Linguistic Clue Pushes Back Origin of "World's Oldest Computer" 141
Calopteryx points out a piece at New Scientist which suggests that the Antikythera mechanism may be even older than previously thought; an ancient Greek word on of the device's dials suggests the device may date to the early second century BC. The article is accompanied by a great animation of its (deduced) workings, too.
Well that concludes many things (Score:2, Funny)
But Does It End In 2012 (tm) (Score:4, Insightful)
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Two syllables, one color-word? And the color word might remind you of the content of (what I hear) is a vital plot device in another movie which is apparently a bit better than (say) The Da Vinci Code called Two Girls One Cup?
Because I suspect he's just floating in a pool of his own drool trying to work this device into an awful novel.
timothy
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Re:But Does It End In 2012 (tm) (Score:4, Funny)
My gut says someone is already thinking of adding this device as part of a movie plot. sigh...
Really? Mine generally just growls.
fiction plot (Score:2)
Re:fiction plot (Score:4, Funny)
Re:fiction plot (Score:4, Interesting)
Hum. My english level is not good enough for me to take such a stance. Let's say I was happy to read his novels because they were easy enough for my poor understanding the moment I needed it. Now that I've improved a bit, I tend to read more mature books. Before you criticize me, just think for a moment how many fiction books you read in another language than your own (I don't need to know the answer ;-) ).
This said, I think there are wonderful novelists in the US at the moment, and this is pretty exciting. But even Clive Cussler is someone to be proud of, this is a kind of litterature we used to have at the end of the XIXth century in France, and in my opinion, we badly miss it. Alexandre Dumas was widely despised too, in his days, for plotting unrealistic stories, and lambasted for his "poor" style. Nevertheless, his books remains because they were bigger than life (and made better stories than historical accuracy would have produced alone ; Dumas used to say you could rape history, in order to produce beautiful offsprings).
Nowdays, most french novelists are writing about their own navel, and it's awfully boring. This is largely the product of the narrow minds of professional critics who value style over everything. Crafting a good story seems to be a lost art. Fear the day when you might think the same of your own country writers !
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The original poster was making a joke. Your use of "prolific" was correct, since it means "someone who has done a lot of [whatever]".
I couldn't comment on the quality of Clive Custler's writing ; I don't recall having read any of his books. But I do see lots of them cluttering up the bookshops, so he's undoubtedly a prolific author.
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My joke really was based on the idea that his books are fairly formulaic (essentially the reluctant hero model that most hollywood and pop fiction novels are based on . . . the Joseph Campbell model). I have felt that the american art of the novel has been dead for a long time, perhaps the 50s and 60s saw the last of the good ones, thoug
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Oh, you and your wild anachronisms. Next you'll be telling us they played D&D in ancient Rome!
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Oh, you and your wild anachronisms. Next you'll be telling us they played D&D in ancient Rome!
No, but they did have dungeons and live-action runs of Gladiators.
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The original LAG was a game killer just like it is today.
Only back then you really did die.
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I don't know about Rome, but I hear the Egyptians were famous for their games of Dungeon Draggin'.
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Full res video and more info. (Score:5, Informative)
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Here's the thing. This is a beautiful machine, yes. It embodies tremendous amounts of skill and knowledge, yes. But then, so did creating the beautiful structures that remain in Ancient Greece that were well-documented and we know are about 2500 years old (somewhat older than this device). The flutes on columns of buildings like the Parthenon, for example, were cut by hand, and yet are demonstrably as perfect as those cut by machine in modern times. The skill to do such precision work -- by many worker
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War, death, and pestilence.
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Baghdad Battery, Homopolar Motor & Antikythera (Score:2)
Wow, cool thought!! You heard it here first:
The Baghdad Battery [wikipedia.org], another ancient mystery device which dates to almost exactly the same time as the Antikythera Mechanism, performs [instructables.com] well enough to drive a Homop [5min.com]
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Deja vue..... (Score:2)
Didn't I just see this on 'Warehouse 13'?
*Spoiler Warning!!!*
Hint:
He loved puzzles, look for secret compartments!
Is it a 'computer' ? (Score:5, Interesting)
If you read the comments, there is a hot but pointless discussion on whether this device is actually a 'computer'.
My father worked in RAE Farnbrough in the '40s and '50's. The first early 'Pilot-ACE' prototypes were developed by Manchester University and the National Physical Laboratory. Another less well known one was made for the Ministry of Defence and sent to Farnbrough for calculating things like air flow over wing profiles. The NPL director at the time seems to have had a deep distrust of computers, and the early versions were explicitly forbidden to execute conditional jumps ( IF..THEN..ELSE ). The computer would solve flow equations by shooting from the boundary conditions, and then stop. A human operator then had to press a key to instruct it to execute the jump back to the beginning of the loop to take the next iteration. I can only imagine how irritating Alan Turing must have found that - to go right to the edge of computational completeness, and then stop just short. Aaaaugh!
Arguments about who made the first computer tend to get rabid, fast, so people often define a computer as something that can make a conditions jump based on it's previous calculations, and not just like a player piano, rewinding its roll when it has detected the end. This is a nice, clear rule - either the machine can do conditional jumps or it can't - so it tends to get invoked when things get heated. The Antikythera mechanism had no need of a conditional jump. I have no doubt that the people who made it could have designed it to do so if they had wanted to, just as Charles Babbage could have done for the Difference Engine. However, in both cases, they did not, so in both cases, according to the narrow definition that requires a computer to do a conditional jump, this is a 'calculator' and not a 'computer'.
I suspect the Antikythera mechanism may have had immense value for calculating the tides and the safe dates for shipping. As such, you can imagine the ship's captain chucking it over the side in an emergency, like a U-Boat commander disposing of an Enigma machine, rather than let it be captured, and copied. Maybe this is why these devices have vanished so completely from known history.
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IF a certain marker is aligned with another distinct point, THEN a certain result is produced. IF that marker is aligned with a different point, it produces a different result(ELSIF). If it doesn't align with a marker at all you get your ELSE. The only limitation is that the inputs are restricted to those available on the mechanism.
There's no value added. It's like saying it's true because it's true and it's true because it's not false.
The computer should be able to change its program based on a previous result. That's what "if then else" is all about. The antikythera can not do that.
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So a combination lock is a computer? Perhaps so.
So, indeed, a keyed lock is a computer?
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If you read the comments, there is a hot but pointless discussion on whether this device is actually a 'computer'.
Only because some people have unilaterally declared that "computer" always means "universal Turing machine" rather than "something or someone that computes".
Humptey-dumptey syndrome ("words mean precisely what I intend them to mean") and the pathological inability to accept that words can have multiple similar but different meanings seems to be an industrial disease amongst nerds.
Guys: if you want a new word to always mean something highly specific and techical then iether make one up or use something fro
Let's get formal. (Score:3, Informative)
If we define "computer" as "turing machine", then yes it is a computer.
People are using "IF-THEN-ELSE" as a touchstone for this. This is wrong. What the Antikythera machine is (if you're willing to encode the input and output digitally, which you may as well because of gear lash slop) is a Turing machine with an unwritable tape, otherwise known as an FSA (Finite State Automaton).
An FSA, since it's a Turing machine, does effectively do IF-THEN-ELSE operations. The important thing is that it is not pr
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Let's write an Antikythera driver for MESS then!
Re:Is it a 'computer' ? (Score:4, Insightful)
Maybe this is why these devices have vanished so completely from known history.
What is more likely is that devices like this were never widely known because there was very little that resembled a scientific community, so there was no way to make such knowledge public. By "no way" I mean there was neither the technical means of dissemination nor the social means of rewarding the creators of such knowledge.
Science is a public, communal activity. Until the founding of the Royal Society in the 1600's there was no way for the nascent scientific community to actualize itself in archival journals and shared results. Such "science" as there was was carried on by practitioners who swore oaths of secrecy (much of the actual text of the vaunted Hipocratic Oath is actually about not teaching anyone but the sons of physicians any trade secrets, and not stepping on the toes of any of the other medical services unions.)
It is therefore likely that similar techniques and ideas were rediscovered and lost many times during the past few thousand years, in a wide variety of fields. And extreme example of this is knowledge of the diameter of the Earth, which the Greeks knew pretty well, but which was sufficiently debatable 1500 years later that a nutjob like Columbus could convince people that it was about half the actual figure.
The lack of comprehensive, authoritative publications embedded in a living community of empirical investigators meant that knowledge tended to wither and die with time, resulting in relatively slow accumulation over the long term.
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What is more likely is that devices like this were never widely known because there was very little that resembled a scientific community, so there was no way to make such knowledge public.
In Greece at the time, quite a lot of what Aristotle and his friends wrote survived. An influential teacher would attract followers, and there was usually the feeling that the 'right answer' could be reached by dialogue, so this is not Science as we know it, Jim, but it does have many of the general properties.
I am not a historian, but I would argue that the Greeks of Athens and Pergamon were a rich society with a leisured class that allowed people to indulge in abstract thought. Philip Ball in "Bright E
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When we say "computer" we aren't talking about abaci or slide rules. We're talking about nearly-turing-complete digital computers, which if they had unlimited store would all be theoretically capable of emulating anything any of the others can do (over time.)
So, NO, the Antikythera device does NOT have ANY bearing on the argument as we typically think of it. If it did, then we never would have had to discuss colossus et al, because again, the slide rule precedes them (As do other similar calculators.)
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The value of if/then for this mechanism is completely obvious. If the sun doesn't come up tomorrow, without fully taking this into account, the phase of the moon calculation will come out horribly wrong.
Computing was hard back in the day. Moses climbed Mount Sinai for some peace and quiet while he chiseled out his astrolabe's stack dump as part of a warranty claim, ate some strange mushrooms on the way up to relieve the tedium, and the rest is history. (One wrong chisel stroke and your claim is rejected
So who is selling replicas? (Score:2, Interesting)
n/t
An even earlier "device" for calculations (Score:4, Informative)
Full story in a Telegraph article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1388038/Mysterious-gold-cones-hats-of-ancient-wizards.html [telegraph.co.uk]
And, no it doesn't run linux but it may be possible to imagine a beowulf cluster of them.
How does this actually date it? (Score:2)
The Most Important Question: Heliocentric (Score:3, Insightful)
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Please read this before posting. [wikipedia.org]
Oh shucks, too late.
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You could make a description like that, but you'd be missing the point (deliberately, I suspect). The stick and sand "analogue computer" you describe depends entirely on the software in the stick-user, who must not only understand what the problem is ("I want to know what the positions of the planets was/ will be on such-and-such a date"), but also all details of how to solve the problem. Without the user having both of these software packages inst
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In contrast, the hardware of the Antikythera mechanism embodies a method of solution, so that it's user only needs to understand the problem and how to enter it into the computer, but not the detailed method of solution.
It depends entirely how you view it. The Antikythera machine is certainly a more advanced computer: the required actions for solving the problem are certainly less complex than a stick and some sand. However if you regard the stick and sand as a machine with a set of actions you must take the two are alike (you do not have to understand why you do them - you just do them): the only difference is the complexity of the instructions. Did you understand the complete reasoning behind the method of long division
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Logically you are correct. There is no logical distinction between (for example) Wossname's 1000-odd-strong Beowulf cluster for playing a fair amateur strength of Go and performing the same computation using a Maxwellian demon and a couple of billion atoms of hydrogen for working memory. Both, being physical devices for assisting with a computation, are computers. However, this then leaves the concept
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I disagree with you.
This not a free form stick and sand device.
It's a mechanical device that deterministically computes planetary data based on user input.
It's a highly specialized computer in my book.
RMS 2000 BC (Score:3, Funny)
This not a free form stick and sand device.
"GNU/Stick and Sand" has the Four Freedoms.
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But does it run Linux?
(Don't worry; I hated typing that joke as much as you hated reading it.)
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A computer? That's the hot chick who crunches numbers for me.
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It's as much of a "computer" as my Casio G-Shock is. The Casio is microprocessor controlled so you shouldn't have a problem with accepting that.
Re:It it hadn't been for the Catholic Church .. (Score:4, Interesting)
They didn't actually do that, but don't let that get in the way of your prejudice. About the worst they can reasonably be accused of is encouraging bright people to remain celibate.
Either way, though, it wouldn't have changed much. The Catholics did not control the entire world, and there was plenty going on outside their reach -- particularly in the Islamic world, where massive progress was made in mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy.
Nice troll though.
Re:It it hadn't been for the Catholic Church .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Wouldn't threatening leading scientists with heresy or witchcraft charges, crusades against a technologically advanced (and supportive of science!) civilization, and a general discouragement of literacy outside the clergy count as "holding back scientific research"? I think it does.
Re:It it hadn't been for the Catholic Church .. (Score:4, Interesting)
Happened all the way later, the funny thing is the so called dark ages the middle ages were not that dark, the witch burning happened way after the middle ages with their height about 300 years ago, but when that started to happen the genie in form of the printing press was already out of the bottle.
And even worse the catholics were not even the worst witch burners in fact in the later stages during the 30 years war in europe the offical roman view was even against it (the triggering books although were clearly catholic), but it was a mass phenomenon infesting the minds of the europeans at that time, and the protestants often being worse.
Also the stance of the catholic church towards science and the trial of galileo did not change anything and it would not have happened probably in the middle ages.
Re:It it hadn't been for the Catholic Church .. (Score:4, Informative)
Ah to add an example the so called dark middle ages, were the foundation of the first universities in paris and there was a huge exchange between the scholars of france and granada (which was the science capital of that time)
The situation was simply that the roman empire was crushed and so in the european world science was lost what was saved mostly could be found in cloisters which also opened the first schools, the other roman world the byzantime empire still had it thriving but was constantly under war so they had higher priorities, but nevertheless all the science also went into the arabic world and from then again into europe!
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Re:It it hadn't been for the Catholic Church .. (Score:5, Interesting)
I would not even say the arabs are the safekeepers, probably almost the entire middle age society with western europe being the dark spot only. The biggest gate was Constantinople with their book copy shops from there the books went into the arabic world and also to some degree into europe.
For those countries western europe must have looked like Afghanistan looks now for us.
This is one of the biggest mistakes tought in schools that the middle ages were some kind of age where knowledge was lost everywhere while only a small subset of the world lost its knowledge (which it never had in the first degree since france never went into this stage after the roman empire collapse neither did italy really nor spain)
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Yes, the church built several universities.
But scholars at these universities only engaged in intellectual masturbation (i.e. religion). They produced ZERO useful results. Literally zero. Oh, and they even failed to preserve antic texts, overwriting old parchments with stupid prayers.
And what about the Library of Alexandria? It was destroyed by Christians.
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Have you read what you've quoted?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria#Decree_of_Theodosius.2C_destruction_by_Theophilus_in_391 [wikipedia.org]
"In 391, Christian Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all "pagan" (non-Christian) temples, and the Christian Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria complied with this request."
As far as I know, this is the most plausible version. Because Theodosius' decree is corroborated by other sources.
And the story of Caliph Umar is most probably a hoax.
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Have you read what I quoted? He issued this decree to kill the remnants of 'paganism' - a religious reason. The use of Christianity to solidify personal power is even more telling of the nature of religion.
And of course, if Muslims really had burnt the library, then it changes little enough. Religion was still a force stifling science throughout the ages. It still is.
In fact, the Arab world is another great example. They got a huge head-start early in the history and then just squandered it. Right now, the
Re:It it hadn't been for the Catholic Church .. (Score:4, Informative)
Not more than many other churches, as soon as extremists have a certain percentage every religion starts to suck.
There are churches on the protestant side and on the orthodox side which are so extreme that the catholic church looks like a bunch of liberal hippies compared to them.
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Re:It it hadn't been for the Catholic Church .. (Score:5, Interesting)
Funny enough, it wasn't the RCC. As much as they're dogmatic about religious things, they were (and to some degree still are) pretty lenient and progressive towards research and science. The RCC are hardly Luddites, and quite a bit of progress that was possible in medieval times was helped by Popes who wanted better artillery and more sculptures.
The RCC was a good scapegoat for emperors, though, if they wanted a cheap and easy way to get rid of gripers. Much like a lot of "terrorist" laws are today. Heretic, witch, communist, terrorist... why do you think the times change? The terms change, their use stays the same. It's a tool for those in power to intimidate their subjects and gain support for their quest to weed out the malcontents that dare to raise their voice.
The RCC wasn't keen on keeping literacy down. In fact, they taught it. Most charges of heresy and witchcraft against scientists were not raised by the RCC itself but rather by powerful individuals that were threatened by them. The Roman Inquisition was one of the most advanced judical systems in those times, and many people accused of heresy hoped to be subjected to the RI instead of a "worldly" court because your chance for a fair trial (as far as fairness went in those times) was heaps higher. You had the right to a defender who was educated in Roman Law, you had the right to be sheltered, in such a way that it is possible to you to prepare for your trial, the judges were not under the direct control of the Pope (actually quite often they acted against the Pope's interests) and your chance to go out free was not too bad, compared to other trials of that times. Maybe the best example on how much these Inquisition trials were aiming at finding the truth rather than a 'desired' result was the trial of Martin Luther, who, after all, challenged the RCC itself.
The Spanish Inquisition is the one we usually think of when we think of the term "Inquisition", with fake trials and torture and predetermined verdicts. This was by no means sanctioned by the RCC and actually just a tool of the local authorities, not one of the Holy See.
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The RCC most definitely did not help improve literacy. Contrast Moorish Spain which had virtually universal literacy with the rest of Europe at the time, and their stance toward learning becomes obvious.
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Again, that was not the (direct) action of the RCC. It was the Spanish Reconquista which was essentially the Spanish Emperor trying to "reclaim" his lands. In other words, yet another war waged in the name of religion when the actual interest was conquest.
The RCC itself had more to do with the struggles in middle Europe, namely Italy and Germany.
Re:It it hadn't been for the Catholic Church .. (Score:4, Funny)
The Spanish Inquisition is the one we usually think of when we think of the term "Inquisition"
I call BS.
If everybody thought of the Spanish Inquisition whenever they thought of the term "Inquisition", they wouldn't go around talking about how nobody expects them!
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Thanks for proving my point. Because "gee, I didn't expect the Spanish Inquisition" is the line that leads to them coming in. That's what we generally think of when the term Inquisition is used: People in power accusing you of something, determined to prove you're guilty, no matter what the cost, be it torture, be it forged confessions or bribed witnesses. That's NOT what the "official" style Inquisition was about.
I don't really enjoy being the advocate for the RCC, but their inquisition system was incredib
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Just look at Galileo Galilei or Jean Francois Champollion for examples of what the Catholics did against science.
Galileo was pushing the sun-centered universe and was persecuted by the Church for it. And the Church went after Champollion because of a fear that he would discover something in Egypt proving that the Great Flood of the bible couldn't have happened when the Church said it did.
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That's not true. The Church were quite happy with the heliocentric version of the way the solar system worked - it meant that by using those calculations, they could determine the exact date of Easter much more precisely. Previously their system had Easter moving throughout the year unpredictably, whereas under a heliocentric system it could be pinned down to within a month.
They persecuted Galileo because he had some un-p
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"Tell that to Geordano Bruno http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno [wikipedia.org] [wikipedia.org] and all the others who were burnt at the stake for heresy."
Only one of the charges against Bruno concerned any his scientific views (specifically, the one about there being a plurality of worlds). All the others were about various non-standard theological ideas he'd been espousing, and his investigations into, and writings on several types of prohibited magical practices.
It should be noted that (a) Bruno's trial lasted
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The church was fighting a loosing battle there, the main issue was the invention of the printing press, the church tried to supress things and development, and did not manage. You can draw a shitload of parallels to the MP/RI AA mess we have today.
That does not mean they hampered or stopped any development, and that did not happen in the middle ages!
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Nothing would have been changed, in the byzantine empire and the arabic world and china knowledge thrived, so basically
nothing was held back. I think technological jumps follow a cycle and currently we are at the height of such a development cycle which might slow down again for several decades.
The main root for modern science were some factors, call it the lazy well fed european together with the connection between mathematics and physics layed out by people like Decardes Leibnitz and Newton.
It could have
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For a very long period of time, it looks as if entertainment value was put way above scientific rigor
And we have recently returned to that dark age.
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Oh boo hoo, science hasn't slowed down any, and it isn't as if current researchers are working on easier problems.
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If anything, the catholic church promoted the brightest minds and protected them. You know, when the roman empire fell, most europeans favourite hobby was still smashing their neighbours heads with axes. It wasn't even just the northern europeans, since the german tribes spread to all parts of the old western rome.
Luckily, the catholic church eventually converted these peoples and with that came a culture where even a quiet man who spent most of his life in a room doing experiments could be regarded a great
Re:It it hadn't been for the Catholic Church .. (Score:5, Insightful)
Luckily, the catholic church eventually converted these peoples
You make it sound wonderful. Yes, just like the Catholic church "converted" the natives living in the Americas. Oh, where are they today, anyway? That's right, most of them chose to die rather than be "converted". Now why would that be?
No, it's not burning people at the stake that brought about the renaissance. Progress and science continued East of Constantinople which less than 300 years after the fall of Rome, converted to Islam. During the golden age of the Islamic Caliphate, great progress was achieved in mathematics and natural science while Europe was embroiled in petty squabbles and eternally warring fiefdoms and baronies. The catholic church actively persecuted scientists as heretics, whereas the Islamic world embraced them (with certain limitations in the field of medicine, like not allowing dissections of the human body).
Then the Mongols invaded and destroyed the Islamic caliphate, and again a lot of progress and knowledge was lost in the world. Fortunately for Western Europe the big fish had eaten most of the little fish, and the squabbling local bosses had been forced to accept the rule of kings by then. This allowed for the organization of navies, the re-establishment of international trade and the establishment of universities - like Salamanca in Spain and Oxford and Cambridge in England. Finally Western Europe could afford to maintain scholars again. However what mostly happened is that they copied the knowledge that was coming from the East. It would be another 200 years before the Renaissance happened, and invention took off in the West.
No, please don't give me that line about how the church promoted scholarship. The ONLY thing the church did was force monks to copy old texts, and that's how SOME of the ancient knowledge was preserved. However monks weren't allowed to pass that knowledge on to the general public, and didn't communicate much among themselves lest they be called heretics.
It's no coincidence that the only "religious" scientist, Mendel, only had his work on genetics "discovered" 200 years AFTER HE WAS DEAD.
I suggest you read a few history books, and you'll see what a nasty political tool the Catholic church (or any church, for that matter) is. But remember, God needs your money.
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And build universities and schools and fund scientists. Funny how Europe can have so many old universities isn't it? And funny how they were all founded by a pope?
Re:It it hadn't been for the Catholic Church .. (Score:4, Informative)
And build universities and schools and fund scientists. Funny how Europe can have so many old universities isn't it?
[citation needed]
University of Bologna, founded in 1088 and received a charter from Frederick I, King of Germany and Italy in 1158.
Salamanca - founded by Alfonso IX, King of Spain in 1218
University of Paris - founded between 1160 and 1170 and later recognized by Pope Innocent III (who was a graduate in 1182).
University of Oxford - founded in the 11th century, not by any pope.
University of Cambridge - founded by students fleeing the University of Oxford...
University of Padua, founded 1122 by students of the University of Bologna
in fact, here's a link [wikipedia.org] for you, where you can see that really not that many universities were founded by popes - especially outside of the Italian peninsula, and most of those were founded 200+ years after the first universities because Italy was starting to lag far behind the rest of the world. The renaissance may have begun in Italy, but if you look at the names of the great scientists, most of them are German, French or English.
I will argue that the pope's main interests in the universities was to assure that the "fourth" doctrine, theology, was taught properly, and that none of the other fields of study (law, medicine and philosophy) strayed from permitted doctrine.
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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scholasticism [wikipedia.org]
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That's 20 I suppose. Mendel died in 1884 [wikipedia.org].
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You make it sound wonderful. Yes, just like the Catholic church "converted" the natives living in the Americas. Oh, where are they today, anyway? That's right, most of them chose to die rather than be "converted". Now why would that be?
Take a look south of the US border sometime. Most of the Central and South American population is of native descent. Of the ones that died, most didn't "chose" to, but died of imported diseases no one really had control over. The only large area of the Americas where natives were completely eradicated was North America, which happens to be the only area colonized largely by non-Catholic nations...
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Yes, just like the Catholic church "converted" the natives living in the Americas. Oh, where are they today, anyway? That's right, most of them chose to die rather than be "converted".
That's true only if dying from smallpox is "by choice." The natives that survived the new diseases chose to convert and intermingle [wikipedia.org].
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If anything held back technology, it was the slavery of the ancient world (by this, I mean slaves controlled by punishment rather than reward).
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Of course its + interesting. This is Slashdot, the home of such fanatical atheists that they make Dawkins look reasonable.
Facts like the preservation of knowledge in monasteries after the collapse of the Roman Empire are inconvenient truths that are best forgotten.
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That's an insane view. Slavery allowed the elite to devote themselves to intellectual concerns. If Plato had to spend half his day in the fields, would he have written what he did? Of course not.
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If Plato had had to get up off his ass and do some productive work once in a while, he might have had some more sensible ideas. Instead his anti-democratic notion of "philosopher-kings", and his metaphysical elevation of ideas over observations, have been toxic streams in Western thought for millennia.
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I'm not really a friend of the Catholic church and its dogmatic position, but claiming they're the fiend of research and development is a bit misplaced. As usual progress was the enemy of those in power, and they in turn used the Church for their means. It's a bit like saying that today, governments are enemies of progress because they issue laws that hamper it.
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As usual progress was the enemy of those in power,
No, progress is always the ally of those in power. However those in power are always trying to stomp on the masses and hold them back - that's how they STAY in power - because if you're not one step ahead of the masses, you are nobody.
Thus today we have corporate lobbying and purchasing of politi - er campaign contributions, copyright laws and extensions far beyond YOUR lifetime, patents on YOUR gene sequences, etc
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That applied only to western europe and was one of the causes for the reformation to even have a ground to thrive on.
The church was never in the power to stop any progress because most of the time since the collaps of the roman empire the development simply did not happen in western europe at all!
The role of the church in all this is greatly exaggerated due to the Galileo trials, which btw. happened at a time when science already was happening in europe in full force.
The church never hampered any developmen
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Pleton was expelled from Florence by the church in 1409 for his teachings, and ended up back in Byzantine territory. Don't give me that crap, and learn your history.
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Interesting, but seems unlikely can you give me references, i have yet to see one of this fact.
All references I found were that pleton came to florence in conjunction with the emperor, and had time on his hands and started teaching and after he left his scholars tought, but not a single reference on the net is speaking about being expelled, it seems more likely he left after the council was over.
Also unlikely because Pleton visited Florcence in conjunction with the byzantine emperor around 1407 and was ther
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Sorry I mixed up the years, in 1409 Pleton was in Mistra he was expelled from Constantinople in 1393 and started to settle there, the famous council was in 1438-39, so how could the catholic church hamper the lectures which happend around 30 years later? Pleton was not even in Florence in 1409 but was sitting in Mistra studying Plato. Forget about my last posting regarding this I mixed up years a quick googling about the facts set me right.
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Those in power very much included the church for most of Europe's history.
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Yes and no. Most of the popes in medieval times came from Italy (actually, IIRC almost all of them except a handful), from various important families that ruled the local city states, with the notable exception of the French popes during the schism. The RCC was in a constant struggle with the German Empire (which included large parts of south Italy at that time), also due to a very different social system in the areas, feudal Germany vs. Renaissance Italy.
Essentially, the Church did have a lot of power but
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Agreed, but you could make a similar argument about, for instance, the (Holy Roman/German) Emperor, who had a lot of power but problems employing it due to being in a constant struggle with the Church and, perhaps more significantly, his peers within the HRE, not to mention the rest of Europe. ;)
Also -- the HRE for some time included parts of Northern Italy, not Southern Italy, right?
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One day in the far future:
"I've finished! The last peice of source recovered. We now know how this ancient artifact called Linux worked"
"Linux, what's linux?"
"Its a very old but staggeringly advanced computing system devised *before* the dark age of Microsoft. Its amazing to think that hundreds of years ago people had the ability to listen to music and watch videos whenever and whereever they wanted without being bound by the draconian licencing schemes, blue screens, poor driver quality and cost we have ha
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Actually in case of a catastrophy on a worlwide scale, it is more likely that Linux would survive in case of computer technology can be safed than Windows, due to windows inherent closed source nature!
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Scientific progress didn't stop simply because it largely stopped in Western Europe. The best and brightest minds weren't killed by the church because they didn't live within its reach.
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Think about it a little bit, where did the philosophy of science develop? Why did Europeans develop this concept of experimental science?
The Chinese were techn
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