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The Romans killed Archimedes, (eventually) closed all the Greek schools/universities, and decayed into superstition. Unlike the Greeks, they did not leave the

by chasil 4y ago

The Romans killed Archimedes, (eventually) closed all the Greek schools/universities, and decayed into superstition. Unlike the Greeks, they did not leave the world a better place at the end of their power than they found it at the start. Many see them as violent and bitter enemies of scientific truth, and there is some foundation for this view.

callmeal 4y ago
>Unlike the Greeks, they did not leave the world a better place at the end of their power than they found it at the start. > >Many see them as violent and bitter enemies of scientific truth, and there is some foundation for this view. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
abetusk 4y ago
If I understand your argument right, this is essentially saying that the dark ages were dark. First off, I'm not even sure that narrative is true. Second off, even if it were, there's still the Middle East and Asia. I, unfortunately, don't know a lot about the Middle East during the European dark ages period but, from what I understand, they went through a type of renaissance themselves. The question still is, why didn't people need or use coal at the levels they did until the 1600s?
- WorldMaker 4y ago
  > Second off, even if it were, there's still the Middle East and Asia Don't write off Mesoamerica and South America either. I know many people that strongly argue "The Mayan Empire never fell it was crushed." There especially was no direct equivalent to the European Dark Ages in the Mayan Empire. It remained a productive agricultural empire right up until post-Industrial Spanish Conquest (and right down until contemporary periods of not just the Roman Empire, but even as far back as various Mesopotamian empires as well). That's just the Mayan Empire. We also have an impression that Aztec Empire and even the looser "Confederations" of North American Indian tribes at various times all had economies comparable to European agricultural sense of "Empire" at least, but all also lost a lot history/institutions during American conquests. It seems reasonable to wonder if that deforestation of England truly was a strange precursor in the face of what we know of non-European empires at the time. (Which we don't know enough given how many of them Europe managed to burn to the ground in the American conquests.)
kurupt213 4y ago
The Greeks were as violent and imperialistic as the Romans. They would have eventually went west if the Romans hadn’t conquered them. They would have lost, too, because the Roman maniple based legions were superior to the Macedonian phalanx
jcranmer 4y ago
> Unlike the Greeks, they did not leave the world a better place at the end of their power than they found it at the start. Roman law fuels most of the world's modern legal codes. Roman languages are among the most widely spoken today, and is closer to universal if you look at written language (even now, we're writing using the Roman alphabet). The largest world religion is Roman religion. Roman infrastructure forms the backbone of European infrastructure in much of the world. That's more impact than the Greeks had.
- baja_blast 4y ago
  > That's more impact than the Greeks had. Our careers would not be possible if it was not for the mathematical and scientific contributions of the ancient Greeks. Not only did they greatly contribute to the foundations of math, but the way they formalized logical thinking enabled further discoveries.
  - brnaftr361 4y ago
    None of this shit comes out of a magic hat, we're all ostensibly observing the same phenomena - that is to say there's hardly any reason whatsoever to attribute the gleaning of some fact derivative of the shared reality to a people. And I think this can be duly evidenced by the fact many people come to nearly simultaneous independent conclusions. This can be reduced to something like Newton didn't discover gravity, Newton formally described it in mathematics, and anyone dedicated enough to pursue the formal description could have done much the same. Much in the same way, the Eurocentric view is wrong to attribute things and with the way cultural interaction spheres tend to work it's even more difficult to attribute developments to a given culture or individual. E.g. not only are we "standing on the shoulders of giants" but the scientific domain is pruning viable explanatory paths with each passing moment, narrowing the scope of positive knowledge and increasing the sharpness of the borders of negative knowledge. For instance China had what was effectively fiat currency well before it became widespread in European nations; they also managed to invent moveable type which was ineffectual and thus discarded - but Gutenberg gets the attribution?
    - 4y ago
xyzzyz 4y ago
You have an extremely simplistic view of civilizations that lasted longer than almost all the ones currently existing. Imagine someone in year 4000 dismissing the French peoples as a whole as “violent and bitter enemies of scientific truth” who “decayed into superstition” because of something Charlemagne done, and some other cherry picked events from a millennium+ long history. This is so simplistic to border on satire.
- sidibe 4y ago
  Here I go making an irrelevant sidetracked comment, but Charlemagne is an interesting example to pick considering the main domestic policies he's associated with are educational reforms and making it available to more people.
  - deleted 4y ago
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- deleted 4y ago
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- chasil 4y ago
  Well, this simplistic view appears to be shared here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20790545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20790545
  - deleted 4y ago
    [deleted]
- MichaelCollins 4y ago
  An ancient Roman urban legend (a story Romans told about themselves) says that a Roman inventor once created a method of producing unbreakable glass. He showed this to the emperor by dropping a glass chalice on the ground, where it bent instead of breaking, then he hammered it back into shape. According to this legend, the Roman emperor asked if anybody else knew how to make it. The inventor said no, he was the only one. So the emperor had him killed on the spot, to prevent the disruption of the Roman glass industry. I think it never actually happened, but this sort of story reveals a Roman perspective on technological innovation in Roman society.
jacobolus 4y ago
Most of the “Greek” scholars of the later part of the “Hellenistic” era of science were Roman citizens, came from all over the Empire (not just the Greek speaking parts), and natively spoke a variety of languages. Some of them moved to Alexandria or Athens, but others remained in Rome or elsewhere. It is (at best) oversimplified to put this as “Romans” in opposition to “Greeks”. What is fair to say is that the Greek language remained the common "language of science", just as Arabic was the common language of science throughout the Islamic world (even for e.g. Persians), Latin was the common language of science in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, or English is the common language of science today. You wouldn’t say that “the English were opposed to science unlike the Latins Edmund Gunter, Thomas Harriot, Edmond Halley, Isaac Newton, et al.”.
mcphage 4y ago
What have the Romans ever done for us?
kybernetikos 4y ago
> The Romans killed Archimedes Yes, but not because of his science. In fact, his science was the reason the Roman commander gave specific instructions that he was to be spared. He wasn't spared because of his inability to follow instructions from an invading soldier while he was trying to work out a problem.

by chasil 4y ago

callmeal 4y ago

>Unlike the Greeks, they did not leave the world a better place at the end of their power than they found it at the start. > >Many see them as violent and bitter enemies of scientific truth, and there is some foundation for this view. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.

abetusk 4y ago

If I understand your argument right, this is essentially saying that the dark ages were dark. First off, I'm not even sure that narrative is true. Second off, even if it were, there's still the Middle East and Asia. I, unfortunately, don't know a lot about the Middle East during the European dark ages period but, from what I understand, they went through a type of renaissance themselves. The question still is, why didn't people need or use coal at the levels they did until the 1600s?

WorldMaker 4y ago
> Second off, even if it were, there's still the Middle East and Asia Don't write off Mesoamerica and South America either. I know many people that strongly argue "The Mayan Empire never fell it was crushed." There especially was no direct equivalent to the European Dark Ages in the Mayan Empire. It remained a productive agricultural empire right up until post-Industrial Spanish Conquest (and right down until contemporary periods of not just the Roman Empire, but even as far back as various Mesopotamian empires as well). That's just the Mayan Empire. We also have an impression that Aztec Empire and even the looser "Confederations" of North American Indian tribes at various times all had economies comparable to European agricultural sense of "Empire" at least, but all also lost a lot history/institutions during American conquests. It seems reasonable to wonder if that deforestation of England truly was a strange precursor in the face of what we know of non-European empires at the time. (Which we don't know enough given how many of them Europe managed to burn to the ground in the American conquests.)

kurupt213 4y ago

The Greeks were as violent and imperialistic as the Romans. They would have eventually went west if the Romans hadn’t conquered them. They would have lost, too, because the Roman maniple based legions were superior to the Macedonian phalanx

jcranmer 4y ago

> Unlike the Greeks, they did not leave the world a better place at the end of their power than they found it at the start. Roman law fuels most of the world's modern legal codes. Roman languages are among the most widely spoken today, and is closer to universal if you look at written language (even now, we're writing using the Roman alphabet). The largest world religion is Roman religion. Roman infrastructure forms the backbone of European infrastructure in much of the world. That's more impact than the Greeks had.

baja_blast 4y ago
> That's more impact than the Greeks had. Our careers would not be possible if it was not for the mathematical and scientific contributions of the ancient Greeks. Not only did they greatly contribute to the foundations of math, but the way they formalized logical thinking enabled further discoveries.
- brnaftr361 4y ago
  None of this shit comes out of a magic hat, we're all ostensibly observing the same phenomena - that is to say there's hardly any reason whatsoever to attribute the gleaning of some fact derivative of the shared reality to a people. And I think this can be duly evidenced by the fact many people come to nearly simultaneous independent conclusions. This can be reduced to something like Newton didn't discover gravity, Newton formally described it in mathematics, and anyone dedicated enough to pursue the formal description could have done much the same. Much in the same way, the Eurocentric view is wrong to attribute things and with the way cultural interaction spheres tend to work it's even more difficult to attribute developments to a given culture or individual. E.g. not only are we "standing on the shoulders of giants" but the scientific domain is pruning viable explanatory paths with each passing moment, narrowing the scope of positive knowledge and increasing the sharpness of the borders of negative knowledge. For instance China had what was effectively fiat currency well before it became widespread in European nations; they also managed to invent moveable type which was ineffectual and thus discarded - but Gutenberg gets the attribution?
  - 4y ago

xyzzyz 4y ago

You have an extremely simplistic view of civilizations that lasted longer than almost all the ones currently existing. Imagine someone in year 4000 dismissing the French peoples as a whole as “violent and bitter enemies of scientific truth” who “decayed into superstition” because of something Charlemagne done, and some other cherry picked events from a millennium+ long history. This is so simplistic to border on satire.

sidibe 4y ago
Here I go making an irrelevant sidetracked comment, but Charlemagne is an interesting example to pick considering the main domestic policies he's associated with are educational reforms and making it available to more people.
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
deleted 4y ago
[deleted]
chasil 4y ago
Well, this simplistic view appears to be shared here. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20790545 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=20790545
- deleted 4y ago
  [deleted]
MichaelCollins 4y ago
An ancient Roman urban legend (a story Romans told about themselves) says that a Roman inventor once created a method of producing unbreakable glass. He showed this to the emperor by dropping a glass chalice on the ground, where it bent instead of breaking, then he hammered it back into shape. According to this legend, the Roman emperor asked if anybody else knew how to make it. The inventor said no, he was the only one. So the emperor had him killed on the spot, to prevent the disruption of the Roman glass industry. I think it never actually happened, but this sort of story reveals a Roman perspective on technological innovation in Roman society.

jacobolus 4y ago

Most of the “Greek” scholars of the later part of the “Hellenistic” era of science were Roman citizens, came from all over the Empire (not just the Greek speaking parts), and natively spoke a variety of languages. Some of them moved to Alexandria or Athens, but others remained in Rome or elsewhere. It is (at best) oversimplified to put this as “Romans” in opposition to “Greeks”. What is fair to say is that the Greek language remained the common "language of science", just as Arabic was the common language of science throughout the Islamic world (even for e.g. Persians), Latin was the common language of science in Medieval and Renaissance Europe, or English is the common language of science today. You wouldn’t say that “the English were opposed to science unlike the Latins Edmund Gunter, Thomas Harriot, Edmond Halley, Isaac Newton, et al.”.

mcphage 4y ago

What have the Romans ever done for us?

kybernetikos 4y ago

> The Romans killed Archimedes Yes, but not because of his science. In fact, his science was the reason the Roman commander gave specific instructions that he was to be spared. He wasn't spared because of his inability to follow instructions from an invading soldier while he was trying to work out a problem.