Were the dark ages a setback for science?

I came across this graph:

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And I dont think that is true at all. For one, all pre-renanissance 'science' were more or less non-collaborating, independant and often mislead and mistaken attempts. Yes we have the insights of the mathematical geniuses and some medical discoveries, but the primary achievements of early cultures were politics, architechture and argriculture - not actual science as we see it today, which was set up after the renanissance.

So my question is this. What is the dark ages hadn't occured? Did the dark ages provide a "omg, we better focus on progress" kind of impetus to the renanissance or did it do irreparably harm science, technology and the progress of humanity? What would have happened if the dark ages never happened?

 

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Then there might have been the "enlightened" era instead!

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That graph suggests we would be advanced equal to about 350 years in the future. That wouldn't really be true, would it?

 

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It might have but there's really no way to tell what could have been done since it wasn't done. It's all speculation, to me, and made by hypothetical methods.

 

But whether or not the dark ages had any effect, positive or negative, on the scientific revolution is a valid question, no? Is there any data on this issue?

 

It's simple speculation, just like any alternative history fiction is. We could have continued upwards, or there could have been a later dark ages, or even worse.

I remember on one of Sagan's Cosmos episodes, he was talking about the Library of Alexandria, its destruction, and the unknown loss of information. He speculated himself that had it not occurred, we could be flying ships to the stars now, with Greek names on their sides. Of course, we could easily have advanced to greater weaponry earlier, and then brought about virtual extinction too. It's hard to say really.

But...the Dark Ages did tremendously slow our advancement. But some information was also preserved as well. We didn't have to start from zero. Renaissance after all means revival, so there were parts and pieces that remained that were built upon to get to the Enlightenment period.

 

It is a valid question which cannot realistically be answered by any factual answers but only speculation as to the consequences. It is like asking if Albert Einstein wasn't born would physics be any different. The question cannot be answered but only speculated about because that time-line didn't historically happen.

 

Good for you. I don't agree with it either.

The biggest problem with ancient science was probably that it was largely speculative, natural philosophy as opposed to natural science (in the post 17'th century sense). There wasn't a great deal of experimentation. Theorizing was generally qualitative, founded upon philosophical ideas. Apart from some people like Archimedes, whose style of reasoning didn't really catch on, there wasn't a whole lot of mathematization or precise measurement.

In ancient and medieval times, natural philosophy was widely separated from the craft traditions. Builders, potters, metal workers, miners, military engineers and so on all had collections of techniques, recipes, rules of thumb, sometimes collected together into handbooks. A lot of it was fairly sophisticated, based on several thousand years of trial and error. But it was cook-book technology, with little theoretical understanding supporting it.

It was craftsman's technique. Theoreticians remained aloof and didn't like getting their hands dirty. They imagined that they were totally different kinds of people, engaged on a much higher pursuit into the basic nature of things. They were philosophers, not merely workmen.

It wasn't until the renaissance that we started to see the craft traditions coming together with and influencing the intellectuals. Painters stopped being workmen and became artists. After Giotto, they became Italian celebrities and we start hearing their names. Builders turned into famous architects, patronized by princes. There was a whole new sensibility, exemplified best by Leonardo and his notebooks.

With the introduction of cannons, engineers started thinking about aiming and trajectories, and we start seeing mathematically calculated ballistic graphs. That got people thinking about how gravity worked and about how fast things actually fell. Mathematics started grappling with instantaneous rates of change and started moving towards calculus. People started thinking about what forces were responsible for observed accelerations and tried to model everything mathematically.

As much as anything, it was the renaissance's coming together of workmen and intellectuals that was probably the biggest single impetus for the scientific revolution. You finally had guys like Galileo actually trying his own hand at constructing one of the newly invented telescopes and then turning it to the heavens, making more discoveries in a day than the medievals made in centuries.

Suddenly intellectuals all over Europe were doing experiments. It became a sign of cultural sophistication to display some... apparatus... in one's home. There was a glorious time where, before science had become entirely professionalized, when everyone was experimenting. It was actually considered cool and stylish.

Today we seem to be moving back towards a more medieval sensibility (in lots of ways). Science once again has been separated from the general public, and is something that's found only in universities and practiced only by PhD's. And inevitably, the rest of the public is gradually growing more ignorant about, estranged from and even hostile towards science. The main thrust of European philosophy since World War II has been strongly anti-science and very dismissive of what it calls 'instrumental reason'. (European intellectuals see breaking the grip of science as liberation.) In the US, we see Christian creationists becoming more and more strident.

It's hard to say. In a lot of ways, the rise of science was fortuitous, a matter of luck and the juxtiposition of the right elements at the right time. It isn't obvious to me that the ancient world would have ever developed science as we know it if Rome hadn't fallen. Maybe yes, maybe no. It would have required intellectual developments that may or may not have taken place.

One problem with the graph that you originally posted is that it seems to presume that there is a nice linear curving trajectory to progress (asymtotic!) and that the "dark ages" interrupted it. But in real life, I don't think that progress typically moves in a nice straight upward curve like that. It's more of a jerky stair-step graph. I think that the general trend may be upward, since we learn from those who went before us. But downward sloping periods are certainly possible and probably not uncommon in history as knowledge is lost and as the social conditions most conducive to thought and innovation cease to exist.

The collapse of Greco-Roman civilization did lead to a dramatic general decline in both material and intellectual conditions in the Mediterranean world. But it isn't clear that modern science was just around the corner if that hadn't happened.

 

Don't forget that China was researching and developing all sorts of new technologies while everyone else was in those Dark Ages. China had made the rudder, compass, printing press, paper, blast furnaces to make cast metal objects and on and on 100's of years before the West ever thought about inventing stuff like that. China was traveling around the world 1000 years before Christopher Columbus ever set sail and they did it in fleets of 400 foot long sailing vessels.

 

Agreed. It wasn't the rise of Christianity that stopped any potential "progress". It was the collapse of the Roman infrastructure.

 

I think the graph is just symbolic, since there's no actual way to plot knowledge or technology.

There may be some common misconceptions about when or why this era is called the Dark Ages, and the extent to which the implied darkness reflected an abandonment of natural philosophy and math. The idea itself dates back to the 14th century, reflecting a noticed dearth of western literature after the fall of Rome. Another misconception might be that Christianity impeded progress. To some extent I would argue that Christianity eventually led to the rise of scholasticism. Copyists in the monasteries may have been crucial to saving ancient manuscripts that shaped the future, such as Aristotle and Plato, and probably even preserved and encouraged science. Other events, such as the advances of the Huns, are more likely causes for any declines. Even the events leading to the rise of the Holy Roman Empire can be viewed through different lenses. For example, you could advocate that Charlemagne founded cornerstone legal principles, such as due process of law, which was a huge advancement (albeit elusive) even before some of the popes (and anti-popes) became tyrants. You might find evidence on the other side, for example, Augustine dismissed a round-earth theory, but even then I think his logic was OK since it was founded on the absurd notion that we were hanging from the inside of a spherical sky.

The destruction of the Library at Alexandria was actually a series of reported events over centuries. The big one by Caesar is said to have lost 70,000 volumes, but that was at the height of imperial Rome, long before the Dark Ages we normally think of. Also the fire supposedly spread accidentally from burning the Egyptian ships. (Who knows. I would presume it was malice.)

So I'm ambivalent as to this issue. I am more surprised by anti-science Christians in the modern era, with all of the facilities at their fingertips to deal with a mountain of evidence. To that extent, I could hardly blame medieval Christianity for little more than its complicity in assembling the book that the fundamentalists are prone to thump on when entering the realm of denialism.

 

They were a setback in the context of the question, but one shouldn't take that to mean that a secular setback wouldn't have happened if the influence of god-botherers was removed.

You might just as well ask if the earth would be a loose conglomerate of shattered rocks if christianity hadn't slowed down scientific progress. Maybe it would; maybe science would have progressed so fast that social changes couldn't keep up with it and someone would have invented an antimatter bomb for an insane warlord by now.

I find it very hard to believe that removing one organisation which had evolved to be a very effective tool for social control and psychological oppression would not result in a power vacuum which catalysed the genesis of an equally controlling and oppressive organisation.

That's how it usually happens.

I'd put it this way; the dark ages were an expression of innate human irrationality, religion is an expression of innate human irrationality, and without religion most people would find something else to be irrational about, making dark ages possible in a non-religious context too.

 

I think that can be a cyclic phenomenon of human development. We can see that the exact opposite is happening in the India subcontitent and the east asia regions. Perhaps the east and west would pull at each other till this patern equalises. I think the biggest reason for this phenomenon is that we largely consider the intelligencia to be representative of past ages and the rapid explosion of the population has lead to a large number of ignoramuses. Which leads me to question whether this is a cyclic phenomenon of a systemic result of too many humans with not enough infrastructure to make all of them experts. The current and ongoing collapse of the [belief in the] supernatural, which began about the time of nietzsche, hume and darwin and has gained momentum by the new atheist movement's biggest achievement - public debate over the truth of the supernatural - has lead to a partitioning of people into non-believers, agnostics, atheists, anti-theists, anti-religionists, scientists and moderates on one hand and literalists, fundamentists, creationists, dogmatists, theists and believers on the other - with both sides in a escalation of activity. What do you think about this?

Ps.
Science, knowledge and human society-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tysZObbs4Yo&feature=relmfu

Religious censorship and importance of free speech-
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UnC7Nwqw5Dg

Importance of scientific naturalism -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a0pjFr_vS5U&feature=relmfu
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ihYq2dGa29M

 

There have always been those can get a good education and those who could not. I blame those in charge of education for not giving the citizens all that they should be getting through education. Without a good education citizens will not be able to understand what is happening around them even when they could research things and find out themselves. Irresponsible leaders everywhere are bringing the educational system down in many countries, especially America, unless your wealthy and can buy a good education in a private school. No matter how large a population becomes the leaders must give the citizens the tools with which to work with to enable them to earn a good living and live a healthy and robust life.

Again if the educational system would be teaching properly and up to date material this cycle could be broken but alas those responsible to do that seem to now want to have the few get education to control the rest. Most of todays population, in America, don't understand how the financial system works nor do they understand how they are being manipulated and conned out of their life savings by those with better educations that lead them astray. So those that are in charge are puposley dumbing down the rest of society so they can take advantage over them in many ways.

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Architecture and agriculture are based on sciences, and basic discoveries in fields like materials science, chemistry, metallurgy and physics were what allowed those advances to happen. Chemistry may seem boring and old fashioned compared to, say, IC design, but it's just as much "actual science."

We'd likely be a lot further along in our technological progression, with all the good and bad that implies.

 

You should also take into consideration that the Romans "Annexed" a lot of cultures, some might have taken up some of their sciences, others might of actually been where the science came from to begin with. The Roman infrastructural collapse had them "retreat" slowly but surely back to their core provinces, in their retreat it left those that stayed behind to fill the void, unfortunately that was most those of religion that realised they could gain power.

Religion has always been a thorn in the side of science because for the most part rather than attempting to deal with actual data and evidence, belief and feeling reigns over judgement.

I'm surprised religious groups don't bark so much at "Accountants", after all they deal with statistical data taken from factual evidence, when they say a company is going bankrupt, they do so because the evidence tells them so, they don't give them a reprieve because they feel and believe it's wrong for the company to stop trading because of the countless job losses.

Accounts will realise the evidence and supposition of statistics means that if a drastic change doesn't occur then the company will fold, religion would likely just assume that "Oh today it feels bad, but tomorrows always brighter" (Such blind optimism isn't good in a scenario where "escalation of commitment" is allowed to get out of hand.)

 

Well said. O keeper of "Good" ideas, there are many ideas begging for thy holy bin on these threads, if thou shall care to check them out -
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=2895953&posted=1#post2895953
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?t=112184
http://www.sciforums.com/showthread.php?p=2895948&posted=1#post2895948

 

I think we are in the dark ages of science right now at this very moment in time . A make it or brake it kind of thing. Get our shit together or get out of camp .
A cross roads so to speak .
It is called "On The Verge of Discovery"
The point to were you experience information flow that overwhelms the system . If not Shepard into common goals of better well being well you know what they say chaos gets you . Fucking chickens with no heads . They run around not knowing there dead yet . Like Irishmen . They don't know there dead until the sun goes down like rattle snake .
We are in the dark ages because of the lack of being able to consolidate.
What is the culprit that makes it so dark . Lack of freedom of information.
Yeah all over that one . Smash my body into it like a human cannon ball.
Unbelievable. Even it it means something else to you all and your ideas about blocking information flow just saying " Intellectual Property " is creating war conditions in human emotions . Fuck you guys . Fuck you . Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you Fuck you . Go fuck your self pompus ass . Go fuck your self Dick wad . No wonder I am a slave . Fuck you dick wad

We are defiantly in the dark ages of discovery and well humans are a nasty dirty animal with much to learn about being a human

 

The Roman empire continued to develop during the 'Christian' era. It was the non-Christian Vandals and the other goths that did Rome in. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vandals

Much later, Marco Polo of 'Italy' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marco_Polo) introduced new concepts from China that revolutionized Europe - rocks that can be burned instead of wood, and some say - spaghetti.

 

Off your medications again? :shrug: