[Fyron]

Starting an OT thread is redundant. The original thread is already OT, and has veered into several different topics already.

Even if you should find one, though, you will still have to show that the Church had no positive impact on knowledge production in the Middle Ages. This may be more difficult than you think. For one, the monasteries were repositories for many of the great classical texts of mathematics (Euclid, Pythagorus), medicine (Aristotle, Galen), philosophy (Plato, Aristotle again), and astronomy (Hipparchus, Ptolemy). And the thinkers of the Middle Ages were church trained, because that was the only real source of education.

The Church refused to acknowledge new ideas that conflicted with its views, which is how it slowed down advancement, not education. And again, I was talking about the European Dark Ages, not really about the time of Galileo. The EDA were over before he was ever born.

The 'dark ages' in Europe were more the result of the collapse of the Roman Empire and with much war and food shortages, people were more concerned with the basics of survival than 'science' or technology. However, the Chinese and Arabs were doing just fine in these regards and developed lots of new stuff.

Yes, and I explicitly stated that several times during the discussion. Although, the Chinese did not make that many advancements during the period of time that the European Dark Ages Lasted, they just did not lose a lot of the basics like Europe did when Rome collapsed.

But it did not really hold back 'science'...it was more of people's convictions to the old school of though (i.e. Aristotle, etc).

Yes, and the Church made very effort to preserve those old schools of thought.

[ March 10, 2003, 04:47: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]