extensive experimental laboraties in the 17th century to verify whether the mechanical experiments detailed in banned books were true or false.
• Palma argues that science is not only about making discoveries, but also actively sharing them to enable human progress. By her definition Leonardo da Vinci was not a scientist because he wrote his findings in coded writing so nobody else could understand and use them.