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The Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages
- absconditus 16y ago"A professor at a cathedral school for most of his career, Gerbert of Aurillac was the first Christian known to teach math using the nine Arabic numerals and zero. He devised an abacus, or counting board, that mimics the algorithms we use today for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. It has been called the first counting device in Europe to function digitally—even the first computer. In a chronology of computer history, Gerbert’s abacus is one of only four innovations mentioned between 3000 BC and the invention of the slide rule in 1622. Like a modern scientist, Gerbert questioned authority. He experimented. To learn which of two rules best calculated the area of an equilateral triangle, he cut out square inches of parchment and measured the triangle with them. To learn why organ pipes do not behave acoustically like strings, he built models and devised an equation. (A modern physicist who checked his result calls it ingenious, if labor-intensive.)"
- rmah 16y agoThe Sumerians had the abacus (2700BC), the Greeks, the Romans, the Chinese, etc, etc, etc. Why credit it to this Gerbert guy? Reference: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abacus
- huxley 16y agoIf all you know about the "Dark Ages" came from your high school text books, then yes, "Everything You Think You Know About the Dark Ages IS Wrong." The book looks interesting, but isn't unique in challenging these assumptions about the "Dark Ages". As a popularizer of the Middle Ages, Monty Pythoner, Terry Jones is one of many who have championed that period as a much more complex era than we were taught: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2004/feb/08/highereducation.news http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2004/feb/08/highereducat... If Abacus and the Cross looks interesting, you should also look for Terry's book Medieval Lives.
- sp332 16y agoTerry Jones also made a BBC TV miniseries with the same name: http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2004/feb/08/highereducation.news http://www.guardian.co.uk/education/2004/feb/08/highereducat... He also has an excellent article on how overrated the Renaissance was! http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/3507439.stm http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/bristol/somerset/...
- lukeschlather 16y agoThis article seems appallingly Euro-centric for someone claiming to challenge conventional wisdom about the dark ages. He makes passing reference to Baghdad as an important center of learning, but still focuses on the Pope. To my mind this is less "Everything you think you know about the dark ages is wrong" and more that there were some occasional scientific luminaries in what was otherwise pretty much an intellectual backwater. They're definitely worthy of study, but it would be far better to remind people that the dark ages were mostly dark in Europe, and looking to the Islamic empires as well as out to China you see the centers of human progress, which contrary to the orthodox Western historical narrative did continue unabated. It's definitely nice to see some study of European science in the dark ages, but I'd much rather hear more English-language writing about the Arabic scientific community.
- ellyagg 16y ago> This article seems appallingly Euro-centric... This is a silly criticism. The Dark Ages are by definition about Europe. If you'd like to see more books about what was going on in Islamic empires and China during the European Dark Ages, great, but that's not what this author's imagination was captured by.
- lukeschlather 16y agoThe way history is taught in most US schools, The Dark Ages are about the world. I would expect someone trying to overturn orthodoxy to start with that. This subtly reinforces a worldview that paints Europe as central, when it was not.
- Helianthus16 16y agoSensationalist headlines are often a sign of poor writing/thinking. There's no way _everything_ I think I know about the Dark Ages is wrong. Don't insult my intelligence just because a smug title has a bit of snap to it. Good thing it seems like the actual book has a more scholarly title.
- pg 16y agoThis is a bit too revisionist. There were a handful of men in dark age Europe with a deep interest in scholarship: Alcuin, Bede, Gerbert. But they were isolated individuals who imported ideas from the past and/or neighboring territories. In fact, I suspect the average person's mental picture of dark age Europe is probably wrong in the direction of being too advanced rather than too backward, because we take so much of present culture for granted.