[OT] Plato's Pub and Philosophical Society

[Fyron]

First, you keep making a claim without any support material, while others are telling you you are wrong and using support material.

No, they do not have support material. I have seen them post no supporting material.

When other people offer counterpoints, you just restate your previous point which has no bearing on the new points.

The only counterpoints where I did that were when they posted something that I had already said or talked about earlier in the discussion.

[ March 10, 2003, 06:05: Message edited by: Imperator Fyron ]

[Narrew]

Ha, this is something that I have thought about a few times.
I do agree that Religion did hamper "Growth". True, they did copy selected "texts" that they deemed worthy, but the peasants were NOT encouraged to be literate, if they were, the Churches power base would weaken since they were the only ones that could give the word of GOD (which that was just their point). All in all it came down to POWER, the Church throttled freethinking, there were many good things that they did, but the bad/evil/ignorant things surely made up for it, such as the Crusades or the Inquisitions.

I think of the Great Library in Alexandria which had many documents from all over the known world. One thing was a simple working steam power device. What would have been if the library had not burned down?

I do think that we can look at history and draw more than one conclusion, hence the conflict of opinions (at least we wont go to the stake for them). If we do look back over the Last 2000 years, the Last 300 years have been amazing and the Last 80/90 more than astonishing (of course we all know that).

That all said, I am with Fyron. The Church was not everything in the power base of Europe, but it was a major part of it and the things it did to stifle knowledge (and I contend anything other than what THEY thought was true knowledge was ignored) had a long Lasting effect on Growth, otherwise how come when America won its freedom did we really start to see growth?

[Ruatha]

Didn't the monks erase Aristoteles works and use the pergament for prayer books instead?
Thereby eradicating valuable knowledge, some of which has been independetly discovered so late as in the 20:th century.

[Captain Kwok]

Originally posted by Ruatha:
Didn't the monks erase Aristoteles works and use the pergament for prayer books instead?
Thereby eradicating valuable knowledge, some of which has been independetly discovered so late as in the 20:th century.

They did not. In fact, they copied his works preferentially because of their divine implications, i.e., that everything in the universe is striving for its perfect state, etc...

If we are talking about the European dark ages ~500-1400 then war/invasion/disease were all primary causes of technological stagnation, not the church! The church didn't really start to take control until the 1200s etc, and that was after the Europeans were able to manage a bit of stability. The church in 1500-1600s is more what you guys are referring to - but even to some degree, it was the thinkers who were stuck on Aristotle and not open to new possibilities that kept new thinkers from making a bigger splash then they did...

[Mephisto]

Originally posted by Narrew:
...such as the Crusades or the Inquisitions.

You see, Inquisition is just a good point to proof that the world isn't black and white.

You thinks "fair trail" is good thing? Who thinks the sentence "innocent until proved guilty" is a good one?
Well, you might be surprised but this fundaments of our (western) societies were laid down by the Inquisition. It's highest principle was that under no circumstances a innocent person could every be convicted. If there wasn't 100% proof of the guilt you had to release the accused person. And the only 100% proof was a confession. So, without a confession by the criminal himself you had to release him. I think this is quite remarkable and a very high standard.
Well, the same system created to prevent the punishment of the innocent let to torture. Without confession no conviction so they tortured you to get it. The system itself was build to give you security and ended in horror. The faults of us humans...
But after we abandoned torture it became the fundament of your punitive law systems�

[Mephisto]

Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:

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First, you keep making a claim without any support material, while others are telling you you are wrong and using support material.

No, they do not have support material. I have seen them post no supporting material.

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And neither are you, Fyron.
Science and education were preserved in the Church during the EDA in the monasteries. Without the sanctuary of the monasteries and Church buildings most if not all of the ancient wisdoms from the Greeks and Romans would have been destroyed. And, finally, don't just forget the worldly rulers. Do you think they had any interest in educating the pawns, their minions?

[Chronon]

Well, this thread generated alot more discussion than I anticipated. It's good to know that many people are still interested in history. Perhaps this new thread isn't so redundant after all?

Tesco - Good idea, but since I would be on Fyron's team (if we're defining it along religious lines I'm definitely not a true believer - more of an agnostic really) we'd have to play the AI, and that just wouldn't be much fun.

Fyron - I thought that I did provide plenty of supporting examples on my points. Could you be more specific on the types of evidence you would like to see?

Narrew and Fyron - I won't argue that the world view of the Middle Ages seems somewhat limited from our modern perspective. But as Kwok has argued, the reasons for this go beyond the Church. Are you arguing that without the Church there would have arisen a kind of spontaneous Scientific Revolution?

[Unknown_Enemy]

Nice topic. Here are my 2 cents.
(dark Age timeset : 300 - 1500 for this post)



At the beginning of the Dark Age, the WHOLE of Europe was invaded by barbarians. Some of these, the Francs, conquered the roman province of Gaulle and settled down. Most of the barbarian rulers were completely illiterates. Do you remember Charles Martel (Charlemagne) ? Well he was not able to write his name, but he was the very first powerful King to adopt Christianism.

It would be a dream to think knowledge was transmitted in the population. Serfs were not much more than slaves, they did not have the leisure to learn read/write. Knowledge was only transmitted between priests and monks who all learned latin. Until Charlemagne, almost all the ruling nobles were illiterate.

So, until Charlemagne, there is no question that knowledge salvaged from the roman Empire had been saved by the Churche.
Sometime, you even had improvement, but it was very slow. For example, until 1095, everybody in Europe (spain excepted, but it was Arab...)used to count with roman numbers (I, II, III, IV etc..). Only a handful of monks in europe were able to do a complexe multiplication or division. And if you do not believe it, just try to compute 52384.124 * 9145687.1235 using roman numbers.
Good luck.
Then went the first crusade. Then went a bunch of monks who came back from the holy land bringing knowledge of arabs numbers. In less than a century, every single idiot in europe became able to work out the basic operations using arab numbers.

That was for the church.
Speaking of it, which church are we speaking of ? High level church ? Or lowly monks in their covent ?
High ranking in the christian church were often coming from noble families. I would suggest everyone to try reading historical report on reign of Hugue Capet (a few years before 1000), and you'll see noble warriors continuously betraying each other, with the help of some of their family members in the ranks of the church. At that time, it was not unknown to have an eveque or such murdered by an enemy noble.

Most of the high church was about politics and power. But for this topics, what is interesting is the low level monks and priest, who has been the true gardians of both the faith and knowledge.

So Fyron, I have to disagree with you, the Church was tremendous in gaining and keeping track of human knowledge during the dark age. Simply put it, the time was not right for big advances despite the Church.

[Alpha Kodiak]

Originally posted by Unknown_Enemy:
Speaking of it, which church are we speaking of ? High level church ? Or lowly monks in their covent ?
High ranking in the christian church were often coming from noble families. I would suggest everyone to try reading historical report on reign of Hugue Capet (a few years before 1000), and you'll see noble warriors continuously betraying each other, with the help of some of their family members in the ranks of the church. At that time, it was not unknown to have an eveque or such murdered by an enemy noble.

Most of the high church was about politics and power. But for this topics, what is interesting is the low level monks and priest, who has been the true gardians of both the faith and knowledge.

Unknown_Enemy has brought up a very important point. Once the church was no longer oppressed, but rather became the seat of power, it attracted those who seek power, rather than just those who truly followed the teachings of Christ.

To this day there is a dichotomy between those who use the institutional church as a source of political power and those for whom the church is a place of fellowship with others who also seek to follow Christ. It is interesting that the only people that Christ was recorded as having harsh words for were the religious leaders who put extra burdens upon their followers.

Given that dichotomy, my response to this thread is that the power structure of the church did do things that hindered scientific advancement, as well as perpetrate other embarrassments such as inquisitions and crusades. On the other hand, the underlying structure of the church was instrumental in both the preservation of knowledge and education, both of which provided foundations for future scientific advancement. Thus the issue is not really black and white at all, but rather a mix of good and bad. I do not feel qualified to comment on whether the good or the bad is of more significance.

[Fyron]

Originally posted by Mephisto:

quote:

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Originally posted by Imperator Fyron:

quote:

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First, you keep making a claim without any support material, while others are telling you you are wrong and using support material.

No, they do not have support material. I have seen them post no supporting material.

---

And neither are you, Fyron.
Science and education were preserved in the Church during the EDA in the monasteries. Without the sanctuary of the monasteries and Church buildings most if not all of the ancient wisdoms from the Greeks and Romans would have been destroyed. And, finally, don't just forget the worldly rulers. Do you think they had any interest in educating the pawns, their minions?

---

I think you people have misunderstood me. I never once said nor implied that the Church was the only factor. Of course other things were influences. What I said was that the Curch stifled new advancements. Of course the monastaries preserved old documents. I never once said they did not, or said anything that is affected by that fact. You do not get new advancements simply by preserving ancient texts. After the facts began overwhelming the Church's dogma, these texts were used to restore long lost knowledge. But, this still is not qualified as a new advancement.

Fyron - I thought that I did provide plenty of supporting examples on my points. Could you be more specific on the types of evidence you would like to see?

My point was that you did not cite any sources for your claims, which some people seem to think is only a problem when I make Posts.

Narrew and Fyron - I won't argue that the world view of the Middle Ages seems somewhat limited from our modern perspective. But as Kwok has argued, the reasons for this go beyond the Church. Are you arguing that without the Church there would have arisen a kind of spontaneous Scientific Revolution?

No, I am arguing that the Church's actions of clinging to old (false) beliefs about the nature of the world prolonged the European Dark Ages because questioning the Church was heresy. How can you come up with new ideas when you are branded as a heretic for doing so? If the Catholic Church was not there, there would have been a different Church that would have done just about the same exact thing.

It would be a dream to think knowledge was transmitted in the population.

Of course it would. I have not seen anyone argue this so far.