Could any inventions have come sooner?

[SirNitram]

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.

Yes, when you control education, you tend to control development of such things. Do you have more than tautologies, you imbecile?

[Surlethe]

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.

Got any examples?

[drachefly]

One might think the stapler sure could have been invented sooner, but it actually requires considerable metallurgy. Similarly for paper clips and ballpoint pens...

[Hillary]

Self-adhesive stamps. Those should have some sooner.

Spot on. I also think they could have invented the pull-open tin can a bit sooner.

I think the invention was held back by those shady tin-opener barons. It's a conspiracy I tells ya!!!

[Dark Hellion]

The church of the Dark Ages and until the counter revolution operating strictly under the Augustinian code. While the bible was correct on the issues of spirit and morality, science was left as a purely secular institution. The church did not have time to regulate science when it had so many other worries, like the encroachment of the Moors and other Muslims.
The Church was also instrumental in the shift from tribal society of the barbarian hordes of the Roman era to the nationalism that followed and is used to today. Without groups like the Holy Roman Empire, and the Churchs support of Monarchs over groups of land, we would not have the ability to devop the ability to have a large number of coexisting politically and financially powerful nations.
Philosophically, the simple fact of using the bible as a major source meant having to put some holes in the Aristotelian thinking that had dominated all of science for the previous thousand years. And the second there were major holes you could get things like the Copernican Revolution, which while itself didn't have a large deal of support by the Church because it proposed that the sun was the symbolic representation of God and thus the world should revolve around Him (thus contradicting with the theological elements of the bible that the church controlled) the idea of the earth revolving around the sun solved major astonomical problems that many church astronomers took as a major step for science. The Dominicans where, by Galileos time, predominately Copernicans, and the strength of the Copernican theory for most of the time before Galileo's trial was provided from within the Church by the Church astronomers. By Galileo's trial, the Aristotelian Geo-Centric model had all but been abandon except by Reactionaries, and either the Copernican Helio-centric or the Tychonian geo-centric models (a model which does solve problems of retrograde without major use of epicyclical motion just like the Copernican model as proposed by Kepler).
If you want to propose that the Church slowed development, the burden of proof is on you. I can provide more examples of important developments that were impossible under the political, philosophical, or socio-economic systems of the Empire, but where capable of being put into place under the leadership of the Church. Could an organization capable of doing such things faster than the Church exist, perhaps, but science needed a shaking up, and the fall of the Roman Empire provided this, and the Church attempted for centuries to keep its interference to a minimum. If that isn't satisfactory for the only structure capable of filling the power vacuum of the collapse of one of the most powerful organized governments to exist on earth, I don't know what the hell you are trying to get at.

[tharkûn]

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.

In other words you have nothing. The church actively preserved knowledge, spread literacy, and maintained a common language; but because they failed to live up to modern expectations; they were the ones hurting technological progress, not the guys with torches.

Let's hear you stop artificially restricting the choices,

Don't be a dumbass. You maintain that Rome was advancing technological progress rather than stagnating prior to collapse. Please provide some evidence of this. The Eastern Empire which had hundreds of years as a major power (far stronger than the early Republic) failed to advance technology significantly. The late unified Empire failed to advance technology significantly. When I ask you to list examples from the period in which you allege Rome was advancing technology, you piss and moan that asking for examples after 306 AD is unfair.

Get over yourself, if you maintain that technological transfer and innovation was rolling steadily along after 306, then find your balls and post some examples. If you beleive that the problem occurred before that date, please tell me how in hell a persecuted Christian church had any influence on the situation.

Cathedrals, for all their architectural wonder, were not the only way to reach understanding of physics

No, but they were a way.

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.

When did stagnation begin? Please provide examples of technological advancement just prior to your start date.

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.

That depended on the subject. The big problem wasn't discussing such things, but telling your questions to the uneducated laity.

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.

Church theology changes quite dramaticly from the Dark Ages to 1600's. In any event Galileo is a more complex case than merely his bad science. Interestingly enough the example of backwards church attitudes comes at a time of extremely rapid technological progress.

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.

As far as its effects on science, the church's scholasticism is extremely important and beneficial. While local clergy in plague affected areas may well have changed attitudes, the church as a whole remained the largest sponsor of scholasticism and science in Europe at the time.

Is the barbarity of others an excuse for them?

"Backward" is a relative term. Compared to their contemporaries the "Dark Ages" Church was not terribly backward. They had stupid ideas, so what? The Muslims, Konfucians, Shinto, etc. had their own.

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.

Incorrect. Scientificly minded invidiuals were overwhelming in the clergy during the dark ages. For instance the western inventers of precussion drilling were monks, modern heliocentrism comes from a Polish priest, and perhaps the best encyclopedia of the era (including Islamic and Chinese sources) was published by St. Isodore. It takes an exceedingly long time before science outside of the Church has any standing at all.

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.

So? Most Islamic education was religious instruction, some philosophy and history. Roman education was rhetoric, history, and some philosophy. Chinese education was philosophy, ethics, and history. It seems to be a historic inevitability for populations under these conditions to come up short on critical thinking.

For all its foibles the Church did preserve a huge amount of classical knowledge. It also spent huge fortunes supporting astronomers, engineers, and others. I really don't think one can say that the Church is what was holding back technology and be accurate.

[CoyoteNature]

I like to think of prehistory, say what if iron metallergy had been invented earlier, or farming, or writing.

Seem to recall something about the Babylonians using batteries, only it wasn't for power but for removing rust or some such(its dim so I'm really not sure).

Also remember something about light bulbs in Egypt, something about burn marks on the pyramids (and yes its dim, so I'm not terribly offended if I'm wrong).


Other alternatives, like what if there had been horse species in the Americas, the development that would follow would have allowed for significant development.


In the real history of course, the Indians ate all the horses; started developing civilization around about the 1100s, depending on how you count what was civilization.

Probably because of a lack of a domestic mammal, and the one real mammal they did have, i.e. the llama was obstructed by geological boundaries.

The Aztec Empire for example did develop the wheel, only it was a toy, very little use without anything to pull.

[anybody_mcc]

Church was often supporting scientific development in Dark Ages : Ockham , and one of popes de facto introduced arab ciphers. But it is practically impossible to decide if they were positive or negative force ( in Dark Ages , later surely negative ).
Another thing that might be interesting for tharkun/SirNitram discussion is that many believe that one of the greatest incentives for the cultural development of the West was destruction of the Constantinople which was followed by great wave of scholars taking refuge in Italy ( taking books and of course their knowledge with them ).
As for the Arabs , they were in great position , having contact with Indians and after they conquered great parts of Eastern Roman Empire they got libraries full of ancient greek and roman texts.

[Straha]

To get back to the original topic, the greatest single invention which could have come about and saved the whole world YEARS of later pain and anguish would have been the Printing Press. If that had been invented, and it's not that long of a shot to think it could have been, anytime during the Roman Republic or Empire (before around 300 AD) the vast increase in ease of transference of knowledge and the creation of new books would have allowed humanity not only to work on the same idea contemporaniously across the mediteranian but would have also allowed for better long term knowledge (the destruction of manuscripts from that area is obscene) and greater political freedom, and also, possibly, greater political stability. In any event if you want one invention that would have saved humanity from a Dark Ages, you'd want the printing press.

[CoyoteNature]

Actually I think the printing press, or a early version of it was invented all the way back in Greek times.

Just never found a use for it at the time.

That'd be a interesting what if, what if the printing press had been invented in Greek times, say during Alexandria's Empire?

[Dark Hellion]

The question is not in the innovations being invented earlier, but in them being utilized. This is the real difference between Roman scientific methodology and the methodology that developed during the Dark Ages. For the Romans (who stole their methodology and culture from the Greeks) science was not used for the betterment of life. Architecture wasn't even recognized as part of science, thus despite having aquiducts, the Romans saw no reason to use scientific reasoning to furthur improve their infrastructure. With the collapse of the Empire, the need to use technologies gained from scientific research became paramount. The only thing that stopped Dark Ages kingdoms from building the civil works of the Empire was the economics, thus they had to find more efficient ways of doing such things.