James Hannam

True. I should have used the adjective 'modern' as I usually try to do.

I really enjoyed that book. This point of Cnina seems very sensible but is, I think, only half the story. Western Europe had the advantages of being fragmented politically, coupled with the advantages of being united culturally. Hence, to a great extent, it enjoyed the best of both worlds.

In essence, it is the need for reasons to believe science's axioms. These are linear non-eternal time, universal laws, compliance with mathematics, recognition of the limits of common sense/reason, nature being without agency and rare/no divine intervention. Christianity supplied the ones the Greeks missed and had a far less tolerant attitude towards deviating from the others. China, according to Needham, lacked almost all of them.

Oh, don't worry. We are very uneasy. It was an monumental cock-up that blotted an otherwise quite good record. In fact, the RCC has been pretty supportive of science since 1633 and it's caution on making specific pronouncements probably related to how badly it was burnt back then. My book ends with G's trial but its main point is how much his work depended on medieval antecedents.

Best wishes

James

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

nogods4me

8.32 lumens

No Robots

Yeah, to a degree. Orthodoxies of any kind do tend to restrict development of ideas. But there are qualitative differences between orthodoxies, too.

I fear that that is indeed what has happened. People forget Newton's own words:

That gravity should be innate, inherent, and essential to matter, so that one body may act upon another at a distance through a vacuum, without the mediation of anything else, by and through which their action and force may be conveyed from one to another, is to me so great an absurdity that I believe no man who has in philosophical matters a competent faculty of thinking can ever fall into it.

The situation with Darwin is far more grim.

Indeed.

Antipope Innocent II

I'm not sure what "social advances" are (sounds like the old "Whig Fallacy" at work to me) but I don't think anyone is saying there were many "scientific advances" in the Early Middle Ages (ie 500-1000 AD). Just that things weren't as "dark" as the popular conception makes out. Also that this "darkness" can't be laid at the door of the Church, no matter how much some zealots try to distort things to do so.

The Twelfth Century Renaissance? Certainly. Or were you referring to the later one with the very pretty pictures and the failed crackpot inventor?

The later Renaissance was more an intellectual and artistic movement than a period - it took hold in different places at different times. The period in which ancient learning began to be revived in Europe was the Middle Ages. That's also the period in which the foundations of the later Early Modern Scientific Revolution were laid.

Brother Daniel

I'm still not convinced. The West was also heir to the same Christological disputes; the RCC follows essentially the same Christology as the Eastern Orthodox. The lack of Byzantine scientific development cannot be explained by factors that it shared with Western Europe.
I don't see how that would matter. And in any case, it doesn't sound right to me. The Eastern Orthodox (unlike their Western counterparts) were always in contact with those Christian groups that did* lose sight of the human Christ, and so were always on guard against that particular heresy.

(*Actually, I'm not sure that the Copts, Armenians etc. lost sight of the human Christ either, but the Greeks believed that they did, which makes my point equally well.)
No. It generally doesn't come up.
:huh: Reads like Hegel was on drugs.

Gamera

Writing Beowulf, translating Aristotle, perfecting viniculture, inventing new forms of philosphical analysis and hermeneutics (including exegesis, which is the modern method for understanding texts), expanding archetural concepts in a way that dwarf classic building techniques.

The medieval period lacked a consistent grasp of the scientific method, and institutions to expand it. That was it's true failing. But then, that's a common failing for most of history.

Indeed, clerics such as St Albertus Magnus set the stage for the resurgence of the natural sciences.

Antipope Innocent II

Indeed. I often have to remind people who like to denegrate the Middle Ages and over-glorify the Classical Era that even the tallest ancient building was squat compared to many Medieval cathedrals. Those cathedrals remained the tallest buildings in many European cities until well into the Nineteenth Century.

And we can add a lot more to your list - fully harnessing the potential of water power, inventing effective windmills, using tidal mills, adopting Arabic numerals, using artesian wells, inventing a practical mechanical clock, making miniaturised clocks (they went from "mainframe" to "desktop" in a generation), inventing eye glasses (Hands up all those wearing them? Thank the monks boys and girls!), using water-powered bellows and trip hammers to revolutionise steel production, making gunpowder weapons practical and - last but not least - inventing a workable form of printing (and then exporting it back to the Chinese).

Not bad for a "dark age".

As for "writing hymns over Archimedes works", as I explained in another thread, we can thank a medieval scholar, John of Moerbeke, for the preservation of Archimedes and the re-incorporation of his work into Western science.

Including the Classical Era. The final piece of the scientific puzzle - experimental science - came in the Modern Period, though its inklings can be found in the Middle Ages in the writings of guys like Roger Bacon.

Potoooooooo

Are you Bede and is Bede you? If so why did you delete you old account and come back under your real name?:huh:

No Robots

The West was nowhere nearly so embroiled as the East, what with Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, etc. etc.

What I am saying is that Orthodoxy was constantly fighting those who asserted Christ's humanity: Jews, Arians, Nestorians, Monophysites, Muslims, etc. They ended up with a wholly otherworldly Christ, culminating in the absurdity of Christ Pantocrator.

Thought not.

Q.E.D.

James Hannam

Yes, I'm Bede. I use my real name now because I think that anonymous and pseudonymous works have less credibility than what someone is willing to pin their own identity to. It would be much better if everyone did the same.

Best wishes

James