enoch007

For all you Eurocentrists with your "Rome-good/Rome-bad" dichotomies, here are three Wiki paragraphs about the truly greastest civilisation of the period, namely China:

Lógos Sokratikós

Westerners were always scoundrels as compared to the Greeks, pre or post Rome, until the end of WWII, then a little better after decolonization (the French in Argelia were terrible), and much better after the cold war (until GWB).

I remember Francisco de Goya y Lucientes, the Spaniard, did a painting called "El sueño de la razón engendra monstruos" = "The dream of reason begets monsters", referring to the Napoleonic invasions and the French discourse of reason much abused by them. I believe an awful lot of things Westerners touched became "monsters", including their religion. We remember the inquisitions, the wars of religion, the murderous and torturing intolerance in the name of God and we don't want to forget. Religion does beget good and bad, and I don't think science is the brainchild of religion, but many scientists had to rationalize their love for truth-from-observation under religious guises, some for love of their lives, and others from simple cognitive dissonance. Now they don't have to, now they're free to be or not be religious and they tend to be choosing a farewell to the deity.

Lógos Sokratikós

Frankly most places were greater than western Europe of the time. In fact science and philosophy were better under the muslims in Spain than after they kicked them out, in great part because of mandatory Catholicism and their paranoia.

I agree with muslims in one thing at least: Christianity is all splintered up because of their amazingly complicated theology, and the efforts authorities have to do to keep folks in line with orthodoxy because of it.

Yes, we do owe a lot to Christianity. If it hadn't been that complicated and incoherent, modern science might have taken longer to flourish (we may point towards the broken geography of Europe as another powerful cause).

enoch007

Byzantium was a backwater compared to Beijing

Lucretius

"Scoundrels "maybe but you have to admit that these "Western scoundrels " were able to do something that the "more sophisticated" Greeks were unable to do.
Namely create a long lasting Empire that for all its' faults still has an influence today.
Alexander the Greats "empire" rapidly disintegrated into chaos and in-fighting between his generals and while the Roman Empire did have it's Civil Wars in spite of this remained recognizably Roman, whereas the empire Alexander created in the East became several fractured smaller empires.
In fact I would go further and say that it was very much the "cross pollination" of Greek AND Roman (Western scoundrelish) culture that enabled the Eastern Byzantine Empire to survive for as long as it did .
(Please note I am not in any way "attacking Greek culture " I obviously know of the huge debt that Roman culture had to the Greeks)

enoch007

Look, I love to beat a horse demised so... The Romans had a fine empire which collapsed under the weight of it's own inertia, Greek Civilisation and Hebrew Religious culture forms the basis of western culture. Byzantium carried the torch of Western Civilization until passing it Renaissance Europe.
The Christianized barbarians of Western Europe were just that, babaric, uncouth, superstitious. Their culture had some nice medeival moments (usually adorned with rapine and destruction, owing to their barbaric roots) but so many learned persons on this thread seem totally oblivious to THE CHINESE CULTURE...whose continuous (if intermittant dynastic) march of invention, conquest, innovation and spleandor rivals, at least, and probably surpasses all the achievements of any of the aforementioned cultural hegemonies.

Lucretius

Enoch it's not so much that we are denigrating Chinese culture but rather the fact that in discussing a particular period in Western history it is completely irrelevant ,not that I am saying that in the overall history of the world that Chinese culture is insignificant.
Just that it is meaningless in this context the same way that if we were discussing Chinese culture then the works of Tacitus would be an irrelevance

James Hannam

Yes. The really odd thing is that modern science arose in Christian Western Europe in the sixteenth/seventeenth centuries and not in China. Why the Chinese never developed science is one of the great unanswered questions of history. Even Joseph Needham didn't seem to know, although he tenditively blames their metaphysics.

Best wishes

James

No Robots

Unanswered? What about the Greeks?

James Hannam

Well, they certainly didn't develop modern science, if that is what you mean.

But why not is another great unanswered question.

Like the Chinese they seemed to have blind spots which meant their undoubtedly impressive achievements were not developed into the admittedly difficult conceptual framework which allows modern science to form. The divorce between mathematics and natural philosophy, the lack of much experiment and their beholdenness to Aristotelain dogma all seemed to hold them back. Also, the tiny number of Greek philosophers and the lack of any official program in the subject was another serious problem that meant the subject didn't develop critical mass.

Best wishes

James

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