Science in the “dark ages” 30 Jun 2009 God struck down my internet last night, or I’d have posted this sooner: Thony Christie, who has guest blogged here, now has his own blog, The Renaissance Mathematicus. Responding to a comment on the Accommodationism thread, Thony takes down the claim that religion caused the dark ages, when it was more likely that the marauding northern tribes, internal political conflict, and a breakdown in the economic and administrative functions of the empire caused the dark ages, which nevertheless managed to generate the Carolingian empire, a time of learning and political stability in the 8th and 9th centuries. That notwithstanding, Thony shows how the “dark ages” were, like most periods of history, a time of learning and science, and moreover how religion played a critical role in its progress and dissemination. Go read it. General Science History Philosophy Religion Science
Ethics and Moral Philosophy Peter Jensen – religious bigot 13 Apr 2010 Archbishop Peter Jensen is living proof of the old saw that religion should be a private matter. Every time he opens his mouth in public, he just exposes his bigotry against the nonreligious even further. Now he is saying that teaching ethics to children should be stopped because it will… Read More
Cognition Thoughts on the Hard Problem 30 Jun 20201 Jul 2020 Most of you will already know that David Chalmers, the once-hirsute Australian philosopher of mind (only Rob Wilson seems to remain in the Hirsute Philosopher’s Club these days. God knows I never was) proposed what came to be known as the Hard Problem of Consciousness: The really hard problem of… Read More
Philosophy “I suffer not a woman to teach” 9 Dec 2012 Christian attitudes to women are well known. Ever since St Paul, in his best Elizabethan English, made the above comment (I Timothy 2:12), Christians have constrained women and their freedoms, always making them subordinate to an “owning” male – father, husband, or even grown sons. Christianity is not unique in this respect – Judaism,… Read More
Thank you kind sir for directing some traffic to my humble little baby bog. I have visitors! I have commentators (yes, commentators, plural)! I’m not writing into the void. Which all goes to prove that old adage, ‘it pays to be nice to gorillas’.
Outside of Europe the first Renaissance in knowledge came about as the result of the founding of a new religion Islam. Following the initial stage of very rapid expansion, in the 7th century, the Muslims of the Arabian peninsular realised that compared to the Indians, with whom they traded, they were very ignorant and uneducated and so they set about acquiring knowledge from the Indians, Chinese and Greeks, comparatively soon they built up their own systems of science. Ummm…so which was it? Was it the result of Islam, or the result of their perceived ignorance relative to their economic partners? During the 1950s, the United States perceived their ignorance relative to other countries, and began a big push for science education. Around the same time, MacArthyism began to take hold. Yes, they’re correlated. But that does not prove that MacArthyism is responsible for America’s scientific renaissance. However, despite the low level of this knowledge preservation it provided the necessary fundament on which to build when Europe in its turn started to import knowledge from the Muslims in the 11th and 12th centuries, the people doing the importing (read translation) being all Christian scholars. Far from being the cause of the loss of scientific knowledge in the so-called dark ages, religion was the one thing that kept that knowledge alive and fuelled its Renaissance in the High Middle Ages. “Necessary fundament”? Just how much knowledge is “necessary” for this fundament? My guess is that, in hindsight, whatever amount of knowledge was preserved, regardless of what size it is, could be called the “necessary fundament”, because whatever knowledge resulted in later times would, by necessity, have to be built upon whatever came before. I think this is an example of what Gould called “retrospective coronation”. I’m not arguing that religion “caused” the dark ages. But I am arguing that religion did not “cause” the preservation of science in either Europe or the Islamic world. You can’t have it both ways.
No historical event of any kind has one cause. In this case it can be down to many causes and influences. As to the affirmation of the consequent, it is I think accepted by all science historians that science did not get started until the rediscovery of neo-Platonic writings and the classical corpus. My personal explanation is that this set up problems – you cannot solve problems until you have them set up in an investigable manner. The legacy of the Greek learning did just that; and as early as the 10thC, European scholars were applying experiment (both actual and Gedankens) to these problems, particularly those of Aristotle’s physics. By the way, I’m working up a post of whether or not Aristotle did think things fell at speeds proportionally to their weight. Turns out to be an interesting question indeed.
I find the ethnology and anthropology of the early Muslim world rather fascinating. Thony draws attention to it and its relationship with the development of Muslim culture. They took the study of such things seriously and it appears to make a difference in there thought with regard to myth and legend. “But ere that we clear our mind from all those accidental circumstances which deprive most men, from all causes which are liable to make people blind against the truth, e.g inveterate custom, party- spirit, rivalry, being addicted to one’s passions, the desire to gain influence etc….. Era of the Creation.- The first and most famous of the beginnings of antiquity is the fact of the creation of mankind. But among those who have a book of divine revelation, such as the Jews, Christians, Magians, and their various sects, there exists such a difference of opinion as to the nature of this fact, and as to the question how to date from it, the like of which is not allowable for eras. Everything, the knowledge of which is connected with the beginning of creation and with the history of bygone generations, is mixed up with falsifications and myths, because it belongs to a far remote age; because a long interval separates us therefrom, and because the student is incapable of keeping it in memory, and of fixing it (so as to preserve it from confusion).” Abu Raihan. The Chronicle of Ancient Nations,11 th cen.