Well, I'm a big fan of perspective, which was lacking for quite a while. But I'll grant that art wasn't too bad. Music (which is a subset of art) was pretty good too, although a single standardized system of musical notation wasn't accepted until fairly late.
Badmouthing the Middle Ages
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Kopji
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Repeated episodes of iconoclasm not only by the church, but by the public would make the time deserving of the title "dark ages" all by itself.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages
"Triumph of Christianity" by Tommaso Laureti (1530-1602), ceiling painting in the Sala di Constantino, Vatican Palace.
Ceiling title probably not intended as ironic but is nonetheless.
A snapshot of the great artistic age:
I feel like we are harvesting nits.
If the 'Catholic' version of history related above is sloppy, wouldn't it be better for Christians to get the beam out of their own eye and correct it before looking elsewhere?
Otherwise, the 'middle ages' look pretty dark from here. To present them otherwise seems like a desire to revise history more to our liking.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dark_Ages
"Triumph of Christianity" by Tommaso Laureti (1530-1602), ceiling painting in the Sala di Constantino, Vatican Palace.
Ceiling title probably not intended as ironic but is nonetheless.
A snapshot of the great artistic age:
I feel like we are harvesting nits.
If the 'Catholic' version of history related above is sloppy, wouldn't it be better for Christians to get the beam out of their own eye and correct it before looking elsewhere?
Otherwise, the 'middle ages' look pretty dark from here. To present them otherwise seems like a desire to revise history more to our liking.
Yet the very idea of them being "dark" arose from a desire on the part of people living in subsequent eras to revise history more to their liking.
Any past era is prone to being viewed as "dark" in one sense or another by those who come after it. But in truth, there are plenty of reasons to consider the Middle Ages a dynamic, hopeful and rich period in European history rather than a prolonged caesura in cultural progress. Consider, inter alia, the following (all originally cited in the "Is religion slowing us down?" thread):
- "[T]he Age of Reason began in the Middle Ages."
"One can scarcely doubt that reason was applied more fruitfully in the Age of Reason than in the Middle Ages. But it would be rash to conclude that natural philosophers in the seventeenth century, and in the Age of Reason generally, were therefore 'more rational' than their medieval predecessors. Medieval scholastic theologians and natural philosophers were as dedicated to the use of reason in the disciplines they discussed and analyzed as were the scientists and natural philosophers who developed the new science in the Age of Reason. ... Modern philosophy did not have to undertake the struggle to establish the rights of reason against the Middle Ages; it was, on the contrary, the Middle Ages that established them for it, and the very manner in which the seventeenth century imagined that it was abolishing the work of preceding centuries did nothing more than continue it."
"If modern science has progressed almost unrecognizably beyond anything known or contemplated ... in the Middle Ages, modern scientists are, nonetheless, heirs to the remarkable achievements of their medieval predecessors. The idea, and the habit, of applying reason to resolve the innumerable questions about our world, and of always raising new questions, did not come to modern science from out of the void. Nor did it originate with the great scientific minds of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, from the likes of Copernicus, Galileo, Kepler, Descartes, and Newton. It came out of the Middle Ages ... It is a gift from the Latin Middle Ages to the modern world, a gift that makes our modern society possible[.]"
- Edward Grant
- "[T]he question remains: did the Middle Ages make significant contributions to the science of the seventeenth century? The answer is unquestionably affirmative. In critical ways, medieval natural philosophers prepared the ground and paved the way for seventeenth-century scientific achievement; and when a new structure for science was built in the seventeenth century, it contained a great many medieval materials. ...
If we shift our attention to developments within specific disciplines, I believe that a persuasive case can be made for a significant measure of linguistic, conceptual and theoretical continuity between the Middle Ages and the early modern period."
- David C. Lindberg
- "[By] the late 13th century Europe had seized global scientific leadership."
"The invention of invention, involving not only wide-ranging thought about technical improvements that are needed but also intercommunicating groups of technicians striving to produce them, is datable to about the middle of the thirteenth century in Europe. Invention as a movement has flourished in the West ever since then."
- Lynn White
- "Modern science is not a direct outgrowth of Antiquity, without reference to the Middle Ages. It is rather the child of medieval science."
- Richard C. Dales
I'm not an art guy, but my favorite exhibits ever were at the Uffizi gallery in Florence. They start you off in the Middle Ages when the art was flat and lacked perspective -- 2D, basically. Then they move you into the 14th and 15th centuries when artists rediscovered how to create perspective. The coolest 3D effect I've seen was the "dome" in a church (in Siena, I think). In fact, it wasn't a dome; it was a flat ceiling painted to look as if it were a dome. I did not notice it was a flat ceiling until it was pointed out.
I have not read the threads you cite elsewhere, so at the risk of beating a dead horse....
From this historical layman's perspective, generally the period 500-1000 are considered the Dark Ages (or the Middle Ages or the Age of Disco -- whatever you want to call it) is because so much grand knowledge appeared to have been lost or left moldering.
I'm sure Dark Age peasants figured out some great new things to do with gruel or crop rotation. This was all well and good. However, it doesn't change the fact that it took 15 centuries after the Pantheon's dome was built in Rome for Europe to rediscover how to repeat the trick.
Much of ancient Rome had sewers and sanitation, but the knowledge to construct such systems apparently was lost to Europe for many centuries after Rome.
Look at the mosaics, paintings, and statues from ancient Greece and Rome. Now look at the art from Europe during the Dark Ages. The latter is a pile of crap by comparison. How is it Europe forgot how to paint perspective or to sculpt things that look even marginally realistic?
It's wrong to think the Dark/Middle Ages were a period where all progress ground to a complete halt, but it's abundantly clear that a great deal of knowledge was either lost or ignored during this time.
The Odd Emperor
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Flat-out false? Pretty strong words there pilgrim!
What’s false? My contention that little progress was made in a 1000 year period between the fall of the Roman Empire to the Early Renaissance? Or my assertion that you may be incorrect about the invention of the horse collar?
BTW I never said the Middle Ages was necessarily a period of stagnation (although this too occurred in some places.) My contention is that during a period from about 400 AD until around 1400 or 1500 AD there was *little* progress in a wide range fields. There were some exceptions, the Portuguese may have discovered the New World during this period, and kept it a secret. Same with some fishermen communities in Norway.
But, you can take nearly any field of endeavor, from warfare to writing, from medicine to agriculture and see that very few improvements were made during that time—relative to the Renaissance and the period we live in today. I read you citations and found that even they don’t really add much weight to your argument (which I believe is something like “the term Medieval should not be synonymous with backward.” Please correct me if I’m mistaken. )
Like this passage;
This is almost impenetrable. The Romans didn’t invent and abandon the flattened arch (this suggests some kind predetermination.) They (or the rest of Europe) forgot about those things for a while. Waves of plague, a deadening influence of the Catholic Church, war, and a locked class structure all contributed to a slowing of progress. This is not just something I made up, in many ways medieval society was inferior to many that came before.
Or this;
Not only gravity but the force of compressed air and steam began to be investigated, and the emergence in the seventeenth century of steam engines can be shown to have a direct connection with developments four hundred years earlier. Moreover ... by 1327 cannons are found. The cannon is a one-cylinder internal-combustion engine, and all modern motors of this type are technically descended from it."
Here the author is referring to the trebuchet, first developed in the 7th century not the 10th century (probably much earlier.) They were an improvement over the Onagar or the Ballista. The “cannon” was a kind of internal combustion engine; but There is to my knowledge really no direct lineage between this and the external combustion engines which reigned supreme during the 19th century or the advent of the gasoline engine.
But one can make this same argument about the Classical societies, they too investigated steam and gravity powered devices. Water clocks are an example of this. Also, the author is making some very seeping statements about events that were (in this case) almost a hundred years and thousands of miles apart.
Cannon and trebuchet were developed in the Middle ages and were used, almost without improvement right up into the 17th century when rapid improvements in firearms took place (a quick history of early firearms can be found here http://www.researchpress.co.uk/firearms/history/armsinvention.htm)
Anyway, some of the stuff you’re citing seems revisionist at best. Sure there was some progress during the middle ages, (medium ævum ) that seems a far cry from a contention that swift and sweeping changes too place during that period--conventional history seems to differ with you.
Oh yes, If I would be inclined to site something, this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages seems apropos.
Along the same thought lines, let's look at recent history. Look at how life for the typical westerner changed from 1900 to 1950. Talk about sweeping change. In less than one lifetime, the typical person added electricity, cars, refrigeration, recording devices, antibiotics, radio, flight, and telephones to their list of everyday things. These things have changed how cities are laid out, how long people live, how rapidly we communicate, and the size of our world. Even the inventions we have seen since 1950 don't really compete with them. PCs are the only real new thing since 1950 that has made fundamental changes to how we do things; everything else has been only an improvement on an earlier models.
Specifically, the following assertions:
- "Almost no progress, military, technical or social was enjoyed in the so called Middle Ages (from around 400 AD until around the mid 16th century.)"
- "Nearly every 'advancement' during this period was due to rediscoveries of old writings from the earlier classical civilizations."
I believe your assertion regarding the invention of the horse collar was addressed to kleinjahr, rather than to me.
Your statement that the Middle Ages witnessed "almost no progress" in social, technical or military matters suggested that you thought they were stagnant in the (Am. Her. Dict.) sense of "Showing little or no sign of activity or advancement." Your point that this does not signify a complete absence of movement is duly noted; I don't wish to split hairs.
The truth of the foregoing statement largely comes down to the proviso “relative to the Renaissance and the period we live in today.” European societies experienced a great many important and transformative improvements during the Middle Ages, including in such areas as agriculture and warfare. The pace of such improvements has only increased over time, so naturally subsequent centuries witnessed a greater number of innovations – thanks in no small part to novel attitudes toward science, technology, and human progress generally that developed in the Middle Ages. There is greater continuity, in respect of such matters, between the Middle Ages and later periods than between the Middle Ages and everything that came before.
I agree that the term "medieval" should not be synonymous with "backward." More generally, however, the medieval era is properly be understood as an era of great relative progress and originality in a wide range of human rational, practical and cultural endeavors, from technology to education to law, and many points in between. At the same time, the Middle Ages took place a long time ago. Obviously, it doesn't compare favorably to the 21st century in many areas. Neither does the 19th century, for that matter.
I'd have to consider exactly what you mean by saying this didn't occur, in relation to exactly what Prof. White is likely to have meant when he wrote that it did occur – and on what basis – which I'm not immediately in a position to do.
To the extent this happened (speaking strictly of technology here), it seems to have been a late classical rather than a medieval phenomenon. As Prof. Artz points out, "None of the important skills of the Romans seems to have been lost on the Middle Ages."
The Catholic Church appears likely to have been, if anything, a net stimulus to progress, for reasons discussed at length in the other thread. At the very least, there is no evidence it was not a net “deadening influence”.
In many ways? To many that came before? Ill try to save us time by asking you, as a starting point, to list a half-dozen criteria according to which Western European society in, say, 1300 was inferior to the one in 300. (Unless that happens not to be one of the many examples you had in mind.) No one here is asserting that medieval European civilization did not have its negative aspects even in comparison to classical antiquity - particularly in the centuries immediately following the disintegration of the Roman Empire. However, the numerous improvements make it difficult to argue that it was inferior overall to its historical antecedents.
More specifically, by "a new type of counterweight artillery", Prof. White is referring to a certain kind of trebuchet powered purely by gravity (as opposed to the traction or hybrid variety). I don't know why you mention the 10th century. Prof. White's statement is, at any rate, corroborated by other sources. "By 1199" – the earliest absolutely verifiable instance of the use of such artillery – the counterweight-only trebuchet had been invented. I'm not sure if you had some other point to make in this connection.
I'm not surprised that it sounds revisionist to you, but the fact is that scholarly knowledge and understanding of these matters has evolved greatly in the past few decades. It simply hasn't yet trickled down very far, apparently.
By "conventional history," I assume you mean the conventional popular understanding of history, rather than the current conventions among experts in the field. You see, what "conventional history" differs with are just about all the recent major historians I know - and I do my best to keep up in this area - specializing in the history of science and technology (as well as other specialties) during the relevant period. This doesn't seem to bother the historians too much, so perhaps I shouldn’t let it bother me.
To those arguing that the middle ages were a time of stagnation, don't you think it makes more sense to compare them with previous times than with later ones?
The development of the scientific method, as well as an inheritance of all the science of millenia before, is what has allowed science to progress so swiftly in the last few hundred years. That middle ages simply didn't have that advantage. If they were stagnant, surely they must be shown to be stagnant in comparison to classical (ie, Greek and roman) civilization?
How much progress was being made during that time? Was it faster or slower than during the middle ages? If knowledge was lost during the middle ages only to be later rediscovered, is this something that tended to happen frequently in all societies before the development of the printing press, or was it specific to the middle ages?
In other words, were the middle ages especially backward relative to the times that came before, or are we only comparing them to the modern day? And if so, why doesn't the classical period merit this comparison?
I don't know that much about history, so I don't know the answers to those questions. But I think they important to this discussion.
Oh, and just to be clear, I think Randi was right to say what he did, as Darat pointed out, it was comparison between homeopathy and medieval medical practices and way of thinking. Fair enough, considering that in order to make a point he has to use things that people are familiar with.
The development of the scientific method, as well as an inheritance of all the science of millenia before, is what has allowed science to progress so swiftly in the last few hundred years. That middle ages simply didn't have that advantage. If they were stagnant, surely they must be shown to be stagnant in comparison to classical (ie, Greek and roman) civilization?
How much progress was being made during that time? Was it faster or slower than during the middle ages? If knowledge was lost during the middle ages only to be later rediscovered, is this something that tended to happen frequently in all societies before the development of the printing press, or was it specific to the middle ages?
In other words, were the middle ages especially backward relative to the times that came before, or are we only comparing them to the modern day? And if so, why doesn't the classical period merit this comparison?
I don't know that much about history, so I don't know the answers to those questions. But I think they important to this discussion.
Oh, and just to be clear, I think Randi was right to say what he did, as Darat pointed out, it was comparison between homeopathy and medieval medical practices and way of thinking. Fair enough, considering that in order to make a point he has to use things that people are familiar with.
Kopji
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We do not disagree on this point. Earlier historians had a more humanist agenda and saw the medieval times as dark, but now modern historians can describe them as dynamic and rich. Is our 'new understanding' due to new historic evidence that has emerged to refute the earlier characterizations, or have we the viewers of history changed?
If we were to truly assess the middle ages we would need to know what might have been without all the inspired destruction. Since we can't do that, 'badmouthing the middle ages' or not seems mostly due to a point of view, not historic facts.
To digress a little, I offer the fourth crusade. (Fordham University has a nice collection of primary texts and historic accounts.) http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/4cde.html
In a nutshell: A holy crusade heads off to conquer Egypt and instead are hijacked by Venice to attack their enemy Zara. The crusader army does that with ease, and is eventually sent on to sack Constanople, a city of great art and culture. Venice rises to power and their trade partner Egypt is spared a crusade.
It seems impossible in reading the story not to see the parallels for our own time: Religious zeal turned into a blunt tool for cynical political ends. Has anything really really changed much in today's world? No. We are indeed the products of those times.
Condemning them as dark times might be an uncomfortable condemnation of what we still do today (or want to do).
To go back to the OP, I've seen nothing presented in all this discussion that indicates to me that saying homeopathy belongs in the dark ages (call it what you will) was an inappropriate statement. Its theory and its practice is something that would have been at home with the gernal miondset that prevailed at that time (especially in regards to illness and treatments).
Indeed the comparison even holds if science was going through the most fantastic expansion in all of human history since homeopathy would have been left behind in such a scientific revolution.
Which ever way you cut it saying homeopathy belongs to the dark ages is a good way of getting over to the general public that an idea is something that belongs to an age of superstition.
Indeed the comparison even holds if science was going through the most fantastic expansion in all of human history since homeopathy would have been left behind in such a scientific revolution.
Which ever way you cut it saying homeopathy belongs to the dark ages is a good way of getting over to the general public that an idea is something that belongs to an age of superstition.
The Odd Emperor
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The various definitions and interpretations become an endless quagmire in any case. “Almost no” is very nearly an absolute and when dealing with history it’s not a good idea to think in absolutes.
I very nearly stand corrected.
True, however the moniker “the middle ages tended to be backward and ignorant (which is silly of course, ages cannot be ignorant”) is certainly accurate from a 21st century viewpoint which I believe *is* the point of the argument. It is certain that some progress was made in the middle ages in some areas. I think (and most historians that I’ve encountered seem to echo this) that one of the significant events of the middle age was also a turning away from the older traditions which was caused by (among other things) a fragmentation of previous government/religious institutions.
It’s a vast oversimplification to say "well the Catholic Church caused the dark ages to happen" (and I really hate the term dark ages but, that’s a whole ‘nother topic.) but, there is a very good reason why it appears to be so. The Church ended up permeating and stabilizing society to an extent which is hard to comprehend today. Stabilizing as in discouraging change.
One euphemism I’ve utilized is the term “medieval science” when describing conclusion driven "science" as apposed to real evedence driven science. It was not really until the very end of the Middle Ages that science and engineering became less hampered by what was conventional wisdom. We then began to see very rapid progress in a wide range of fields. Certainly this is rather oversimplified but, history is a process whereupon complex interactions are rendered down so as to be more comprehensible.
I may have been speaking of the sweeping way the statement read. I’m certainly not in a position to say someone is flatly incorrect, however I suspect (as I mentioned) that absolute statements when dealing with such things is not such a good idea.
Perhaps not lost, misplaced maybe? Lots and lots of documents were lost, artistic prowess, military technology all suffered setbacks (for lack of a better term) at the beginning of the Middle Ages and did not really recover until much later.
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I suspect you actually mean “there is no evidence that it *was* a net deadening influence.”..
It was a stimulus so long as the progress enhanced the Church in some way. For example, during the Middle Ages we find almost no music that was not secular in nature. The advent of non-secular music is a seminal event in the Middle Ages, well documented. The lack of perspective in painting, the almost complete lack of non-secular artistic expression in almost every other area strongly suggests that the Church did indeed have an overwhelming influence in Medieval Culture.
I’m not aware of a traction or hybrid trebuchet, I don’t know what one would be like—
sorry I’ve only operated and repaired gravity powered ones so I can’t call myself an expert. The term (to my poor understanding) is that of a specific form of gravity powered rock thrower.
Certainly my history department doesn’t teach it that way, I am actually aware that some of this is rumbling around the academic community but it’s not exactly mainstream and has not tricked down into the vernacular yet.
Good for you! Specializing in a wide range of fields is always a good thing!
The Odd Emperor
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Randi is speaking in the vernacular and so, medieval is congruent with backward. That’s not an improper usage to his audience.
Greek and Roman society didn’t seem to be progressing any quicker than Medieval society. Perhaps slower by some standards. The big difference is that Medieval society was unaware of the societies which came before while the Romans had some understanding of Greek history and culture.
This is not to say that they were did not know that the classical societies existed; simply they didn’t really understand them. There was a tendency to dump much of the religious underpinnings although a surprising amount of the Roman pantheon carried over into the Roman Catholic Church.
But, archeology did not exist and many assumed Greek and Roman society was more or less the same as their own. This can be seen in some of the depictions of events in the Classical Period, many garb people in the contemporary clothing of the time that the artist lived in.
I agree – no one could reasonably dispute the strict accuracy of your statement here – but surely you must acknowledge that medieval European civilization is often singled out in the popular imagination (and certainly with some frequency by Mr. Randi) as an epitome of backwardness, inhibited development, irrationality, superstition and so forth. Moreover, there seems to be a popular sentiment – the currency of which Randi undeniably promotes - that there was something specifically about the Middle Ages – some intrinsic and perhaps vaguely culpable dimension(s) of the culture, rather than the accident of following on the heels of the Empire’s breakup – that accounts for the ostensibly characteristic ignorance and irrationality attributed to the age.
So while your specific point here is accurate, the notion to which I’m referring is fundamentally inaccurate, and unfortunately characterizations of medieval culture as especially ignorant tend to arise from and reinforce (often consciously) the latter. To this extent, I think the term medieval is overdue for some rehabilitation. People don’t customarily refer to the Middle Ages as backward and ignorant merely for the banal reason that what constitutes progress in one era often seems modest or unimpressive by the standards of people living many centuries later. Rather, people use the reference because they tend actually to believe that medieval society experienced very little progress even from the standpoint of a medieval observer.
One may bicker over semantics, but I have argued here and elsewhere that significant progress was made in a significant number of areas.
To my mind, it’s not just an oversimplication. Indeed, I can’t think of any meaningful sense in which it could arguably be more true than false.
Yet the Church underwrote - certainly materially but, more importantly, intellectually and spiritually – so many of the important advances during this era that I think to say it generally discouraged change is seriously misleading. The historians I cited earlier addressed this specific point.
I interpreted the author to mean that, with respect to the useful skills to which the author was referring, there was substantial continuity.
Good catch. That was a typo arising from a last-second rearrangement of the paragraph.
Certainly. However, since the Church took such a broad view of what was useful to the welfare of the people of God, almost every area of practical utility or learning was at least theoretically, and very often in fact, encouraged by the Church.
Then you have more practical familiarity than I. (Could you get a listing in the Yellow Pages under ”Trebuchets, Repair and Maintenance”?) At any rate, simply put, a traction trebuchet is the oldest kind, operated by pulling on ropes, and a hybrid (as you might expect) is one that also employs some counterweights to assist in the pulling.
The rumblings date back several decades. My impression is that the major modern figures in the field of medieval intellectual and scientific/technological history (of which Prof. Grant and the late Prof. White are but two) more or less support this understanding. I would characterize it as mainstream within the discipline (though perhaps among historians specializing in other matters), but obviously not among laymen.
Good for you! Specializing in a wide range of fields is always a good thing!
I’m not sure what that means, or if it is a good thing. But at any rate, when I said “as well as other specialties” I was referring to the fact that popular wisdom about the Middle Ages is challenged by historians in a wide range of specialties relevant to the era – not that I am able to keep up, obviously with all of these. When I said that I try to remain current, on the other hand, I was referring to major publications dealing with medieval science and technology specifically. That’s purely an avocation. Formally speaking, as you might already know, my true specialized discipline is law, with a particular academic interest in the development of the Western legal tradition (including - no surprise here - during the Middle Ages).
Translation:
People believe that the Church helped prevent social and technological development in the Middle Ages, and I dislike it when people say things that can be construed as a criticism of the Church. Therefore, I will claim that the Middle Ages were a time of great scientific development which modern science is founded on, and I will quote other revisionist historians to lend credibility to this position.
See? ceo_esq is really no harder to speak than Politicianese or Lawyerspeak.
People believe that the Church helped prevent social and technological development in the Middle Ages, and I dislike it when people say things that can be construed as a criticism of the Church. Therefore, I will claim that the Middle Ages were a time of great scientific development which modern science is founded on, and I will quote other revisionist historians to lend credibility to this position.
See? ceo_esq is really no harder to speak than Politicianese or Lawyerspeak.
It has been suggested to you in the past, Melendwyr, that you stick to speaking for yourself, but you seem to require periodic encouragement in that area. Once you've mastered the urge to ascribe, capriciously, opinions and motives to other posters, you might practice exercising more circumspection in expounding on topics with which you have limited familiarity.
jjramsey
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Melendwyr, as a skeptic, you should be well aware that there is often a divide between the layperson's conventional wisdom on the topic and the actual scholarly consensus, yet you choose to trust conventional wisdom over the experts in the field. Instead of "translations," why don't you actually put forth some evidence? That's supposed to be the common currency in these forums.
Lets not forget the OP point, I still maintain no one has put forward any evidence that indicates that homeopathy isn't of a type of "treatment" that belongs more in an age of superstition then one "post enlightenment".
Given the theories of disease and the available treatments back then I believe Randi's statement was both illustrative and accurate.