James Hannam

As His Unholiness was saying, experiment took a long time to appear. The reasons for this are because it is such an odd thing to do. I'm not even sure that Bacon got us all that close because he was talking about experience and observation rather than controlled experiment.

For the Greeks, nature was homogenous. This meant that extracting little bits of it to prod in the lab is pointless. The little bits you are experimenting on will react completely differently to how they do in the real world. Experiment depends on nature being commutable (to loosely use a term of art from mathematics). You have to be able to put the bits you experiment on back together into the larger whole in different ways without it fundamentally changing their properties.

Christians assumed that nature was pure matter. Natural philosophers also tended to disregard the magical worldview that saw the natural world bound together by numberless links that meant it could only be studied as a whole. Coupled with the belief that nature obeyed laws ordained by God, this meant that experiment made sense. It became essential once Aristotle's common-sense natural philosophy fell apart and it was realised that God's freedom was not going to be circumscribed by what seems sensible to us. Thus the only way to discover the laws of nature was to go out and look.

Best wishes

James

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

David B

Further to the TV documentary series I mentioned above, I can't find a transcript, but here's a couple of relevant links.

http://www.fulvuedrive-in.com/review...thur+s+Britain

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Pryor

As I said above, he makes a strong case for saying that in Britain at least the Dark Ages were not that dark.

I'd certainly advise those interested in the subject to watch out for repeats on satellite. They come up quite often.

David B

James Hannam

My usual bias towards books as references rather than TV shows leads me to recommend Francis Pryor's books "Britain AD" and "Britian in the Middle Ages". Both bring to archaelology to bare on the problems caused by a paucity of written sources.

Best wishes

James

David B

By coincidence, I'm just off to the library.

I doubt that they will be in stock, but I'll ask if they can get them in for me.

Thanks.

I still think the tv progs worth watching, though.

David B

Lucretius

Fair enough it was just that I and I think others would "automatically " associate the term the "Dark Ages " with Europe, that may be to an extent "intellectually lazy" I admit and as that was the title of the thread assumed that it was menat to be limited to that .
I now see that it has to an extent drifted to a wider perspective since I posted that,so I look forward to reading more about that since it is not a part of history I know a great deal about if I'm honest .


I was mainly thinking of the decline in slavery (at least in Europe itself) and the advances towards a true class of citizens, which eventually after a long time lead to a true democracy .
The point I was attempting to make was that as I said before the fact that slavery in itself was effectively abolished, it was replaced by serfdom which really wasn't all that much better if you were at the bottom of the social ladder.
To all intents and purposes the change from "slave" to "serf" was merely a change in title in my opinion.

James Hannam

I don't think this was true. Serfs owed a fixed rent to the lord of the manor but the excess was theirs to keep. This meant that they could, in theory, better themselves by producing and selling a surplus. It is true that they were indentured to the land, but they had more or less limited rights as well. In particular, they could often move away and settle somewhere else. Huge amounts of land were opened up in the Middle Ages and settlement was encouraged by tax exemptions and liberties. Finally, a lord could only enforce his rights against a recaltrant serf through process of law rather than having rights to force them to behave themselves. All this was open to abuse, but checks and balances did exist.

Being a serf was no fun at all, but it was streets ahead of being a Roman slave, unless you were a house slave in a nice house.

Best wishes

James

PS: Slavery was not unknown in medieval Europe. Enslaving Christians was illegal but pagans and Muslims were fair game.

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

Brother Daniel

Okay, so most of the heated discussion took place in the east. I don't see how that's relevant here.
Plenty of Jews and Muslims in the West, as well. (Think of Spain.)

Plenty of Arians in the West, as well. (Think of the Goths.)

The Monophysites are the ones who offended the Greeks by losing Christ's humanity from their theology (at least, that's the way the Greeks tell the story), and the Greeks were always on guard against that particular heresy, as I've already said.

As for the Nestorians, their only heresy was being able to count to two. (Traditional Christians agree that Christ has a human nature, that Christ has a divine nature, and that "divine" and "human" are not the same thing. Those who conclude that Christ has two natures -- just count them, there's "divine" and there's "human" -- are Nestorian. Those who conclude that Christ has one undivided nature are "Orthodox" (or Catholic).)

Only in your own imagination.

No Robots

How is atomic theory evidence of belief that "nature is homogenous?" Or do you mean "continuous" rather than "homogenous"?

James Hannam

Atomic theory was rejected by Aristotle and had quite a limited impact in ancient Greece. But I cocked up with my vocab anyway. The word I meant to use was holistic.

J

Sarpedon

I quite agree that the dark ages weren't so dark. However, the question is would they have been lighter than a continuation of classical culture could have been? Thats vastly debatable.

Advances in crafts, including architecture, which I know most about, are undeniable. In fact, some could argue that the shortage of resources caused by the economic and population crashes spurred the more economic use of materials seen in Gothic architecture, as well as the use of labor saving devices, such as more advanced wind and water power. For example, the much beloved cathedral of Notre-Dame in Paris was built to the EXACT dimensions of the Classical style Old St Peters in Rome (as opposed to the St Peter's cathedral thats there now, which is a rennaisance building) only on a tighter budget. Many of the structural innovations of the gothic period had their origins in cost-saving devices, which later were developed into weight saving devices that allowed the buildings to be taken higher than ever before.

HOWEVER, nothing in the medieval, and few things in the modern age can rival the Colosseum for sheer complexity and speed of erection. It is the pinnacle of Roman architectural skill, having such a complexity of design, rivalled only by modern sports arenas, and was completed so quickly (which gives mute testament to the Roman skill at organization, which was their greatest gift) that we moderns can only sigh with envy (I've been hearing about the new Twin's stadium for years, they haven't even broken ground yet) In contrast, the construction of most cathedrals lagged on for years, as churchmen, workers and burghers bickered about money and frequent redesigns. Most people who started cathedrals didn't live to see them finished. The middle ages completely lacked the organization abilities the Romans had. the Colosseum was vaster than any cathedral, bigger than any 4 or 5 cathedrals, and was completed in a matter of years, faster than many modern projects of similar scale.