Kenneth Clark thinks the 12th-13th century was special in some mysterious way; pointing out that all kinds of interesting progress happened then. There was cert

Kenneth Clark thinks the 12th-13th century was special in some mysterious way; pointing out that all kinds of interesting progress happened then. There was certainly a great deal of learning which occurred then; in addition to Bacon and Grosseteste; Witelo, Albertus Magnus, Petrus Peregrinus, Leonardo Fibonacci, Abelard. In the spiritual realm, Francis of Assisi; an important thinker even to the non-religious. Clark points out that, oddly, a lot of interesting and nice things happened in other civilizations at around the same time. I can't list any at present, as my world history isn't as good as Clark's, but it's in his documentary. I dunno, maybe the weather was particularly conducive to elevated thinking. The conventional wisdom is that science was hamstrung by the black death, since something like half the population of Europe died off. While Newton escaped a plague at Cambridge during his miraculous year, that's not the same level of disaster as half the population going away. Anyway, history nerding is fun.