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Beyond Greece and Rome

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Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#51

Post by rayiner »

ElFitz wrote: post #33
rayiner wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I still think there is something we can call “Western Civilization" This is perhaps the least controversial statement in history. It's obviously true. Western Civilization is: 1) Greece 2) Rome, borrowing from the Greeks 3) Christianity taking over Rome 4) Germanic tribes adopting Roman law + the Christian religion 5) Protestantism 6) The Renaissance 7) The Enlightenment You can read Plato, and it all makes sense t…

Medieval Europe absorbed a great deal of philosophy, mathematics, medicine and science through the Islamic world. Including from Arabic translations of and comments on Ancient Greek texts. Meaning even some of that Greek lineage was mediated and influenced by the Islamic world. And all of which had a significant influence on the Renaissance. Similarly, the Greeks are thought to have borrowed more than a little from A…

I think “great deal” is an overstatement. The US has borrowed a lot of work done by Chinese mathematicians and scientists. But would you say we have “absorbed a great deal” of Chinese culture? Japanese video games and anime are immensely popular in the US. But would you say we have “absorbed a great deal” of Japanese culture?

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#52

Post by frollogaston »

wannabe44 wrote: post #24

> The de facto equation of ‘ancient history’ with ancient Mediterranean history, at least in most of the Anglosphere, has endured for many generations. But we are on the cusp of a dramatic shift in perspective that is producing a much bigger, broader and more exciting view of ‘the ancient world’. Archeology is more difficult than reading. The civilizations which left a literary corpus (oral or written) will have more…

There were also empires like Persia who had most of their written history deliberately destroyed by conquerors, like the Arabs or Mongols.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#53

Post by TheCoelacanth »

rayiner wrote: post #51
ElFitz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medieval Europe absorbed a great deal of philosophy, mathematics, medicine and science through the Islamic world. Including from Arabic translations of and comments on Ancient Greek texts. Meaning even some of that Greek lineage was mediated and influenced by the Islamic world. And all of which had a significant influence on the Renaissance. Similarly, the Greeks are thought to have borrowed more than a little from A…

I think “great deal” is an overstatement. The US has borrowed a lot of work done by Chinese mathematicians and scientists. But would you say we have “absorbed a great deal” of Chinese culture? Japanese video games and anime are immensely popular in the US. But would you say we have “absorbed a great deal” of Japanese culture?

It's absurd to claim that there wasn't a enormous Arabic influence on European science. There's a reason that algebra, alchemy, algorithm, alcohol and alkaline all start with "al" because "al" is Arabic for "the" and all of those words are borrowed from Arabic.

There are many others that don't have that prefix but are nonetheless derived from Arabic like zero, cipher, azimuth, nadir, zenith and many others.

Our numerals are "Arabic numerals" because we got them from Arabic.

European science barely existed until Europeans started reading Arabic writings and ancient writings that were preserved in Arab libraries.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#54

Post by belviewreview »

This idea is correct, but I am very puzzled it is presented as something knew. In 1964 William H. Mcneill won the National Book Award for The Rise of the West, and the first 2/3's of the book was about how for thousands of years there was an interconnected set of civilizations that spanned from the Pacific through Central Asia and the Middle East to the Mediterranean.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#55

Post by ElFitz »

rayiner wrote: post #51
ElFitz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medieval Europe absorbed a great deal of philosophy, mathematics, medicine and science through the Islamic world. Including from Arabic translations of and comments on Ancient Greek texts. Meaning even some of that Greek lineage was mediated and influenced by the Islamic world. And all of which had a significant influence on the Renaissance. Similarly, the Greeks are thought to have borrowed more than a little from A…

I think “great deal” is an overstatement. The US has borrowed a lot of work done by Chinese mathematicians and scientists. But would you say we have “absorbed a great deal” of Chinese culture? Japanese video games and anime are immensely popular in the US. But would you say we have “absorbed a great deal” of Japanese culture?

As another commenter said, I wouldn’t compare the Islamic world’s influence on Europe to China’s or Japan’s on the US.

One invaded what became a major power, stayed there for centuries, and up to nearly a third of a second one, staying there for decades.

The others are on the other side of an ocean.

There’s a reason we study it in junior high school, at least in some Western European countries.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#56

Post by argentier »

NoboruWataya wrote: post #32
bashmelek wrote: post #7

To be honest, though many historians today might disagree, I still think there is something we can call “Western Civilization,” even if it is a vague family of things that cannot be strictly defined. I know they are trying to correct for certain harmful attitudes out there, but articles like these feel to me to put the social message above all. It is especially when a certain perceived problematic attitude is the foc…

> the Celts I'm biased because I am Irish and the Celts are "our" ancient people (though not only ours, of course), but I wish they got more focus in popular culture. Newgrange predates the Egyptian Pyramids by a few hundred years. I wonder is it just that less remains of their society and so there is less to talk about? AIUI the insular Celts at least mostly built with wood, as opposed to the Romans and Greeks who b…

Newgrange has nothing to do with the Celts: it predates their arrival by several thousand years.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#57

Post by argentier »

rayiner wrote: post #9
bashmelek wrote: post #7

To be honest, though many historians today might disagree, I still think there is something we can call “Western Civilization,” even if it is a vague family of things that cannot be strictly defined. I know they are trying to correct for certain harmful attitudes out there, but articles like these feel to me to put the social message above all. It is especially when a certain perceived problematic attitude is the foc…

> I still think there is something we can call “Western Civilization" This is perhaps the least controversial statement in history. It's obviously true. Western Civilization is: 1) Greece 2) Rome, borrowing from the Greeks 3) Christianity taking over Rome 4) Germanic tribes adopting Roman law + the Christian religion 5) Protestantism 6) The Renaissance 7) The Enlightenment You can read Plato, and it all makes sense t…

That's more of a statement of the 'Plato to NATO' Western civilization meme than anything real.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#58

Post by argentier »

quitspamming wrote: post #8
seydor wrote: post #3

There is this anguish to define the "West" as a real entity, while it's not. There are lots of histories, and they don't taste well when mixed into a salad. Saying that there is a "global history" is like saying that time exists, and it s more of an ideological narrative than anything useful.

> There is this anguish to define the "West" as a real entity, while it's not. The West is the Latin Church. From the Latin Church came the Protestants. From that West meant and means anything influenced by or in protest of the Latin Church in Europe and its colonies. Very easy to understand, makes less of a difference today than it might have 100 years ago but to pretend it's hard to define or not a real thing isn't…

you could more accurately relate it to the Greek war with the Persians. That's where many of the tropes about Western freedoms vs Eastern tyranny originate. Long before the Latin church was heard of.

See Aeschylus' The Persians

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#59

Post by argentier »

rayiner wrote: post #51
ElFitz wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Medieval Europe absorbed a great deal of philosophy, mathematics, medicine and science through the Islamic world. Including from Arabic translations of and comments on Ancient Greek texts. Meaning even some of that Greek lineage was mediated and influenced by the Islamic world. And all of which had a significant influence on the Renaissance. Similarly, the Greeks are thought to have borrowed more than a little from A…

I think “great deal” is an overstatement. The US has borrowed a lot of work done by Chinese mathematicians and scientists. But would you say we have “absorbed a great deal” of Chinese culture? Japanese video games and anime are immensely popular in the US. But would you say we have “absorbed a great deal” of Japanese culture?

Look at the volume of quotations of Avicenna (Ibn Sina) and Averroes (Ibn Rushd) by medieval philosophers as a counterpoint.

Re: Beyond Greece and Rome

#60

Post by imadierich »

wannabe44 wrote: post #22
seydor wrote: post #3

There is this anguish to define the "West" as a real entity, while it's not. There are lots of histories, and they don't taste well when mixed into a salad. Saying that there is a "global history" is like saying that time exists, and it s more of an ideological narrative than anything useful.

Like it or not, the "west" has a cultural common ground (Indo-European derived, chiefly greco-roman, gaulic and germanic cultures which were not isolated from each other as you would imply), and more importantly a religious common ground in judeo-christian religion and morality. Poland helped Austria against the Ottoman invasions because of this common ground, and predominantly anglo-saxon Americans read Homer's poet…

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