response 214 of 293:

Dec 16 19:08 UTC 2003

Re #212: just to keep the subtleties straight...I did not say I *wished*
anything - just that I would have preferred it. I am aware of the original
ignorance of modern humans when they finally evolved and that they had to
figure out everything in a very complex and confusing world. History could,
of course, have taken other directions, but it is not surprising that it
is full of misdirections. I blame a lot of that upon people discovering
that they could control others by inventing fantasies - even coming to
believing them themselves. 

I disagree, however, that we will ever "come to regard quantum physics and
relativity in the same way most of us regard phlogiston, astrology and the
sun going around the Earth". It has been known from the start that those
scientific concepts were simply workable hypotheses of limited accuracy. 
They were presented in that spirit and challenged to be countered or,
rather, improved, even if that meant to be replaced. It was mostly
adherence to dogma, not to observation, that kept phlogiston et al alive
as long as the did (and have).

What will happen in the future is that the "whys and hows" of quantum 
physics and relativity will be discovered. That, however, will not make
even the current manipulations of those concepts less valid within their
limits of accuracy.

response 218 of 293:

Dec 16 20:33 UTC 2003

Re: #2133. Don't forget that we had to come a LONG way in order to get
to Mediaeval Europe in the first place, and the journey started (as
far as my hemisphere is concerned) in China and the Middle-East.

I often wonder how much wisdom we'd have discovered if my ancestors
and ours hadn't destroyed the civilizations of the Americas, or even
if they'd simply written more of it down for us. Or if writing had
been invented separatrely in Europe, for that matter - how on *earth*
did the Mayans build their palaces without using wheeled vehicles; how
on *earth* did the prehistoric people of Britain build Stonehenge with
stone from over a 100 miles away in Wales, again without wheels? (And
what the hell was it for?!) Seems to me they would have needed
*incredibly* complex and organised societies. Btw, Roman and Greek
Chroniclers from Tacitius to Caesar report that Celtic and Germanic
societiews *were* highly complex, and that, possessing no written
language, their memory capacity (or rather their harnessing of the
capacity we all have) was phenomenal.

response 220 of 293:

Dec 16 23:44 UTC 2003

Regarding monks 'freeing up time' - I have seen a drawing of a monastery plan
where there was one area of squares marked:  sheep, pigs, cows, goats, horses,
servants.  

response 222 of 293:

Dec 17 05:46 UTC 2003

India is still polytheistic.

response 224 of 293:

Dec 17 14:50 UTC 2003

A recent study came out and showed that democrats are 2 -1 more likely not
to attend church, and republicans are 2 -1 more likely to attend a church.
Perhaps this means that most dems are godless and thus care little for the
opinions of those who are God fearing?

response 226 of 293:

Dec 17 16:45 UTC 2003

You read my mind again, gull.

response 228 of 293:

Dec 17 19:34 UTC 2003

re224: what church do you attend, fatty?

response 230 of 293:

Dec 17 20:23 UTC 2003

China was a lot more technologically advanced than Europe during the period
that Europe was dominated by the Catholic Church.  Europe made more
technological progress after the church lost its stranglehold on knowledge.
It was not known for things like encouraging a belief in a round earth.
Or for questioning any accepted opinions.

response 232 of 293:

Dec 18 01:27 UTC 2003

re resp:230: The people who grew up in Catholic Europe, and their 
children and grandchildren, advanced a huge amount, inventing the 
scientific method (which made use of the strenuous rules of logic 
developed for the priests); advancing math far beyond what the Arabs 
had given them; and applying all of the things they were learning to 
technology.

The Church may not have invented the printing press, but the people it 
trained certainly made great use of it.  Likewise with the water wheel 
and horse-drawn plows.  The monasteries invented many kinds of clocks, 
seeking the most accurate way to know when to do different prayers.  
The mechanisms of some of them -- and probably the tools used to make 
them as well -- were used for other developments.

Then there's sea travel, which was practiced for millenia, but no 
ships from China, America, Japan or southern Africa came to Europe.  
Why was that?  It was because they didn't know how, and because their 
cultures didn't encourage them to explore that much so they didn't 
develop the urge to travel that far.  Medieval Europe didn't invent 
the sailing ship, but Spain, Portugal and England sure did the most 
with it.

All I'm doing is suggesting there's a reason for all of this, and that 
it's not plausible to say it all happened in Europe, while Europe was 
dominated by the Catholic Church, but happened *despite* the Church.

response 234 of 293:

Dec 18 03:22 UTC 2003

I read an interesting book recently about how the Chinese, in 1421-1423, built
a huge fleet of ships and sailed over the entire world, planting colonies in
the Americas, discovering Antarctica, etc.  They decided after that not to
explore any more because there was a disastrous fire which led them to believe
that the gods did not want them to do so.  
The Chinese ships were much more advanced than those of the Spanish or
Portuguese, who got hold of some copies of copies of the Chinese maps before
they set sail to the west.  It was even claimed that C. Columbus used a faked
map to show that he could reach China by sailing west, and that he really knew
there was other land in the way.  The faked map was made by pasting together
sheets of one based on a Chinese map and altering a few of them.  

The Chinese sailors did not get scurvy because they sprouted beans along the
way.

response 236 of 293:

Dec 18 06:00 UTC 2003

Europe also gathered science and technology from other corners of the
world with other religions (under which, of course, those inventions were
invented).  These include the abacus, gunpowder, buttons, paper money,
paper itself, the compass, much of metallurgy, the astrolabe.....this list
is enormous. It must also include all the inventions created in
pre-Christian Europe and Asia and Africa. That Europeans took advantage of
these inventions speaks to their own enterprise, but certainly Europe was
not the "cradle" of invention until the industrial revolution. 

response 238 of 293:

Dec 18 12:12 UTC 2003

('Tis is also interesting/relevant that Panini spoke/read/wrote but one
language.)