Middle-Age Crisis: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
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Re: Middle-Age Crisis: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
#2Is it surprising? Most people in my circles wouldn’t be surprised. I’m pretty disconnected from popular thought, though.
Re: Middle-Age Crisis: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
#3Is it surprising? Most people in my circles wouldn’t be surprised. I’m pretty disconnected from popular thought, though.
Often I have to explain to people that no, people in medieval age didn't die when they were 25, that life expectancy is just an average, and thus it averages out people that lived normal lives (ie: plenty of people died in their 90s, as do people today) and people that died really, really fast (childbirth, child accidents and wars are particularly good at skewing the data).
Another one is trying to explain that people knew Earth was round for a looooong time.
Also explaining that no, Greeks didn't really believe Atlantis existed... our earliest record of Atlantis was Plato mentioning the myth... so even to ancient Greeks, Atlantis was a myth already.
Re: Middle-Age Crisis: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
#4I think a lot of problems come because a lot of our “understanding” of the Middle Ages came though Protestant polemics and French Enlightenment authors. Both groups were very interested in portraying the Middle Ages in the worst possible light.
Recently, a lot of historians are going through the process of actually examining primary sources such as letters, bills of sale, church birth and death records, and a much more different view of the Middle Ages is coming to light.
Re: Middle-Age Crisis: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
#5It is Washington Irving, not the Gershwins, who is responsible for the "Columbus set out to prove the world was round" myth.
Re: Middle-Age Crisis: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
#6I think a lot of problems come because a lot of our “understanding” of the Middle Ages came though Protestant polemics and French Enlightenment authors. Both groups were very interested in portraying the Middle Ages in the worst possible light. Recently, a lot of historians are going through the process of actually examining primary sources such as letters, bills of sale, church birth and death records, and a much mo…
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Re: Middle-Age Crisis: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
#7Awesome read! Enjoyed it!
Re: Middle-Age Crisis: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
#8offtopic: Article mentions people laughing at Columbus. What I have read before is that they laughed because he simply calculated the Earth circumference wrong: if his goal was really finding a way to India, then he would need much bigger ships and much more supplies just to not run out of food on the way. He was just lucky that America is so close to Europe :)
Re: Middle-Age Crisis: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
#9offtopic: Article mentions people laughing at Columbus. What I have read before is that they laughed because he simply calculated the Earth circumference wrong: if his goal was really finding a way to India, then he would need much bigger ships and much more supplies just to not run out of food on the way. He was just lucky that America is so close to Europe :)
> America is so close to Europe
s/America/the Caribbean/
He never managed to set foot on either continent.
Re: Middle-Age Crisis: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science
#10Is it surprising? Most people in my circles wouldn’t be surprised. I’m pretty disconnected from popular thought, though.
Nope, not surprising at all, just a short and lazy re-fluffing of a point that's been beaten into the ground. I'm pretty sure my teachers debunked the "people in 1492 thought the world was flat" thing in my junior high science classes in 1989-1990. The book under review sounds like an interesting read, though.