I know that our modern tech can produce purer metals and more advanced alloys than anything they could've produced. He also stated that today's metals are harder to fix up after they've been damaged (I know that this is incorrect). However, whenever I think I'm right on something, I usually look it up (If it's something easy to look up) and find out that I'm wrong to some extent. The main reason I ask this is for the reason that he's mostly right. The class I'm taking is art appreciation and most of the stuff that he talked about seems very logical up until this moment. I have some more questions that might get answered when my original question gets answered which would be: Why does he think this? For example, if the answer comes up as "They used techniques which utilized the softness of the metal to their advantage," then I could see why he would think that. Today he has been very wrong, as we have been talking about metal working. One of his claims about our shit metal was something like "What happens when your tool breaks?" Some classmates say you buy another "Exactly." Does he have a stake in this claim? Did he have a bad experience with tools in his past? Is he dumb or I?
In one sense he's got a point. A high-carbon steel knife/plane blade/chisel/axe/star drill is indeed rather straightforward to re-forge if very blunt: it was once a very typical thing for every mine or quarry ( or tunneling operation) to have a blacksmith re-forging better edges on star drills and re-hardening them. Heat them to a cherry red, hammer them into a forging die to get the edges pointed, heat red, quench in oil, heat to a blue color. And the finer crystalline structure makes them easier to sharpen with slipstone sharpening stones and other natural abrasives. Plenty of wood carving tools these days are still high-carbon steel because it's easier to get a very good edge on them. If you try sharpening a 440C stainless steel knife after sharpening a high carbon steel one, you'll find it a lot more work.
That said, the rock-drilling star drill the blacksmith was sharpening had to be sharpened a lot: hammered against stone, if it was hard enough to maintain an edge it could easily chip, and if soft enough to not chip it could distort, bend, and get dull quickly. When it was mostly being driven with mere humans wielding hammers it was not so great a problem. When pneumatic drills came in, in the mid-19th c., though, they were the only things that could drill through granite and keeping them stocked with sharp drills was a constant chore. The S-series shock steels in use today for such purposes last much much longer. They are harder to sharpen, but they can hold an edge and resist dulling far longer than high carbon. Carbide-tipped stone cutting tools are even better.
It's true when he says that you throw tools away now, when they become dull or break. But that's not a matter of the material: S-series shock steels are harder to forge and weld, for sure, but people throw away high-carbon tools as well. That's a matter of how cheap all materials have become in the modern world, compared to labor. A blacksmith in the 18th century would weld new steel onto an axe head for the edge, forge weld a crack in a mattock, etc. But why would anyone spend $100 on such a repair now, when they could buy new axe or mattock for $50?