One quibble — the author credits Boethius with having attempted to translate the works of Aristotle, but having died before he could complete the project. But he did finish the stuff on logic. The author refers to this as "luck" but shouldn't we give a little credit to a Dark Ages philosopher who chose to make his life's work the translation of Aristotle? Starting with logic was almost certainly not luck.
Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?
11–20 of 69 posts
Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?
#12In fairness, most of the progress the article is talking about happened in the High or Late Middle Ages. The period from 800 to 1200 was considerably less fecund, so the "myth" isn't entirely false: the early Middle Ages were pretty barren, scientifically speaking.
That said, one of the (many) things that makes us tend to underplay the scientific progress made even in the Late Middle Ages was the disconnect between science and technology. In modern science, from Newton's time onward, the two have been closely coupled (with technology leading the way to new science as often as the other way around).
In the Middle Ages, technology developed more-or-less independently of science, often with quite astonishing results. An excellent book on the subject if Jean Gimpel's "The Medieval Machine", although the solemn declaration of the end of Western technological power makes the preface pretty hilarious reading, 35 years on: http://www.amazon.com/Medieval-Machine-Industrial-Revolution...
Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?
#13There are no scientific advances in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, i.e. between 500AD to 1000AD, just a 'mere' 500+ years... This is actually acknowledged by the writer of the article. Things get somewhat better in the 2nd part of the Middle Ages leading to the Renaissance. So roughly 1000AD-1500AD. The earliest references from the author are in 12th century. Such an intellectually dishonest title.
The article answers a question about the middle ages. No dishonesty there. The LINK title starts with "Middle Ages". The author points out that while the Dark Ages (500-1000) were indeed dark, the Middle Ages weren't, and that the Church, far from suppressing early scientific investigation nurtured it. If the link title omitted the first two words it might be accused of dishonestly, but since it does not, it's your r…
The Dark Age is generally terminated at 800, with Charlemagne assuming the title of Emperor in the West. So the point that most of the Middle Ages (800 - 1200) saw relatively little scientific progress is not entirely wrong, although the article's point that the foundations of modern science were laid in the High Middle Ages (1200 - 1380) is well taken.
Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?
#14There are no scientific advances in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, i.e. between 500AD to 1000AD, just a 'mere' 500+ years... This is actually acknowledged by the writer of the article. Things get somewhat better in the 2nd part of the Middle Ages leading to the Renaissance. So roughly 1000AD-1500AD. The earliest references from the author are in 12th century. Such an intellectually dishonest title.
The article answers a question about the middle ages. No dishonesty there. The LINK title starts with "Middle Ages". The author points out that while the Dark Ages (500-1000) were indeed dark, the Middle Ages weren't, and that the Church, far from suppressing early scientific investigation nurtured it. If the link title omitted the first two words it might be accused of dishonestly, but since it does not, it's your r…
The "Middle Ages" refers to the period starting with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and ending with the discovery of America. So 5th to 15th century.
So conveniently redefining Middle Ages to start in the 12th century to make a point is not particularly honest. There was no scientific progress for more than half of the period commonly known as "Middle Ages" in Western Europe. That's a fact not disputed by the article.
Addendum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages Middle Ages period is 5th to 15th century.
Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?
#15I had my opinion of the christian church dramatically overhauled a few years ago, paradoxically by a great scifi novel: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Canticle_for_Leibowitz
Funny, I had the opposite reaction when reading A Canticle for Leibowitz . There's one scene near the end where a refugee mother and baby are dying. They are crippled, burned, and suffering radiation poisoning. Both are in great pain, and the mother wants euthanasia for herself and her baby. A priest first tries (and almost succeeds) to talk her out of it. He then resorts to force, trying to kidnap the baby and event…
I thought the point was to show a full cycle, from collapse to collapse. In times of collapse the church was useful in preserving knowledge and supporting the spirit. In times of hubris (ie just before collapse) it subsides to dogma. We don't know how to separate the benefits from the dogma. At least that was my interpretation..
Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?
#16There are no scientific advances in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, i.e. between 500AD to 1000AD, just a 'mere' 500+ years... This is actually acknowledged by the writer of the article. Things get somewhat better in the 2nd part of the Middle Ages leading to the Renaissance. So roughly 1000AD-1500AD. The earliest references from the author are in 12th century. Such an intellectually dishonest title.
The article answers a question about the middle ages. No dishonesty there. The LINK title starts with "Middle Ages". The author points out that while the Dark Ages (500-1000) were indeed dark, the Middle Ages weren't, and that the Church, far from suppressing early scientific investigation nurtured it. If the link title omitted the first two words it might be accused of dishonestly, but since it does not, it's your r…
they key to the article isn't the years covered but the fact that the Church wasn't suppressing knowledge which many people have an irrational inability to recognize.
Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?
#17All I get is a login signup paywall thingy.
Yes I would like to know about this article.
No I would not like to sign up to yet another web site.
Why do people use quora again? It can't be out of loyalty to YC surely?
Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?
#18Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article answers a question about the middle ages. No dishonesty there. The LINK title starts with "Middle Ages". The author points out that while the Dark Ages (500-1000) were indeed dark, the Middle Ages weren't, and that the Church, far from suppressing early scientific investigation nurtured it. If the link title omitted the first two words it might be accused of dishonestly, but since it does not, it's your r…
they key to the article isn't the years covered but the fact that the Church wasn't suppressing knowledge which many people have an irrational inability to recognize.
The church wasn't suppressing ancient knowledge for the most part, but it wasn't exactly doing much to produce new knowledge, either. That didn't really get going (in Europe) until the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, although there was some progress in the late Middle Ages as the article points out.
For the most part, the article is about preserving and recovering old knowledge. That the Renaissance had some precedent in the late Middle Ages is not exactly new, but it does tend to be forgotten in simplified accounts.
Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?
#19Earlier quoted context omitted.
The article answers a question about the middle ages. No dishonesty there. The LINK title starts with "Middle Ages". The author points out that while the Dark Ages (500-1000) were indeed dark, the Middle Ages weren't, and that the Church, far from suppressing early scientific investigation nurtured it. If the link title omitted the first two words it might be accused of dishonestly, but since it does not, it's your r…
The "Middle Ages" refers to the period starting with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and ending with the discovery of America. So 5th to 15th century. So conveniently redefining Middle Ages to start in the 12th century to make a point is not particularly honest. There was no scientific progress for more than half of the period commonly known as "Middle Ages" in Western Europe. That's a fact not disputed by t…
"ending with the discovery of America"... I don't know what you learned in school, but the end of middle ages had nothing to do with America. What caused the end of the middle ages was the cultural renaissance of Europe. By the time America was discovered, the middle ages were finished for a few decades at least.
Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?
#20There are no scientific advances in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, i.e. between 500AD to 1000AD, just a 'mere' 500+ years... This is actually acknowledged by the writer of the article. Things get somewhat better in the 2nd part of the Middle Ages leading to the Renaissance. So roughly 1000AD-1500AD. The earliest references from the author are in 12th century. Such an intellectually dishonest title.
There's a weird kind of historic revisionism that's been going on the last couple years regarding the Medieval period...the "things weren't all that bad" and "the notion that nothing happened is just a myth".
Is it real? Are we just now learning about advanced and invention that happened during this period and were previously ignoring/ignorant of? Maybe. But I suspect something else is at play here, I'm just not sure what.
man, if that doesn't make me sound like a conspiracy theorist
I mean, we actually know that not only was there pitifully little scientific advancement during that period (especially as you point out in the first half), but that science and technology regressed massively and entire fields were completely forgotten. For example, there was a gap of over a thousand years before anybody could build large domes again, and even then it had to be completely reinvented.
The loss of knowledge was vast and unprecedented in history. I've heard it said that Western Europe almost reverted back out of the Iron Age the loss of information was so great.
What's triggering all this revisionism? Again, I don't know, but sources like this
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hwrSE5DZrQ
list all things that happened in the later periods.
Even if you just blame the first 500 years, that's a loong time where not much of anything interesting happened.