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There are no scientific advances in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, i.e. between 500AD to 1000AD, just a 'mere' 500+ years... This is actually ack

There are no scientific advances in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, i.e. between 500AD to 1000AD, just a 'mere' 500+ years... This is actually acknowledged by the writer of the article. Things get somewhat better in the 2nd part of the Middle Ages leading to the Renaissance. So roughly 1000AD-1500AD. The earliest references from the author are in 12th century. Such an intellectually dishonest title.

Tloewald 12y ago
The article answers a question about the middle ages. No dishonesty there. The LINK title starts with "Middle Ages". The author points out that while the Dark Ages (500-1000) were indeed dark, the Middle Ages weren't, and that the Church, far from suppressing early scientific investigation nurtured it. If the link title omitted the first two words it might be accused of dishonestly, but since it does not, it's your reading comprehension that's the problem.
- tjradcliffe 12y ago
  The Dark Age is generally terminated at 800, with Charlemagne assuming the title of Emperor in the West. So the point that most of the Middle Ages (800 - 1200) saw relatively little scientific progress is not entirely wrong, although the article's point that the foundations of modern science were laid in the High Middle Ages (1200 - 1380) is well taken.
- jackjeff 12y ago
  The "Middle Ages" refers to the period starting with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and ending with the discovery of America. So 5th to 15th century. So conveniently redefining Middle Ages to start in the 12th century to make a point is not particularly honest. There was no scientific progress for more than half of the period commonly known as "Middle Ages" in Western Europe. That's a fact not disputed by the article. Addendum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages Middle Ages period is 5th to 15th century.
  - coliveira 12y ago
    "ending with the discovery of America"... I don't know what you learned in school, but the end of middle ages had nothing to do with America. What caused the end of the middle ages was the cultural renaissance of Europe. By the time America was discovered, the middle ages were finished for a few decades at least.
    - dragonwriter 12y ago
      > What caused the end of the middle ages was the cultural renaissance of Europe. The Renaissance in Italy started well before the usual end date for the Middle Ages. There's a lot of things that motivate the dating of the end of the Middle Ages -- the discovery of the New World, the spread of the Renaissance to much of Europe, the completion of the reconquista, and a number of other things contribute.
      - vorg 12y ago
        Probably discovering the New World and movable type printing together had the most impact in ending the "Middle Ages" in Western Europe.
  - vacri 12y ago
    Speaking of 'not particularly honest', how about 'There are no scientific advances in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, i.e. between 500AD to 1000AD"? It's not even a couched statement allowing a little leeway.
  - Tloewald 12y ago
    I usually understand the period from 500 to 1000 or so to be the Dark Ages (which weren't so bad as all that) and the period from 1000 to whenever the renaissance is considered to start to be the Middle Ages. While the dictionary definition might support your literal interpretation (with what I call the Middle Ages being the "high" middle ages, it seems to me that my understanding is pretty common, and jibes with the author of this piece who goes on to discuss exactly which periods he (or she) is referring to. In any event, the writer of the original piece shows that significant advancement occurred during SOME of the middle ages, so my original point stands.
- Shivetya 12y ago
  they key to the article isn't the years covered but the fact that the Church wasn't suppressing knowledge which many people have an irrational inability to recognize.
  - Thrymr 12y ago
    The church wasn't suppressing ancient knowledge for the most part, but it wasn't exactly doing much to produce new knowledge, either. That didn't really get going (in Europe) until the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, although there was some progress in the late Middle Ages as the article points out. For the most part, the article is about preserving and recovering old knowledge. That the Renaissance had some precedent in the late Middle Ages is not exactly new, but it does tend to be forgotten in simplified accounts.
    - bane 12y ago
      Right, the Church was actually in the habit of relying on "ancient" Greek sources, cherry picked to support various bits of doctrine or political stances. "Good learning" in the late middle ages meant learning these sources, which were already millenia old and long since surpassed by the Romans. But all that was lost and in the rediscovery of Western Culture that led to the Renaissance, the practice of building on more recent works, as well as reviewing ancient texts and ideas that had been dismissed by the Church helped begin the wave of humanism and inquiry that's defined Western thought since.
    - scottlocklin 12y ago
      Albertus Magnus, Witelo, Robert Grosseteste (inventor of the scientific method), Roger Bacon, Petrus Peregrinus, William of Ockham: obviously these guys never existed, and the foundation of the Universities in the Cathedral towns never happened.
bane 12y ago
There's a weird kind of historic revisionism that's been going on the last couple years regarding the Medieval period...the "things weren't all that bad" and "the notion that nothing happened is just a myth". Is it real? Are we just now learning about advanced and invention that happened during this period and were previously ignoring/ignorant of? Maybe. But I suspect something else is at play here, I'm just not sure what. man, if that doesn't make me sound like a conspiracy theorist I mean, we actually know that not only was there pitifully little scientific advancement during that period (especially as you point out in the first half), but that science and technology regressed massively and entire fields were completely forgotten. For example, there was a gap of over a thousand years before anybody could build large domes again, and even then it had to be completely reinvented. The loss of knowledge was vast and unprecedented in history. I've heard it said that Western Europe almost reverted back out of the Iron Age the loss of information was so great. What's triggering all this revisionism? Again, I don't know, but sources like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hwrSE5DZrQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hwrSE5DZrQ list all things that happened in the later periods. Even if you just blame the first 500 years, that's a loong time where not much of anything interesting happened.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  > There's a weird kind of historic revisionism that's been going on the last couple years For various values of "last couple", e.g., I remember at least one college history class I had around 1996 where the instructor spent some time (it was something of a tangent from the central focus of the class) discussing research (which I don't think was particularly new at the time, but something the instructor thought most students wouldn't be aware of) which seemed to refute the existence of a period of a lack of technological development in the Middle Ages in Europe. (Not that a lot of early-developed technology wasn't lost or at least less widely distributed, just that new developments continued despite that.)
- javajosh 12y ago
  I have witnessed the same change in the zeitgeist, and also wondered about it's source. My hypothesis is that it's rooted in the trend toward environmental sustainability, local and human-powered production (e.g. hand-made things from locally acquired materials). It seems reasonable to me to believe that life wasn't that bad even for a Christian peasant, assuming: good health, good weather, no plague, no war (to be conscripted in), ugly daughters (to avoid prima nocta). Sure, you didn't own anything but life was simple, food was good, the world was understandable (even if your understanding was primitive and wrong), and the countryside must have been beautiful to explore. Plus you had the remarkable benefit of dreaming about truly foreign and far-away places, like Africa, India or China. Even countries within Europe were so distinct from each other as to make travel a real adventure. There's an interesting take on going back to something like this in Paolo Bacigalupi's _The Windup Girl_[1]. The world has undergone a "Contraction" and oil is incredibly scarce. Travel is difficult and expensive; the world has grown large again, and human and animal power are once again the staples (although military and governments still use oil for some things). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl
sbmassey 12y ago
I didn't read the article yet, but the Carolingian Renaissance was smack in the middle of that period, and was pretty culturally fertile, with pipe organs, new architecture, the invention of lower case Latin script, and so forth.
dang 12y ago
> Such an intellectually dishonest title We changed the title to that of the page itself, which obviously doesn't make the claim you're objecting to. Surprised we didn't do it earlier.
mmaldacker 12y ago
And the article doesn't even mention Fibonacci or Al-Kashi.

Tloewald 12y ago

The article answers a question about the middle ages. No dishonesty there. The LINK title starts with "Middle Ages". The author points out that while the Dark Ages (500-1000) were indeed dark, the Middle Ages weren't, and that the Church, far from suppressing early scientific investigation nurtured it. If the link title omitted the first two words it might be accused of dishonestly, but since it does not, it's your reading comprehension that's the problem.

tjradcliffe 12y ago
The Dark Age is generally terminated at 800, with Charlemagne assuming the title of Emperor in the West. So the point that most of the Middle Ages (800 - 1200) saw relatively little scientific progress is not entirely wrong, although the article's point that the foundations of modern science were laid in the High Middle Ages (1200 - 1380) is well taken.
jackjeff 12y ago
The "Middle Ages" refers to the period starting with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and ending with the discovery of America. So 5th to 15th century. So conveniently redefining Middle Ages to start in the 12th century to make a point is not particularly honest. There was no scientific progress for more than half of the period commonly known as "Middle Ages" in Western Europe. That's a fact not disputed by the article. Addendum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages Middle Ages period is 5th to 15th century.
- coliveira 12y ago
  "ending with the discovery of America"... I don't know what you learned in school, but the end of middle ages had nothing to do with America. What caused the end of the middle ages was the cultural renaissance of Europe. By the time America was discovered, the middle ages were finished for a few decades at least.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    > What caused the end of the middle ages was the cultural renaissance of Europe. The Renaissance in Italy started well before the usual end date for the Middle Ages. There's a lot of things that motivate the dating of the end of the Middle Ages -- the discovery of the New World, the spread of the Renaissance to much of Europe, the completion of the reconquista, and a number of other things contribute.
    - vorg 12y ago
      Probably discovering the New World and movable type printing together had the most impact in ending the "Middle Ages" in Western Europe.
- vacri 12y ago
  Speaking of 'not particularly honest', how about 'There are no scientific advances in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, i.e. between 500AD to 1000AD"? It's not even a couched statement allowing a little leeway.
- Tloewald 12y ago
  I usually understand the period from 500 to 1000 or so to be the Dark Ages (which weren't so bad as all that) and the period from 1000 to whenever the renaissance is considered to start to be the Middle Ages. While the dictionary definition might support your literal interpretation (with what I call the Middle Ages being the "high" middle ages, it seems to me that my understanding is pretty common, and jibes with the author of this piece who goes on to discuss exactly which periods he (or she) is referring to. In any event, the writer of the original piece shows that significant advancement occurred during SOME of the middle ages, so my original point stands.
Shivetya 12y ago
they key to the article isn't the years covered but the fact that the Church wasn't suppressing knowledge which many people have an irrational inability to recognize.
- Thrymr 12y ago
  The church wasn't suppressing ancient knowledge for the most part, but it wasn't exactly doing much to produce new knowledge, either. That didn't really get going (in Europe) until the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, although there was some progress in the late Middle Ages as the article points out. For the most part, the article is about preserving and recovering old knowledge. That the Renaissance had some precedent in the late Middle Ages is not exactly new, but it does tend to be forgotten in simplified accounts.
  - bane 12y ago
    Right, the Church was actually in the habit of relying on "ancient" Greek sources, cherry picked to support various bits of doctrine or political stances. "Good learning" in the late middle ages meant learning these sources, which were already millenia old and long since surpassed by the Romans. But all that was lost and in the rediscovery of Western Culture that led to the Renaissance, the practice of building on more recent works, as well as reviewing ancient texts and ideas that had been dismissed by the Church helped begin the wave of humanism and inquiry that's defined Western thought since.
  - scottlocklin 12y ago
    Albertus Magnus, Witelo, Robert Grosseteste (inventor of the scientific method), Roger Bacon, Petrus Peregrinus, William of Ockham: obviously these guys never existed, and the foundation of the Universities in the Cathedral towns never happened.

bane 12y ago

There's a weird kind of historic revisionism that's been going on the last couple years regarding the Medieval period...the "things weren't all that bad" and "the notion that nothing happened is just a myth". Is it real? Are we just now learning about advanced and invention that happened during this period and were previously ignoring/ignorant of? Maybe. But I suspect something else is at play here, I'm just not sure what. man, if that doesn't make me sound like a conspiracy theorist I mean, we actually know that not only was there pitifully little scientific advancement during that period (especially as you point out in the first half), but that science and technology regressed massively and entire fields were completely forgotten. For example, there was a gap of over a thousand years before anybody could build large domes again, and even then it had to be completely reinvented. The loss of knowledge was vast and unprecedented in history. I've heard it said that Western Europe almost reverted back out of the Iron Age the loss of information was so great. What's triggering all this revisionism? Again, I don't know, but sources like this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hwrSE5DZrQ https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3hwrSE5DZrQ list all things that happened in the later periods. Even if you just blame the first 500 years, that's a loong time where not much of anything interesting happened.

dragonwriter 12y ago
> There's a weird kind of historic revisionism that's been going on the last couple years For various values of "last couple", e.g., I remember at least one college history class I had around 1996 where the instructor spent some time (it was something of a tangent from the central focus of the class) discussing research (which I don't think was particularly new at the time, but something the instructor thought most students wouldn't be aware of) which seemed to refute the existence of a period of a lack of technological development in the Middle Ages in Europe. (Not that a lot of early-developed technology wasn't lost or at least less widely distributed, just that new developments continued despite that.)
javajosh 12y ago
I have witnessed the same change in the zeitgeist, and also wondered about it's source. My hypothesis is that it's rooted in the trend toward environmental sustainability, local and human-powered production (e.g. hand-made things from locally acquired materials). It seems reasonable to me to believe that life wasn't that bad even for a Christian peasant, assuming: good health, good weather, no plague, no war (to be conscripted in), ugly daughters (to avoid prima nocta). Sure, you didn't own anything but life was simple, food was good, the world was understandable (even if your understanding was primitive and wrong), and the countryside must have been beautiful to explore. Plus you had the remarkable benefit of dreaming about truly foreign and far-away places, like Africa, India or China. Even countries within Europe were so distinct from each other as to make travel a real adventure. There's an interesting take on going back to something like this in Paolo Bacigalupi's _The Windup Girl_[1]. The world has undergone a "Contraction" and oil is incredibly scarce. Travel is difficult and expensive; the world has grown large again, and human and animal power are once again the staples (although military and governments still use oil for some things). [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Windup_Girl

sbmassey 12y ago

I didn't read the article yet, but the Carolingian Renaissance was smack in the middle of that period, and was pretty culturally fertile, with pipe organs, new architecture, the invention of lower case Latin script, and so forth.

dang 12y ago

> Such an intellectually dishonest title We changed the title to that of the page itself, which obviously doesn't make the claim you're objecting to. Surprised we didn't do it earlier.

mmaldacker 12y ago

And the article doesn't even mention Fibonacci or Al-Kashi.