ABSTRACT
The community of reasoned dissent preferred to live in towns, the better to interact with each other. However, the supply of food and fuel limited the size of town populations. Traction animals bringing wood to cities required food, as did woodcutters and drivers. The founding of universities in the high medieval period made reasoned dissent possible. In 1450 Gutenberg's invention of printing with movable type made the wide distribution of dissenting literature inevitable. Medieval European science was not empirical; it consisted of disputes over theories. In 1450 Johannes Gutenberg invented printing with movable type. More accurately, he assembled a new technology. He already had available the screwpress, used in the Roman Empire to press grapes. He had rag paper, invented in China fifteen hundred years previously. Printing was the first mass-production industry. Early modern transportation technologies were simple. They included sailing, being towed on canal barges, and road travel by horse and carriage.
