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Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?

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Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?

#41

Post by rpenm »

willvarfar wrote: post #17

All 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?

A response to a similar question on Quora (https://www.quora.com/Tom-Harrington/Posts/Why-Im-Losing-Pat...):

We require that people join because many of those who join like the service and end up contributing back to Quora, which makes it better for everyone. People spend a ton of time making Quora great by sharing their knowledge on here, so we think it is reasonable to ask that others who want to get to all the free knowledge here take the first very small step toward contributing back which is creating an account. That is the only reason we have the policy: to get more people to join who will share more knowledge and make Quora even better for everyone in the long run.

The community at Quora is pretty good, so they seem to know what they're doing.

Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?

#42

Post by rpenm »

willvarfar wrote: post #17

All 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?

Appending ?share=1 to a Quora URL should let you view it without logging in.

Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?

#43

Post by vorg »

dragonwriter wrote: post #28
coliveira wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

> What caused the end of the middle ages was the cultural renaissance of Europe. The Renaissance in Italy started well before the usual end date for the Middle Ages. There's a lot of things that motivate the dating of the end of the Middle Ages -- the discovery of the New World, the spread of the Renaissance to much of Europe, the completion of the reconquista , and a number of other things contribute.

Probably discovering the New World and movable type printing together had the most impact in ending the "Middle Ages" in Western Europe.

Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?

#44

Post by bglazer »

bane wrote: post #20
jackjeff wrote: post #7

There 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…

Your point about the domes is quite interesting. Can you imagine what it was like to be a citizen of Rome in the year 800, looking at a dome that is hundreds of years old and having no idea how people could possibly do that. I can't think of a modern analogue.

It would be like finding the monolith from 2001 on the moon.

Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?

#45

Post by vorg »

> In the Third Century, however, there were major social and political upheavals that interrupted many aspects of Roman life, including scholarship

The 3rd century is also when the Chinese Han Dynasty fell, and was replaced by the "Three Kingdoms" (220 AD - 280 AD), a time of constant war and many deaths. Were the synchronized downfalls related somehow, perhaps shared diseases?

> The Christian church came to hold political power when the decline in learning in the west had been under way for over a century

The same happened in China from c.300 AD to 600 AD when Buddhism spread (although the textbooks tend to list lots of little kingdoms and emperors for that time). The Tang and Song dynasties (including the Sui and empress Wu) then took over and completed many engineering projects over the next 700 yrs. Why did the Chinese "Middle Ages" last for a much shorter time than the Western European?

Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?

#46

Post by dnr »

akkartik wrote: post #4

I 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

If you like that, you might love The Glass Bead Game. It also made me think differently about the Church (and many other things), and includes similar themes of collapse and stability.

Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?

#47

Post by ricree »

vorg wrote: post #45

> In the Third Century, however, there were major social and political upheavals that interrupted many aspects of Roman life, including scholarship The 3rd century is also when the Chinese Han Dynasty fell, and was replaced by the "Three Kingdoms" (220 AD - 280 AD), a time of constant war and many deaths. Were the synchronized downfalls related somehow, perhaps shared diseases? > The Christian church came to hold pol…

>The 3rd century is also when the Chinese Han Dynasty fell

And the Parthian empire, for that matter. At around the same time (the early 220s). An interesting timing for the three of them, although the worst of Rome's troubles didn't take place until decades later.

Not to mention how much the more aggressive Sassanid empire that followed the Parthians added pressure to the already troubled Roman state. Certainly, the Sassanid invasions played a very large part in Rome's own three way split from about 260-274.

Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?

#48

Post by rwl »

Tloewald wrote: post #11

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.

Indeed, it wasn't. In fact, Aristotle's logical works (the "organon") have been recommended as the entry point into his philosophy since antiquity. See: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Organon

Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?

#49

Post by Tloewald »

jackjeff wrote: post #14
Tloewald wrote: post #9

Earlier 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…

I usually understand the period from 500 to 1000 or so to be the Dark Ages (which weren't so bad as all that) and the period from 1000 to whenever the renaissance is considered to start to be the Middle Ages. While the dictionary definition might support your literal interpretation (with what I call the Middle Ages being the "high" middle ages, it seems to me that my understanding is pretty common, and jibes with the author of this piece who goes on to discuss exactly which periods he (or she) is referring to.

In any event, the writer of the original piece shows that significant advancement occurred during SOME of the middle ages, so my original point stands.

Re: Why did science make little real progress in Europe in the Middle Ages?

#50

Post by graeme »

kjs3 wrote: post #37
graeme wrote: post #31

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There may or may not be a new revisionism, but the idea has been around a while. I first remember coming across this idea in Timeline by Michael Crichton: http://www.amazon.com/Timeline-Michael-Crichton/dp/034541762... And I doubt he came up with the idea. I also think I heard that this debate has been going on in medieval scholarship for a while. That said, the debate is unlikely to be a strawman that glosses over t…

Crichton is a really bad person to count on as a paragon of science reporting beyond being a journeyman doctor. He's a climate change denier, among other anti-science stances. And if you disagree with him, he might put you in a book, using your name and profession, but making you a child molester.

I didn't say he was a good example of science reporting. I said he made the same argument as above, at a far earlier date. This shows the argument itself isn't necessarily recent.

For those downvoting the parent comment because of the final sentence – Crichton actually did do that. It was highly unusual.

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