Where would we be if the major monotheisms never existed?

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DC
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21 May 2012, 7:36 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Jono wrote:

I think Hero of Alexander designed an early form of steam engine which was used for the automatic opening and closing of temple doors. That was in the 1st century AD.


It was a novelty item. In the same class as hula hoops.

There was no market for serious steam driven machinery in ancient Alexandria. In those days all the cheap labor needed to do stuff was available in the form of low wage free labor and slave labor. The industrial revolution did not have a chance until there was a labor shortage in Europe which there was because of the major death caused by the bubonic plague. Without the Plague the industrial revolution would either not have happened or would have happened much later.

ruveyn


I don't mean to piss on anyone's chips while we have a good "let's bash monotheism' thread but there is major flaw.

Why don't the Chinese, the Indians, the Australian aborigines or the American Indians have a pangalatic empire by now if monotheism was the ONLY reason the ancient world failed to progress to industrialisation?

Ruveyn is closer, but if you look at the industrial revolution it was driven by coal.

Coal only became economically viable because Britain had cut down all it's trees and the price of charcoal had gone through the roof.

Coal driven steam engines were only created to get at resources deep underground because the romans had robbed all the easy stuff 1500 years earlier.

The close presence of lots of metal resources buried deep, crap loads of easily accessible coal, no way to create cheap charcoal, an inability to enrich oneself by invasion due to the strength of your neighbours, the inability to import large volumes of resources and an economic system that allowed lower class people to keep some of what they earned thanks to patents, religious turmoil of the reformation, the printing press to spread ideas, good quality glass, etc

All of these were crucial to the industrialisation of Britain, if you remove any of these it would not have happened. Progress to the industrial age wasn't inevitable, it was a random confluence of many different threads.



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22 May 2012, 12:19 am

There is and was a lot of coal in many other places, idem for metals, so this argument is also insufficient.

In the case of Britain, there is probably something closer to reality in the enclosure movement and the increasing efficiency of British agriculture (in heads per cultivated acre). This lead to rural exile, with many untrained, unqualified ex-peasants seeking jobs in the cities. Enter some technological advances, and this manpower can be used efficiently in huge manufactures.



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22 May 2012, 2:24 pm

enrico_dandolo wrote:
There is and was a lot of coal in many other places, idem for metals, so this argument is also insufficient.

In the case of Britain, there is probably something closer to reality in the enclosure movement and the increasing efficiency of British agriculture (in heads per cultivated acre). This lead to rural exile, with many untrained, unqualified ex-peasants seeking jobs in the cities. Enter some technological advances, and this manpower can be used efficiently in huge manufactures.


Nope.

The only other place on earth with similar quantities of coal that were easily accessible with primitive tech is China and those reserves are a very long way away from the coastal cities.

The enclosures and highland clearances were acts of parliament designed to deprive the peasants of the ability to support themselves and force them into towns to supply cheap labour to the dark satanic mills, you have your cause and effect mixed Enrico.



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22 May 2012, 4:52 pm

enrico_dandolo wrote:
Jono wrote:
Hang on. I did not say that it was "because" people were Christian and I also did not say that the Renaissance was anti-Christian. However, the early Christians were no better than the Taliban. Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered by a Christian mob, most likely under the direction of the Patriarch Cyril (who was canonized as a saint by the Church, by the way), and then we lost a lot of ancient knowledge and works of the ancient scholars and philosophers because that same mob burned the Library of Alexandria to the ground. While the Church was not always hostile to learning, we must also not forget what happened to Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo.

The economic stagnation that you're talking about actually started with the Third Century Crisis and was likely a major contributing factor to the fall of the Western Roman Empire but that not the main reason for lack of progress in science and mathematics in the west during the middle ages nor did really it have anything to do with Christianity and the Church being dominant. Truth be told, the only people who were educated in the west during that time were mainly monks and clergyman and the main method of critical thought and learning was scholasticism, which focused mainly on resolving contradictions but older ideas were otherwise never really questioned and were taken on authority. That was the main reason for the lack of progress during the middle ages. The progress that started to take place in the 13th century and later, the Renaissance, would never of happened if it weren't for the reintroduction of the ancient Greek scholarship, albeit improved by the arab scholars in the east. Roger Bacon, for example, improved on the work of Alhazen, from a latin translation of his "Book of Optics".

If it didn't happen because people where Christians, why bring Christianity into the equation at all?

The way I see it, during a long period of economic stagnation, there was intellectual stagnation; when the economy got better, intellectual activity started anew. Thence, the fact that it took form into Christian studies is irrelevant. It is also important to note that starting with the 12th-13th centuries, the intellectuals did not stop to study religion. Theology and the like continued as before, and probably grew. The other forms of intellectual activities did not take their place at all.


I think I explained why Christianity was included, re-read the bold parts. To clarify, when I said it didn't happen because people were christians, I was only acknowledging that most historians no longer subscribe to the conflict thesis in its original form. But Christianity might still of contributed to the fall of the Western Roman Empire due to it's clash with and later persecution of paganism. Additionally, some ideas that contributed to the scientific revolution during the renaissance might of been dismissed or ignored partly on religious grounds (though also on other grounds such as contradictions with the accepted Aristotelian physics). For example, a heliocentric model of the solar system was already known about for long before Copernicus, and in fact was proposed by Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century BC and was later argued in favor for by Seleucus of Selucia a century later. During the middle ages, not much attention was given to heliocentrism until Copernicus developed his computational model based on it, which gave accurate predictions, even despite the fact that it was proposed so much earlier. One of the arguments against it was religious. Recall that Galileo was accused of heresy for suggesting that it was a physical reality.

Intellectual activities during the middle ages were not tied to the economy like it is today. The fact is that few scholars in the west tried to challenge the older ideas and alternative ideas of the Greeks were forgotten about. I know there was econimical growth during the 12th and 13th century in Western Europe but that was because of inventions such as the windmill etc. So, intellectual activity during the 12th and 13th centuries led to economic growth, not the other way round.



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23 May 2012, 12:17 am

DC wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
There is and was a lot of coal in many other places, idem for metals, so this argument is also insufficient.

In the case of Britain, there is probably something closer to reality in the enclosure movement and the increasing efficiency of British agriculture (in heads per cultivated acre). This lead to rural exile, with many untrained, unqualified ex-peasants seeking jobs in the cities. Enter some technological advances, and this manpower can be used efficiently in huge manufactures.


Nope.

The only other place on earth with similar quantities of coal that were easily accessible with primitive tech is China and those reserves are a very long way away from the coastal cities.

The enclosures and highland clearances were acts of parliament designed to deprive the peasants of the ability to support themselves and force them into towns to supply cheap labour to the dark satanic mills, you have your cause and effect mixed Enrico.

I am not very knowleadgeable about this, so you may very well be right, but wasn't the enclosure movement very much older than the industrial revolution? I see it rather as a scheme to increase wool production (and exports) in favour of the gentry. I mean, Thomas More talked about the enclosures in Utopia, and that goes back to the 16th century...

Jono wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
Jono wrote:
Hang on. I did not say that it was "because" people were Christian and I also did not say that the Renaissance was anti-Christian. However, the early Christians were no better than the Taliban. Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered by a Christian mob, most likely under the direction of the Patriarch Cyril (who was canonized as a saint by the Church, by the way), and then we lost a lot of ancient knowledge and works of the ancient scholars and philosophers because that same mob burned the Library of Alexandria to the ground. While the Church was not always hostile to learning, we must also not forget what happened to Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo.

The economic stagnation that you're talking about actually started with the Third Century Crisis and was likely a major contributing factor to the fall of the Western Roman Empire but that not the main reason for lack of progress in science and mathematics in the west during the middle ages nor did really it have anything to do with Christianity and the Church being dominant. Truth be told, the only people who were educated in the west during that time were mainly monks and clergyman and the main method of critical thought and learning was scholasticism, which focused mainly on resolving contradictions but older ideas were otherwise never really questioned and were taken on authority. That was the main reason for the lack of progress during the middle ages. The progress that started to take place in the 13th century and later, the Renaissance, would never of happened if it weren't for the reintroduction of the ancient Greek scholarship, albeit improved by the arab scholars in the east. Roger Bacon, for example, improved on the work of Alhazen, from a latin translation of his "Book of Optics".

If it didn't happen because people where Christians, why bring Christianity into the equation at all?

The way I see it, during a long period of economic stagnation, there was intellectual stagnation; when the economy got better, intellectual activity started anew. Thence, the fact that it took form into Christian studies is irrelevant. It is also important to note that starting with the 12th-13th centuries, the intellectuals did not stop to study religion. Theology and the like continued as before, and probably grew. The other forms of intellectual activities did not take their place at all.


I think I explained why Christianity was included, re-read the bold parts. To clarify, when I said it didn't happen because people were christians, I was only acknowledging that most historians no longer subscribe to the conflict thesis in its original form. But Christianity might still of contributed to the fall of the Western Roman Empire due to it's clash with and later persecution of paganism. Additionally, some ideas that contributed to the scientific revolution during the renaissance might of been dismissed or ignored partly on religious grounds (though also on other grounds such as contradictions with the accepted Aristotelian physics). For example, a heliocentric model of the solar system was already known about for long before Copernicus, and in fact was proposed by Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century BC and was later argued in favor for by Seleucus of Selucia a century later. During the middle ages, not much attention was given to heliocentrism until Copernicus developed his computational model based on it, which gave accurate predictions, even despite the fact that it was proposed so much earlier. One of the arguments against it was religious. Recall that Galileo was accused of heresy for suggesting that it was a physical reality.


What you need to show is how the Late Roman Empire would have done better by not adopting Christianity. Pagans and Christians did a good job at persucuting each other, depending on the Emperor, so I don't see how the fact that the Christians were victorious at it would change anything.

Besides, if heliocentrism was discovered in the 3rd century BC and survived for a century, why not blame the nearly five centuries between that and official Christianity? Maybe it is just that there was little solid, empirical evidence for this model until the telescope?

Also, what must be kept in mind is that Late Ancient "paganism" was not the cult of the ancient republican gods of Rome. The Christians called all non-Christians (and non-Jews) pagans. The Muslims were pagans too.

Jono wrote:
Intellectual activities during the middle ages were not tied to the economy like it is today. The fact is that few scholars in the west tried to challenge the older ideas and alternative ideas of the Greeks were forgotten about. I know there was econimical growth during the 12th and 13th century in Western Europe but that was because of inventions such as the windmill etc. So, intellectual activity during the 12th and 13th centuries led to economic growth, not the other way round.

1) The monasteries were key centers of agricultural innovation.
2) When famine is omnipresent and Viking raids are part of every day life, there is little time left to debate Aristotelian metaphysics. Obviously intellectual activities were tied to the economy.
3) It wasn't only windmills. One cause was climate: a more temperate period helped increase land productivity. The rest is a virtuous circle of population growth, urbanization, development of industry, land reclamation, expansion of commercial activity, etc. Intellectual activity did not lead to growth by itself. Besides, I don't see how humanist philology contributed to economic growth...



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23 May 2012, 2:05 am

enrico_dandolo wrote:
DC wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
There is and was a lot of coal in many other places, idem for metals, so this argument is also insufficient.

In the case of Britain, there is probably something closer to reality in the enclosure movement and the increasing efficiency of British agriculture (in heads per cultivated acre). This lead to rural exile, with many untrained, unqualified ex-peasants seeking jobs in the cities. Enter some technological advances, and this manpower can be used efficiently in huge manufactures.


Nope.

The only other place on earth with similar quantities of coal that were easily accessible with primitive tech is China and those reserves are a very long way away from the coastal cities.

The enclosures and highland clearances were acts of parliament designed to deprive the peasants of the ability to support themselves and force them into towns to supply cheap labour to the dark satanic mills, you have your cause and effect mixed Enrico.

I am not very knowleadgeable about this, so you may very well be right, but wasn't the enclosure movement very much older than the industrial revolution? I see it rather as a scheme to increase wool production (and exports) in favour of the gentry. I mean, Thomas More talked about the enclosures in Utopia, and that goes back to the 16th century...


There wasn't a single act of parliament on one date, there were thousands of them.

The overwhelming majority were after the start of the industrial revolution and were designed to drive peasants into cities.

Even wikipedia would tell you this

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inclosure_Acts

"Inclosure Acts for small areas had been passed sporadically since the 12th century but the majority were passed between 1750 and 1860. Much larger areas were also enclosed during this time."



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23 May 2012, 10:13 am

Look up Niall Ferguson and his "killer apps". That is his explanation why the West surged ahead in times past.

ruveyn



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29 May 2012, 6:28 am

For those of you who say that Christianity during the Middle Ages did not effect the development of science, please take a look at the following essay. It's quite long but worth it:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/comments10.htm

It also contains the following graph, which I think is quite fitting:

Image



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29 May 2012, 6:50 am

ruveyn wrote:
Jono wrote:

I think Hero of Alexander designed an early form of steam engine which was used for the automatic opening and closing of temple doors. That was in the 1st century AD.


It was a novelty item. In the same class as hula hoops.

There was no market for serious steam driven machinery in ancient Alexandria. In those days all the cheap labor needed to do stuff was available in the form of low wage free labor and slave labor. The industrial revolution did not have a chance until there was a labor shortage in Europe which there was because of the major death caused by the bubonic plague. Without the Plague the industrial revolution would either not have happened or would have happened much later.

ruveyn


Not to mention that steam power was not the basis of the industrial revolution. The industrial revolution began with the advent of the factory system, before steam power, before even water-powered textile mills.

The factory system happened when the Enclosures generated large urban populations as peasants were stripped of feudal tenure, locked out of the Commons and kicked off their land. Aristocrats sought to replace them with sheep which were more profitable due to a booming textile market. Production of goods at this time occurred as cottage industry - peasant farmers practiced various crafts in their homes and sold their goods and services. Blacksmiths, weavers and so on were all self-employed. But once they were kicked off their farms during the Enclosures, they lost the ability to do this.

A merchant, at this time, who wished to bring a good to market had to deal with a whole array of self-employed craftsmen. If merchants wanted to bring a shirt to market, they had to go in turn to a shepherd, curer, fuller, webster, spinner, weaver, fuller, and dyer. Each of them owned their own capital and therefore had leverage to command a good price for their work. At some point, merchants realized that there were large numbers of these people without capital, in the urban centres. They brought them all under a single roof so that every stage of production happened in one location, and the workers were people with no capital so their wages were low. These merchants could bring their goods to market more cheaply and gained a competitive advantage. Also, production was higher with the use of the factory system because it all occurred in one location.

Water power came later, with the first water-powered looms. Eventually steam began to replace water power but by this time, industrial production was already well underway.



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29 May 2012, 10:09 am

enrico_dandolo wrote:
Jono wrote:
enrico_dandolo wrote:
Jono wrote:
Hang on. I did not say that it was "because" people were Christian and I also did not say that the Renaissance was anti-Christian. However, the early Christians were no better than the Taliban. Hypatia of Alexandria was murdered by a Christian mob, most likely under the direction of the Patriarch Cyril (who was canonized as a saint by the Church, by the way), and then we lost a lot of ancient knowledge and works of the ancient scholars and philosophers because that same mob burned the Library of Alexandria to the ground. While the Church was not always hostile to learning, we must also not forget what happened to Nicholas Copernicus and Galileo.

The economic stagnation that you're talking about actually started with the Third Century Crisis and was likely a major contributing factor to the fall of the Western Roman Empire but that not the main reason for lack of progress in science and mathematics in the west during the middle ages nor did really it have anything to do with Christianity and the Church being dominant. Truth be told, the only people who were educated in the west during that time were mainly monks and clergyman and the main method of critical thought and learning was scholasticism, which focused mainly on resolving contradictions but older ideas were otherwise never really questioned and were taken on authority. That was the main reason for the lack of progress during the middle ages. The progress that started to take place in the 13th century and later, the Renaissance, would never of happened if it weren't for the reintroduction of the ancient Greek scholarship, albeit improved by the arab scholars in the east. Roger Bacon, for example, improved on the work of Alhazen, from a latin translation of his "Book of Optics".

If it didn't happen because people where Christians, why bring Christianity into the equation at all?

The way I see it, during a long period of economic stagnation, there was intellectual stagnation; when the economy got better, intellectual activity started anew. Thence, the fact that it took form into Christian studies is irrelevant. It is also important to note that starting with the 12th-13th centuries, the intellectuals did not stop to study religion. Theology and the like continued as before, and probably grew. The other forms of intellectual activities did not take their place at all.


I think I explained why Christianity was included, re-read the bold parts. To clarify, when I said it didn't happen because people were christians, I was only acknowledging that most historians no longer subscribe to the conflict thesis in its original form. But Christianity might still of contributed to the fall of the Western Roman Empire due to it's clash with and later persecution of paganism. Additionally, some ideas that contributed to the scientific revolution during the renaissance might of been dismissed or ignored partly on religious grounds (though also on other grounds such as contradictions with the accepted Aristotelian physics). For example, a heliocentric model of the solar system was already known about for long before Copernicus, and in fact was proposed by Aristarchus of Samos in the 3rd century BC and was later argued in favor for by Seleucus of Selucia a century later. During the middle ages, not much attention was given to heliocentrism until Copernicus developed his computational model based on it, which gave accurate predictions, even despite the fact that it was proposed so much earlier. One of the arguments against it was religious. Recall that Galileo was accused of heresy for suggesting that it was a physical reality.


What you need to show is how the Late Roman Empire would have done better by not adopting Christianity. Pagans and Christians did a good job at persucuting each other, depending on the Emperor, so I don't see how the fact that the Christians were victorious at it would change anything.

Besides, if heliocentrism was discovered in the 3rd century BC and survived for a century, why not blame the nearly five centuries between that and official Christianity? Maybe it is just that there was little solid, empirical evidence for this model until the telescope?

Also, what must be kept in mind is that Late Ancient "paganism" was not the cult of the ancient republican gods of Rome. The Christians called all non-Christians (and non-Jews) pagans. The Muslims were pagans too.


I admit, it took me a while. But I've finally found a historian who supports the view I was talking about. Here's an essay on his blog:

http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2006/11/science-and-medieval-christianity.html

Also, to answer your question about how the Romans could of done better, look up what Richard Carrier has to say about "Ancient Science" and the "Early Christian Hostility to Science". The ancients might well of been on the verge of their own scientific revolution before early Christianity put a stop to that.

Also, I'm aware of "paganism" meant. In fact, the pre-Christian Roman empire was more tolerant to those other religions than the Christians were in-so-far as they generally equated their Roman gods with the gods of other ethnic religions and didn't force those cultures to abandon them.

enrico_dandolo wrote:
Jono wrote:
Intellectual activities during the middle ages were not tied to the economy like it is today. The fact is that few scholars in the west tried to challenge the older ideas and alternative ideas of the Greeks were forgotten about. I know there was econimical growth during the 12th and 13th century in Western Europe but that was because of inventions such as the windmill etc. So, intellectual activity during the 12th and 13th centuries led to economic growth, not the other way round.

1) The monasteries were key centers of agricultural innovation.
2) When famine is omnipresent and Viking raids are part of every day life, there is little time left to debate Aristotelian metaphysics. Obviously intellectual activities were tied to the economy.
3) It wasn't only windmills. One cause was climate: a more temperate period helped increase land productivity. The rest is a virtuous circle of population growth, urbanization, development of industry, land reclamation, expansion of commercial activity, etc. Intellectual activity did not lead to growth by itself. Besides, I don't see how humanist philology contributed to economic growth...


The fact that during that time, monks still copied ancient manuscripts and got an education indicates that either it wasn't or that it cannot be a sufficient explanation.



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29 May 2012, 12:56 pm

Jono wrote:
For those of you who say that Christianity during the Middle Ages did not effect the development of science, please take a look at the following essay. It's quite long but worth it:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/comments10.htm

It also contains the following graph, which I think is quite fitting:

Image


What's a unit of scientific advancement?


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29 May 2012, 12:58 pm

snapcap wrote:

What's a unit of scientific advancement?


Number of inventions per year.

ruveyn



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29 May 2012, 1:09 pm

ruveyn wrote:
snapcap wrote:

What's a unit of scientific advancement?


Number of inventions per year.

ruveyn


We must be slowing down, because I haven't seen that Shamwow guy in awhile.


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29 May 2012, 8:26 pm

snapcap wrote:

We must be slowing down, because I haven't seen that Shamwow guy in awhile.


Check the number of patents issued by the various governments.

Another crude measure is the number of scientific journal articles published per years. Since some papers that are published are trivial or are crap this is not the world's best measure.

ruveyn



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29 May 2012, 8:37 pm

Jono wrote:
For those of you who say that Christianity during the Middle Ages did not effect the development of science, please take a look at the following essay. It's quite long but worth it:

http://www.nobeliefs.com/comments10.htm

It also contains the following graph, which I think is quite fitting:

Image

I knew this graph would show up. :roll:
This do not take account for the complex reality and the important social changes of middle age.


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30 May 2012, 1:12 am

The world would be dominated by the Han Chinese, even more than it is now.
Didn't China close itself off due to Islam and that's how their culture, once the most advanced on Earth fall behind the West's?