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Well, I'm basing that particular claim on the published opinion of a professional academic historian of science. If you or anyone else interested has a lot of

• mcv 7y ago
  You're not kidding about that polemic. He's projecting quite a lot of personal opinion on this. In any case, he's a professional academic historian of science. He makes it clear right at the start that there are people who disagree with him. I'm not surprised that there are people who think his way; it has been the dominant view since Voltaire at least. But that doesn't mean it's correct. It intentionally ignores many advances made during the early middle ages, because it needs to ignore those advances in order to make its claim. The simple fact that there were many advances in the fields of engineering, metallurgy, architecture, transportation, mathematics and others, easily proves he's wrong. I'm probably mistaken about watermills, but I don't see any mention of Roman wind mills in your links, and I know those were used in the 10th century to drain swamps. Gothic architecture, with its glass walls and flying buttresses, started in the 12th century, and explicitly did not call back to Roman architecture; to the contrary: it replaced the existing Romanesque architecture. In mathematics, there's the Hindu-Arabic numerals, which, during the period from 500-1200 AD, found their way from India to Europe. Of course if by "science" you mean very specifically philosophising in the style of Plato, you're right that Europeans rediscovered that later in the Middle Ages. But that's more of a regression in science than a resurgence of it. In fact, some of those ancient Greek ideas that held back science in some cases. For example: the idea that Earth is at the center of the solar system while other planets revolve around it in complex patterns of circles in circles. Even Galileo, who championed heliocentrism, held on to the Platonic ideal of circular orbits, and the church rejected it because it did not fit observations (the ultimate scientific reason). Only with Kepler's elliptic orbits (which Galileo ridiculed) did they let go of that Platonic idea. I'm not saying the Romans didn't do anything or the Middle Ages were the high point of science, just that the traditional view of the Middle Ages as a scientific dead zone, and that Christianity is to blame for that, is nonsense. It's not objective history, it's projecting a very specific agenda onto history. I'm also not arguing that the collapse of the Western Roman Empire had no negative consequences: it was devastating for trade, and therefore also to the spread of ideas, including new scientific discoveries. But that lack of trade forced communities to be more self-sufficient on a local level, which spurred innovations which weren't needed in Roman times, necessity being the mother of invention.
  • Keysh 7y ago
    the church rejected it because it did not fit observations (the ultimate scientific reason). No, the Church rejected heliocentrism because it clashed with scripture, and because Giordano Bruno had promoted it, so they associated it with heresy. Their argument was that it was OK to use heliocentric models purely as calculational devices, as long as one did not attempt to argue that it somehow reflected reality. The Church did not begin to formally accept heliocentrism until the 1750s, when they dropped the general prohibition against heliocentric books. The prohibition against Copernicus's book De Revolutionibus was only rescinded in 1835.
    • mcv 7y ago
      That the church rejected heliocentrism because it clashed with scripture is a common misinterpretation. It had nothing to do with scripture, and indeed scripture says nothing definitive about it in a way that would trump observation. The church did not have a problem with heliocentrism before Galileo started picking fights over it, and it seriously considered Galileo's model. Galileo's model did not match the observations of the time though, because Galileo insisted on circular orbits, which was wrong. (Who knows what would have happened if his model had been shown to match observations?) When Kepler proposed a model with elliptical orbits, Galileo even ridiculed that idea. Once Galileo had fallen out of favour with the pope for insulting him (in a book that was supposed to be an evenhanded comparison of geocentrism and heliocentrism, he had a character called "Simplicio" repeat arguments that the pope had used), he got investigated for that, and eventually got house arrest. It's entirely possible a heresy charge got piled on top at some point, but that's not how it started; the pope was entirely willing to consider heliocentrism. And Galileo was not the first to propose it either. Perhaps it should be mentioned that Kepler actually had religious reasons for proposing his heliocentric model, believing the sun to represent Jesus, around which the universe revolves. That didn't stop him from using observation, and thus science, to perfect his model. Many of these people held what we now would consider pseudoscientific beliefs: Galileo insisted on the Platonic idea of circular orbits, Kepler was an astrologer, Newton had some weird alchemical ideas. And many, many important scientists have been devout Christians. That never stopped them from advancing science.