James Hannam

Ray,

Galileo was a close friend of the pope himself. He was extraordinarily well connected to the Grand Dukes of Tuscany and the great and good of Venice. Some basic fact checking on your part might not go amiss here. I also resent your implication that I am twisting the facts to defend the RC. This ends our discussion, although others may wish to continue replying to you.

Best wishes

James

Lógos Sokratikós

What's the RC?

(I answered my own question, disregard this post)

Ray Moscow

Well, I find myself outclassed by those here who have done much more reading on the subject -- so I'll go do some more reading myself.

Also, I apologise for accusing James and others of RCC apologetics. That's just where I had repeatedly encountered seemingly similar defenses of RCC practices in this period.

Ray

James Hannam

I think there might be mileage in this sort of cost/benefit analysis, but it goes beyond the simple myth-bashing we have been engaged on in this thread. The trouble is that you need to do a lot of research just to ask the right questions, let alone figure out the answers. If I have a moment, I might post a balance sheet of my own and see what others think of it.

Ray, apology accepted.

Best wishes

James

Lógos Sokratikós

That would be great. The problem with threads, and it's a real pain in the butt, is that they're unidimensional. It starts up at the top and just goes down, down, down. My modified SWOT or any other table can help give more structure to the discussion.

Although now that I come to think of it, my modified SWOT has its downside too. The influence of different factors are given as absolute values, rahter than given relative strengths. "University" may be "Very strong", but theo dogmatism might be "Middleweight" or even "Weak", since Copernicus, for example, would be talking about items outside the creed and may or may not have been found to be threatening to the Cath. creed.

Etc.

Amaleq13

IIUC, Galileo was not put on trial for publishing the theory but for publicly declaring that it was in conflict with Scripture and/or the Church. If Copernicus had done that, I suspect the end of his story would have been considerably different.

Ray Moscow

Thanks for that. There are a lot of subtleties to these two stories that I did not know.

Ray

Sarpedon

Sorry for jumping back in after such a long pause! I think you mistook me when I compared complexity of the two buildings. You took it to mean 'structural' complexity, whereas I was meaning 'design' complexity. Perhaps the average medieval cathedral was more structurally complex, but the cathedral itself is relatively simple, merely a repetition of structural bays with little to distinguish one from the next. The colleseum on the other hand was a nightmare of ramps, elevators, sunshades, entrances and exits and all sorts of different circulation paths that needed to be isolated from each other and which proceeded along at many different levels. The medieval cathedrals were built by master masons. Essentially, the problem of cathedrals was essentially that of structure; once you had that solved, it was merely a matter of repetition and ornament. The colesseum, on the other hand, would have required design specialists, possibly working from drawings and models.

I was hinting primarily that the speed that the roman projects were completed was not only the result of superior resources, but also due to the existence of a class of planners, designers, administrators, etc that the dark ages were essentially lacking. Medieval builders did not use scaled drawings, but drew the components of the buildings under construction full scale: usually on the ground in a temporary structure built for that purpose. This would have made pre-planning, pre-fabrication and cost estimating difficult. All these factors would have slowed construction time. We do not know if the Romans used scaled drawings; none have survived. However, we do have fragments of a scaled model used for the construction of the great complex at Baalbek, another insanely complicated project, which would have been very difficult to do by the 'draw on the floor' method of medieval architecture.

Ray Moscow

Hagia Sofia is extremely impressive, even now. Should it be considered a crowning achievement of Rome, or medieval?

James Hannam

IMHO, definitely Roman. I found it absolutely stunning and still have no idea how they keep that dome up. But it is at base a basilica with round arches and a semi circular dome, so nothing the classical Romans could not, in principle, have built.

Best wishes

James

read the first chapter of God's Philosophers: How the Medieval World Laid the Foundations of Modern Science FREE