On Thu, Oct 27, 2011 at 8:35 PM, David Goehrig <[email protected]> wrote:
> > > > probably: > > sharp rise... > > plateau... > > collapse... > > dark ages then begin. > > As probably the only Late Ancient / Early Medievalist on this list, I feel > a need to correct this myth of the Dark Ages (which can be squarely blamed > on Edward Gibbon, and his personal issues with organized religion). As we > managed to work beyond a certain cultural bias brought on by Imperialistic > 19th century powers manipulating our perspective of the Roman world for > political gain, most historians who now study this era see it as an > incredibly vibrant period of political, technological, and cognitive change. > > Most languages spoken in Europe today are a direct result of a massive > growth in technical language developed by people who married Classical > thought with new Germanic and Asiatic influences. Critical mathematical > advances occurred laying the groundwork for what would become symbolic logic > and algebra. > > If you focus on the then more populist and wealthy east, there is a > straight continuity. In the west, there is actually pretty radical change > which gave birth to the political structures that created the modern era > (which Classicists view as everything after 1066). While outside of Ireland, > nearly all knowledge of Greek was lost, those concepts were translated into > vulgate resulting in a vast democratization of thought. (seeds of the > reformation) > > From a pure info technology standpoint, there is no plateau, merely a > paradigm shift which enabled new sources of intellectual growth. Just like > we saw with the advent of digital computing. > > My friend who is full of weird facts tells me, and I quote: It's not that [the Dark Ages] were dismal and miserable, it's that a lot of the rest of the word (especially the Middle East) surpassed Europe very quickly in a lot of areas including philosophy, medicine, and mathematics. Avicenna alone probably exceeded the combined output of Europe for a few hundred years... ..."Dark Ages" really reflects a very culturally Eurocentric view.
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