Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Toto · 01-04-2010, 01:19 AM

Richard Carrier blogs on two wildly misinformed essays from two points of view (he will comment on James Hannam's "much more careful and informative treatment" next month.)

Well worth reading.

GakuseiDon · 01-04-2010, 02:18 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Richard Carrier blogs on two wildly misinformed essays from two points of view (he will comment on James Hannam's "much more careful and informative treatment" next month.)

Well worth reading.

The essay by Mike Flynn that Richard is commenting on is here:
http://m-francis.livejournal.com/101929.html

Probably best to read what Flynn writes as well as reading Richard's response.

Here is the first one:

Flynn writes (responding to an essay by someone called Walker):

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flynn

1. Walker writes, "When Constantine established orthodox Christianity in 325 CE (at the Council of Nicaea), scientific investigation virtually stopped."

It is curious how many fundamentalist tropes show up in atheist writings. In this case, the "Constantine founded Christianity" trope, which was originally proposed by fundamentalists of the "secret church" persuasion. Their animus was directed against the Roman Catholic church, which was terribly unfair to the Eastern Orthodox. At the time of Constantine, there was not yet any distinction. Further, as Walker ought to know, the Constantinid dynasty tried to establish Arianism, not orthodoxy and famously included Julian the Apostate, who tried to gin up a pagan church in imitation of the Christians. (We have many of his letters, so we know this was his purpose.)

What evidence is there that "scientific investigation" stopped? What evidence is there that it had ever started? As Brian Stock commented in "Science, Technology, and Economic Progress in the Early Middle Ages," the Roman thought that nature could be imitated (via engineering), placated (via prayers and sacrifices), but not understood (via science). Very little of Greek mathematics, for example, had been translated into Latin, beyond what was needed for accounting (of loot), surveying (of conquered lands), and architecture; and almost nothing of Archimedes or of Aristotle's natural philosophy. Indeed, Roman technology in the late days of the Empire is not notably different from Roman technology in the late days of the Republic.

"The failure of Greece and Rome to increase productivity through innovation is as notorious as the inability of historians from Gibbon to the present to account for it."
-- Brian Stock, "Science, Technology, and Progress in the Early Middle Ages," in Science in the Middle Ages (Lindberg, ed.)

Richard responds to the first part of Flynn's reply to Walker:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carrier

As Brian Stock commented in "Science, Technology, and Economic Progress in the Early Middle Ages" [in Science in the Middle Ages (Lindberg, ed.)] the Romans thought that nature could be imitated (via engineering), placated (via prayers and sacrifices), but not understood (via science).

There is absolutely zero evidence the Romans ever thought any such thing. To the contrary, from the writings of Latins like Seneca and Pliny, the assumption was not only that nature could be understood (especially through science) but that it was our moral obligation to seek to understand it. And when they did, they usually wrote in Greek. Ptolemy, Hero, Dioscorides, Menelaus, and Galen, some of the greatest scientists in antiquity, were all Romans. There were many more.

I've seen Richard make this misunderstanding before: he is confusing "scientific method" with "scientist". No-one argues that the Romans didn't invent some clever things. But that doesn't mean "scientific method". Flynn is clearly responding to Walker's comment of "scientific investigation stopping after Constantine", NOT whether there were scientists or not in the earlier period. While some Romans and Greeks did touch on a "scientific method", and some of them built on and improved the work of earlier scientists, there was little progressive scientific investigation in ancient times. And that's Flynn's point: it didn't stop because it never started.

(ETA) I remembered where Richard did this before: in a radio interview discussing Rodney Stark's view of scientific progress in the West. It was clear (to me at least) that Stark was talking about "scientific method" and "scientific progress", while Richard appeared to believe that listing inventions in China and Europe were enough to refute Stark's points.

GakuseiDon · 01-04-2010, 02:30 AM

I'll just do one more -- the one after next in his blog -- which is even weirder. I do have a lot of time for Richard, since he often says what he thinks regardless of whether it is for or against any ideology. But he does write some really strange things at times. To wit:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Carrier

The Latin West never lost its Greek heritage because it never had it to begin with.

This is false: the Latin West had entire wings of their libraries (almost every city had one) stocked with Greek treatises, and Latin scientists spoke and read Greek. Even private libraries in the West were once well-stocked in Greek texts (like the one we've been excavating in Herculaneum). During the Dark Ages (500-1000 A.D.) the Latin West largely forgot how to read Greek, and gradually threw away almost all its Greek books out of disinterest, making little attempt to remedy the loss by translating them into Latin. That was a conscious choice. Indeed, since contact with the Greek East was never broken, they had every opportunity to remedy that loss. They didn't.

So: The Latin West had the Greek books in their libraries, but out of disinterest they didn't take advantage of them. Fair enough. But when we look at Flynn, we see him making the exact same point.

Here is the extract from Flynn where he says "The Latin West never lost its Greek heritage because it never had it to begin with" (my bolding and underlining below):

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flynn

The large percentage of Greek science in the surviving writings tells us that the Christians who copied them were interested in science, not that the Greeks were.

This was not true of the suriving Latin writings. The Romans just weren't interested in science and math, and wrote almost nothing. A third of the million or so words of preserved classical Latin consist of Cicero's wrtiings (and comprise 75% of what we know Cicero wrote). However, there were several Roman encyclopediasts who wrote digest summaries of what was known. Macrobius and Pliny were the two best-known. These were used as school text books in the West in the early middle ages and provided a curriculum for the "Seven Liberal Arts." The thing to remember is:

a) The Greek East never lost its heritage. It was preserved unbroken; and Byzantium deserves its proud title of "The World's Librarian."
b) The Latin West never lost its Latin heritage. Catalogs of private and monastic libraries that have come down to us list all the best known Roman writers.
c) The Latin West never lost its Greek heritage because it never had it to begin with. Most of it was never translated until the Christians, hearing that it was available in Toledo, swarmed there from every nation once the jihad had ebbed, eager to translate the Greek works.

Note what Flynn writes at the end. "Most of it was never translated", i.e. it was there (Flynn cites Toledo, Spain) but it was never translated.

Am I representing Carrier and Flynn fairly here?

mountainman · 01-04-2010, 02:42 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Richard Carrier blogs on two wildly misinformed essays from two points of view (he will comment on James Hannam's "much more careful and informative treatment" next month.)

Well worth reading.

Definitely, but as far as I am aware the hospitals of Asclepius were not an invention of the Romans or the Roman empire, since they were a product of the Greek empire which itself borrowed medical knowledge from the Egyptians.

From the blog:

Quote:

~:~

But recall that the temples of Asklepios were not hospitals where you went to be cared for by nursing sisters. They were religious temples where you went in the hope of getting a vision from the god in your sleep.

They were actually both. Doctors frequented the temples (sometimes medical schools were even associated with them), and temple attendants saw to the needs of supplicants as well. The true hospital (as an organized and scientifically engineered facility for surgery and in-patient care) was invented by the Romans.

The true hospital (as an organized and scientifically engineered facility for surgery and in-patient care) was invented by the Greeks following their tradition of Apollo, Asclepius, Pythagoras, Hippocrates, etc.

Do we call Galen a Roman or a Greek? The Roman empire was not Italian, its culture and its science was Greek. Its educated language was Greek. Galen wrote and spoke in Greek. Personal physician to the Roman Emperor Marcus Aurelius (who also wrote and spoke in Greek), Galen was exempted from military service on the basis that he was one of the therapeutae of Asclepius. This was Greek, not Roman.
I'd like to see a citation for the claim that

The true hospital (as an organized and scientifically engineered facility for surgery and in-patient care) was invented by the Romans.

Quote:

In fact the hospitals of the Roman legions were so advanced they were not rivaled until the Scientific Revolution.

I'd like to see a citation for this claim as well. The physicians and their assistants who attended the Roman army were trained in the major Asclepia temples and were referred to as a specialised form of the "therapeutae". AFAIK all this was Greek culture, science, medicine, etc.

The ROMAN Emperor Constantine utterly destroyed the major, most ancient and most highly revered temples (public hospitals) of Asclepius between his military supremacy in c.324 CE and the before the Council of Nicaea c.325 CE. He imposed Christianity in the Eastern Roman empire by the sword, and was singlehandedly responsible for the loss of the major Asclepian temples - and the heritage and medical knowledge preserved in their associated libraries and gymnasia.

Toto · 01-04-2010, 08:21 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

...

I've seen Richard make this misunderstanding before: he is confusing "scientific method" with "scientist". No-one argues that the Romans didn't invent some clever things. But that doesn't mean "scientific method". Flynn is clearly responding to Walker's comment of "scientific investigation stopping after Constantine", NOT whether there were scientists or not in the earlier period. While some Romans and Greeks did touch on a "scientific method", and some of them built on and improved the work of earlier scientists, there was little progressive scientific investigation in ancient times. And that's Flynn's point: it didn't stop because it never started.

(ETA) I remembered where Richard did this before: in a radio interview discussing Rodney Stark's view of scientific progress in the West. It was clear (to me at least) that Stark was talking about "scientific method" and "scientific progress", while Richard appeared to believe that listing inventions in China and Europe were enough to refute Stark's points.

This is the subject of Carrier's PhD thesis. He provides a working definition of science and shows that the ancients did science, in terms of making observations, conductiong experiments, and building theories.

Clearly the scientific method has continued to be refined. But are you going to claim that there was no medical science before the second half of the 20th century because there were no double blind, controlled tests of medicines?

Toto · 01-04-2010, 08:26 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

...

Quote:

The Latin West never lost its Greek heritage because it never had it to begin with. Most of it was never translated until the Christians, hearing that it was available in Toledo, swarmed there from every nation once the jihad had ebbed, eager to translate the Greek works.

Note what Flynn writes at the end. "Most of it was never translated", i.e. it was there (Flynn cites Toledo, Spain) but it was never translated.

Am I representing Carrier and Flynn fairly here?

I don't think so.

How could you miss Carrier's point that the Roman intellectuals were all bilingual? You must know from Christian history that the lingua franca of the Roman Empire was Koine Greek.

avi · 01-04-2010, 11:53 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by mountainman

as far as I am aware the hospitals of Asclepius were not an invention of the Romans or the Roman empire, since they were a product of the Greek empire which itself borrowed medical knowledge from the Egyptians.

and, I am not disputing this conclusion, nor arguing this point against you, but I would like to remind folks here, who may not be aware, that the practice of medicine and surgery in both India and China were well advanced, compared with Greek or Roman institutions at that time, i.e. 2k years ago.

If you think about the task of organizing the silk route caravans, imagine what that voyage must have cost, not just in gold or silver, but in terms of human sacrifice.

There must have been at least 1000 warriors accompanying the caravan. The physicians traveling with the caravan had to treat all kinds of exotic diseases, snake bites, plus common injuries, as well as wartime manipulations....Crossing the desert did not mean, crossing without risk of exposure to hostile forces.

Chinese medical texts were light years ahead of western understanding of pharmacology, two thousand years ago. The reason why a guy like Avi Cenna, who lived on the silk route, could master medicine at such a youthful age--17 (his textbook of medicine is still, to this day, the longest published textbook of the healing arts in Europe, at 400 years,) was undoubtedly due both to his fluency with Greek, access to Aristotle's textbook, and exposure to the silk route scholars and clinicians.

With respect to science, and the scientific method, I think it is fair to acknowledge the Atomists, as well as Aristotle, Eratosthenes, and the scores of other famous Greek scientists of 300-100 BCE. Maybe the Roman invasion of Greece in 146 BCE, killed scientific inquiry?

avi cenna
back from the dead....

Clivedurdle · 01-04-2010, 01:25 PM

I thought the silk road was organised on a town to town basis - goods would be passed on to the next local trader who would take it to the next town and then take something else home.

GakuseiDon · 01-04-2010, 03:08 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

...

I've seen Richard make this misunderstanding before: he is confusing "scientific method" with "scientist". No-one argues that the Romans didn't invent some clever things. But that doesn't mean "scientific method". Flynn is clearly responding to Walker's comment of "scientific investigation stopping after Constantine", NOT whether there were scientists or not in the earlier period. While some Romans and Greeks did touch on a "scientific method", and some of them built on and improved the work of earlier scientists, there was little progressive scientific investigation in ancient times. And that's Flynn's point: it didn't stop because it never started.

(ETA) I remembered where Richard did this before: in a radio interview discussing Rodney Stark's view of scientific progress in the West. It was clear (to me at least) that Stark was talking about "scientific method" and "scientific progress", while Richard appeared to believe that listing inventions in China and Europe were enough to refute Stark's points.

This is the subject of Carrier's PhD thesis. He provides a working definition of science and shows that the ancients did science, in terms of making observations, conductiong experiments, and building theories.

Clearly the scientific method has continued to be refined. But are you going to claim that there was no medical science before the second half of the 20th century because there were no double blind, controlled tests of medicines?

No, but was there a continuing "scientific investigation"? (For example, someone back then invented a primitive steam engine, but it wasn't built upon.) Flynn refers to the works of Plato, Aristotle and Ptolemy as "scientific writings", so he obviously regards them as scientists. But its clear that he is talking about scientists building on the work of earlier ones. Some did, but it was done in bits and pieces.

But when did systematic scientific investigation begin, and was Constantine that one who put a stop to it (as Walker claims)? That's what Flynn is addressing, but you don't get that from Richard's blog.

Toto · 01-04-2010, 03:28 PM

Carrier is critical of Walker and clearly does not argue that Constantine put a stop to scientific investigation.

A cursory search of Flynn's essay does not turn up the phrase "systematic scientific investigation," so I'm not sure what you think his point was.

Carrier comments:

Quote:

Originally Posted by Flynn

As Brian Stock commented in "Science, Technology, and Economic Progress in the Early Middle Ages" [in Science in the Middle Ages (Lindberg, ed.)] the Romans thought that nature could be imitated (via engineering), placated (via prayers and sacrifices), but not understood (via science).

There is absolutely zero evidence the Romans ever thought any such thing. To the contrary, from the writings of Latins like Seneca and Pliny, the assumption was not only that nature could be understood (especially through science) but that it was our moral obligation to seek to understand it. And when they did, they usually wrote in Greek. Ptolemy, Hero, Dioscorides, Menelaus, and Galen, some of the greatest scientists in antiquity, were all Romans. There were many more.

This sounds systematic to me, if not at a level of the National Institute of Science, but still something more than random observations.

01-04-2010, 01:19 AM	#1
Toto Contributor Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Los Angeles area Posts: 40,549	Did Christianity aid or hinder the development of science? Richard Carrier blogs on two wildly misinformed essays from two points of view (he will comment on James Hannam's "much more careful and informative treatment" next month.) Well worth reading.

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01-04-2010, 01:25 PM	#8
Clivedurdle Contributor Join Date: Mar 2003 Location: London UK Posts: 16,024	I thought the silk road was organised on a town to town basis - goods would be passed on to the next local trader who would take it to the next town and then take something else home.

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