>> We too often forget that they had an incredible understanding of construction techniques and math we hide in our design programs was worked out on paper, not

>> We too often forget that they had an incredible understanding of construction techniques and math we hide in our design programs was worked out on paper, not discounting a bit of gut feel when actually putting the structure up. What kind of understanding are we talking about here? Before Newton there was none of the understanding that is needed to build a Cathedral. The only thing they had were models and previous attempts - there’s no way they could use paper to infer whether a particular shape will be stable under conditions.