Could any inventions have come sooner?

[Imperial Overlord]

The church's relationship with science is tricky at best. The monestaries were technological innovators (particularily with regards to animal husbandry and agriculture), they did preserve old books, and they were pretty much the only source of any education in Western Europe. But most ancient texts were obtained from Muslims by Jews, translated (multiple times), and brought west. One didn't even have a consistent Bible throughout Western Europe until the eleventh century and in the twelfth century heresy becomes increasingly important to the Church.

Science is still important enough that a Renaissance Pope will be the patron of the man who proved that the "Donation of Constantine" was a fake, but that will be in part because the society outside the church has come to embrace those values. The Twelfth Century Renaissance, the birth of movements like the Cathars and the Franciscans, and the increasing focus on heresy are the high water mark of the church's involvement with science.

[the wicked prince]

Comparing Chinese stagnation to the European stagnation in the Middle Ages is pointless, because the causes are different. China stagnated due to cultural and political reasons, they isolated themselves from the rest of the world by design.

European stagnation <msg continues>

This is a, how shall I put it, a rather naive copout. It's like saying "European stagnated due to cultura and political reasons, they put a strangehold on knowledge by design.

The Church's influence on affairs during the Dark Ages is an unfortunate circumstance; were it not for this matter the premise tharkun holds forth, that the fragmentary competing states created in Dark Ages Europe are desirable for advancing the pace of technology, is correct.

Corollary to this is the statement that stable empires with stabilized frontiers and no equal rivals tend toward stagnatation. With no competitive equal, massive amounts of wealth and manpower, there is no need to pour money into supporting hapless scientists and curious men and everything to be gained through snapping up real estate and throwing huge parties.

With Dark Ages Europe small nations, there was no knowledge, with large prosperous stabilized empires, there was no need to get knowledge. The first is due the Church, the second, due to no competition

[the wicked prince]

there really should be an edit function

[the wicked prince]

When an Empire has no equal there is
less pragmatism, more partying
less striving against other ways, rather this is the only way

as for the Church and the European Dark Ages, I would refer more to the loss of knowledge and infrastructure, thereby leaving the advantageous situation, that of already competing groups, at a severe disadvantage of progress. How much of which is directly attributable to the Church I do not know, although I am aware that their attitudes are hardly ideal

the origin of the development of the scientific method and the idea that technology is here to benefit us, not merely cute toys, are no doubt fundamentally important, but I must confess myself ignorant of the history of the development of a class that cared for them

And a note regarding stability, other parts of the world suffered depopulations, destruction of infrastructure, and loss of knowledge all through the ages as well, they are not magical paradises, they exist in this Earthly world. Just like Rome

[Gil Hamilton]

This is a, how shall I put it, a rather naive copout. It's like saying "European stagnated due to cultura and political reasons, they put a strangehold on knowledge by design.

The Church's influence on affairs during the Dark Ages is an unfortunate circumstance; were it not for this matter the premise tharkun holds forth, that the fragmentary competing states created in Dark Ages Europe are desirable for advancing the pace of technology, is correct.

Corollary to this is the statement that stable empires with stabilized frontiers and no equal rivals tend toward stagnatation. With no competitive equal, massive amounts of wealth and manpower, there is no need to pour money into supporting hapless scientists and curious men and everything to be gained through snapping up real estate and throwing huge parties.

With Dark Ages Europe small nations, there was no knowledge, with large prosperous stabilized empires, there was no need to get knowledge. The first is due the Church, the second, due to no competition

Untrue. The Roman Empire advanced a fair bit, even while 1/4th the planet lived under Roman rule. Not tremendously compared as the years dragged on, but some. Interestingly enough, the Romans had all the makings of having an industrial revolution in their day. This was a rather interesting conversation I've had with both my history professor and Marina on this board. They had had plenty of educated people, something of a middle class in places, engineering and mathematics right on target (even a very basic form of calculus), and the starts of clockwork mechanisms and engines (even if the application at the time was counting miles along roads and hurling unbelievably heavy things at people). They had the wealth to actually make it work. The reason they didn't advance was not because there was no reason to (even the Romans understood the need for progress) but because they themselves had a cultural quirk. Societies tend to reach a certain point where they ask the question of "How can I make a process easier?". In our post-Enlightenment Industrial Revolution, the question got answered by "We can build machines to do the work of the men or make their jobs easier." In Rome, they answered it by "Throw more slaves at the problem." Rome didn't stagnate because there was no need for progress anymore (to say that they beat all their enemies at any point is absurd), but because they couldn't get beyond the slave owners mentality. If they had a more developed concept of liberty and that machines were more than toys and death machines, they could have easily started an Industrial Revolution despite the size of their empire.

Funnily enough, almost all the people living in the Middle Ages never asked the above question. They were too busy being illiterate while squating in waddle and daub huts and scratching out a living, while the Church perserved but didn't disperse what survived of the knowledge of the Roman Empire.

[Elheru Aran]

Archimedes was on the verge of "inventing" the mathematical branch of Calculus, but a Roman soldier got pissed off and killed him when Archie gave him lip after the soldier walked in the dirt he was drawing on.

Myth/legend. He was certainly a genius, but as to whether or not he was developing a proto-calculus, one would think he'd do that on something a little more secure than a finger in the dust.

[Edi]

Comparing Chinese stagnation to the European stagnation in the Middle Ages is pointless, because the causes are different. China stagnated due to cultural and political reasons, they isolated themselves from the rest of the world by design.

European stagnation <msg continues>

This is a, how shall I put it, a rather naive copout. It's like saying "European stagnated due to cultura and political reasons, they put a strangehold on knowledge by design.

Excuse me, but what the fuck are you smoking? I specifically said that European stagnation was due to factors OTHER than cultural and political. Specifically, European knowledge base got wiped out because there was such massive loss of life from the plague epidemics.

As for the rest of your post, could you please quote where the fuck I disagreed with the church being an influence for preserving at least some knowledge? I disagree with your final point for the same reasons Gil does, but otherwise your reply to me was quite completely pointless.

Edi

[Kuroneko]

Myth/legend. He was certainly a genius, but as to whether or not he was developing a proto-calculus, one would think he'd do that on something a little more secure than a finger in the dust.

While the story of the Roman soldier is of questionable validity, the fact that Archimedes made a number of results that anticipated calculus is nearly incontrovertible. His method of exhaustion was used to calculate areas many shapes, including circes and parabolas. Archimedes is known to have preferred to translate mathematical problems to physical ones, intuit the solution that way, and then proceed toward mathematical proof (according to his own words, and his strong interest in physics is a matter of historical fact). On the other hand, Sir Isaac Newton revered Greek mathematics greatly, going in so far as to prefer geometrical arguments to algebraic ones. Not only does Sir Isaac use what is essentially Archimedes' method of exhaustion in establishing his method for integration, but Sir Isaac has a strong bias toward power series in solving problems. One can imagine a probable chain of development: Sir Isaac deduced how to integrate the general power x^m rather than stopping at Archimedes' parabolic x^2

Excuse me, but what the fuck are you smoking? I specifically said that European stagnation was due to factors OTHER than cultural and political. Specifically, European knowledge base got wiped out because there was such massive loss of life from the plague epidemics.

The first outbreaks of the Black Death was ironically around the time that the Italian Renaissance was taking its first steps. While the Eastern Roman empire was ravaged by plague at least twice between the fall of the West and the Black Death, are there any records of them significantly affecting Europe? I'm dubious of whether this is a significant reason in the West... then again, plague during Justinian's reign was a direct reason why his occupation of the West failed, so the subsequent lack of order and military weakness in the West can be seen as a direct consequence of plague.

[Kuroneko]

I don't know why that was cut off, but...

Sir Isaac deduced how to integrate the general power x^m rather than stopping at Archimedes' parabolic x^2...

... and that was the most important step in his calculus. What was holding Archimedes back was his lack of any general way to describe higher-degree shapes; if Archimedes had algebraic notation, I have no doubt that he would have developed calculus at least as powerful as Newton's. Of course, that's a very significant "if".

[Spoonist]

->Just to point out the obvious here. You are using an awfully western perspective in your ramblings here...

Think instead of something like the ramifications if ancient china had developed the scientific method and the philosophy surrounding it. They had all the single inventions, all the material plus the manpower to put it in practice.

In my opinion what they lacked where a competitive system where they would test and improve ideas etc. Most of the good ideas was kept among the nobility and wouldn't be implemented on a large scale in society.

Take the firearm/cannons for instance, the chinese had had it for at least 500 years before europeans stole the idea. Then within 150 years the new improved european versions where used to defeat the chinese.

Or if the chinese and the japanese hadn't such xenophobic and conservative cultures during th 14-17th century. Ouch...

[Dark Hellion]

I think even more ironically is that the Renaissance nearly killed science as we know it by attempting to revert to Roman Methodology, despite the fact that the socio-economic climate of Europe had changed so much. The Romantic ideals of the Renaissance come into a direct clash with science, and only a few of the so called Renaissance men actually contributed to the later Enlightenment period.

[Edi]

Excuse me, but what the fuck are you smoking? I specifically said that European stagnation was due to factors OTHER than cultural and political. Specifically, European knowledge base got wiped out because there was such massive loss of life from the plague epidemics.

The first outbreaks of the Black Death was ironically around the time that the Italian Renaissance was taking its first steps. While the Eastern Roman empire was ravaged by plague at least twice between the fall of the West and the Black Death, are there any records of them significantly affecting Europe? I'm dubious of whether this is a significant reason in the West... then again, plague during Justinian's reign was a direct reason why his occupation of the West failed, so the subsequent lack of order and military weakness in the West can be seen as a direct consequence of plague.

That's what I thought at first too, but I had a change of perspective a couple of years ago when I picked up Robert Hendrickson's More Cunning Than Man: A Complete History of the Rat and Its Role in Human Civilization.

You're right in that the term Black Death did not appear before the pandemic that started in Genova in 1347, but bubonic plague has been around in the Middle East and the Mediterranean at least 1500 years earlier than that and possibly since the 12th century BC. First recorded incident is from around 1080 BC. Ironically, the record for that is the Bible and can be considered accurate since the description fits the bubonic plague. It's in the First Book of Samuel, the disease that killed the Philistines.

The following is an excerpt from Hendrickson's book, from the chapter that deals with rat-borne diseases in general and the bubonic plague (as well as pneumonic and septicemic plagues) in particular. I don't know where to find it online, as this is typed from my paper copy.

Ferocious plague was more responsible for the destruction of the Roman Empire than was the ferocity of the barbarians. At least eleven plagues, which may have been bubonic, were recorded in Livy in republican times, the earliest dating back to 378 BC. In AD 68 bubonic plague attacked Rome, killing ten thgousand Romans a day; another raging plague followed eleven years later, stlll another in AD 125, when Tacitus writes that "houses were filled with dead bodies and the streets with funerals." One can see the rats scurrying in the shadows, invisible makers of history. The great Antonine plague of AD 164 lasted for sixteen years, ten thousand deaths a day ocurring at the height of an epidemic that exterminated half of Rome's civilian population and nearly all of the Roman army, which had brought it home from Mesopotamia. The renowned physician Galen ignominiously fled bubonic plague and the emperors Lucius Veras and Marcus Aurelius died of it. Still anotehr plague struck in AD 251, raging for fifteen years and killing five thousand a day at its height. Throughout the so-called "Golden Age" of Rome plague struck relentlessly, until a weakened empire fell to the barbarians. Thus travel ceased and for a while the epidemic halted.

Some pages later he writes:

The impact of ratborne Black Death on history worldwide has never been, and probably never can be, fully assessed. In its time, humanity underwent a total revolution, society became disorganized, earth was delivered to a chaos of terror, superstrition, crme, pain and megadeath in the full sense of that modern term. [Personal observation: This passage seems to refer specifically to Europe, as I at least do not recall these conditions to have been described as universal in any history book I've read.] No society suffering a loss of one-third of its population could function effectively, military planners tell us today. So it was in the world of the Black Death. The foundations of society were gnawed out from under it by rats. Scholasticism gave way to superstition, religion declined with the dearth of priests, too many of the remaining religious became monomaniacal about sin.

<snip>

The invisble rat did inspire improved sanitation systems throughout Europe, and the death of so many learned scholars forced a democratic change from teaching in Latin to teaching in the day-to-day languages of the people. But the plague's main contribution to good was its acceleration of the end of feudalism and serfdom (which the first pandemic had helped bring about). The manorial system now broke down in large part because the manpower shortage caused by the Black Death gave those workers remaining much greater bargaining power; they could become free laborers, earning the best price for their labor at all times.

Those are the parts most relevant to my arguments about the plague epidemics and pandemics being such definitive factors toward the late development of technology. I generally recommend Hendrickson's book to anyone who is interested in the subject. It's fascinating reading.

Edi

[weemadando]

A great deal of the problems to do with tech stagnation in China came from the fact that whenever a new "dynasty" came into effect, much of the learnings of the last were destroyed for any number of reasons, mainly to re-establish control for the new rulers.

The Chinese were world-leaders at book-burnings for a long time.

[Nieztchean Uber-Amoeba]

What would happen? Russia would use Nikolai for all their military innovations, Einstein would invent a time0travelling device, and there would be a very fun little global war a couple times.

[tharkûn]

In what delusional realm do you exist in, Tharkun? Oh yes, the one of apologists.

Ahh where would a SN post be without the ever present well poisoning.

The transfer of technoloy east to west was occouring during Rome, as was a standardized language.

News to me. As I recall the Eastern and Western halves of the empire spoke mutually unitelligable languages (not to mention the spawning of numerous pidgins and divergent dialects). The Eastern Roman Empire which endured until the fifteenth century did not as quickly transfer technology as the Italian states, the Iberian states, or even the Holy Roman Empire, France, and England.

But let's play along and ignore the linguistic divide, what technology was transferred from east to west by the Eastern Roman Empire? Pick your top half dozen examples.

The stagnation was because the Church was the bastion of learning.

Stagnation had already set in long before the end of pagan scholarship. Personally I think the massive sacking, looting, pillaging, and slaughter endemic to the mass migrations and subsequent territorial disputes had just a bit more to do with it.

They were not pushing for the return of plumbing or indoor heating. They were not pushing for new technologies. The Roman Empire pushed because it was necessary for an Empire.

Okay, cite a dozen examples from the post-Justinian Eastern Roman Empire.

Hence why it won't work if money is tied up in Cathedrals and your best thinkers are theologists instead of engineers.

Wouldn't it have been a shame if Newton were a theologian? Oh wait, nevermind. In actuality the Cathedrals contributed greatly to European engineering and science.

The point is that society has goals and there are many ways to acheive them. It doesn't matter if the goal is to build temples to the dominant religion, defend the state, or enrich the powerful; the underlying principle is that how these goals are acheived has much to do with technological progress. Rome had the manpower and money that it could throw men at a problem. If you need water pumped out of a mine, well you just had enough men working at it to pump the water out. If you needed a strong army to defend the borders you could invest in very expensive new metallurgical techniques, or you could just increase the pay of the army and use more manpower. The initial investment cost to implement technology has always been among the main impediments to advancement; given that payout may be decades away most Romans were not willing to invest in the technological solution over the manpower one.

-They preserved knowledge from Rome and Greece, but not terribly much compared to the Muslims. It was only after they started actively looting the Muslims did they start regaining that knowledge. After all, it was originally they who burned the libraries, with early Christians destroying many of the "pagan" libraries, destroying books or overwriting them with prayers.

Compared to the Muslims, true. Compared to the pagan barbarians sacking the cities they saved huge amounts. Library burnings occurred just fine without the Christians in many cases and it normally took about one sacking before even ecclesastical libraries were gone. The big thing the Chruch did was copy huge amounts of text and store copies in Ireland and other places where the Huns, Maygars, Ostrogoths, etc. never looted, pillaged, and burned.

Tharkun points out the vast amount of knowledge retrieved by the Crusaders, but it begs the obvious question. Why did the Muslims have all that knowledge and the Europeans did not?

Because much of it was imported from India (and in many cases that was making its way from Malacca and hence back to China). The concept of zero is an Indian import, likely being acquired by Arab traders plying the Indian oceon that spread throughout the Islamic world and then passed over to the Christians in Spain and finally spread outward to the rest of Christendom. Simple closer proximity to Brahmagupta's work explains that one.

Hell "Arabic numerals" are actually Indian in origin; likewise such stalwarts as algebra and trigonometry are coming out of India during the mid-late middle ages. To quote a leading Abassid scholar, "India is the source of knowledge, thought and insight."

So why, for example, did you have Arab scholars having stuff that actually approached a Scientific Method and men like Al Hazzin actively experimenting and theorizing about optics while Europe lives under the popular conception that we see because our eyes generate light? How is it that Europeans had to resort to capturing such knowledge rather than independantly developing it? The fact is that at the time, Europe completely lacked the mentality and organization for such scientific endeavors.

Ohh look we shall now say that millions of people all conformed to stereotype to such a degree that they lacked the mental capacity to think about new concepts. What BS.

Arab optics worked because they had the math to work out some of the relations which Europe, still hobbled with the Roman numeral system, lacked. This goes back to the Muslim states having more direct contact with the Indian mathmaticians who had the tools to make the physics actually work.

Art and construction based on reality was beyond their thought process; they couldn't wrap their brains around working in a non-religious fashion. You might go "But Gil, that's art work, what does that have to do with science and mathematics?" Well, a fair bit, actually. No one in Europe was even thinking about working in an Earthly perspective

BS. Walk into most any of the great cathedral and you see that the builders knew all about perspectives.

They talked of Republic and scientific investigation and experimentation beyond things like alchemy. It was around this time that the Humanists like Toscano reinvented the idea in the West of a round Earth (even though they underestimated the size of Asia and didn't quite know about North America) and invented modern navigation (impossible in the Dark Ages, they lacked the tools and knowledge to navigate without the North Star, due to having lost the knowledge of the Ptolemaic grid system and perspective).
A good example of that lack of mentality is visual perspective and mathematics. Look at Middle Age art work. You'll notice that the lot of it is flat and that some people are giant while others are tiny. It's not because the artists of the Middle Ages lacked the capacity to accurately render an image, they lacked the mentality.

You do realize that Islamic art de facto prohibited portraiture, at all. People weren't flat, they were close to non-existant due to religious taboos about painting them during the time period. Thus ends our delightfully idiotic plunge into the study of a culture's science and technology by looking at its portraiture.

They talked of Republic and scientific investigation and experimentation beyond things like alchemy. It was around this time that the Humanists like Toscano reinvented the idea in the West of a round Earth (even though they underestimated the size of Asia and didn't quite know about North America) and invented modern navigation (impossible in the Dark Ages, they lacked the tools and knowledge to navigate without the North Star, due to having lost the knowledge of the Ptolemaic grid system and perspective).

Modern navigation descends directly from importation of orient technology, historicly the use of the compass can be traced right back to China. The tools actually used for navigation were not Ptolemaic in origin, but came from trigonometry which was heavily used by the Church for maintaining the calendar as well as having the fundementals being imported from the Arabs who took it from the Indians.

This and other major developments occured when Europe moved away from the Church. All this was impossible in the Dark Ages and why it was Dark.

It was dark because most of the records from the era were:
1. Destroyed during the endemic warfare of the barbarian invasions, fuedal states, and religious wars.
2. Such written records as survived, were unintelligable to Italian classicists at that time.
3. It was a popular conception justifying certain philosophies and worldviews.

The Dark Ages has been dropped by virtually all professional historians who have studied the period in any detail. It is nice to see that propoganda centuries old still works though.

-They preserved literacy in Europe... if you were a member of the Clergy. If you were outside of the Clergy, you were practically guaranteed to be completely illiterate and uneducated.

Members of the Clergy were everywhere. When you look at the short list of Charlemagne's top advisors they were all clergy, who just happened to be running the secular state. The clergy were a second elite in Europe who did everything from collect taxes to brew beer. It isn't until the friggen 19th century that the masses attained any real literacy.

During the Dark Ages, where are the schools and universities?

Well let's see Constaninople, Paris, Bologna, Modena, Cambridge, Salamanca, Padua, Toulouse ...

You aren't going to find many during the Middle Ages and what schools did exist were Seminaries

So what? Al-Azhar, the premier school of the Islamic world at the time was a madrassa. Even the Chinese schools were theological origin.

At the end of all of this I'm seeing exactly nothing which shows the church actively retarding technoligical growth. The fact is it preserved information, help give rise to numerous modern universities, funded astronomy, and brought about the largest transfers of knowledge into Europe, more or less ever to have occurred.

It's kind of difficult to maintain a high standard of education (even relatively) when large parts of the population is wiped out at fairly regular intervals. If the learned people die, regaining what was lost will take time. Then add the backward attitudes of the church on top of that, and it's no wonder it took so long for stuff to be discovered.

I was unaware of Bologna, Paris or Constaninople having significant problems maintaining faculty or students. Likewise exactly which attitudes of the Church were so detrimental, particularly relative to the Arab world, China, and India?

Rome didn't stagnate because there was no need for progress anymore (to say that they beat all their enemies at any point is absurd), but because they couldn't get beyond the slave owners mentality.

It wasn't a question of mentality, it was question of economics. You could replace the many slaves required to till the ground with roman implements with a heavy iron plow. However in Roman times that plow will cost so much up front that in his lifetime the landowner would have been further ahead to ditch the plow and buy slaves or hire wage laborers. Conversely after the Roman empire broke up that same plow becomes far more economical; namely because the iron working industry of Europe progressed siginficantly - mostly because warriors in the middle ages required far superior armor and weaponry as states were unable to tap Romanesque manpower.

Think instead of something like the ramifications if ancient china had developed the scientific method and the philosophy surrounding it. They had all the single inventions, all the material plus the manpower to put it in practice.

The manpower is actually part of the problem. In the west inventions were used to reduce the amount of manpower needed to do a job. In the east that simply wasn't an issue; the manpower was there. For instance look at transportation. In the west roads (and hence bridges) and better shipping were heavy sources of technological improvement. In China they simply marshalled the peasants and dug the friggen Grand Canal. When you have the manpower to do something like that you don't need the technological innovation.

Or if the chinese and the japanese hadn't such xenophobic and conservative cultures during th 14-17th century.

Reactionary cultures are a symptom of the problem, not the cause.

A great deal of the problems to do with tech stagnation in China came from the fact that whenever a new "dynasty" came into effect, much of the learnings of the last were destroyed for any number of reasons, mainly to re-establish control for the new rulers.

Every time? No. Unfortunately a few truly spectacular burnings did do masive damage.

[Edi]

It's kind of difficult to maintain a high standard of education (even relatively) when large parts of the population is wiped out at fairly regular intervals. If the learned people die, regaining what was lost will take time. Then add the backward attitudes of the church on top of that, and it's no wonder it took so long for stuff to be discovered.

I was unaware of Bologna, Paris or Constaninople having significant problems maintaining faculty or students.

Are you seriously suggesting that the plague epidemics had no impact on the amount of knowledge retained or the proportion of educated people compared to the rest of the population? Especially since recent evidence of Roman medical technology, knowledge and skill has established that Roman level knowledge in the field of surgery was not recovered until the 20th century? There was a shitload of knowledge and skills lost to the Black Death and the earlier plagues. One example is the architectural style called "Decorated", gone forever for lack of skilled craftsmen. The aforementioned Roman medical knowledge, rediscovered 20th century. Modern Western medicine was separately developed from the 17th century forward by trial and error and painstaking discovery, but most of what was discovered between the 17th and mid-19th century was something the Romans already knew for the most part.

Likewise exactly which attitudes of the Church were so detrimental, particularly relative to the Arab world, China, and India?

Let's see, Inquisition, Biblical literalism, persecution of anything that dared question the superstitious dogma prevalent at the time. Why don't you take a look at the Hendrickson quotes about what happened to the church in the aftermath of the Black Death?

Edi

[tharkûn]

Are you seriously suggesting that the plague epidemics had no impact on the amount of knowledge retained or the proportion of educated people compared to the rest of the population?

I'm noting that historical records indicate that these universities continued to function in spite of plagues and that the higher education system did not collapse.

Let's see, Inquisition

Which one? The Medieval one was instituted in 1184, was more lenient than secular inquiries, and I can recall no scientific cases put before it.

The Spanish inquisition was created in 1478 by Ferdinand, possibly to off his creditors without having pay up, and was actively opposed by the Pope until the Turks attacked Otranto and Ferdinand made his support conditional upon being given full control of the inquisition.

The Portuguese Inquisition and Roman inquisitions were founded in 1536 and 1542 respectively.

Of those only the Medieval one is remotely close to the "dark ages" and it was neither anti-science (as far as I am aware it was a purely theological matter), nor particularly bloody (as compared various massacres carried out by the Muslims, Chinese, or Mongols).

Biblical literalism

Modern reactionary philosophy. Catholic doctrine at the time was for inerrancy, not literalism.

persecution of anything that dared question the superstitious dogma prevalent at the time.

You say that like it that wasn't a common trait among all peoples at the time or prior. Socrates was afterall sentenced to death by pagans, the Muslims killed all manner of apostates who doubted Mohammed, and of course the fun Chinese killings arising out of the Konfucian, Doaist, and Buddhist intrigues.

Why don't you take a look at the Hendrickson quotes about what happened to the church in the aftermath of the Black Death?

I did. He is in error, or at least treaty the church as a monolithic bloc according to those quotes would be. The Irish church maintained a long scholastic tradition. In Paris the church founded the (argueably) oldest surviving university.

Frankly the majority of problems people mention seem to stem from the destruction of the Roman economy, be it by barbarians or microbes. The Church, on balance, appears to be neutral at worst. It seems not to be the primary cause of technological loss, and actively preserved both knowledge and social constructs needed to acquire and disseminate new knowledge. Does it measure up to a modern institution devoted to spreading knowledge? No. Compared to its contemporary social institutions? Yes. Compared to antiquitious social institutions? Not particularly worse.

The idea that a 2000 year old institution is the reason for technological stagnation because it fails to live up to modern standards is BS. Interestingly enough when the Church was later taking a far more active role in science; technology progressed far more quickly (be it because of or in spite of the Church's influence).

[Ypoknons]

A great deal of the problems to do with tech stagnation in China came from the fact that whenever a new "dynasty" came into effect, much of the learnings of the last were destroyed for any number of reasons, mainly to re-establish control for the new rulers.

The Chinese were world-leaders at book-burnings for a long time.

Confucius was a big problem (ouch that hurts to say). He emphasis on "looking at the past" did not help technological development, his disdain for merchants forstalled the foreign trade impeteus that could have prevented a overall stangantion due to isolation.

[SirNitram]

In what delusional realm do you exist in, Tharkun? Oh yes, the one of apologists.

Ahh where would a SN post be without the ever present well poisoning.

I dunno. I'm just insulting you because you're an ignorant twat.

The transfer of technoloy east to west was occouring during Rome, as was a standardized language.

News to me. As I recall the Eastern and Western halves of the empire spoke mutually unitelligable languages (not to mention the spawning of numerous pidgins and divergent dialects). The Eastern Roman Empire which endured until the fifteenth century did not as quickly transfer technology as the Italian states, the Iberian states, or even the Holy Roman Empire, France, and England.

But let's play along and ignore the linguistic divide, what technology was transferred from east to west by the Eastern Roman Empire? Pick your top half dozen examples.

Pre-split, you dishonest twat.

The stagnation was because the Church was the bastion of learning.

Stagnation had already set in long before the end of pagan scholarship. Personally I think the massive sacking, looting, pillaging, and slaughter endemic to the mass migrations and subsequent territorial disputes had just a bit more to do with it.

Of course you do. You've decided the matter already and are just sitting here to hear yourself type.

It couldn't possibly be because the only path to learning was to join the church. That didn't, in any way, restrict the propagation of knowledge. In Tharkun-universe, this is not a problem. Here in the real world? Well, that's a bit of a problem, restricting who can get education. As we've seen in the modern age, matters improve when more people get it.

They were not pushing for the return of plumbing or indoor heating. They were not pushing for new technologies. The Roman Empire pushed because it was necessary for an Empire.

Okay, cite a dozen examples from the post-Justinian Eastern Roman Empire.

Why retrict myself into your strawman? The unified empire is what I have been talking about.

Hence why it won't work if money is tied up in Cathedrals and your best thinkers are theologists instead of engineers.

Wouldn't it have been a shame if Newton were a theologian? Oh wait, nevermind. In actuality the Cathedrals contributed greatly to European engineering and science.

Towards building more cathedrals. Not towards returning to the level of sanitation, road building, etc.

The point is that society has goals and there are many ways to acheive them. It doesn't matter if the goal is to build temples to the dominant religion, defend the state, or enrich the powerful; the underlying principle is that how these goals are acheived has much to do with technological progress. Rome had the manpower and money that it could throw men at a problem. If you need water pumped out of a mine, well you just had enough men working at it to pump the water out. If you needed a strong army to defend the borders you could invest in very expensive new metallurgical techniques, or you could just increase the pay of the army and use more manpower. The initial investment cost to implement technology has always been among the main impediments to advancement; given that payout may be decades away most Romans were not willing to invest in the technological solution over the manpower one.

The pump water is rather hilarious; this is the Empire that built the Aqueducts. They engineered when it was profitable to do such. Did stagnation set in? Yes, of course. This has been said. Only a strawmanning retard.. That'd be you.. would over-focus on this. Incidentally, it's funny how what you attribute to the loss of knowledge and stagnation, happens to all stem from the decline, fracture, and fall of the Empire.

The Empire went as far as it would without things changing to give it the impetus to not throw men at the problem. Perhaps if you were, you know, literate, you'd have seen my first post addressing that.

Of course, it would be tricky to speed things up too much, because while the steam engine existed in the Roman Empire, there was no impetus to develop it. Slaves existed, for one thing. But one could engineer situations.

But no, let's pretend such things don't exist.

[LordShaithis]

Blah, blah, blah.

I'll tell you what could have been invented sooner: The sandwich.

We've been eating meat and bread for how long?

[tharkûn]

It couldn't possibly be because the only path to learning was to join the church. That didn't, in any way, restrict the propagation of knowledge. In Tharkun-universe, this is not a problem. Here in the real world? Well, that's a bit of a problem, restricting who can get education. As we've seen in the modern age, matters improve when more people get it.

Right is was terribly superior when only the obscenely rich could afford education The Church didn't become the only source of education by active design, but rather because the invading barbarians destroyed and dismantled all competitors.

Why retrict myself into your strawman? The unified empire is what I have been talking about.

Okay let's hear your top 10 examples post Constantine.

Towards building more cathedrals. Not towards returning to the level of sanitation, road building, etc.

Toward elementary understanding of physics. Not to mention that techniques developed for Cathedrals were directly applied to fortifications and suddenly were spread across Europe by virtue of necessity.

The pump water is rather hilarious; this is the Empire that built the Aqueducts.

You do realize that the Aqueducts tapped surface water and that the Romans did use manual labor to drain their mines which was afterall the actual use steam engines found that brought about their adoption as working machine (rather than curiosities)?

Incidentally, it's funny how what you attribute to the loss of knowledge and stagnation, happens to all stem from the decline, fracture, and fall of the Empire.

The Empire was already stagnating before it broke apart. The Eastern Empire, which was still huge and powerful still stagnated.

Likewise unlike you I'm taking into account the problems of the Chinese, Mughals, Ottomans, Andeans, Mesoamericans, Russians, etc. Stable or contracting empires rarely seem to progress technologicly. Likewise I'm taking into account the relatively rapid technological progress in Greece, India, early Rome, Italy, the Netherlands, etc. When manpower intensive solutions exist, there tends to be little impetus to make the up front investment into new technology; when manpower intensive solutions are not realistic, historicly more resources were devoted to technological solutions.

I have yet to see anything in any posts where the "Dark Ages" Church actively retarded technological growth, rather than you know doing the whole preserve and disseminate knowledge thing. The worst anyone has come up with is that it sucks in comparison to modern systems; nothing to show it to be terribly worse than contemporary institutions.

[SirNitram]

It couldn't possibly be because the only path to learning was to join the church. That didn't, in any way, restrict the propagation of knowledge. In Tharkun-universe, this is not a problem. Here in the real world? Well, that's a bit of a problem, restricting who can get education. As we've seen in the modern age, matters improve when more people get it.

Right is was terribly superior when only the obscenely rich could afford education The Church didn't become the only source of education by active design, but rather because the invading barbarians destroyed and dismantled all competitors.

No one's claiming it did, you dishonest twat. We're emphasizing that the Church being in control of education and doing nothing to change that stagnated things.

Why retrict myself into your strawman? The unified empire is what I have been talking about.

Okay let's hear your top 10 examples post Constantine.

Let's hear you stop artificially restricting the choices, trolling fucktard.

Towards building more cathedrals. Not towards returning to the level of sanitation, road building, etc.

Toward elementary understanding of physics. Not to mention that techniques developed for Cathedrals were directly applied to fortifications and suddenly were spread across Europe by virtue of necessity.

Cathedrals, for all their architectural wonder, were not the only way to reach understanding of physics, as much as one attempts to construct flimsy bullshit.

And yes. They worked out more ways to fortify. I notice how you've got nothing on public works.

The pump water is rather hilarious; this is the Empire that built the Aqueducts.

You do realize that the Aqueducts tapped surface water and that the Romans did use manual labor to drain their mines which was afterall the actual use steam engines found that brought about their adoption as working machine (rather than curiosities)?

Have you actually read the thread where I address this point? Or are you just being a trolling fuck as usual?

Incidentally, it's funny how what you attribute to the loss of knowledge and stagnation, happens to all stem from the decline, fracture, and fall of the Empire.

The Empire was already stagnating before it broke apart. The Eastern Empire, which was still huge and powerful still stagnated.

Are you literate? I specifically include the decline.

Likewise unlike you I'm taking into account the problems of the Chinese, Mughals, Ottomans, Andeans, Mesoamericans, Russians, etc. Stable or contracting empires rarely seem to progress technologicly. Likewise I'm taking into account the relatively rapid technological progress in Greece, India, early Rome, Italy, the Netherlands, etc. When manpower intensive solutions exist, there tends to be little impetus to make the up front investment into new technology; when manpower intensive solutions are not realistic, historicly more resources were devoted to technological solutions.

Congratulations, retard: You've reached the conclusion I pointed out in my first post in this thread.

I have yet to see anything in any posts where the "Dark Ages" Church actively retarded technological growth, rather than you know doing the whole preserve and disseminate knowledge thing. The worst anyone has come up with is that it sucks in comparison to modern systems; nothing to show it to be terribly worse than contemporary institutions.

Nice strawman. If that's pointed at me, you'll note I speak of stagnation, not regression. Regression was quite limited and due to the decline, fracture, and collapse of the empire. The problem is the ensuing stagnation made this worse.

But go ahead. Continue your pathetic misdirections and artificial narrowing of choices.

[LordShaithis]

Self-adhesive stamps. Those should have some sooner.

[Dark Hellion]

We're emphasizing that the Church being in control of education and doing nothing to change that stagnated things.

No, it didn't. That is a simply idiotic claim to make given where all major philosophical developments of modern science came from. I'll give you one guess... Ding Ding Ding, the Dark Ages church. The Churchmen of the Pre-counter-reformation period where the paragons of learning. It is only the WASP history of America that attempts to devalue the Church that we aren't taught of the major scientific contributions of the church until 200-300 level Philosophy courses. And before you call me an apologist, don't. It isn't apoligism to give credit where it is do. The Church had the same problem of any monolithic hierarchal organization in that it eventually stagnated on its own power, but when it was fresh and vibrant, it made the major leaps that changes technology from an amusement to a way of life.

[Edi]

Are you seriously suggesting that the plague epidemics had no impact on the amount of knowledge retained or the proportion of educated people compared to the rest of the population?

I'm noting that historical records indicate that these universities continued to function in spite of plagues and that the higher education system did not collapse.

Continued to function, yes, but a lot of knowledge was lost nonetheless. After the collapse of the Roman Empire and again after the Black Death there was a narrowing of the knowledge base and a lot of things had to be rediscovered.

Let's see, Inquisition

Which one? The Medieval one was instituted in 1184, was more lenient than secular inquiries, and I can recall no scientific cases put before it.

The Spanish inquisition was created in 1478 by Ferdinand, possibly to off his creditors without having pay up, and was actively opposed by the Pope until the Turks attacked Otranto and Ferdinand made his support conditional upon being given full control of the inquisition.

The Portuguese Inquisition and Roman inquisitions were founded in 1536 and 1542 respectively.

Of those only the Medieval one is remotely close to the "dark ages" and it was neither anti-science (as far as I am aware it was a purely theological matter), nor particularly bloody (as compared various massacres carried out by the Muslims, Chinese, or Mongols).

None of those had to be particularly anti-science because most things science was exploring have something related about them in the Bible, which made a lot of question immediately theological. Nevermind that the church also regarded certain Greek philosophers as pretty strong authorities on worldly matters, so when anything contradicting them arose, they did not want to hear of it even if it was correct.

Biblical literalism

Modern reactionary philosophy. Catholic doctrine at the time was for inerrancy, not literalism.

Inerrancy, then, though those two often amounted to the same thing as the Galileo incident quite well demonstrates. He was persecuted based on literalist Bible interpretation, for example.

persecution of anything that dared question the superstitious dogma prevalent at the time.

You say that like it that wasn't a common trait among all peoples at the time or prior. Socrates was afterall sentenced to death by pagans, the Muslims killed all manner of apostates who doubted Mohammed, and of course the fun Chinese killings arising out of the Konfucian, Doaist, and Buddhist intrigues.

So what do these red herrings have to do with the fact that the church had some fucking backward ideas, especially after being decimated by the Black Death? Is the barbarity of others an excuse for them?

Why don't you take a look at the Hendrickson quotes about what happened to the church in the aftermath of the Black Death?

I did. He is in error, or at least treaty the church as a monolithic bloc according to those quotes would be. The Irish church maintained a long scholastic tradition. In Paris the church founded the (argueably) oldest surviving university.

Within the context of the book, it is understandable. He covers the effects of the pandemics briefly, which leaves no space to explore regional particulars of the church. After all, he focuses on the rats.

Frankly the majority of problems people mention seem to stem from the destruction of the Roman economy, be it by barbarians or microbes. The Church, on balance, appears to be neutral at worst. It seems not to be the primary cause of technological loss, and actively preserved both knowledge and social constructs needed to acquire and disseminate new knowledge. Does it measure up to a modern institution devoted to spreading knowledge? No. Compared to its contemporary social institutions? Yes. Compared to antiquitious social institutions? Not particularly worse.

Can't argue with this much, but it's notable that after the Black Death, it didn't take long for the church to split up in the Reformation, and it was notably over institutional corruption and categorical refusal to discuss new ideas.

The idea that a 2000 year old institution is the reason for technological stagnation because it fails to live up to modern standards is BS. Interestingly enough when the Church was later taking a far more active role in science; technology progressed far more quickly (be it because of or in spite of the Church's influence).

I'd say in spite of it. The church was, and is still, quite reactionary toward anything that is seen as contradicting their teachings. It goes without saying that most people were religious or at least professed to be so a couple of hundred years ago, but most of those with the scientific bent were NOT clergymen. Even now atheism is merely tolerated, if that. Educational emphasis in the periods we are talking about was mostly on religious instruction, some philosophy and history. Not all that much on critical thinking or examination of our surroundings. You can bet that that sort of things tend to put the brakes on scientific progress.

Edi