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| Author |
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| 25 new of 293 responses total. |
twenex
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response 218 of 293:
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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.
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rcurl
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response 219 of 293:
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Dec 16 20:44 UTC 2003 |
Re #216: you seem to be confused. I made no such claims as you attribute to
me. Would you care to explain what you are trying to say?
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keesan
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response 220 of 293:
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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.
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jmsaul
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response 221 of 293:
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Dec 17 03:09 UTC 2003 |
I admit this is drifting, but jep -- the monotheistic religions didn't invent
nationalism as opposed to tribalism (China had it, as did Rome, the Greek
city-states, the Aztecs, and many other societies). As for industry, there's
no reason to believe it wouldn't have evolved in a polytheistic society. A
number of polytheistic cultures attained great achievements in science and
engineering: Egypt, the Maya, China, Greece, Rome, etc.
Some of those societies are the ones that contributed the knowledge the
monasteries preserved during the Dark Ages.
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keesan
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response 222 of 293:
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Dec 17 05:46 UTC 2003 |
India is still polytheistic.
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gull
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response 223 of 293:
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Dec 17 14:48 UTC 2003 |
Re resp:213: I don't know. In some ways didn't the Catholic Church do
everything it could to *halt* progress? I mean, look how they treated
Galileo. (Granted, they eventually apologized...over 300 years later.
This is the kind of pace of progress the Church can deal with. ;> )
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bru
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response 224 of 293:
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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?
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gull
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response 225 of 293:
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Dec 17 15:13 UTC 2003 |
Or maybe it means the Republicans are religious zealots and thus care
little for the opinions of those who don't want other people's religious
rules forced on them?
(Hint: Both are overly-broad generalizations.)
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twenex
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response 226 of 293:
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Dec 17 16:45 UTC 2003 |
You read my mind again, gull.
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edina
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response 227 of 293:
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Dec 17 18:50 UTC 2003 |
Maybe us Democrats don't need to prove our "God Feariigness" by attending
church once/twice/three times a week.
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happyboy
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response 228 of 293:
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Dec 17 19:34 UTC 2003 |
re224: what church do you attend, fatty?
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jep
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response 229 of 293:
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Dec 17 20:03 UTC 2003 |
re resp:220: Are you disputing that some of the monasteries produced
innovations in labor saving devices?
re resp:221: Maybe other cultures could have produced the Industrial
Revolution. I don't know. (A characteristic I share with every other
person here.) Western Europe, dominated for a dozen centuries by the
Catholic Church, *did* produce it.
I agree, this is all drift. I apologize; the gay marriage debate
wasn't done.
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keesan
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response 230 of 293:
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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.
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jmsaul
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response 231 of 293:
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Dec 18 00:49 UTC 2003 |
Re #222: Absolutely. As is Japan, mostly.
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jep
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response 232 of 293:
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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.
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gelinas
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response 233 of 293:
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Dec 18 01:38 UTC 2003 |
jep, you should spend some time reading about the Hellenistic period.
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keesan
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response 234 of 293:
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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.
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jmsaul
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response 235 of 293:
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Dec 18 03:59 UTC 2003 |
The China theory you're talking about isn't necessarily true, but it's
certainly intriguing.
Re #232: This thread started with me saying that there was no good reason
to pick up religious beliefs from the most fractious and un-
peaceable region of the world. Your response was that industry
and nationalism came about because people followed those particular
religions. I (and others) rebutted that by pointing out that many
polytheistic cultures overcame tribalism, and that technological
developments weren't the exclusive province of the Biblical
religions.
If you want to rebut that argument, you can't do it by showing that
Christians also made technological developments; we aren't denying
that they did. We're just saying that Judeo-Christian-Moslem
belief wasn't a necessary prerequisite. Good luck rebutting that
one given the historical record. Sure, they invented stuff -- but
so have polytheists, so monotheism clearly wasn't a requirement.
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rcurl
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response 236 of 293:
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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.
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twenex
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response 237 of 293:
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Dec 18 10:49 UTC 2003 |
The Indians (principally Panini - the name is not Italian and is
pronounced "pang-I-ni"; the first n should have a dot over it) made
the greatest advances in linguistics known until the 19th century; the
leaps made since then were sparked off by an Englishman's
investigation of sanskrit through those Indian texts. Many Indians are
polytheists. Oops, bang goes another theory.
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gelinas
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response 238 of 293:
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Dec 18 12:12 UTC 2003 |
('Tis is also interesting/relevant that Panini spoke/read/wrote but one
language.)
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gull
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response 239 of 293:
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Dec 18 14:54 UTC 2003 |
I would venture to say that it seems to us that all useful inventions
came from Europe because the history we learn is mostly European. Some
things were, in fact, genuinely invented there; others were filtered
through Europe and improved there. Europeans do seem to have had more
drive to do adventurous things with technology, but I'm not convinced
the church had anything to do with that. I think it had more to do with
wars and the need of many European countries to expand their sphere of
influence outwards to get precious resources from elsewhere.
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twenex
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response 240 of 293:
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Dec 18 16:44 UTC 2003 |
Europe is also probably the nicest place to live in the world, from an
agricultural standpiont; not too hot, not too cold, no monsoon,
tornados, relatively few earthquakes and volcanos, plenty of fertile
land, not too many forests, not much ice or snow. Interestingly,
Britain was one of the last places the Romans colonized and one of the
first they left. It was also one of the first to go over the sea (it
would have been impossible to, say, invade France by that time), and
one of the last to retreat from its imperialist ways. [I hope any
Irish people on GREX will not take offence if I point out that the
Romans never bothered with Ireland.)
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jep
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response 241 of 293:
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Dec 18 16:56 UTC 2003 |
re resp:235: In resp:201 I stated that I think Middle Eastern based
Judao-Christian moral principles are the basis for modern nationalism
and the conversion of our lifestyles from being based on agriculture to
being based on industry.
What I see by way of counter-argument is speculation that maybe another
culture would have gotten there too. I have no problem with that,
except that it has nothing to do with the point I made and which is
presumably being refuted.
It is a fact that Western European culture has become dominant over the
last 500 years. Maybe it got to this state despite Christianity, and
not because of it. Maybe Buddhism or Hinduism or Samurai culture or
something else would have gotten there eventually instead. My only
argument to that is that none of them did. Shouldn't that count for
*something*? Even if it is stylish on Grex to hate Christianity?
I was responding to resp:200 which questions why anyone would want to
adopt Judaism or it's offshoots, Christianity and Islam, given that
there's a political mess in the Middle East. I'd say (I did say) the
political mess isn't the most important thing ever to result from the
Middle East.
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gull
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response 242 of 293:
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Dec 18 17:04 UTC 2003 |
Re resp:241: I just think "Western European culture is majority
Christian, and Western European culture has dominated, therefore
Christianity is responsible for the dominance of Western European
culture" is pretty dodgy, logically. You could just as easily use that
line of reasoning to argue that Western European culture advanced more
quickly because it's majority white, for example.
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