Understood and agreed, they need to construct or repair buildings efficiently...

However there is the concept of 'the resistance of the material' where the act of working with the material with bare hands and simple tools is a meditative process. Something I would have thought applicable to the contemplative and monastical life of a monk.

There's a fascinating article from BBC 4 on the topic https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m0000xqt

I have a fascination with hobos and freight train riders and watch a fair amount of videos on Youtube about it. One of hobo had a RAG he would query about train yards and catchout points. Wasn't a full timer, but built it last spring I gathered. Not art exactly, but a similar idea. Humans like shortcuts.

One small correction/addition! While the pointing machine is 18th century, the practice of pointing itself is quite a lot older. Its precursor was the three-compass method, which was known in antiquity and recovered in the 15th century. In fact, if you look closely at Michelangelo's David, you can see the little holes on the marble used for pointing.

That said, actual Gothic sculpture and decoration fell into that gap when pointing was lost. And the frankly lower quality of most medieval sculpture more or less reflects that. And anyway, nothing wrong with neo-Gothic.

100% with you on effort reduction. I was making closets at home and was doing pilot holes for attaching the back 1/4" plywood. I calculated I had to do 50 odd holes for all of them. Then i discovered the brad stapler gun(all electric) and I was done in 5 mins what would have taken an hour to get right with a jig.

Wood working projects get out of hand when you add a small feature. I cannot imaging what would happen if you had to do this with stone carving!

What's more gothic than dark satanic mills

For example, Rodin had it figured out. He just hired more sculptors!