5 ms·

Was there really a dark age ? Or was it a an artifact of a Eurocentric view of the world? Different regions of the world went dark at different times in histor

by rdtwo 4y ago

Was there really a dark age ? Or was it a an artifact of a Eurocentric view of the world? Different regions of the world went dark at different times in history. I don’t see a global dark age on the horizon (at least from a technological perspective)

msla 4y ago
> Was there really a dark age ? Or was it a an artifact of a Eurocentric view of the world? A Dark Age is always, or at least has always been so far, bound to a specific region. You might as well ask if there really was a Ming Dynasty when the Aztecs never heard of any such empire. These days, the term "Dark Age" is usually used to mean the dislocation and disruption caused by the Roman Empire abandoning its western regions and retrenching in the east, around Constantinople. We can't answer how Dark that age was in that region by focusing somewhere else.
- throwaway2202 4y ago
  What something is used to mean differs from whether it makes sense objectively. Ming existed independently of observer obviously, and sciences are objective by definition. Objectively one also considers if people move, and flow of money. I can’t tell what is there that make a region a key factor in determining light or dark ages of physical sciences.
  - msla 4y ago
    > I can’t tell what is there that make a region a key factor in determining light or dark ages of physical sciences. My point is that regions have dark ages, if dark ages exist at all, and trying to disprove the existence of a regional dark age by pointing out that other regions weren't in a dark age is a non sequitur. For example, I think it's widely recognized that the Islamic Golden Age occurred during at least part of the time usually regarded as Western Europe's Dark Age.
    - smga 4y ago
      The historical relation between the descent of Rome into the Western dark ages, the subsequent rise of the non-Western Islamic world, and the rise again of High Medieval Western Europe is something I learned only in recent years. [0] The fall of Rome in Western Europe was followed, after a lag of some centuries, by the rise of Islamic civilization and its peak in the Islamic Golden Age (c. the Umayyad and early Abbasid Caliphates). During this golden age, the Islamic world became a center of trade routes, agriculture, population, wealth, and knowledge-- a center of civilization. But the later Abbasid Caliphate declined as well, marked by the dispersal of trade routes, agriculture, population, wealth, and knowledge. Then, some of that knowledge, wealth, and control of trade routes migrated West during its High Middle Ages, bootstrapping the Western millennium. The rest, is History. [0] Bas van Bavel, _The Invisible Hand_

by rdtwo 4y ago

msla 4y ago

> Was there really a dark age ? Or was it a an artifact of a Eurocentric view of the world? A Dark Age is always, or at least has always been so far, bound to a specific region. You might as well ask if there really was a Ming Dynasty when the Aztecs never heard of any such empire. These days, the term "Dark Age" is usually used to mean the dislocation and disruption caused by the Roman Empire abandoning its western regions and retrenching in the east, around Constantinople. We can't answer how Dark that age was in that region by focusing somewhere else.

throwaway2202 4y ago
What something is used to mean differs from whether it makes sense objectively. Ming existed independently of observer obviously, and sciences are objective by definition. Objectively one also considers if people move, and flow of money. I can’t tell what is there that make a region a key factor in determining light or dark ages of physical sciences.
- msla 4y ago
  > I can’t tell what is there that make a region a key factor in determining light or dark ages of physical sciences. My point is that regions have dark ages, if dark ages exist at all, and trying to disprove the existence of a regional dark age by pointing out that other regions weren't in a dark age is a non sequitur. For example, I think it's widely recognized that the Islamic Golden Age occurred during at least part of the time usually regarded as Western Europe's Dark Age.
  - smga 4y ago
    The historical relation between the descent of Rome into the Western dark ages, the subsequent rise of the non-Western Islamic world, and the rise again of High Medieval Western Europe is something I learned only in recent years. [0] The fall of Rome in Western Europe was followed, after a lag of some centuries, by the rise of Islamic civilization and its peak in the Islamic Golden Age (c. the Umayyad and early Abbasid Caliphates). During this golden age, the Islamic world became a center of trade routes, agriculture, population, wealth, and knowledge-- a center of civilization. But the later Abbasid Caliphate declined as well, marked by the dispersal of trade routes, agriculture, population, wealth, and knowledge. Then, some of that knowledge, wealth, and control of trade routes migrated West during its High Middle Ages, bootstrapping the Western millennium. The rest, is History. [0] Bas van Bavel, _The Invisible Hand_