05-25-2006, 12:50 AM
I guess it was inevitable that I was going to post to this thread eventually ... :roll:
They certainly weren't. I don't subscribe to the fashionable theory that the fall of the Western Empire was actually just a mild 'transformation of the Roman world' and that the 'Dark Ages' never happened. Thankfully the tide is turning against this nonsense and Bryan Ward-Perkins' The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation makes a pretty rock solid case that the collapse was chaotic, bloody and extensive, not some multi-cultural hippy group-hug.
The problem, however, is that many people use the term 'Dark Ages' to describe the whole period from 476 to 1500 AD when, supposedly, we were rescued from medieval barbarism and superstition by the dawning of the glorious 'Renaissance', where everyone suddenly got a lot smarter or something. The term 'Dark Ages' can really only be said to apply to the early Middle Ages - up to circa 800 AD or 1000 AD or (at most) 1100 AD (depending on where you're talking about).
The other problem is that there is an assumption that because central administration collapsed, long distance trade all but ceased, education narrowed and a lot of infrastructure crumbled, technological innovation must also have ceased. This doesn't follow at all. In fact, those things seem to have been, in many cases, an actual stimulus to innovation and change.
Finally, anti-Church bias tends to rear its ugly head in this issue, with many people having an explicit or implicit assumption that the Church simply had to have hindered technological innovation because ... well, because it was bad and evil and did bad, evil things like that. In fact, the innovations of the medieval period, including the early 'Dark Ages' period were often a result of Church communities, usually monastic ones, having to find labour-saving ways of getting work done. So these communities often either invented new technologies or help propagate them.
The supposed Roman lack of technical innovation and the tendency not to utilise technologies has also been overstated, but it is broadly true that a large source of manual labour in slaves did have something of a retardant effect on the widespread use of mechanical power, for example. Whereas population decline, the deterioration of transport infrastructure, isolation and political instability in the 'Dark Ages' all meant early medieval people often had to find ways to harness mechanical power to get work done that used to be done by muscle alone. So the collapse of the Empire was, in many ways, a stimulus to innovation, rather than a retardant.
I don't share that feeling. The Roman period was not as technologically stagnant as it is sometimes made out to be, but if you look at the number of innovations and the pace of technological change between 500 and 1500 AD, the medieval millennium was far more innovative by comparison.
Yet this doesn't seem to have affected the rate of technical innovation or the rate of the dissemination of new technologies across Europe. Even the brainy old Greeks, who were very good at using reason and questioning to come up with new ideas, tended to scorn using those ideas for practical technological innovations. With a few notable exceptions (Hero, Archimedes), Greek thinkers tended to regard technology as the work of mere dirty artisans, not lofty thinkers.
This tendency continued in the Middle Ages, though to a lesser extent. The medieval guys who invented the post windmill or the water-powered trip hammer were probably illiterate, but they weren't dumb and nor did their illiteracy mean other illiterate guys didn't recognise these things as good ideas when they saw them.
And the literate medieval guys didn't completely share the Greek thinkers' disdain for tinkering with things. We know that several monks were working on how to get a mechanical clock to run using a weight-driven escapement. We have one letter from one monastery to another where the idea is being discussed and the writer says he hopes someone would find a way to get such a mechanism to work. Not long afterwards the first such clocks began popping up all over Europe, so obviously someone found the solution.
Yes, but that silly idea was one the medieval world inherited from the Greeks and Romans. Polybius may have known that the equator wasn't impassable due to scorching heat, but plenty of other Greco-Roman writers didn't. And their orthodoxy was contested long before 1400 AD. Medieval travellers in Asia travelled south of the equator and reported that the old 'authorities' were wrong. In the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries you have medieval traders traveling as far as Sumatra and Java and coming back entirely unincinerated.
A lot was lost, but much of it was recovered or rediscovered long before the 'Renaissance'. And the collapse of the Empire stimulated the harnessing of water and wind power which, in turn, set the medieval mind looking for other ways to apply mechanical power. By the end of the period they were using machines to do everything from printing books to turning meat on spits and were writing about and even experimenting with flying machines long before Leonardo's doodles. Not bad for a 'Dark Age'. :wink:
Quote:I've read in many books that technology marched on from roman times up through the Renaissance, but I remain somewhat unconvinced. They weren't called the Dark Ages for nothing I suspect.
They certainly weren't. I don't subscribe to the fashionable theory that the fall of the Western Empire was actually just a mild 'transformation of the Roman world' and that the 'Dark Ages' never happened. Thankfully the tide is turning against this nonsense and Bryan Ward-Perkins' The Fall of Rome and the End of Civilisation makes a pretty rock solid case that the collapse was chaotic, bloody and extensive, not some multi-cultural hippy group-hug.
The problem, however, is that many people use the term 'Dark Ages' to describe the whole period from 476 to 1500 AD when, supposedly, we were rescued from medieval barbarism and superstition by the dawning of the glorious 'Renaissance', where everyone suddenly got a lot smarter or something. The term 'Dark Ages' can really only be said to apply to the early Middle Ages - up to circa 800 AD or 1000 AD or (at most) 1100 AD (depending on where you're talking about).
The other problem is that there is an assumption that because central administration collapsed, long distance trade all but ceased, education narrowed and a lot of infrastructure crumbled, technological innovation must also have ceased. This doesn't follow at all. In fact, those things seem to have been, in many cases, an actual stimulus to innovation and change.
Finally, anti-Church bias tends to rear its ugly head in this issue, with many people having an explicit or implicit assumption that the Church simply had to have hindered technological innovation because ... well, because it was bad and evil and did bad, evil things like that. In fact, the innovations of the medieval period, including the early 'Dark Ages' period were often a result of Church communities, usually monastic ones, having to find labour-saving ways of getting work done. So these communities often either invented new technologies or help propagate them.
The supposed Roman lack of technical innovation and the tendency not to utilise technologies has also been overstated, but it is broadly true that a large source of manual labour in slaves did have something of a retardant effect on the widespread use of mechanical power, for example. Whereas population decline, the deterioration of transport infrastructure, isolation and political instability in the 'Dark Ages' all meant early medieval people often had to find ways to harness mechanical power to get work done that used to be done by muscle alone. So the collapse of the Empire was, in many ways, a stimulus to innovation, rather than a retardant.
Quote:I get the feeling that for every invention of the period, 2 inventions or important ideas were lost.
I don't share that feeling. The Roman period was not as technologically stagnant as it is sometimes made out to be, but if you look at the number of innovations and the pace of technological change between 500 and 1500 AD, the medieval millennium was far more innovative by comparison.
Quote:For one thing, it is clear that illiteracy was rampant, and use of a standard language almost completely dissappeared except in the Church.
Yet this doesn't seem to have affected the rate of technical innovation or the rate of the dissemination of new technologies across Europe. Even the brainy old Greeks, who were very good at using reason and questioning to come up with new ideas, tended to scorn using those ideas for practical technological innovations. With a few notable exceptions (Hero, Archimedes), Greek thinkers tended to regard technology as the work of mere dirty artisans, not lofty thinkers.
This tendency continued in the Middle Ages, though to a lesser extent. The medieval guys who invented the post windmill or the water-powered trip hammer were probably illiterate, but they weren't dumb and nor did their illiteracy mean other illiterate guys didn't recognise these things as good ideas when they saw them.
And the literate medieval guys didn't completely share the Greek thinkers' disdain for tinkering with things. We know that several monks were working on how to get a mechanical clock to run using a weight-driven escapement. We have one letter from one monastery to another where the idea is being discussed and the writer says he hopes someone would find a way to get such a mechanism to work. Not long afterwards the first such clocks began popping up all over Europe, so obviously someone found the solution.
Quote:I've recently began reading about the medieval economy, and I can hardly believe what I am reading. Trade had almost completely collapsed, and almost the entire population of Europe lived on self sufficient farms. After reading for years about the Greeks and Romans, I am shocked by what was lost. Polybius knew that if you went far enough south, the sun would appear on your opposite shoulder as you sailed east/west. That was nothing but an untested crackpot, if not heretical, theory in 1400 c.e. where it was common knowlege that anyone that sailed south of the horn of Africa would be incinerated by the heat!
Yes, but that silly idea was one the medieval world inherited from the Greeks and Romans. Polybius may have known that the equator wasn't impassable due to scorching heat, but plenty of other Greco-Roman writers didn't. And their orthodoxy was contested long before 1400 AD. Medieval travellers in Asia travelled south of the equator and reported that the old 'authorities' were wrong. In the Thirteenth and Fourteenth Centuries you have medieval traders traveling as far as Sumatra and Java and coming back entirely unincinerated.
A lot was lost, but much of it was recovered or rediscovered long before the 'Renaissance'. And the collapse of the Empire stimulated the harnessing of water and wind power which, in turn, set the medieval mind looking for other ways to apply mechanical power. By the end of the period they were using machines to do everything from printing books to turning meat on spits and were writing about and even experimenting with flying machines long before Leonardo's doodles. Not bad for a 'Dark Age'. :wink:
Tim ONeill / Thiudareiks Flavius /Thiudareiks Gunthigg
HISTORY FOR ATHEISTS - New Atheists Getting History Wrong
HISTORY FOR ATHEISTS - New Atheists Getting History Wrong
