About one hundred and eight years ago, the archaeologist Valerius Stys made the discovery of his life. During a routine dive into an ancient Roman ship that had sunk near one of the Greek islands, a stone with a gear embedded in it caught his attention. After decades of research, it turned out that this stone was part of the oldest analog computer known to us, also called the 'Antikythera Mechanism', named after the Greek island Antikythera near which it was discovered.
Today, after X-ray and gamma-ray scanning, which yielded a wealth of knowledge about the face of the clock, we know that the Antikythera Mechanism contained between thirty and seventy-two cogwheels that drove each other. It was capable of non-trivial calculation operations: the user would enter a date using a knob on the side of the device, and the mechanism would calculate the day of the year, and the position of the sun, moon, and other planets on that date. Apparently, he was also able to show the zodiac signs, and keep track of the times of the Greek Olympic games.
Watches of this type were certainly not common, if only for one simple reason: they are too complex. Today, in the age of mechanization, robots on an assembly line can place gears inside watches and screw the piece into one piece. In the distant past there were no such production lines. It is likely that the artist - or perhaps, the computer engineer - who created the complex mechanism spent quite a few years of his life designing and manufacturing the many gears, pins and connecting parts and assembling and forging all of these into the body of the watch. It is possible that each of the major Greek cities had such a computer, which could announce for them the date of the upcoming Olympics. We don't know, because there are no more such watches left. The technology was lost after the Christian era began, and only in the 18th century can we begin to see watches boasting a similar level of complexity.
When I look at this complex computer, and the videos made around it, I wonder to myself: why didn't the Greeks have their own industrial revolution? They had many of the necessary tools for this. They knew how to process metals up to the bronze level, they understood the importance of the market and their ability to regulate it (Xenophon pointed out that if there were too many coppersmiths, the copper would become cheap and the blacksmiths would go out of business and move to another field of work) and they even had 'robots' - a society founded on Slaves - who could and could be used to assemble a primitive production line.
I don't have an unequivocal answer to this question. My guess is that although the conditions seem similar - the use of metals, the understanding of the market and the existence of human robots - it is not enough. For starters, bronze is stronger than iron, but it is made from a combination of two other metals: copper and tin. It is an alloy that is not easy to produce, and alloy itself is relatively rare in the earth. So probably the bronze itself was not available to create everyday products.
As for the market, the ancient Greeks may have had an understanding of the forces of supply and demand, but it is hard to believe that they were aware of the idea of the production line. Adam Smith, who raised the idea for the first time in the 18th century, brought about a real revolution thanks to the concept of the production line. The Greeks had not yet conceived this idea. And even if they thought of him, they must have been afraid to entrust their slaves with bronze tools such as hammers and knives that could be used by them to rebel. They didn't trust their robots - and rightly so.
And so, the industrial revolution is doomed to be postponed in two thousand years, until the time and date when the social and technological conditions were suitable for its maturation. Perhaps there is a lesson in this not to be too late. Perhaps - and this is a big perhaps - there is also an encouraging lesson here regarding Marx's socialism, which was supposed to grow by itself out of the proletariat in the distant future, but instead was forced upon Russia under the communist regime of Lenin and Stalin. who knows? Perhaps socialism-communism was ahead of its time, and in the distant future it will take its place on the world stage as a successful model for state leadership.
Maybe... but probably not.
I declare in advance that I am not a historian, I did not study history at university, and that all the opinions I have expressed here are educated guesses, based on my reading of the Greek and Roman period (which is quite extensive, but I still do not claim to be an authority on the subject).
137 תגובות
Development has nothing to do with religion. Why was there no development in the Far East where religion was tolerant and the Indians in America had not yet invented the wheel. until the white man arrived and what about Africa what religion is there they live in the whole period historical violation why did science develop in a certain place I have no answer this is for the wiser than me
Sabdarmish Yehuda, what a slander... I was really offended...
I am very ashamed of my name - he really sleeps like that and everyone laughed at me in class because of him...
And in general, I tried to be funny - if my joke was bad - that's no reason to discredit me like that and delete my answer - I was really offended
I read Jehoshaphat's response to the article and I was shocked! My jaw dropped in amazement and my mouth remained open!.
I have held such an opinion for many years and I have used the very same arguments at every opportunity that my friends and colleagues have
Brought up on this topic before...amazing! Really amazing.
I, too, as a judge, have changed a lot in this matter and have not found any theory on this matter that logically supports the possibility
The phenomena we know from ancient times and in particular my mind responded when I saw the movie "Chariots of the Gods"
The late sixties and early seventies and that it got worse over the years...
Although I am a very realistic person and not a fantasist or delusion, there must be a convincing enough explanation that solves the problem
The many questions and doubts about the findings scattered around the world and that the possibility of aliens or rather
Extraterrestrials were/were here in ancient times, fits well as a plausible answer even if it is impossible to prove
Today, although there were such creatures here, it closes this dilemma well, as there are many
Various axioms or assumptions regarding one or another theory waiting for generations and more for someone to disprove them.
To exterminate
In addition to Michael's words, he also says that the church was very afraid of any scientific progress and made sure to burn anyone who published heretical words about divinity and Christianity. Remember, for example, Giordano Bruno, a scientist who was executed in a fire, Galileo Galilei who saved himself from a fire after agreeing to retract his statements, and many others.
The church preserved only what and who was in accordance with its views
Sabdarmish Yehuda
Peace be upon you
Completely ignore the response of the anonymous user who is just commenting and he thinks he's smart but he's just stupid. I also hope that Avi Blizovsky will remove his response from the website.
I will try to answer your question
Matter and antimatter differ only in the electric charge. For example an electron is matter and its charge is minus. The antimatter of the electron is the positron which is similar to the electron in everything except the charge which is plus. As above with a proton whose charge is plus and the antiproton whose charge is minus.
When matter meets antimatter they turn into energy.
In atomic weapons, a percentage of the matter becomes energy, but in the meeting of matter and antimatter, everything becomes energy.
That's why you understand that it is very difficult in our material world to create anti-matter because as soon as it meets matter it turns into energy. But they still managed to create a little antimatter and individual atoms and hold them for a few seconds.
I don't know what matter and antimatter have to do with watches.
Hope I helped you and apologize for the poor answer of the anonymous user.
I am not ashamed of my name!
Sincerely
Sabdarmish Yehuda
The Israeli Astronomical Society
I see that there are people here who might be able to answer a question for which I have not yet found an answer on the Internet. What is antimatter and what does it have to do with watches? Thank you in advance for your time.
Dvir:
Of course there is no truth in your conclusion.
The fact that "the church kept all knowledge" is similar to the way in which God is full of mercy (if he were not full - he would have a little left forever).
To remind you (if you have any interest in the facts at all):
In the Middle Ages - science froze
In today's ultra-orthodox society - there is no science
In countries ruled by Islam - there is no science
But it is clear to me that the facts do not interest you - otherwise you would not have written what you wrote.
The church is actually the institution and the place that preserved the reservoir of human knowledge throughout the long Middle Ages. All the Latin writings, everything known to the world about antiquity since the Renaissance, were written, copied and preserved by monks. The church was also the only scientific center where people engaged in thought, memorization and research. Christian theologians and scholars founded the scholastic system which was the first push to establish universities and secular studies. It was church people who introduced the knowledge of Aristotle and Plato to the masses. It was the church that supported the cultural fabric, the spiritual life, the conscience morals that stand at the foundation of a healthy society. It was the church that put forward the philosophical achievements of the time. It was the church that united the European space within which innovations and ideas moved. If there is a place to which knowledge about innovations from the Asian or Muslim space was drained, then it was the church. The church coordinated and financed expeditions of explorers in the twilight of modern times. These make me believe that not only does religion not stifle science and progress, but it even supports them.
Yair,
1. Of course, those aliens built clocks much more advanced than mechanical clocks (in fact, their technology is based on anti-matter clocks) but they did not want to leave evidence of their visit here.
2. The works displayed in the Israel Museum were not made by humans but by other aliens whose specialty was metalworking - they are by the way different from the first aliens and they did not have an ideology according to which one should avoid leaving traces.
3. Electricity is electricity!
4. Do you really think that you will be able to logically convince a person who believes that aliens exist and visit the Earth and bases this on an old mechanical clock, a corridor in a pyramid and the book of Ezekiel?
Jehoshaphat the wise
If you estimate that extraterrestrials who came from beyond light years built this device, what is your assessment: why did they build a primitive device of gears and not some digital clock?
If you want to get an idea of the ability to work the metal in the ancient period, visit the Israel Museum in the archeology department. Look there for the tools from the treasure cave from the Judean desert, from the Skelolithic period, and you will be impressed by the degree of precision in metal casting about 7000 years ago.
And the word electricity in Ezekiel has nothing to do with the meaning of electricity nowadays. It is the name of some substance that has a special color.
good joke.
Everyone is stupid and only Jehoshaphat understands.
Like you, I read the article, and in addition the writers' comments and their opinion on the article, most of which are people
Intelligent and standing in awe of the writers' logical understanding of the subject for which we have gathered here...
And what are the readers busy with?... - Unbelievable, - The revolution, production lines, slaves, Christianity, Islam, history,
Robotics and what not... You are ridiculous, all of you!.
You did not touch on two main areas. - and as in mathematics, you must know how to pose the question - .
1). Is it possible that 2000 years ago!!!. Could someone human with thinking and mathematical ability need and create
What tool or device will solve this type of problem? Is it possible that there was some human production 2000 years ago!!!
who could produce a metallic block - and it doesn't matter what metal - and process it into a disk in the center as part of the material
A shaft of the exact length and diameter that will fit with one or two or three additional wheels synchronized with it and on its edge teeth at exact distances from each other - and those in which we say only 30 !!! No 72 -…
After all, we have seen what size it is, it is not a meter by meter clock... and how do you think he made it
All those mathematical calculations?... And if that human being has already consumed his life and years to create some device
Let him give him some stupid information in the end, how many years of his life did he devote to logical calculations?
Over 1500 years later, Galileo will have a hard time convincing the intelligentsia around him that the earth is round...
No-who-knows-what-a-discovery... So you're dealing with historical questions?!...You're ridiculous!...
What's more, I saw a number of programs on National Geographic, in which engineers in various fields tried to give
An engineering answer is conceivable and to present a solution to how the ancients built the pyramids in Egypt...
For every one solution they presented, two more new ones were born... up to this very moment, there is no answer to the riddle.
For example: it turns out - by scientific means - that there is a hole inside the pyramid, exactly the size of
Thirty by thirty cm that crosses the pyramid diagonally from bottom to top to make contact with
The heavenly bodies... well?... and I ask: who calculated this?... - suppose I even know the need -.
I can go on and on with more examples, but to summarize the topic I say this: when you look at
Obey God - with whom it is impossible to argue - and knows the human abilities that existed in the relevant period
You come to a conclusion that sounds ridiculous on the face of it, that there once were extraterrestrials with abilities here on Earth
that made it possible to do the same things. Even if you don't have evidence in writing (?) or in findings, - for now - this
Doesn't mean there isn't such a thing, it just means you just haven't found it yet. One can also think that if indeed
There used to be such productions here, why isn't it possible that they consistently destroyed evidence of their presence?...
At that time, with a slight deviation of hundreds of years, the prophet Ezekiel lived here in the land. You don't have to be
A religious person to read a simple and easy text in chapter XNUMX where incidentally the word is mentioned for the first and only time
"Electricity"... and you don't have to have a highly developed imagination to imagine, according to the scriptures, extraterrestrials...
Roy Shalom,
There is a researcher named Max Weber - a German sociologist who delved into a similar question, although his question was about the Roman Empire: "Why didn't the capitalist industrial production system develop during the ancient Roman times?" The answer is precisely related to the existence of the slave class - when there is an "infinite" workforce that is based on slavery There is no need for streamlining, streamlining, machines and technology. When there is no freedom and there are no legal freedoms enshrined in law, it is not possible to develop a "free" economy in which the producer is also the consumer (the industrial revolution created a layer of workers whose legal definition as "free" individuals allowed their employment for a meager wage and, paradoxically, almost a kind of miracle, with the help of that wage they purchased the products they created themselves). The existence of the same human resource of "free" salaried workers is possible in a mass society in which family ties are loosened, in which there is a relative alienation and isolation of individuals, in a society in which its members identify each other according to the identity of nationality, in which social status is not derived from royal aristocratic affiliation, but from Equity ownership and more. Archaeologists have found evidence of a great deal of technology in past ages, yet the existence of technology did not lead to an industrial revolution. The industrial revolution was created in a significant historical context - following the French revolution in which the ideas of freedom, liberty and nationhood were born and the scientific revolution that began in what is called the Enlightenment and both joined together to advance the industrial age.
By the way, Weber - he analyzed in an amazing way the bureaucratic system that managed the state in the Chinese Empire, and also the Christian religion, especially the Protestant spirit that led to the formation of the capitalist concept later.
As part of an attempt to respond in another discussion, I opened the entry "Christianity" in Wikipedia
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/נצרות
And I found the following text in it:
During the fourth century, Constantine, the emperor of the Roman Empire decided to stop persecuting Christianity and finally became a Christian; In the Edict of Milan, the two emperors, Constantine and Licinius, declared that the Christian religion had become a permitted religion (Religio licita) in the empire and that the members of the Christian religion should be allowed religious freedom, an act that gave Christianity the status of "official religion in the empire". This year, 313 years after the birth of Christ, is considered the beginning of the Roman Catholic Church, which ruled without Egypt in Europe for the next thousand years, during the Middle Ages. The clergy received a hierarchical status and at its head is the Pope - the head of the church.
R.H.:
I did not blame the existence of religion but its control.
I also gave examples of the phenomenon - both from those days and from today.
Because, as I explained - there is a deep contradiction between religion and science - the religious establishment always does everything in its power to prevent scientific conclusions that contradict the holy books.
Therefore - the bigger his hand - the greater his negative influence on the progress of science.
In the Middle Ages the rulers were the representatives of the church and drew their authority from it and from God.
Therefore, the existence of the examples I gave is not at all surprising - just as the state of science in contemporary populations controlled by a religious establishment is not surprising.
As I explained - also at the individual level - the motivation to check the laws when they believe that everything is already written in the Holy Scriptures decreases - and we recognize such a belief among contemporary religious populations.
monument:
I don't know what kind of scientific progress you are talking about and whether you think there is scientific progress nowadays.
In my opinion there are - although there are no revolutions.
Revolutions may or may not occur, but it has been a long time since John Horgan wrote his book "The end of Science" and science is alive and kicking as ever (as mentioned - in environments that are not controlled by religion).
Technology is also constantly advancing.
In my opinion, it is very difficult to stop the progress of science and technology for the simple reason that dealing with these issues is great fun.
My opinion on the question "Why is this perceived by us as fun?" You are welcome to read here:
https://www.hayadan.org.il/meta-beuty-2911082/
In other words - if you asked about the motivation to engage in science - it seems to me that it is built in our souls and does not need an external push.
Of course, an external push can help and increase progress.
In any case - the lack of motivation to innovate should not have justified a retreat and in the Middle Ages there was indeed a retreat.
I looked at the hundreds and dozens of previous responses to this article...
And I just wanted to add a point that I haven't seen yet: in the arguments expressed in the responses, mostly negative explanations appeared that tried to explain why scientific progress weakened and stopped towards the Middle Ages. That is, the assumption seems to be that if there were no interruptions to progress or development in intellectual history, then we should expect that same progress to continue (up to what we have today or perhaps even longer) without those interruptions... but in my humble opinion this is a half-wrong assumption that assumes only half of the factors involved in development .
In other words, I argue that in addition to there being no disturbances or factors that prevent intellectual development (theoretical and practical in the sciences), there should be positive factors that encourage progress beyond the knowledge and technology that are present at that point in history.
That is, it is not at all self-evident that there should be progress if the period is stable and has no needs or opportunities beyond what has been achieved up to its time in terms of science, technology, etc.
For progress, there usually needs to be a jump. with special conditions in the background that make it possible. For example, in Greece around the 5th century BC, important and diverse fields of thought developed in a very short period of time. But it is almost impossible to find such a concentration of innovations in later antiquity.
There is no reason for there to be further development without a special coincidence or factors pushing in the direction of development. Therefore, in my opinion, as some of the commenters wrote, the Roman world was already very saturated in this respect at the end of its journey, and it is likely that the spiritual and scientific stagnation in it would have continued until it would have crumbled. And this is what happened until the Christian European world was re-created for many centuries.
It is relatively easy for me to see that intellectual development also requires central positive reasons, because many times the limiting factor for development and especially for its theoretical beginning is in the basic scientific thought or theory, which is not renewed or changed often. And it is possible to find, for that matter, in the scientific thought of the 17th century, central ideas and directions that were missing in ancient Greek thought. A later period has a great advantage, in that it sometimes makes it possible to find intellectual inspiration which is almost impossible in an earlier period. Thus, an opening was created for innovative and fateful ideas, which are the cutting edge of intuitive history.
Unfortunately, I cannot contribute much to the topic. My historical knowledge is too little to attempt to determine
Why were no experiments carried out? I would just like to point out that conducting experiments is an advanced stage in science, it requires:
Mathematical ability - most of the experimental results must be checked by fitting them to a quantitative theory, i.e. a mathematical model.
Many of the simple experiments require a good ability to measure times, while this ability is relatively developed
Late with pendulum clocks.
By the way, technological experiments do not require mathematical theory or good measuring ability
You simply try to create a device and make changes to it to see if its function improves.
God,
I'm not sure religion was the primary cause of the Middle Ages. As mentioned, there are religions everywhere and in every society, including today. What I think led to the Middle Ages in Europe is the fall of the Roman Empire. The Christian religion ruled the empire for many years and the retreat that followed the fall has not yet begun. The cultural retreat began when the empire collapsed under the invasions of the Germanic peoples that ushered in the Middle Ages. Their conversion to Christianity was a step in the process but in my opinion even if they had remained pagan there would have been a very massive retreat in knowledge and technology.
R.H.:
Indeed - this is the question, and as I said - the main culprit - in my opinion - is the takeover of religion over the lives of mankind.
Certainly there are other factors, but it seems to me that these factors too - in the broad picture - were caused by the takeover of religion.
118:
Indeed - contemporary Islam was one of the examples I gave to validate the claim that religion is to blame.
In my opinion - the religions themselves will not change (the inability to change is in "their genes").
What I do hope will happen is that their hold on humans will weaken.
I must regretfully admit that nowadays it seems to me that the trend is reversed.
Machel
In response 111 you talk about Christianity.
It would be interesting to note that Islam today is going through the same Middle Ages, the Muslims are fighting the secular Arabs, the Shia faction in the world has grown stronger, but in my opinion it has strengthened to its critical level and in the coming times (years?) it will begin to weaken, which will result in the secular Arabs also increasingly starting to engage in experiments in the framework of science. And who knows, if this does happen, perhaps the other religions such as Judaism and Christianity, and perhaps Hinduism and the like, will begin to lose their influence in the world towards a better future, which will surely lead to an acceleration of technological decline throughout the world to levels that have not existed until now.
M*A*L,
Archimedes relied on a body of knowledge and an atmosphere that encouraged study and research. Galileo a little less but really he was the only one of his generation and was indeed one of the candles in the darkness. And the question again is what brought about the change from the atmosphere of Archimedes, Aristotle, Plato, Euclid and others to the atmosphere in which Copernicus first died out of fear and only later published one of the most important works of all time?
And more importantly, can we learn anything from this about today and can such a dark period return?
R.H.:
I agree with the questions you raise and offered an answer to them.
I don't accept that a complicated set-up is required to perform experiments.
Galileo did very simple experiments in physics and thus heralded the revival of science.
Archimedes performed experiments in the bathtub (I don't know about all the experiments he did there, but one of them was published:))
Ehud and Mc**al,
Regarding the experiments that were not done, it seems to me that you are a little missing the atmosphere that existed in the Middle Ages in Christian Europe. What experiments? All previous knowledge was burned, or disappeared in cellars that only virtuous individuals could read as beautifully described in the book where it was downloaded. All educational institutions only taught religious studies theoretically and sometimes Aristotle's view which for some reason was accepted by the church.
As a young and curious guy there was almost no possibility to start building a set of experiments except maybe some bizarre alchemy experiments that could eventually bring you into focus. There is nothing to talk about for a young girl, even religious studies and reading and writing were banned as during the Taliban regime a decade ago.
So the question should start much, much before the attempts. What actually resulted in a mystic anti-scientific atmosphere opposed to technological progress?
One of the instructive examples of loss of knowledge is the fact that skulls of people who underwent brain surgery and died many years later were found in Egypt, meaning that they survived the surgery, something that was not repeated until modern times.
I think the links also point to the central role of the church in everything that happened in the Middle Ages, including the backwardness of these days and that even the church understands this.
The other things I said show how religion is also a unifying factor behind all the other "reasons" that were actually the results of its control.
The experiment is a central element in science - everyone agrees on that.
There is also agreement that in the Middle Ages they did not engage in experiments.
However - since this is such a central component of science - it seems to me that it is incorrect to claim that science was delayed because they did not do experiments because it is roughly the same as claiming that science was delayed because they did not engage in science.
The question that must be answered in this context is "why were they not engaged in experiments" and I pointed out that the chances that religion is behind this fact are high.
True - the scientists eventually started conducting experiments - but they also eventually stopped being religious. In my opinion the things are intertwined and I have yet to hear any attempt to explain things in a different way.
Michael
Thanks for the links, I think that the quotes you brought do demonstrate that the historical question is complex.
I share your beliefs that the work that scientists did not engage in experiments is indeed a fundamental reason for the non-progress of science and technology. By the way, Galileo did conduct experiments, or so they say, dropping objects from the Pisa tower. Newton also conducted experiments, he almost went blind during them...
Regarding the speculation as to why scientists did not engage in the experiment, I do not associate it with religion. As mentioned, Newton, who was a believing Christian, conducted experiments and also tried at the same time to find answers in the Holy Scriptures and there are countless other examples. The tradition of making inferences about nature without experiment is a Greek tradition. I don't remember who the Greek philosopher was who wrote an essay on the difference in the number of teeth between men and women but never bothered to actually count the number of their teeth. There is a Greek concept that sees the world of phenomena as an illusion. It also appears a little in Plato who spoke about the world of illusions. In light of this I do not think that the tendency of scientists to explore the world without experiments can be attributed to monotheistic religions
Michael
It is clear to you that it is not law day by day for 600 years or more. 600 years constitute almost a third of the time spoken of in the article. In conclusion, I think that regarding your last sentence we have a partial agreement.
"If someone says that in his opinion religion is one of the reasons - you can tell him that he is wrong and religion is not a reason..."
In my opinion there are many reasons for the delay of the industrial revolution. In history there is often no single cause, there is a whole. One of the reasons, not exactly the main one in my opinion, is the Middle Ages and the church's persecution of scientists. Evidence that this reason is not necessarily the main reason is as I have mentioned several times: in parallel cultures with significant scientific and technological achievements, where there was no religious persecution of science, neither did they reach the industrial revolution.
Regarding your claims about "revenge" (response 109) they are clearly unfounded and even refuted. The reason for the discussion in my opinion is the attempt to paint history in black and white colors. There are the bad guys: the church. There are the good: the scientists and the bad always stop progress. History is a much more complex subject than that.
Yehuda
As I wrote to Michael, in my opinion there are many factors for the industrial revolution not appearing earlier and it is possible that some of the factors you mentioned are also important.
In the following link you can read something about the status of the church in the Middle Ages
The following quote is from it:
http://instructional1.calstatela.edu/dfrankl/CURR/kin375/k260ch5.htm
II. The Impact of Christianity
• Christian church was the only institution left intact by the barbarian hordes that overran Europe after the fall of Ravenna — the capital of the Western Roman Empire (Test your knowledge of the reasons leading to "The Collapse of the Western Roman Empire."
• Collapse of Rome and the beginning of the Dark Ages caused utter chaos that drove many from cities to seek protection from powerful aristocrats and despots
• Commerce, trade, and public administration developed by the Roman Empire essentially vanished during the Dark Ages
• Dark Ages actually regressed into kingdoms that were similar to tribal societies
• Europe became feudalistic, with castles and walled cities designed by desperate people for protection and self preservation
• The Christian Church was the lone cultural institution that provided a symbol of stability and order amidst fear and chaos that reigned during this period in history
• Christianity spread throughout the ruins of the Roman Empire, converting many to the ways of the Catholic Church
• Theology of the church was based on absolute faith and belief in the certainty of the divine revelation, epistemological belief. It was a daily struggle to survive. The church held the promise of heaven to all who followed its teachings. Because life in the Dark Ages and Middle Ages was so harsh, the promise of eternal life in an ideal afterlife looked really good!
The following link is from a website of the Catholic Church which for some reason (well - what if not guilt) tries to explain that the Middle Ages were not so terrible.
http://home.comcast.net/~icuweb/c02303.htm
An interesting chapter there explains why, in their opinion, science developed in the western part of the "Kingdom of Christendom" and not in the eastern part.
In the east, there was a spectacular intellectual and artistic revival in the ninth century after the end of the iconoclastic controversy, and the university of Constantinople attracted many distinguished scholars. There was, however, little interest in science or technology.
Byzantine society was rigidly authoritarian, with Church and State closely linked. The Emperor was considered the vicegerent of God, and as ruler of both church and state his word was law. There was a highly centralized state organization with a well-developed civil service, so that practically all activities were controlled by the Emperor. Trade and commerce were rigidly controlled, not to serve the interests of the merchants but to subordinate economic life to the interests of the state. There were indeed schools, but they did not encourage independent discussion, and the static conception of life was not conducive to the development of science. In the west, on the other hand, the universities were centers of intellectual discussions, where novel views were expounded and discussed.
People speak and discuss freely when they are personally secure, when they know that they can say what they like without danger of any kind. This security can be provided by belonging to an organization, such as a university, which encourages free discussions, or by a society that respects the right of private property. In the west this is legally established, whereas in the east property was held subject to the will of the ruler, and may at any time be revoked. If one lives in perpetual fear that the ruler will suddenly take away one's house, one is hardly likely to indulge in any activity that may incur his wrath.
In the twelfth century the Crusaders caused consternation in Byzantium as they passed through on their way to the Holy Land, exacerbating the age-old tensions between east and west. These came to a head with the sack of Constantinople in 1204. Byzantium survived another two hundred years, but was fatally weakened and finally fell to the Turks in 1453.
Such sociological factors are sufficient to explain why science did not arise in Eastern Christendom, and it seems that these are more important than any theological differences.
It seems to me that a summary (concise to the point of cruelty) of things is this:
In the east the government was very rigid and the relationship between the church and the government was very strong.
In addition to this, the rulers could appropriate the individual's property for themselves at any moment.
This caused people in the East to fear more and avoid activities that might upset the ruler and therefore did not engage in science.
In the concluding paragraph they say that this is not about theological differences but about sociological differences (they just gloss over the fact that these sociological differences were nothing more than the extent of the church's control over people).
In the following link there is a lot of text that discusses universities in the Middle Ages and science in those days.
http://jameshannam.com/medievalscience.htm
The picture he presents is complex and I haven't read it all, but here are some quotes from a section discussing science at the time:
Innocent III condemned Aristotle's natural philosophy in 1210 [NOTE] and, when this had little effect, a committee was set up at Paris in 1231 to expunge the Aristotelian corpus of heretical ideas so that they would be suitable for teaching [NOTE].
.........
The crisis came when, following the teaching of Siger of Brabant at Paris around 1270, many theses derived from Aristotle and Averröes were declared heretical both at Paris and at Oxford following a papal sponsored investigation by Bishop Stephen Tempier [NOTE]
Another issue that emerges from the text in the above link is that the "scientists" in those days were "armchair scientists" in the sense that they tried to reach conclusions by the power of thought alone - without conducting experiments.
This is a very important point and we really recognize the beginning of modern science with the beginning of the link between the "exploration of reality" and the experiment.
It seems to me that it is difficult to give an overwhelming answer to the question "Why didn't they start conducting experiments earlier?".
Maybe they just didn't think of it.
On the other hand, precisely the contemporary attempts of the supporters of various religions to present a presentation as if all the discoveries of science are already presented in the Holy Scriptures seem more relevant in this context.
After all, in those days everyone was religious and it is possible that they really thought that everything was written in the holy books and all we had to do was understand and interpret.
Let's say the industrial revolution broke out on day X.
It means that the day before X day she still hasn't erupted.
Obviously - there were reasons why it didn't break out the day before.
Suppose someone were to write an article and ask himself the question "Why didn't the industrial revolution break out a day before day X?", comes to the conclusion that he does not know the reasons, and continues the article with the sentence "and thus the industrial revolution is doomed to be postponed in two thousand years".
I guess not many people would appreciate the wisdom of this sentence.
After all, it is a fact that the industrial revolution was postponed from that day by only one day, so what is the sense in talking about two thousand years?
But such a sentence appeared in the article and it made sense because the industrial revolution was indeed delayed by 2000 years.
Therefore it makes sense to discuss the reasons that postponed it for 2000 years and not only why it did not erupt on a certain day or even in a certain decade.
If someone says that in his opinion religion is one of the reasons - you can tell him that he is wrong and that religion is not a reason, but it is quite stupid to tell him that he is biasing the discussion.
sympathetic:
I find no reason to argue with "no arguments".
I addressed the issue and expressed my opinion.
I think it was on topic.
You don't think so.
I can't help but suspect that your desire to see things as not belonging to the topic is nothing more than "revenge" for my comment to you regarding the dark mass, and your words also implied this fact.
to love
Is it not possible that precisely the existence of a cheap labor force of slaves and orphans is the reason for the non-development of the industrial revolution?
On the other hand, I believe that the lack of development of science was due to the small size of the world population, a lack of communication between the people, the lack of education of the people and also Christianity which was afraid of the "competition" with science in explaining the phenomena of the universe.
But people think Christians are like mushrooms after the rain, so you can burn a few like Giordano Bruno and silence a few more like Galileo, but it will only slow science down for a few years. The rallying battle of the church is already lost. And science will advance.
Michael
You were right, I ran out of arguments. Arguments are only valid for a person who is willing to read them and think about them not
For those who refuse to hear and read. Locked in his positions…
Note already in my answer 50 I complained about the deviation from the topic of the article, the article talks about
"Why didn't the Greeks have their own industrial revolution?" And I have already mentioned it several times. The only one who made any link to religion and diverted the discussion to this topic is you. The only one who mentions the ultra-orthodox in the discussion and our days
He is, in my opinion, a much bigger deviation from the topic of the article. Today's ultra-Orthodox and today's religion is not similar to Christianity in the Middle Ages. Regarding arguments, you come out against religion in general, this is again irrelevant because we are talking about a very specific topic, Christianity in the Middle Ages, not any religion per se, what's more, you were presented with many cases where religion did not fight science and even encouraged it, yet you choose to ignore it. You are diverting the discussion to religions in general which is an irrelevant topic at all.
Now back to the topic: You claim that the debate about religion in the Middle Ages is relevant because:
"Yair said that in order for there to be an industrial revolution, more than one invention was needed and a lot of progress was needed before the industrial revolution broke out.
I merely explained what delayed the industrial revolution more than anything else - that is - how it was that all those additional necessary inventions were prevented for such a long period of time."
Well, the Greek culture existed hundreds of years BC and from that time the computer described in the article was discovered. Greek culture was replaced by the Roman Empire, which was also unaffected by Christianity, which was a small and persecuted religion until about four centuries AD. I guess you will agree with me that for at least 600 years since then
The computer developer described in the article, Christianity did not stop the progress of science. So what did stop science and technology? Why didn't science develop? Maybe from this we can understand that your answer is unrelated. The church in the Middle Ages did fight and stop science and also brought about a technological and scientific retreat, but what does this have to do with it? The simple answer is that it is not related and there are other explanations for this. Are 600 years not enough to produce technological development? If you explain what determines the historical timescales for technological development you can explain what caused a delay of 600 years later you can blame Christianity in the Middle Ages...
Beyond all that, I brought you several examples of advanced civilizations: China, the Mayan civilization that had high technological capabilities and no industrial revolution developed in them even though they did not go through the Middle Ages. From this it follows that the halting and even withdrawal of science and technology is not precisely related to religion and has more complex reasons.
Rah:
As far as I know - the castes - which are indeed practiced in some parts of Hindu society - are not part of the religion itself.
The relevant Wikipedia entry reads, among other things:
[25] Mahavira (24th Tirthankar of Jains) and Buddha (founder of Buddhism) taught that to achieve moksha or nirvana, one did not have to accept the authority of the Vedas or the caste system.
I am afraid, however, that your prediction regarding religion remaining on earth is correct and in fact, in light of the developments of the last few years - especially in the field of Islam - a day may come when everyone will be obliged to observe the laws of religion and it may even be that on this day the word "everyone" will represent the empty group after that the whole world will be destroyed in a religiously motivated war.
splendor:
I must admit that I did not read your words correctly.
I was misled by the sentence discussing the collapse of the Christian empire and thought you were claiming that Christianity had in fact lost control.
I didn't read the rest of the sentence that mentions exactly those princes I was talking about.
However - I do not accept the spirit of things.
It is true that the central government of the Roman Empire collapsed but the princes still drew their authority from God (through the Church).
This is the case R. H. spoke of when he described one of the functions of religion as the source of authority for the ruler.
Even the ruler of a small estate - if he derives his authority from religion - will not hesitate to support scientific activity that pursues this authority.
There is no doubt that the difficulties of daily existence of the noble's subordinates also prevented them from engaging in science, but:
1. Nothing but religion could prevent this from the nobles themselves.
2. The hardship of existence that the nobles imposed on their subordinates was intended to ensure their rule, which apart from religion had nothing to base it on. A rule based on logical reasons is not required to keep the subordinates under such conditions. We see a similar picture in the ultra-Orthodox community in our country, when ensuring the continued poverty of this population is one of the tools of their leaders in maintaining their power.
I repeat and apologize for not reading your words correctly.
I think the current comment addresses the part of the comment I missed more correctly.
My comments from comment 92 remain valid.
I also reiterate and emphasize that in my opinion there were other reasons for the slowdown in the progress of science, but I have no doubt that religion was a major factor in the slowdown and even the retreat, and in addition I reiterate and emphasize the fact that no event was brought up in this discussion that could be used to point to another factor as a major reason.
By the way - I didn't talk about your claim about the reasons for the fall of the empire at all.
In fact, my only reference to the subject of the Roman Empire was that it was not its fall that caused the events I mentioned.
Your words were blocked because you mentioned my name.
Because of the behavior of some commenters, my father chose to make my name one of the words whose mention blocks the comment.
The comment is not blocked until it becomes irrelevant, but until someone in charge of managing the site sees it (and really there was nothing in your comments that warranted blocking and they were simply caught in a rule designed to protect the site from other types of people. It may be time to remove the restriction and see what happens Although I must say that the insults and blasphemies I received in the past from all kinds of people who were not ready to hear an opinion different from their faith was truly unbearable).
liza
What kind of narcissist are you?
I have no idea what sentences I wrote about the Middle Ages could cause me to be blocked?
I have to say that I think I'm one of the least belligerent here.. It's a bit strange..
Ziv, the system filters responses according to keywords that accumulate over time. It's not always possible to monitor, especially on days when I'm barely connected to the internet.
Avi Blizovsky:
What's going on here?, I appreciate your work, but my comments are consistently blocked and wait for approval for a long time, until they become irrelevant, I don't think I'm dangerous to the stability of the blog or anything...
First of all it is not true that Hinduism has no laws. The whole story of castes and their restrictions stems from Hinduism. It is also forbidden to kill a living creature, especially cows. There are also many rituals to which the believer is obliged.
Second thing, regarding need vs. urge, since we don't have an example of a company without faith, it is not possible to test its success against others.
The obvious conclusion that you will certainly not like is that there is no chance that religion will pass away from the world because it is embedded too deeply.
R.H.
Certainly I know a belief in a higher power that does not involve a system of laws.
The tribal example is Hinduism (which is acceptable to call a "religion" but it is not such because it has no rules of conduct).
Hinduism is an example in general that is good to remember because it is also much older than Judaism which always claims the crown of the oldest religion.
By the way, an interesting and not really important link to this matter shows the distribution of the various beliefs in the population:
http://www.adherents.com/Religions_By_Adherents.html
Here you can see that Hinduism is also the third largest "religion".
Regarding Christianity versus Judaism - you are probably right, but both survive thanks to their ability to survive as a collection of ideas whose resources they compete for are people's minds, but in any case this is not a contribution to human survival.
Regarding the question of whether faith is a very strong need of the human race - I must emphasize the difference between an urge and a need.
Like all animals we are driven mainly by impulses.
Basically, these drives were instilled in us during evolution thanks to their contribution to survival, but since this is not about intelligent design but evolution, the drives are not a precise thing.
The need to have sex is essential for survival, but the urge to have sex also leads to masturbation, visits to brothels, and just sex for pleasure.
Evolution "took pains" to instill in the animals the urge to have sex because the animals at all did not understand the term survival, and even if they did, they would not have discovered the connection between having sex and the birth of offspring.
I assume, by the way, that even the first generations of humans did not yet stand for this connection.
Creatures in which the sexual drive was not imprinted did not survive.
Evolution did not "bother" to adjust the sexual drive so that it was directed only to the birth of offspring - simply because it was too complicated for it (and by the way - maybe it will happen again. Some of the women commenting here on the site speak as if it had already happened to them).
A similar thing happened with nutrition.
Animals do not understand the connection between nutrition and survival, but evolution instilled in them an urge to eat and even tuned this urge so that they prefer (according to the taste and smell) the types of food that contribute the most to their survival.
She still has not been able to "internalize" the fact that humans with their developed minds can produce food in such quantities that what was essential under conditions of stress becomes harmful under conditions of progress and therefore humans in the Western world eat too much and consume foods that are harmful to them.
Evolution also instilled in us feelings of pain and fear - exactly for the same reasons and there is no need to elaborate because I assume the principle is clear.
These feelings are also not adjusted to the modern age and to any condition, and therefore many of us are afraid of a second doctor.
So what about belief in supernatural power?
Doubt is indeed defined as one of the guiding principles of science, but in daily activities that require an immediate response in many situations - doubt can be destructive.
Once I was walking with my wife in Neve Magen (the place where I grew up) and we passed by a basketball court where a small group of children were playing next to one of the baskets.
At a certain moment I saw the ball splash off the board and fly in a ballistic trajectory towards my wife's head.
I didn't have time to formulate a sophisticated sentence and all I managed to say to her was "jump quickly to the right".
She didn't understand why I was saying this and being a natural skeptic she started asking me "why?".
When she reached the letter M, the ball hit her head and gave her the answer in my place.
Sometimes you just have to believe.
Because of this, humans run away from doubt and because of this they also invented the god of gaps.
There are things that, in the conditions of the war of survival, it is better not to think about - what's more, most animals have no ability to reach really smart conclusions through thought.
The God of Gaps is a kind of exercise in self-deception designed to help us overcome all sorts of doubts that evolution has programmed us to avoid.
The God of Gaps is not the only way to silence our doubts.
The scientific research combined with the recognition that there are things that I still do not understand but they should not disturb my rest to the extent that I will avoid jumping quickly to the right when necessary, does this just as well but....what to do.... Evolution has more work to do.
And another thought, how do you explain the fact that there is no human society without religion? Perhaps, after all, religions give a great advantage or is faith a very strong need of human psychology?
from **al,
I agree with you that there can be a religion without a higher power, like Nazism or the communists, but on the other hand, belief in a higher power is immediately a religion. In every example I know, belief in a higher power is immediately derived to laws and rules that say what the will of that power is and how the believer must live according to its light.
Do you know a belief in a higher power that does not lead to laws? Therefore belief in a higher power = religion. Belief in a higher power developed for the reasons I listed above.
As for the contribution of religion to survival, then there is an evolution of religions in which the most appropriate and overwhelming possession survives. It is clear that a religion like Christianity with all the decorated churches, there are almost no duties and it is very easy to join it (a little baptism) will be a more overwhelming religion than the heavy Judaism with complicated food prohibitions, circumcision and the arduous conversion processes.
Michael:
First of all, I don't understand the attempt to present the fact that there were places in Europe in the Middle Ages where the Higashi was leadership on behalf of the religious leadership, as something that contradicts my theory. For my argument editor I argued that the church had significant political power in Europe during this period. My main argument is the weakness of the religious central government. See:
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%99%D7%9E%D7%99_%D7%94%D7%91%D7%99%D7%A0%D7%99%D7%99%D7%9D#.D7.97.D7.9C.D7.95.D7.A7.D7.94_.D7.A9.D7.A0.D7.A7.D7.91.D7.A2.D7.94_.D7.A2.D7.9C_.D7.A4.D7.99_.D7.94.D7.94.D7.99.D7.A1.D7.98.D7.95.D7.A8.D7.99.D7.95.D7.A0.D7.99.D7.9D
In relation to the period of the strong Roman rule, there was not really a central government in Europe, you also know that there was a tremendous political disintegration at the beginning of this period, this is not our debate, the debate is whether religion was the factor that stopped the study, research, science and mathematics or were these organizational political reasons as I claimed … and I don't understand how you tried to disprove it…
Returning to your first point, my attempt was not to teach you about memes but to show you my opinion on the fact that even among scientists (not in idealistic science but in pragmatic science - i.e. the scientific society/community.. those who decide what is acceptable and what is not scientifically) there are There is no less a tendency than among religious communities to preserve memes and similar reasons regardless of their logical or statistical refutation.. That is, scientists are also fixated on "brands" and the opinion of the majority and conservatism and beliefs and ideals that are not in line with the scientific truth itself or the scientific process.
And the Duma I gave Inhab is an example of a problem with science and the scientific process, but an example of how scientists did not use the scientific process for non-scientific reasons, to prove various claims and made sure to hide it under a scientific guise.
There are differences between the brains of women and men, however, there is no real scientific research that shows that there is a difference between the IQ of a black and white human brain and
I think my opinion is humanism in this case and not just postmodernism.
Regarding my "unacceptable/based" theories about the reasons for the fall of the empire
See
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%A9%D7%9C%D7%94%D7%99_%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%AA_%D7%94%D7%A2%D7%AA%D7%99%D7%A7%D7%94
R.H.
I claim (and maybe even agree with Michael!) is that those exact rituals are the ones that preserve, like OCD, people's fixation on one way of thinking, and do not allow them to go out of the box.
Habit and ritual are many times stronger than speeches or talks, in preserving the existing situation and thinking!
Rah:
If you don't agree with me, you certainly won't be surprised to find out that I don't agree with you.
Elsewhere I've expanded on this more but:
In part of your response (sections 1 and 2) you talk about the source of belief in a higher power and not about the source of religion.
Belief in higher powers preceded religion and religion only used it to preserve itself. Belief in a higher power is not a religion because a religion is a set of rules of behavior.
That is why I also define Nazism as a religion even though it is not based on God. Like any other religion, Nazism included a set of rules of behavior that arose - so to speak - from an external source and not from the dynamic legislation of human beings.
Section 3 you talked about is nothing more than a private (and even extreme) case of my words.
Why did people want to impose a set of laws on the public?
Many times, perhaps even in most cases, they wanted it for their own benefit.
The cases you describe in this section are the cases in which the ruler who derives his authority from God says:
I am God (or I am his representative) and my words are the law!
What you say about the rituals is again a private case of things I said regarding the existence of additional memes in religion whose function is to give its entire conceptual structure the ability to survive.
What you say in the last paragraph involves two points.
One is that part of the validity of this paragraph again refers to belief in higher powers and not to religions.
The other part (if we reduce the validity of the claim to examples where religion is involved) testifies to the ability of religion to survive but not to its contribution to human survival.
I have already mentioned this in the response you refer to and have expanded on it extensively in the past.
In fact, Judaism is a very good example of this.
The Jewish religion survived at the expense of its sons.
Judaism survived while the Jews died en masse.
God,
I do not agree with your presentation of the reasons and motivations for the establishment of the religions as you present in response 87. In my opinion there are at least 4 strong motivations for the establishment and preservation of the religions and these are:
1) Religions probably started at the same point where science started. From the questions how and why. Religion, almost every religion provides answers to how we got here, who created us, why what happens, etc.
2) Religions also arise from a real distress that comes from the understanding that man is mortal and that disasters happen and religions provide hope and an explanation for this difficult reality.
3) Political reasons. If I am Pharaoh, God on earth, or if I am the Pope, God's representative, it is clear that I cannot be deposed or refused in spite of myself.
All the ritual that exists in all religions of ceremonies and actions that seem to have no real reason many times stem from the need to make a person oblige. If you have to pray three times a day for about an hour each time and on Shabbat all day it brings you a very big commitment.
A final point regarding religion is that it is probably a need that is deeply embedded in human psychology because there is no society even on the most remote and isolated islands in the ocean that has not developed some kind of religion. And there is also no society that managed to become an atheist, including the communists. So maybe there are some "survival" benefits in the belief that actually makes life easier and makes it simpler and less threatening. Be good (meaning do everything we think is good) and you will get to heaven, that's it, simple.
Basically - if Ziv did not bring data to validate his position, this is no reason for me not to bring data to refute it.
So here it is:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prince-bishop
splendor:
I don't know why you found it necessary to clarify something as trivial as the fact that there are still surviving collections of memes in the world.
I explained the things in response to the question I was asked and in my opinion there was no need for what you added.
I think it's important to call nonsense - even if there are those who believe it.
I suppose you know that there were also those who believed in Nazism.
If for the thousandth time I repeated the things you still didn't understand - let me clarify for the thousand and one time:
Science is a strategy for exploring reality.
It is not (how many times do I have to say this?!) the collection of scientific or "scientific" theories ever put forward.
Therefore - if you choose to represent science by a theory that you think has been disproved, you are twice wrong:
Once thinking that in general this or that theory represents "what is science"
A second time by not noticing the fact that disproving theories is the main characteristic of science and therefore disproving a wrong theory shows the strength of science and not its weakness.
In a framed article I will only add that your rejection of the theories you presented as ridiculous is exaggerated because apparently there really are proven differences between the minds of men and women and as a rule there is a difference in the IQ indices of different populations and your opposition to the very idea is nothing more than another example of your tendency towards postmodernism.
I do not agree with your historical claims, but since you did not bring any data to attack them, I have nothing to argue with you either.
Everyone:
But Michael in particular response 87, first of all, also religion but also other philosophical ideas such as "democracy" "state" equality" "art" "research", one scientific idea or another, a sticky song, they are all a collection of memes with the characteristic of self-preservation . Successful religions in general and manotheistic religions in particular have very sardonic elements of a punishing God and others, (I will not give a damn why there is someone who believes that he is important, nonsense - regardless of my personal opinion on the same thing). Scientific ideas have the ability to survive, of adapting to political concepts (for example, a scientific concept that the brain of a woman or a Negro, or a Jew, etc. is smaller and unusable, for these scientific ideas found scientific proofs, for example that no Negro received a degree, distortion stopped There because it was convenient for society to accept this idea despite the simple bias that they forbade blacks to study in acceptable educational institutions... and did not give them the opportunity to study on their own. Of course, this is not the ideal of science, to ignore ideas, but that is human nature. And my criticism is not of science but of people Those who use science (or religion) in a distorted way for their non-scientific purposes.
Ehud, I agree with you, although I think that religion is not only rules of conduct, but the religious establishment, institutionalizes religion with the help of laws (which were probably much less strict in the beginning) and this to preserve itself (that is, the establishment, not the religion, and compare it to Russian communism instead, Because the communist religion was almost completely abandoned by the establishment that chose to preserve itself at the expense of its true ideology (its religion), of equality and sharing...
Michael, there is no doubt that the ecclesiastical rule over Europe was very strong.. in the late Middle Ages before that it was more symbolic, and the real sovereignty was with those small feudal princes who each ruled in their own way, (under the banner of religion of course, but with very little real connection to the central institutions in Rome) in fact the Roman Empire at the end of its journey was actually a Christian Empire... despite your argument for its strength" it is the one that collapsed not the pagan Roman Empire...
Again the example of Henry VIII rebelling was at the end of the Middle Ages and not during it, because then there was really no one to rebel against.
Rah, my application stems from the need to talk about a tremendous period of several hundreds and it is clear that there are exceptions to the rule. But they only testify to the rule..
The only way to talk and learn is by generalizing and unpacking ideas, I found in my words a common denominator for such and such religions, of course you can dismantle any such idea and then talk about something else... otherwise there is nothing to talk about, everything is meaningless and contextless..
sympathetic:
I understand that you have run out of reasons, so you moved on to discuss the question of who diverted the discussion.
Well: you should be precise.
I made a short response to Yair's words (which are true in themselves) in response 2.
Yair said that in order for there to be an industrial revolution, more than one invention was needed and a lot of progress was needed before the industrial revolution broke out.
I have merely explained what delayed the industrial revolution most of all - that is - how it was that all those additional necessary inventions were prevented for such a long period of time.
Everything else is history.
Correction "What we call today religion and what we call today science..."
Michael
First of all religion like science is not one thing here I agree with R.H. . What we call religion today and what we call religion today are completely different things from these phenomena 100 years ago let alone 1000.
Second, religion doesn't investigate reality, I guess if that's the case you agree. Sometimes she has perceptions about reality and sometimes she adopts them. The questions on which religions (I am generalizing) have a clear position is the way a person should behave.
Regarding the discussion you write "My argument is that religion was the most central factor in delaying scientific progress and even in pulling science back in the Middle Ages" this was not the discussion but the direction you diverted the discussion to.
The main question was "Why didn't the Greeks have their own industrial revolution?" (quote from the article itself!). So you see the whole discussion you brought up is off topic because the Middle Ages happened long after the Greek Empire collapsed. You conduct your discussion regardless of the article.
Regarding the debate about the harmful effect of montheistic religions, it is not related and I have a lot to say about it and I have also said it. No need for me to repeat myself. In my opinion, you simply shifted the discussion in an irrelevant direction.
86:
Religion is not just a collection of rules of conduct but it is its essence.
In order for people to observe these rules of conduct, it is based on the almighty policeman - God.
In order to make people afraid of that omnipotent policeman, the religion also contains a collection of stories (most of them stories that did not exist and were not created) about the history of the world - from the moment of its formation until the days when the things were written.
As a rule - religion is a collection of memes (ideas) whose main feature is self-preservation (that is, making sure that there will always be someone who guards these ideas).
That is why it has the idea of God, the idea of death for the sanctification of God, the idea that religion is the source of morality on earth and all kinds of other nonsense.
But - as mentioned - whoever founded the religion did not see nonsense as a goal.
He saw as the goal the laws of conduct and added the nonsense only to support these laws.
R.H
"Even a baby who sees a new toy for the first time is a little scientist who investigates and tries to understand how things work."
This shows that science is, among other things, a collection of laws about how man behaves (as opposed to how he -man- should behave; according to religion). This proves the claim that science is a collection of laws. This claim is no different from the claim that religion is a collection of laws (and it doesn't matter which, i.e., moral, natural, etc.).
Regarding what you said about history, history is also not objective because it is written by subjective people. For example with the Palestinians - the Jews are the occupiers of Palestine, even though Palestine belonged to the British Empire which gave a mandate for Jewish settlement in Palestine.
Machel
In your opinion, religion is only a collection of rules of conduct and nothing more than that?
Friends:
I'm already tired of repeating things.
I don't see religion through narrow glasses.
I see religion as it is and I have never claimed that there is anything wrong with the commandment "Thou shalt not kill" or the commandment "Honor thy father and thy mother".
Those who see things through narrow glasses are those who interpret every complaint about a real crime committed by the religion as a blanket objection to everything related to religion.
After all, I never said that everything in religion is bad, but it is clear that the scientific approach to the study of reality is in irreconcilable conflict with the religious approach.
That is why religions - as a rule - are in conflict with science almost from the moment science was born and it is also clear that this contradiction is only intensifying.
If there is anyone who disagrees with this claim, he is welcome to explain his claim instead of preaching morals to me.
It is a fact that the Middle Ages are the days of the strengthening of Christianity and its perception of the customs of government. It's not just that Henry VIII (a king!) was forced to rebel against the church - it only makes sense to rebel against those who control you! In the Middle Ages, the church ruled everything.
It is a fact that the church did indeed kill those who tried to promote science (and you have to understand - for every person who is questioned or brought to the fore, there are surely hundreds who realized that it is dangerous to deal with knowledge that contradicts religion. These hundreds knew this because, contrary to what was claimed - information they wanted to pass actually did pass!)
When I talk about "religions" I'm talking about the monotheistic religions - Judaism, Christianity and Islam.
I bother to emphasize this because the defenders of religion - as well as the defenders of God - sometimes try to save the object of their defense by examples that are not relevant (like Spinoza's God instead of God and like Hinduism instead of religion. If someone wants to include in the word "religion" also eggplant spread, I will be the first to admit that under this definition there are even good things in religion, so I ask everyone who responds to talk about the matter and not about all kinds of "religions" that are not religions or at least not the religions I'm talking about).
I don't know why Ehud had to bring up the issue of the deterioration in education and I hope he won't accuse me of bringing it up in the discussion about the delay (not the increase in the third power) of science.
In my opinion, the terror of the country has a very significant contribution to the deterioration of education and it stems from a number of sources for each of which I could write a lecture, but I will be brief because it is a deviation (which I did not deviate) from the topic.
One of the sources of the negative influence of religion on education is the budgetary source (or more precisely - the limitation of this source and the disproportionate control of the ultra-orthodox control over the funding sources of education).
Another - no less important - source is the successful propaganda work done by the ultra-orthodox who managed to take over many hours of education in the state education for the purpose of training nonsense.
I will not add at present on this point unless someone insists on arguing about it.
If we return to the topic - my argument is that religion was the most central factor in delaying scientific progress and even in regressing science back in the Middle Ages.
Of all the claims that have ever been raised in this discussion regarding the reason for the decline of science in the Middle Ages - only this claim has been given a factual basis and since people have not grasped it until now - I want to clarify what a factual basis is:
If I claim that factor X was an important factor in the retreat of European science in the Middle Ages - it is not enough to show that in a certain place - not in Europe of the Middle Ages there was a case where factor X retreated science. An example of at least one such case in medieval Europe should be shown.
I did so in relation to the claim that Christianity was such a major factor and no one else did so in relation to any other factor.
More than that: I also explained (and again - I ask those who disagree with the claim and can justify their opinion - not to feel) how the contradiction between religion and science arises from the very definition of these two very different doctrines for understanding the world. No one did this either in relation to any other factor.
Ziv Michal and Ehud,
You all try to generalize, on the one hand from who claims that every religion causes damage and regression and on the other hand Ziv and Ehud who claim that religion does not cause damage to progress. In my opinion it is very difficult to generalize in history even though this is our natural tendency and the way we understand things - generalization and induction.
It is clear that Christianity in the Middle Ages delayed the development of science and technology, Copernicus was afraid to publish his findings, Bruno was burned, Galileo was tried and many other cases are known.
It is clear that today the Muslim countries (with the exception of Iran by the way) are ideologically stopping their development.
Do these two examples prove that religion is always harmful to development? Can we generalize historical phenomena?
Correction of a mistake What I meant to write was instead of "religions sometimes adopt a religious concept..." it is "religions sometimes adopt a scientific concept..."
I am not interested in getting into this debate again because Michael's war on religion is a chauvinistic war (religious in some sense). In my opinion, you see the world through narrow glasses. Nevertheless, I will try one more time…
Religion is a political mechanism that strives to survive in principle, it fights against those who endanger it, not precisely science. Sometimes the Jews endanger the Christians, sometimes the Muslims, sometimes some kind of astrologers and prophets. Today science
constitutes a danger to some of the perceptions of the religion and the religion fights them. It was not always like this. Religion, like other governments, tries to control its beliefs, many other ancient civilizations also withheld knowledge from their citizens, and there is nothing special about Christianity in the Middle Ages, it is simply a government that was very successful and fought against its opponents. First and foremost, religion is a collection of rules of conduct and not perceptions about the world. So a believer can continue to explore nature as long as he observes the religious commandments. In this sense, religion does not contradict science, it does work on a different level. Religions sometimes adopt a religious concept for them, but many times the study of the world is of much less interest to them than moral problems, that is, how one should behave in the world.
Communism in Russia also held certain "scientific" concepts, the science of biology, it destroyed physics, no (despite the belief that the theory of relativity is incorrect because it fits socialism). Science as we know it is a late phenomenon, it usually did not pose a threat to the government, therefore it was not persecuted, but it was not encouraged either. There was simply no institutionalized research. The persecution or not of scientists does not always come from their opinions but from their influence on the public. Every government strives to prevent knowledge from the general public because that way it keeps the power in its hands. This is also how democracy works, it develops the television, the yellow press and withholds budgets from education.
Regarding our country. It's not related to the topic, but Michael always brings it up. Is the decline in education a result of the strengthening of religion in the country? Or due to the fact that the religious do not learn from core professions? The deterioration of the education system in my opinion comes from the pursuit of money, the pursuit of publicity and the lack of respect for knowledge and learning that lose their value (precisely in Judaism there is great respect for knowledge and learning).
In the bottom line, the industrial revolution did not happen in Bion because the society was not suitable for it, not because of the persecution or persecution of science that took place in the Middle Ages. An inappropriate society is an inappropriate sociological and economic structure and infrastructure for administration.
I tried again but I am not interested in continuing this pointless debate.
After looking at a typeface entry on Wikipedia, the assumption is strengthened, that is the only way Martin Luther could scare the church and create a real religious revolution, as above regarding the intellectual revolution of Copernicus and Galileo.
It's just that until then the book had no effect on the masses.
Looking back and forward::
It's possible, I think it's safe, but it's also true for other periods... not just for the medieval times
Michael:
Take my compliments where you will, an insult really as a compliment, advice or anything, it's really not in my hands,
When I'm insulted and don't treat things as they are and only take care of the little things, it's hard for me to understand what's being said!
On the other hand, those who tell me their opinion without arguing and treat my response seriously, there is a dialogue, and both sides can begin to understand the other.
And this is my opinion also regarding your response, which you mentioned, I saw it during the discussion, I sided with your opinion, but certainly not in the way it was said, if they "won't listen anyway" then why respond, and what good is going down on them, what is the point of saying, you were right! Well done,
I prefer to really listen to their words, sometimes they have a point (and even your words :) ) and try to clarify my opinion as much as possible, it doesn't always work, see my experience with Hazy, which was really useless ) if you have free time to waste, you are welcome. But I know at least I tried.
I think that only those who walk with their heads against the wall are dangerous, because at some point the wall comes... and I was waiting to know that many people have something to gain from hearing a disparaging and irritating opinion, that's why I'm debating with you. It helps me to think...
For me, religion is a type of story, just as the structure of the atom is only an analogy and does not necessarily express the absolute truth, the religious story is also a copy of the human soul and way of thinking, that is why I call it philosophy, I am aware that religious people do not always think about religion like I do, and probably the majority do, But as far as I'm concerned it doesn't matter, I'm arguing with the idea not with the statistics... I claim that they don't conflict at all, it only conflicts with those who are interested in trying to connect them, and that's why no scientific discussion about religion succeeds and no religious discussion about science really advances..
I think there is a more serious problem for society in those who argue all the time about nonsense..
I completely agree with you on the subject "those who create knowledge and do not write and distribute it..." and I argued that the Middle Ages was a period in which there was a decline in the creation of information, and this for a variety of reasons. The value of the construction of the delusional but amazing pyramids from an engineering point of view... probably a non-religious group of people would not have built them and thus does not promote engineering, science and mathematics..
Need is the father of re-thinking.. and that there is no need there is no thought..
It is as it has been said many times that wars are one of the great catalysts of science, and this regardless of the fact that I believe in peace and tolerance.. This is the impulse that lacked the intermediate signs because the civilized world shrank with the reduction of civil freedom (serfs), the reduction of passenger traffic (dissolution of the empire), the reduction of organizational resources and the economies (all the above reasons) and also political reasons for instability (multiple kings, wars of succession, pressure from organized people and anti-scientific religious ideas, famine, diseases, etc.)
I argued that in the Middle Ages, less knowledge was created and less was passed on (to future generations and between people)
Not all medieval book distributors were punished (as you will read about Galileo on Wikipedia who was actually asked by the Pope to write scientific books and lectures about his discoveries) in fact I think (this is just my assumption) that the main phenomenon of book burning began precisely after the printing press, or at least at the beginning The Renaissance, when there was a real threat to the stability of the church for reasons of knowledge (for example Martin Luther 1508 AD) because only then was the information spread fast enough before they could stop its spread, and thus more people were affected by the information..
It is possible that in the Middle Ages there was hidden a vast knowledge that might illuminate all the forced darkness that was affixed as a bitter stigma to their time.
time will tell.
splendor:
Obviously your words are not a compliment.
On the contrary - they are an insult because all my responses are factual.
Maybe you didn't understand them, but they were like that.
I didn't say you were religious.
It is clear to me that you are not religious.
In fact, the country's most difficult problem is the secularists who side with the religious.
One of them once annoyed me so much that I wrote the following comment:
https://www.hayadan.org.il/survival-in-the-philipines-0609099/#comment-246867
Religion is the opposite of science in each of the points I mentioned. Quite the opposite!
Certainly it is not on a parallel plane because it claims to tell us all kinds of things about nature (such as how the world was created, how the hare grows, how the Euphrates and the Tigris come from a common source, and more).
Can you explain how it is that "parallel" things nevertheless collide head-on?
I assume you are aware that most religious people do not agree with you and the fact is that they oppose science. Is it because they think there is no conflict?
As I mentioned - our most serious problem is the secularists who try to help religion.
Those who create knowledge and don't write and distribute it - it doesn't matter at all what you call it - obviously you don't know about its existence - not in the days of the Greeks - not in the Middle Ages and not today.
It's really irrelevant and you certainly can't claim that there is a feature of the Middle Ages here.
It's not an organizational problem either! It's all a matter of the individual.
From a moral point of view, there is nothing criminal here either. There are a lot of people who do not create any knowledge - so what if there are (and you don't know if there really are) people who create knowledge and do not distribute it?
What is clear is that in the Middle Ages there were people who wanted to spread knowledge and were severely punished for it.
What is clear is that this happened because their knowledge clashed with religion and religion was strong.
Another thing, what is amazing and terrible about these collapse processes, is that it doesn't take much, sometimes one generation is enough of wars, diseases or political influences (in this category I include the religious influences), that the impact on the loss of knowledge will be enormous... and knowledge that will be accumulated over dozens of generations Deleted because there was no way and possibility to preserve it..
Michael:
Nice to hear an interesting answer from you at last! (This is partly a compliment)
*)"Religion is not the supreme power in the world."
First I mention as I said I am not religious and I don't come close to it, I don't think that because I (and my family) claim that the picture is wider than you present then I will cause the victory of religion! The exaggerated and not related to the contrary, belief in the sentence you said is what degenerates our ability to deduce objective dangers in a scientific way, because we need to protect... (this time it's about the future of science)..
Religion is not the opposite of science, it is not on the same level as religion! As you have said more than once, science is a method for discovering our world, religion is a collection of beliefs, and beliefs about laws regarding how the world is built, religion is a type of philosophy, a way of life, and also a collection of laws... It is clear that religious institutions aim to preserve their hegemony, Like any other institution, but what matters is that they never succeeded! Not really and not in depth, they particularly influenced the "press headlines" of those periods, and this is what we see today.
The Middle Ages were not only a dark period, there was a wide scientific, artistic and cultural development, and also a great retreat at the same time, and I argued that the main reasons were the economy and the people who stood in the centers of power (most of whom were religious, right!)
The Greeks and the Romans and the Aztecs and the Chinese and the Incas were also religious, very much even! And you don't count them as religious, that's strange isn't it? They just didn't have a familiar Middle Ages...
I agree with you on the moral issue, I don't think we have an argument here
I also come from the field of information and organizational processes, and I have seen how much energy and time and money and the leadership and desire of all the elements in the system are needed to preserve information and manage it, and how it is lost if you do not invest in it continuously, especially when a key person leaves the organization, and this is exactly what I think (and I It relies on the many historians whose studies I have read, accepted and not accepted) happened in the retreat of the Middle Ages, in the great retreat of China, in the retreat of the developed culture of Aborigines in Australia already 40000 years ago, and also today in organizations..
A lack of organization can certainly lead to withdrawal, and the example that the daughter of success despite the lack of organization, is an amazing and successful and very discounted example, and is also a good example of the famous survival bias, it is important how much information is lost!! How much knowledge was lost even without connection to the burning of the books of the technological inventors, thinkers and others, simply because they did not have the means to write and distribute in a successful way.. Even at that time, knowledge of writing already existed, there was simply no one who would want to collect the information or even think about Just like in many organizations today.
Whoever burns a book, in my opinion, is as dangerous as burning a person, but the one who is more dangerous for the loss of knowledge is the one who does not write and distribute it. It is more total.
splendor:
"Religion is not the supreme power in the world."
maybe yes, maybe no. It differs from period to period and place to place.
In the Middle Ages in Europe it was the supreme power.
In Islamic countries and among our ultra-Orthodox, she is the supreme power today (see what happens when some rabbi tweets and tens of thousands immediately obey his command).
See what happened in Europe when people like Bruno or Galileo tried to innovate.
In this matter there was no blind generalization and no one can be accused of this type of generalization so preaching against it is demagoguery. After all, I went back and said that in ancient Greece, science started from the pancreas - and in the western world nowadays - science is flourishing and this is related to the decline in the power of religion and the fact that it is no longer a supreme power despite all the attempts of the believers to make it so - attempts by you and your ilk - Chazi - may still result in their success.
Religion is yes (I repeat: absolutely yes!) opposite to science.
In the field of knowledge:
The spirit of science is that every claim should be compared with reality and nothing is sacred except the truth.
The spirit of the religion is what is written in the holy books and not only is there no need to check it but it is forbidden to check and if it turns out that the reality is different then the reality and not the holy books must be denied.
In the field of morality:
Religion sets us all kinds of rules of behavior - some of which require a complete neutralization of our natural morality (after all, how - otherwise - can we murder those whom the religion orders us to murder?).
Science does not establish any laws of behavior but it helps us to discover the laws of morality that evolution has imprinted on us, to understand why they developed, and even to calculate our steps so that we act in a way that is consistent with our natural morality.
In other words - religion and science are in a fundamental and rooted contradiction - one that cannot be removed or plastered over.
Certainly there are other processes that cause the loss of knowledge.
If, for example, a meteorite destroys all life on earth, all knowledge will also be destroyed with it.
This is of course irrelevant because it was not a meteorite that destroyed knowledge in the Middle Ages, but the flowering of Christianity.
Turning knowledge into information, in the current context, is just a slogan that does not belong to the matter.
As a person who for many years in the past managed a computer organization, I have used this expression many times in relevant contexts, but it has nothing to do with the development of scientific knowledge.
Actually the more useful phrase is "turning data into information".
There is no doubt that the more organized we are, the faster we can move forward, but even a complete lack of organization does not lead to retreat.
A striking example of this is the parallel stories of Darwin and Mendel.
One discovered evolution, the other discovered the mechanism that makes it possible, but neither of them had heard of the other, so many more years passed until the great synthesis was created.
But: the knowledge was not lost and did not recede!
In order to bring about the loss and withdrawal of knowledge, much stronger forces are necessary - those that burn libraries and people!
A meteorite is such a force.
Medieval Christianity was also such a force.
Ghost:
You just don't understand what I'm telling you.
The diet laws are not part of science but conclusions reached by the scientific method.
Two important facts should be noted in this regard:
1. These are conclusions that science can reach, but they are not binding on anyone and it is possible that future studies will disprove them and all scientists will applaud (exactly the opposite of what the religious establishment would do to those who propose other religious laws). As mentioned, these are conclusions and not a law enacted by science.
2. These conclusions are not a law of conduct - in the sense that no one will punish you if you do not take them into account. They only show you what is likely to happen if you eat one way or another, but - I repeat - they are not rules of conduct and do not command you anything.
These two facts are of course a world of difference - a difference that your eyes can see.
Science does not command you to kill anyone. I guess you at least understood that.
Religion does command you to kill people.
It does not do this through the law "thou shalt not murder" as it does not do it through the ban on eating pork or through the claim that the rabbit is alive.
It does this through its command to murder Shabbat breakers, homosexuals and others.
Why did you think I meant the "thou shalt not murder" law? Did you really think that I think the law "thou shalt not murder" means "murder" or did you just mean to throw sand in the eyes of the readers?
I answered you completely to the point regarding the Muslims as well.
You just didn't understand but since everything is already written I don't see the need to repeat things.
If you continue to insist on not understanding, the only result will be that you simply will not understand. Why should I even care?
Michael,
Or in case there is something that really happens what I write,
I repeat my point again, because as a show they chose not to treat it, religion is not the supreme power in the world of people and it is not the opposite of science even though it is closer to it than atheism and indeed there are religions and there are periods when there was persecution and pressure to stop the scientific development due to the reasons Michael stated.
I think that even here blind generalization harms our ability to learn and understand processes and thus deprives us of the ability to criticize and oppose those processes if we need to.
Some of the reasons religious people use anti-scientific methods are not exclusive to religious people but to people who think that they have absolute knowledge and cannot be criticized, they speak out of fear of losing control and an inability to listen that can promote ideas that they chose at a certain point to oppose, and they behave in the "head against the wall" method , that is, there is no criticism, there is no chance of making a mistake.. It exists among religious people, it exists among scientists, it exists among organizations (with an emphasis on large organizations), and it exists even among educated people who comment on this site..
This approach blocks the ability to learn and expand horizons and thus opposes scientific thinking.
There are other processes besides the initiatives (the ones I mentioned above) that cause a loss of knowledge, one of which is the resources to manage the information and knowledge. In the past it was extremely expensive and it was necessary to teach people to read and write, to give them access to means of writing, to allow them access to information and food time and relative security, so that they could do their work, create a copy and preserve the knowledge.
Circumstances of shortage and lack of organizational infrastructure (motivation, money, security and means, of the companies) cause the same loss of knowledge.
Today, for example, there is more knowledge, and not always current organizations (commercial companies and countries) know how to manage it. And so a lot of information is lost.. Part of the reason is the lack of a method for understanding the knowledge and turning it into information (which is easy to preserve), among other things, and the unwillingness to deal with criticism (the Bratans, who are not even ready to have a real discussion about the criticism directed at the method they train (for example, Chazi, in whose forum I tried , to create a dialogue with him, or commenters of comments that do not relate to the main point of these turn to address, in order to perhaps show their control and wisdom that is great, that is, they do not hold a discussion but oppose the scientific process of creating a new idea) ..
So the phenomenon of anti-scientism is much broader than the persecution of scientists by the religious, these are something that stems deeply from our human limitations, that is, it is human nature to resist criticism and different thinking... and to fear the different
ghosts,
What is there to understand here?
Science asks "how?"
Religion does not ask but says what to do and why.
Religion is a set of laws like the laws of the state. Contrary to the laws of the state, which base their authority on the essence of morality, religion is based on a higher power that established laws. The laws of the country should make sense (although there isn't always one). But in religion even if the rules seem strange to you like cutting off your son's... when he is a baby you must follow without question.
Science, on the other hand, is a different story. It is the study of the world. Even a baby who sees a new toy for the first time is a little scientist who investigates and tries to understand how things work.
R.H
'Science wonders about the conduct of the world...', yes, after man learned for several thousand years how to behave (according to the laws of religion) he began to learn about how the world behaves (according to science). Science is in any case the 'continuation' of religion. Just a completely different set of rules, but still a set of rules.
According to Wikipedia (the book of the secular):
"Science is a method for gathering knowledge about the world through systematic observation, experiment and inference..."
That is, science is a method - a fixed order of actions carried out to solve a certain problem.
That is, the concept of a method already has a certain legality. Hence, science - as a method - is a systematic set of laws.
Science can be called a set of rules and I don't understand why you and Makal get confused.
I'm interested in doctors, what will happen if you break the diet law???
Do an experiment, go through the diet "laws" at the university and see what sentence they will give you.
Then try drinking alcohol on a busy street in Tehran.
Are you comparing the law of nature to the laws of morality and behavior? What's the connection anyway? Are you talking about unfounded comments?
As Michael claimed, science does not pretend to establish rules of conduct, it has morals and ethics. Science only wonders about the way the world works and tries to apply the resulting understanding through technology.
Machel
"Science is the only way we know to find out the truth about the world." - How? - through the system of laws placed under the auspices of science. Like a system of religious rules, only more correct for today.
"Can you point to a law in science that tells us what to eat?" - What about diet? Isn't this a scientific way of telling us what to eat?
"Can you point to a law in science that tells us to kill someone?" What is the connection? Does "thou shalt not murder" mean to kill someone?
"Can you even point to a law in science?"- E=MC^2. Law enough for you?
Your entire response to me is fundamentally false.
You didn't understand what I was talking about because you thought (I guess) that I wanted to get you back in repentance or something like that.
Don't be afraid, it won't happen.
By the way, I stopped identifying myself for technical reasons.
But I also didn't worry about identifying myself to you because I assumed you would understand who was talking to you. (By the way, I also assumed that you would answer irrelevantly, and I was right about that too).
All in all, I pointed out that when the Muslim religion gets stronger, it has a stronger influence and also (among other things) scientific growth.
It is true that Islam grows mainly in times of war, but that does not change the fact that when the Muslim religion grows stronger, so do the Islamic countries.
which is in contrast to Western countries (mainly), where the countries grew when they moved away from religion.
splendor:
Last attempt really:
I have already explained to others and will repeat it here.
It is not wise to point to religious scientists from the past because in the past they were all religious.
The process of the development of science (and I have explained this many times - both in the current discussion and to you personally) is a process that coincides with the process of disillusionment with religion.
I repeat that apart from the links which are not acceptable, you have not provided any data or any evidence of any acceptable data.
You say you did but you didn't.
Of course, I also brought many examples of the negative influence of religion on science and there is no problem seeing the situation of the Islamic countries or the situation of the ultra-orthodox population in our country.
I also pointed out that this is not a case but an ideology (listen to the link mentioned in response 51).
You are also invited to see here on the website where all the opposition to science comes from.
All this is clear because science is built on critical thinking and is ready to accept any truth that emerges while religion wants to dictate the "truth" and has no interest in people researching and discovering facts that contradict the religion's claims.
I didn't say you said Galileo wasn't.
But you said that the examples I gave were one-time events (implying that they did not characterize the period) and I explained to you that an event that lasts for many years is not a one-time event (unless you also want to define the Middle Ages as a one-time event).
Michael:
In response 55, I brought (not mainly) 3 references, which referred to issues related to the discussion, all of them important, in all of them the important part and the connection to the discussion is accepted by everyone (the aspects that are not accepted by everyone are not relevant to the discussion!), about the book the collapse (the third link) was not written in any A place that is a scientific waste or something similar, but it's easy to ignore that..
That's not all I said there, but you didn't read and you didn't address, for example, the point of the clergy's and clergy's approach to reading, and the prevalence of scientists among the clergy and rabbis (and vice versa), do you also want connections here, so I'll give names: search for yourself: Gregor Mendel, Laplas , Leonard Euler, John Ridley Stroup, Thomas Malthus,…..etc.
I don't understand why you're going back to Galileo again, I claimed that it didn't happen... I said he was guilty, that it wasn't persecution on religious grounds... I was talking about Galileo's connection with "the Barbarian mafia, who was appointed Pope Urban VIII in 1623. And that he was an enthusiastic supporter of Galileo, even though Galileo had already expressed his "forbidden" opinions compared to the apparitions that were before him, and after him... and in addition Galileo himself was originally a priest!!!!!! So here is an example of my argument..
The church also appoints and leads (for its own reasons) many research expeditions (there are priests on every trip to the "New World", and precisely the records of the priests from these periods are the closest thing to scientific biological historical records. Likewise, there is a parallel to this conduct in other religions as well, Islam, Judaism, Buddhism, and others .
Honestly, I don't understand what your problem is with my argument, or you don't understand it and you're ashamed to admit it, or your claim that the clergy of the previous thousands of years could control more than today with the methods of Big Brother over people's thoughts and opinions.. I agree that it What they wanted, the direction is right, but the intensity you describe is wildly exaggerated and completely ignores other forces and trends that existed..
Speaking of quotes, your survey, which is not related in any way to the Middle Ages, is the only example of your theory.
58:
You didn't understand my words and right now you are showing that you don't understand what religion and science are either.
Science is not a set of rules.
Science is the only way we know to find out the truth about the world.
Science also does not dictate what this truth should be - it only points to the ways in which it is possible to test whether a certain hypothesis may be the truth.
Religion is just the opposite.
Religion does not give us any tools to check the correctness of things ourselves because it does not want us to check things ourselves. She wants us to accept her dictates - both in the field of nature's character and in the field of morality.
That's why she gives us grandmother's stories, on the one hand, and rules of behavior (such as science has never given and never will give) on the other.
Can you point to a law in science that tells us to kill someone?
Can you point to a law in science that tells us what to eat?
Can you even point to a law in science?
of course not. But that doesn't stop you from rambling because there is no law against rambling in science either.
Can you point to a law in religion that tells us to kill someone?
Certainly - crowds!
Can you point to a law in religion that tells us what to eat?
Certainly - crowds!
Can you even vote for a law in religion?
Certainly - crowds! There is almost nothing in religion except laws!
By the way - why did you stop identifying yourself? Ghost.
splendor:
Nevertheless, one more comment on the history of the discussion:
Your first response is 55 in which you mainly provided links (which are not accepted by those involved in the field) and conclusions that you want us to draw from them.
In fact, these links are the only "data" you provided throughout the entire discussion.
Now you tell us they don't matter.
In other words - you are telling us that we will accept the (wrong) considerations you presented, which are based on data (incorrect and according to you also unimportant) and the wrong conclusions you reached as the main point.
The one-time "event" of the persecution of Galileo lasted for many years and expressed the opinion of the official church for at least all those years.
Nor was Bruni's pursuit to death an event of several days.
But why am I wasting my time?
Machel
What I wrote in 58 is true.
When the Muslims carry out Jihad in the world in the name of Islam, the influence of the Muslim countries in the world is strengthened. I gave an example of this in response 58. Another example of this is Iran today - both its influence in the world has grown stronger and science in the country has begun to grow (even if part of this is related to stealing technologies).
In secular countries, or western countries when they move away from religion, scientific growth also occurs.
Science is the new religion. Science is the opium of the masses.
It is impossible to arrive at the truth without questioning it - as in science, so also in religion. Religion is beyond moral laws of one kind or another. Religion is a set of laws and thus it is no different from science.
What is true is that the religious system of laws, today, does not compare in its correctness to the scientific system of laws.
Michael:
Daaa... the connections are points for thought and not at all the important part of my response, and I've been trying to make this point clear to you for 3 responses already...
No, the events you mentioned have no direct connection to the fall of an empire, ... they are isolated events that are not related to much deeper processes.. such as the fall of the meteor that probably caused the extinction of the dinosaurs was not related to their ability to swim and fly .. not in a direct connection..
This is, of course, related to riots on a religious background that are related to the processes of the change of government in the Roman Empire.
Your claim that the main reasons for this were organized religious factors, is not serious and ignores the power of indifference.. Most of the people in those times, did not leave their village, did not learn to read and write and did not and cannot hear about one or another scientific innovation..
I did not systematically ignore the crimes that were committed in the contexts you mentioned, I only claim that even though they are brutal organized threats and have greatly harmed knowledge and scientific thinking, they are negligible compared to much larger processes, of a general lack of reasons to preserve knowledge in the first place!! Who thinks of ways that there is hunger and you have to look for food, and that there is no one to pay for them?! Who thinks about knowledge and its preservation that one should run away from the city because there is disease or war...?! Who thinks of writing down a person's secrets before he dies, if there is no one to write them down because there is no one who knows how to read and write because there are no schools for that and no money to fund them??
Economy is the main reason for the stone of knowledge, the economic collapse of a society of two priority orders, of course if you also throw religion into this cauldron, it is significant, but not only..
You are welcome not to answer, certainly not to listen, because you don't read either, so what does it matter..
splendor:
I will not continue to argue with you.
You bring the facts in the link to lead to a certain conclusion that the researchers reject.
In fact - most of the facts you mention are not mentioned at all in any of the links you gave.
I explained my arguments well and you just ignore or just say you don't understand.
Can you explain to me exactly how any event among the events I mentioned stems from the collapse of an empire (as opposed to the actual emergence from above of an "empire" that negates the values that will be presented by the victims of the event)?
Knowledge died out as a result of actively working to kill it and your systematic disregard for the fact that people were tortured and put on the stake so that they would not instill it and the fact that it was done in an organized and orderly manner by the Christian establishment simply shows that you have no intention of thinking about things seriously.
Your ignoring the difference between a case of accidental deprivation and a systematic deprivation anchored in religious laws is also trending.
In short, as mentioned: I will not answer you anymore
Michael:
Ugh, with you, you're almost as hard as my chest,
I admit, I shouldn't have given that link, the idea was for you to expand your knowledge and not get stuck on nonsense, the first link talks about the great voyages of the Chinese ship, its existence is undisputed, the burning of the ships and the Chinese "closing the walls" is undisputed. Not all theory is "pseudo science" the important part related to our conversation is not "pseudo science"...
Why don't you treat the main things..
The Middle Ages as a time did not cause anything, what causes the retreats is culture, society and economy... and I don't understand where you showed that there is no connection to the collapse of the empire??
You go back and forth talking about individual events instead (just like Hazi) I'm talking about the whole of a long period of several hundreds in which knowledge was processed because it was very expensive to maintain it... The burning of the library was a great disaster, but infinitely smaller than the fact that people who knew would know the knowledge What was there died and was not passed down.. that copies of the knowledge that was there were not copied..
The same as above regarding Galileo in Patia and others..
A few are important but a few, even without Galileo they study the beginning and understand that the world is round.. but without the industrial revolution they don't get there.. and it could exist because there were no longer slaves/serfs. See the difference between the North and the South in the US before the Civil War
I'm not suppressing anything.. many people died, a lot of knowledge was used.. but you ignore it and I'm really surprised that it's you.. from the massive surge of loss of organizational knowledge.. maybe it's easy for me to understand this as I'm from a field that sees it all the time..
The examples of deprivation were everywhere not only in Judeo-Christian culture.. They arise in society, and are based on money and beauty and connections and wisdom and cunning and many boys and luck and many other parameters
You certainly don't claim that all the billions of Christians who were on top of the millions of priests acted as one bloc to erase knowledge and prevent progress, this is much, much, much more heterogeneous.. and that's my claim..
splendor:
Some say Holocaust denial is true.
It is written about the book in the link you brought from Wikipedia that it deals with pseudohistory, so why do you expect me to believe writing in it? Certainly no conclusion can be drawn from speculation.
In the first link you gave (and which you ignored yourself) it says: "This theory is controversial, and is not accepted by the majority of the scientific community."
The book may be true and it may not be and it is not relevant to us.
The survey I brought indicates a trend that continues from the Middle Ages to the present day.
I explained the connection between this trend and the strengthening of science and I cannot explain it better. A little motivation of the reader is also necessary to understand the things.
I never talked about the reasons for the collapse of this or that culture, but I pointed to the fact that the Middle Ages caused a significant retreat in human knowledge - a retreat that is incomparable - and which is not related to the collapse of this or that empire.
You simply ignore all the arguments and prefer to concentrate on things that are irrelevant.
Was it really necessary a lot of organizational energy not to burn the library in Alexandria or not to skin Hypatia?
How much organizational energy was necessary not to burn Bruno or not to persecute Galileo and not to confiscate any book that claims that the Earth is not at the center of the world?
It seems to me that it takes a lot of repressive energy to say what you say.
Precisely the examples you gave - of depriving women, gays and others - are all the result of the monotheistic religions.
Remember "Blessed is I not a woman"?
Remember that the religion commands the stoning of homosexuals and Shabbat violators?
You are simply systematically ignoring reality.
Anonymous (58):
Not true.
War pushes for certain technological progress in certain directions, but even if religion caused the war, it is not correct to say that religion caused progress and the fact is that when religion is not in a fighting mood - everything goes backwards and this includes Islam, most of which still lives in the Middle Ages.
During the Middle Ages in the 7th century, the Muslim religion began to spread in the Middle East, along with that came the conquests of the countries (from China to the Middle East) and these conquests were thanks to the weapons that the Arabs perfected (a compound bow).
This shows that military technology grew together with the growth of religion (the more the Arabs controlled more areas, the more the influence of religion on the environment increased. And you have to understand that the spectrum, the Arabs, did not include these in one day as a result of conclusions formed during the conquests) and above all, this is what led to the growth The Arab Empire.
Towards the end of the Middle Ages, Western countries began to move away from religion and become more secular countries,
The Arab Empire was hurt by this, because some Islamic countries became more secular and lost their religious influence in the region - which weakened those countries.
On the other hand, in the West, the Renaissance began, which led to scientific growth and the strengthening of the secular states.
Which resulted in the conquest of some Eastern countries by the Western countries, which increased the influence of the West on the East.
This shows that as Western countries moved away from religion, they also improved scientifically
For the Muslims it was the other way around - when Islam grew stronger, so did the influence of the Islamic countries in the region and, among other things, military technology also improved (but science in general also improved while the empire grew).
Michael:
The link I pointed to describes a book that some say is not true,
The evidence from there is not fabricated and is backed up by many sources, there is a debate but it is not lost science, simply the person who wrote the book is a sailor by training and not a classic historian, the very story of the massive cultural retreat of the Chinese including the burning of the ships of the returning navy is clearly documented and there is no trace of debate about it,
It's all written in the first entry I voted on, which you ignored,
I'm not religious and I don't say anything for or against religion.. You just have to look at the complete picture, people are not the ideal they live according to its light, and many times (probably most) they even live contrary to the ideal, even if the throne in Rome fights against science, many religious people follow Halacha In fact the opposite and the science is being promoted, because of access to the sources I mentioned... that's it. There is no idealization of religion here..
Second, the survey you brought was not measured in the periods we talked about... so I don't understand the context...
"My proposal" is an accepted thesis among historians, and it is enough to see when the empire actually collapsed, and in what form, Christianity simply took advantage of the weakness to invade it, and for many years it did not change anything (the Roman emperors were religious even before Christianity)
The loss of knowledge or rather the lack of preservation of knowledge because knowledge at that time needed a lot of organizational energy to preserve it, resulted from the disintegration of the empire and the need for knowledge. If you don't maintain roads, you don't have to remember how to do it, and in the archive the details about it gather dust, and you don't even remember that it exists and the experts in technology die... that's how knowledge is lost...
The burning of the Bessapria in Alexandria is a single event, terrible but single, you certainly don't want to burden it with all the reasons for the erasure of knowledge in the world... and the other events you mention are also disconnected from the context, of a emitting crisis in the papacy (the pope just changed), economic and other personal reasons ( Galileo's personal connections that what application was not executed?!) that were related to the story, and of course also the religious effect, of preserving the existing and resisting change, but this is only a product not a main factor, it is a lever not the button that activates it,
Regarding the other examples, I am less familiar with them, so I will not refer to them
Think about our time and the many different reasons for the promiscuity (I have no other word) of Madame Curie, instead of promoting her only for being a woman or homophobic xenophobia or any other hatred that caused the suppression of successful scientists and mathematicians and their knowledge and ability, and this also has nothing to do with religion... again I don't Religious, only emphasizes the effects of many different factors to erase knowledge to stop scientific advancement and many of them and perhaps most of them are not religious
splendor:
In the link you pointed to, the book is described as pseudo-historical, so I am ready to accept that pseudo-China has withdrawn.
We may withdraw and we may not. There are many possible reasons for withdrawal and I mentioned it (and there are also many pseudo-reasons for pseudo-withdrawal).
In the past, most people were religious, so it is only natural that science (and following it - the escape from the clutches of religion) was preceded by religious people in the past.
It means nothing in favor of religion. On the contrary - this fact combined with the current situation (described, for example, in this link: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/ctrl/news/file002.html ) and taking into account the fact that the rate of progress of science has increased dozens of times - indicates exactly the opposite.
I do not accept your proposal regarding Greek and Roman culture.
That is - not that I dispute the cause of the fall of the empires - (nor that I accept - it's just not the subject of the discussion) - but that something of the things you mentioned could have caused the loss of knowledge.
Nothing related to slaves caused - for example - the burning of the library in Alexandria, the confiscation of Copernicus' teachings, the murder of Hypatia, the putting Giordano Bruno at the stake or the imprisonment and persecution of Galileo.
Michael:
Regarding your comment about China,
Chinese culture did retreat in a significant way and this time it was a political reason of seclusion. See about his travels the Chinese world explorer sent from 1421:http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%96'%D7%A0%D7%92_%D7%94%D7%90
And read about the technological retreat in China in the fascinating book 1421
http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/1421_(%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%A8)
And also evidence of many retreats in history whose origin (even most of them) is non-religious - in the book "Collapse" http://he.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D7%94%D7%AA%D7%9E%D7%95%D7%98%D7%98%D7%95%D7%AA_(%D7%A1%D7%A4%D7%A8)
Religion often preserves and establishes - but from a later time, in fact the priests were the technological leaders in different cultures (how many priests were leading scientists and mathematicians?) in Ihvad because of the ability to read and write and access to sources of funding time of movement from place to place)
According to me, religion stops, but the clergy less...
Regarding Greek and Roman culture, both were established many years before the Middle Ages, and the Christian religion, and their collapse also began before.. Probably the source of their collapse was actually the source of their power, slaves, who wanted conquests and preservation and control over vast areas and only a strong administrator could make it last for a long time.. It is a crisis that is more similar to Western materialism today and the economic crisis that results from it than to a religious crisis.
Someone else:
The invention of printing did contribute a lot to the development of the industry (and everything else), but I wouldn't define it as the reason for the interest.
As a principle - in places where there was relevant knowledge, it was possible to use it without traveling anywhere.
The point is that instead of producing knowledge, the authorities in the Middle Ages were engaged in destroying it.
The printing revolution also did a lot for science (on which the discussion has mainly revolved so far) and allowed it to become global, but the buds of science had already begun to bloom in ancient Greece (before the printing revolution) and withered in the Middle Ages.
The explanation is simple: the industrial revolution began after great progress in the fields
which had no trace of them in ancient Greece: printing for example. It is true that the Christians were burned
the library in Alexandria but that's not the problem. To learn about the Aeolus ball
For example, that Heron invented, a ball that demonstrated Newton's third law using steam,
The scholar had to travel all the way to Alexandria, instead of getting a diagram of the invention
and to process conclusions at home, it is clear that in such a case the rate of technological development is completely different.
Joseph:
Your words about the context are interesting and true and I must say that even nowadays they have not been properly internalized by the systems that are supposed to promote us.
For example - the patent laws often prevent the registration of the use of an accessory that is similar to an old accessory in a new context as a patent and the result is that the new use is simply blocked (at least until another injustice that exists in the patent law causes the publication of the submitted patent - even if not approved).
However - it must be said that the accessory in question in the article was apparently invented straight into its intended context and this step of changing the context was not necessary in his case.
sympathetic:
Let's start with the question "What does it mean to help science?"
It is desirable to understand, on this subject, that helping science is not a war against any idea - right or wrong - from religious motives.
Rejecting astrology for religious reasons does not (I repeat: does not!) serve science.
Science must not reject an idea for such considerations and rejecting an idea - whatever it may be - for religious considerations - harms science and does not serve it.
Every religion opposes superstitions - simply by denying all other religions. So what? Is this a point in favor of religion?
The problem is not in people's beliefs.
The sane person can change his beliefs.
The problem is with the religious establishment that forbids war on different opinions and I hope you don't expect me to repeat the examples again.
Newton (and all of us) was very lucky that he worked in a time (and in the country - remember what Henry VIII did to the church) where the rule of religion was very limited. Your sarcasm on the subject is out of place. Why was the Middle Ages called by this name? Was it not because there was something in those days that was different and stopped the development of science? Do you think it's simply because of the dates and there was no real reason for it?
I repeat - it is about religious government more than it is about religion.
Religion indeed hinders the progress of science also on a personal level (by offering "answers" to questions that would otherwise try to solve) but virtuous individuals can be freed from this. Newton was like that. Galileo was too. Giordano Bruno too. They simply lived in different times (a matter of dates) and therefore their fates were different.
When Islam was busy with conquests and did not consolidate a central government (or central governments) there was no one to deal with religious coercion.
When the matter was over - religious coercion also arrived (for which all wars were fought in the first place).
I have to say here in a framed article that your style is simply insulting and you should go back to talking in a civilized manner.
All these cynical expressions with "oh sorry" do not strengthen your arguments even to the full extent.
The monotheistic religions have always opposed the conclusions of cosmology (and later - evolution) and the degree of their ability to hinder science was the degree of their power in the government systems.
It was true in the past and it is also true today and there is no need to repeat the contemporary examples.
I repeat and stand by my assertion that all the interpretations and layers are nothing more than ways that people invented for themselves to blur the picture and be able to live with the contradictions and the fact is that even in religious establishments of various kinds - the more orthodox a person is, the more he dismisses these layers.
Just like that - to get the flavor - you should listen to a lecture that was secretly recorded by Rabbi Kirschbaum:
http://www.121k.com/media/yaronyadan/rabbi_kirshenbaum_livevideo.htm
It is better to be a cat (an animal that does not ask questions) than to start thinking about reality and reach heretical thoughts!
I managed to see another comment of yours in the meantime and I'm afraid you didn't pay attention to the topic of the discussion.
The issue is what prevented the industrial revolution from coming sooner.
In my opinion, these are the Middle Ages and the rule of religion that characterized them.
This is completely off topic.
Of course, this belongs to much more because the matter is really in our hearts, but I still don't bring it up when it is not relevant.
I also agree with you Yossi and I apologize for the deviation in the discussion about religion vs. science.
Thank you for your relevant response.
Michael
At the time you accused me of tending to associate unrelated topics with the dark mass. I recognize you
You have the same syndrome regarding religious issues. Although the question is interesting, in my opinion it is not directly related to the topic of the article. I apologize if the discussion was dragged into this topic through my fault.
Joseph,
There is a point to write and it's really a shame that the discussion has been diverted into somewhat delusional lines, there is always some "oh really" who takes care of that.
I was not familiar with the steam engine mentioned and thank you for that.
An example that comes to mind and reinforces what you say about the context is the invention of gunpowder in China which was hardly used for warfare but only for entertainment and fireworks until it reached the West.
Is there any point in writing something relevant when the page is flooded with comments that are not related at all?
I will try but briefly because I may very well be writing for fun.
Another, no less interesting example of an early invention that did not go far is the steam engine of Hero of Alexandria, when for him it was nothing more than a cool toy.
I recommend two sources on this topic, the TV series (and related books) by the science journalist James Barak called "Connections", which can also be seen a bit on the Internet, and the books of Genrich Altschuler, the inventor of TRIZ.
In general, technological and scientific development is limited by the ability of people and society to see not only new objects but to see them in a new context, when in the old context almost every really important invention seems unnecessary or even absurd.
Michael
Let's start with astronomy and Islam. First, the Muslim astronomers in the Middle Ages came out against astrology on both scientific and religious grounds. So we have an example of how religion encourages science and goes against superstitions. The Imam Razi, the scholar of the clusters, held a cosmological theory in which the earth is not at the center, and there were many other Islamic astronomers who held different cosmological theories. Every such religious man found a basis for his ideas within religion, but I don't need to remind you that Newton was also a believing scientist. By the way Newton why the fact that he was a believing Christian did not stop his scientific progress and how did the church let him develop his scientific teachings? Oh, this is a different period, which means that your claim about religion as stopping scientific progress is only valid for Europe during the Middle Ages.
A bit about Jewish astronomers in the Middle Ages. Rabbi Levi ben Gershom, one of the greatest astronomers in the Middle Ages, correctly estimated the distances to the nearest Shabbat stars, invented the secant, and also held a cosmological model of a stable state, i.e. continuous creation. Oh sorry, I forgot you have no claims against the Jewish religion as preventing scientific progress at that time because it is a synonymous religion. Therefore your argument is reduced to the Christian religion in Europe in the Middle Ages.
In conclusion, scientific development and technological progress stopped in advanced civilizations such as Assyria, Egypt, China, and there religion had nothing to do with the stoppage or retreat. The halting of science that you attribute to religion only happened in the Middle Ages because after that great religious scientists like Newton were active. The claim only winks at Christianity because in the Middle Ages Jewish and Muslim astronomers operated and held cosmological theories that contradict what is written in the Holy Scriptures. After all this I somewhat doubt the great ability of religion to prevent scientific progress. I'm not sure that Christianity did stop progress and geopolitical factors with greater influence were not involved.
Regarding your claim about contortions and the claim that another layer can be added to religion that simply does not believe in anything written in the Holy Scriptures, you are clear that it is essentially unfounded. There are few religions that believe in writing them as they are, and the essence of religion is interpretation of the Holy Scriptures.
Hugin:
Your ignorance, which is not even pseudo-enlightened, but a rambling rabbi, does not interest me.
Sweet dreams.
Father, a fundamental error in your understanding.
Indeed the Israel Guards raised the IDF for our secular and religious generations and the early guards before our establishment as a state.
But many of us keep the Torah like the Hesder! Whether secretly or openly.
What you are probably not aware of is that some of the IDF's later trainings turned the orderly German spirit into America, which did not subside but migrated to America.
The polarization as expressed by our friends indeed exists out of necessity, a reality that pulls strings that have gone too far and cut themselves off from the sources on which we are all founded, both as religions and as science.
Come on, the only relevant guards are IDF soldiers. All the yeshiva mumblers are only guarding their butt, and even that is not safe without IDF soldiers.
41): Your pseudo-enlightened ignorance is the Achilles heel of your privacy, for this hour.
Maybe you should really consider a PhD? in your way Under the auspices! and not from the prodigal:(! in order to understand again what ethics and morals are according to the law of mutual guarantee that the people of Israel swore to uphold for the sake of the continued creation of the promise.
Indeed, even religion, like science, if it only feeds on the bland and loses its essentials, seems to fade with time.
But still even though you have no respect for the *guards, they hold you and everyone else.
Come on (Hugin?):
Your words are obviously a mistake.
Science does not uproot itself from morality, but on the contrary - strengthens our understanding of it and our adherence to it.
This is in contrast to religions that impose "morality" on us, which is partly self-evident and partly immoral.
Regarding the obvious: I am not religious but I am not a murderer and I am not a thief. Do you want to tell me that if it weren't for religion you would become a murderer and a thief?
Regarding the immoral - I am not a murderer - neither are Sabbath breakers and homosexuals when those who adhere to the "moral" laws of the religion are commanded to do so. Do you follow the laws of religion or do you accept the morality that developed as a result of the development of science?
The sooner we distance ourselves from that abusive "parent", the better!
36, the first three sentences you presented are indeed correct!! Have you asked yourself why? Beyond the polarity you mentioned later?
I tell you, science on a developing wave of enlightenment, uprooting itself from the precious principles of religion and the highest morality finds itself racing towards the morals of the kidneys of all the infrastructures that are still in the making.
Any acceleration that is not accompanied by Torah - initial: heavy!! And don't kill!! And more.. a storm may be kidney torment in a terrible chain.
To this is entrusted the Torah-Jewish-morality in Israel, as a parent for all time and as science develops in the world and there are still those who do not understand the consequences, the clock is ticking to remind them!
Lisa:
In the title of your words you agree with Ehud and in the content of your words you agree with me.
First of all - I explained what I think is the source of religion's opposition to science and some of the scientists you mentioned did not deal with issues that are a problem for religion.
The others were indeed persecuted or at least their conclusions were confiscated by the Church!
You also mentioned that in order to promote science, it was necessary to disbelieve in the thinking of the religious establishment (and indeed apostasy was punishable when the religious establishment ruled).
You also talked about "mainstream science" but mainstream can only exist when there is information sharing between the scientists and it cannot exist when certain articles are banned from publication.
In other words - it is also clear from your words that the religiosity of the Middle Ages constituted a heavy barrier against the progress of science, and this was exactly my claim.
In my words there was no reference to the factors that move science forward because it is clear that there are many different questions. It is also clear that these factors never all disappeared. That was not the topic of discussion at all.
I agree with Ehud.
Mainstream science advances in the direction dictated by social/economic/security/political pressures. Standard scientific activity requires funding and funding comes from powerful and influential parties and in accordance with their interests.
Many significant advances in science (including scientific revolutions) occurred by individuals who thought independently without direct connection to these pressures and the general social climate.
Here is a very partial list of those scientists who themselves were religious, and their interest in religion can even be attributed to the desire to explore and discover the secrets of the universe:
Copernicus, Francis Bacon, Johann Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, Pascal, Newton, Thomas Bayes...
What can be said about them is that they did not accept the thinking of the religious establishment.
It is this independence of thought that promotes science and it is not directly related to religion positively or negatively. An establishment of any kind tends to produce conservatism.
I offer another thought to Roy's question why did not an industrial revolution develop in ancient times. The difficulty is not in the question of the production line, which did not characterize the beginning of the revolution.
It seems to me that behind the presentation of the sophisticated device hides, either knowingly or unknowingly, the question of why a combustion engine was not actually invented by those great people. For the steam engine was the engine of the industrial revolution.
It seems to me that several factors contribute to the answer: in ancient Greece there was a very small population. About 30-40 thousand people, including slaves, lived in Athens during its greatness. Even if we transfer the question to Rome where there was a real chance of such an event and which was much larger - 500 thousand to a million - it is still a small population, especially if we consider mainly the educated, who did not exceed about 10 percent of the population. This is compared to the development of science and technical inventions throughout Europe in the 17th-18th century, which already has a pattern that transmits knowledge very quickly to everyone.
The second factor is the high cost of the iron, and the minority of civilian use of it. In fact, they almost never cooked in metal pots, and in clay pots it is difficult to grasp the intuition about the enormous power contained in boiling water. It should be said that in terms of the ability to process the metal there was no real obstacle. On the other hand, large amounts of iron were needed to conduct many experiments, if someone had already arrived at the aforementioned intuition. The chance that anyone could get that much iron was zero, unless they could convince Caesar of the possibility of making such a revolutionary engine. In 18th century Europe, iron was already much cheaper, so private individuals could conduct many experiments and develop an engine.
Another point that may not have been understood:
The growing opposition of religion to science is not a consequence of the development of religion.
On the contrary - it is a consequence of the development of science!
As science discovers more facts about reality, the grandmother's stories of religion crash more and more, so the religious turn to two polar directions (sometimes simultaneously):
One direction: science is wrong
Second direction: the holy books said it first.
Be that as it may - it is clear that the contradiction today is greater than the contradiction of the past and there is no wisdom in bringing examples from periods when there was no science and there was no contradiction.
And also the question about "show me one Islamic scientist who was put on the gallows" I would stop first and ask you to show me one Arab scientist.
Religion has never opposed mathematics and astronomy - as mentioned - objected when it became clear that its findings contradicted religion.
There is no example of an Islamic scientist who discovered something that contradicts the religion.
The various "layers" of reference to writing in the Holy Scriptures are just twists and turns that the religious invented as the contradictions multiplied.
You can add another layer to the religion that simply does not believe in anything written in the Holy Scriptures and then all the contradictions will be resolved.
I am even ready to be religious in this kind of religion.
sympathetic:
An addition to things regarding Judaism.
Judaism was indeed once less hostile to science.
There are many reasons for this, none of which are religious.
The Jews were a persecuted minority who held an undervalued religion to say the least and scientific wisdom was one of the only ways they could buy themselves status.
This changed when Judaism no longer needed it and therefore nowadays the ultra-Orthodox have no problem exposing their hostility to science.
sympathetic:
I don't think you read what I write.
I would stop the question "show me one Egyptian who knows X" first and ask "show me one Egyptian"/
Indeed - the various occupations - and in particular the Muslim occupation - destroyed culture in the Egyptians as well.
What's new?
I assure you that even if a large enough meteorite had fallen on Egypt, its culture would have been destroyed.
It's just not relevant!
The examples I gave are not only from today's religion.
Egyptian science did retreat. Where is the biological knowledge about embalming, where has it gone? Show me an Egyptian who can plan
Pyramid not to mention its construction. A magnificent culture disappeared without any relation to religion. Islam about a thousand years ago did not have much knowledge of astronomy as well as mathematics (the invention of algebra) not to mention architecture and medicine.
You are mixing the religion of today with the religion of a thousand and more years ago and these are completely different things even though they are called under the same name. Judaism also had great scientists, for example the Rambam who was a doctor and a man with a wide education. The relationship to the stories of creation is complex in every religion and there are several levels of understanding of the story. Just as today there are many religious scientists and they have no problem on the one hand being religious and on the other hand exploring nature without prejudices, so also in the past. A tendency to understand religious stories simply is the property of the masses and not of those who promote science or religion. By the way, all the stories you brought are examples of the attitude of Christianity in Europe to science and most of them also in a certain period. Give me an example of an Islamic scientist who was hanged, what about Jewish scientists, were they ostracized from Jewish society? The review groups for your claim prove that there is no truth in it.
Michael demonstrates enormous knowledge but why are Roy's responses absent?
Chen T:
At least in one thing you flattered me more than I deserve:
I have never done a PhD in any field. All my studies after the master's degree were informal.
Michael,
You enrich me quite a bit with your comments on mundane and universal physics, but now you have also enriched me with the philosophy of history in its relation to science. I was deeply impressed, Dr. Rothschild, accept HH 🙂
Michael Rothschild Your answers contribute a lot
sympathetic:
I don't know on what basis you state that Chinese science has retreated.
Do you know of a case of a scientific discovery that was discovered in China and forgotten?
The Egyptian people whose culture you speak of no longer exists.
This is not an example either.
Islam did not promote science.
There were simply times when he was busy with conquests and did not interfere like today.
All monotheistic religions are based on a story that science contradicts, so it is only natural that they oppose science, and indeed they do so vigorously.
The conflict between religion and science is indeed all-encompassing, but it is currently focused on two areas - biology (evolution) and cosmology.
Biology came into this conflict only recently but cosmology was one of the first sciences and as soon as it started to reveal the truth it came into conflict with the stories of creation.
I demonstrated this with the Islamic countries nowadays and you can also look at the ultra-orthodox communities in our country.
I also mentioned the stories of Galileo and the library in Alexandria and we can also mention Giordano Bruno and Hypatia.
There is no lack of examples and the monkey trial like the trolls on our site and like the struggles in the USA (and Israel! Under the guidance of the chief scientist of the Ministry of Education!) over the teaching of creationism illustrate the fact that religion has not stopped opposing science but only that its influence has diminished.
It is not clear to me why Roy does not answer here
Both Egypt and China advanced civilizations retreated. There were cultures that religion promoted for example Islam a thousand years ago was a catalyst for scientific and cultural development so I don't understand your thesis. I am not a follower of the central government theory but I do think that geopolitical factors can have a greater influence than religion.
Beyond all this, every government wants to keep its subjects in ignorance on the one hand and on the other hand to develop the weapons at its disposal through advanced technology. An enlightened public is starting to ask questions whether it is a religious government or another central government. So the Christian religion is no different from many other regimes in that it encouraged ignorance.
sympathetic:
European culture did not stop. She retreated.
After all, a thousand years after they knew how to calculate the radius of the earth - suddenly they no longer knew that it was round!!
The only cases where this happened elsewhere were due to the death of the population.
None of the examples you gave demonstrate a phenomenon of the retreat of culture without the extermination of the population and at least one of them - the halt (yet not a retreat) can perhaps be attributed precisely to the duty of the nature of the central government.
These are advanced civilizations that have stopped regardless of religion. So in my opinion they are control groups. Human progress does not stop precisely because of religion, sometimes it is, as you mentioned, wars and conquests or ecological problems... and now we will return to Europe, did the progress stop there only because of religion or were wars, lack of centralized government, etc. responsible for this... the review groups show us otherwise.
sympathetic:
You ask seriously?
Do you know of a medieval-like period in these cultures?
The fact that cultures were physically destroyed or assimilated into others due to wars and conquests or ecological problems is really irrelevant.
Good thing you didn't bring the Minoan culture as an example.
Michael
What about China? Inca culture? Or even Egypt, Assyria and Babylon? They are all highly developed cultures.
sympathetic:
The review group you suggested is not a review group and although I wrote my previous response I have not yet seen your response - I think it should explain to you why.
Only in Europe has there been a retreat. The fact that the tremendous leap in understanding the world took place in Greece and that no previous or parallel culture advanced to the same extent does not belong to the fact that progress stopped and even retreated only in Europe.
A more suitable control group is the Islamic countries of our time and this group does confirm the claim (and unlike cultures such as the cultures of the East in a world without communication they were really cut off from the progress achieved by the Greeks - today the world is a global village and the excuse "I didn't know" no longer works).
Zvi and Rah:
I said my opinion.
After all, religion is hostile to science even today and hinders it in places where it can do so.
In places where there is a central religious government, science lags behind even nowadays and as a result technology also lags behind.
There is a huge difference between belief in idols (which is only belief) and a religion that derives from some belief rules of behavior and especially - as happens in monotheistic religions - rules against free thought. The persecution of witches indeed characterized the Renaissance, but only because the Renaissance was a transitional phase between the Middle Ages and the present day, and only because it was characterized by central government.
Astrology did not characterize the days of the Greeks and the fact is that what we remember about them is precisely their scientific progress and not characters like Nostradamus (who lived after the official Middle Ages - he is still their product - just like the witch hunt). Even today there are those who believe in astrology, but I still hope that we will not return to a time when mystical thinking is the only thinking that exists.
The Middle Ages were not just another period either. They began after the Greeks had already taken significant steps towards modern science and resulted in an unprecedented retreat of human knowledge.
After all, there is a huge difference between a situation where few turn to science and philosophy and a situation where the achievements that have already been achieved in these fields are systematically destroyed.
Michal and Zvi
When raising a hypothesis, it must be tested on a control group. Michael, you claim that Christianity or religion stopped technological progress in the Middle Ages. You look at the world from a narrow perspective of European culture. What happened in China at that time, did science also stop there because of Christianity or religion? What happened in South America or Africa? There are several human civilizations that were cut off from each other at the same time, some of them are even relatively advanced and some of the claims can be tested.
deer
The main factor that advanced technology (not pure science) in my opinion is wars is also for people to forge metals, build big ships, make roads. Crowded human society Competition for limited living areas led to wars that were the motivation for technological advancement.
Roy
Regarding your question why the Greeks didn't start an industrial revolution you have to look at who had an interest in producing such a revolution? How did you get rich then? Who were the power factors? In Greece there was no market for mass production. Those who could afford it
Things were tailor made for him. There was no interest in mass production and selling the products. This is a fundamentally different world from the modern society we live in, even though it was driven by the same interests: greed, the will to knowledge, religious faith,...
deer,
Indeed I can think of another example from a later historical point of view of a country with a scientific and cultural burst. A country that is an island of prosperity in a sea of ignorance and backwardness and yet this country excels in weak governance, wars, chaos, corruption and rising crime.
Know?
It is worth noting that the Middle Ages were not characterized by extreme religious persecutions like those experienced by the world in later periods:
The persecution of witches specifically reached its peak in the Renaissance and took place in both Catholic and Protestant countries.
Furthermore, the origin of most of the laws against witchcraft dates back to the Roman Empire where witchcraft was a serious offense that carried the death penalty just like in Western Europe later (see "History of Witchcraft" published by Wrestling).
As for the religious wars, they reached their peak in the Thirty Years' War - again, after the end of the Middle Ages.
R.H
As for the writing of the Bible, it is about texts from different periods that were grouped together, so it is difficult to put one's finger on a certain period and say that it was the one that created the cultural burst that created it.
I would be happy if you would give examples from later periods in which it is easier for us to assess both the political situation and the contribution of the intellectual operator (the Bible, for example, is difficult for me to compare, at least in terms of literature, to other works of its time).
God,
You say "the Middle Ages were characterized by witch hunts, astrology, belief in saints and miracle workers and mystical philosophy." But the Greek period was also characterized by astrology, belief in sorcerers, gods and heroes and despite this there was acceptance of knowledge as well. Perhaps this is related to paganism, which is much less extreme towards "others" and less conservative.
deer,
Another example of cultural flourishing (though not scientific) under a weak government is the end of the First Temple period when there was a burst of creativity and when the Bible was designed.
Michael,
There is no doubt that religion in the Middle Ages was a significant force that contributed to the halting of scientific progress.
The question is whether she was the only factor (or at least the dominant one in a noticeable way) and I don't think that is the case.
In my opinion, the lack of a central government and thereby personal security and education is an equally decisive factor.
A person who has not been brought up to think at any stage in his life and who works for the welfare of his family from the age of 5 cannot in most cases be a scientist, of course there are esoteric examples to the contrary, but in general, a society in which every person completes 12 years of schooling, lives in a big city and studies at a university if he so desires, will promote science more In a society where the people live in miserable villages
I have no doubt that religion was a major factor in preventing the development of science in the Middle Ages.
It is not at all surprising that the library in Alexandria was destroyed by a religious mob and that Galileo was tried by the Inquisition.
The government - central or non-central - has no significant influence on people's thoughts on issues in which it does not have its own position.
It has, under certain conditions, an effect on the very ability of philosophers to turn away from day-to-day troubles and think, but people with enough motivation will find time anyway, and rational thinking can only come to a complete stop if the government is hostile to it.
The Middle Ages were characterized by witch hunts, astrology, belief in saints and miracle workers and mystical philosophy.
All these things are the result of abandoning reason in favor of faith - an abandonment whose basis is religion.
In my opinion, it is also no coincidence that the geographical limits of the influence of this period coincide with the borders of Christianity.
I differentiate here between science and technology because technology is indeed based on a central organizational infrastructure, but since serious technology requires serious science - organizational infrastructure is not enough even for technology.
Because of this, as Yair pointed out, a certain degree of technology was possible in the days of the Romans and even before them.
The total stop of progress happened only in Europe and only under the influence of religion stopping science.
The article and the comments on it, including mine, look at the question of knowledge and revolutions from our perspective, when inventions are renewed every day.
If we look at history from below, from the perspective of the times when there was only very little, we can evaluate Roy's question about the industrial revolution differently.
For example, during the New Stone Age several innovations appeared: animal domestication, use of pottery, house building, and above all, seed farming, which in my opinion is greater and more important than the industrial revolution in Europe.
When I skip over thousands of years, 5000 years ago the greatest invention of all time was invented, even towards the future, the writing, an invention on which the whole civilization rests.
Looking at it this way, it is not impossible to see a kind of industrial revolution in the Roman construction factories as well, even if it was followed by a long period of depression.
R.H.
When I say central government, I don't mean totalitarian government - the link between strong and totalitarian is common and wrong and I have no idea what its origin is (perhaps fascist propaganda).
I also agree with you that for the most part a government where people think seven times what they say is not a government that can lead to scientific progress.
By a strong central government, I mean a government that is able to enforce public order and is able to enforce its laws (and these do not have to be stupid, in fact, it is better not to be), by which the government is able to ensure the personal security of the individual and this is what people gathered together to form the body called the state .
Greece was divided into small city-states, but a progressive city like Athens guaranteed its residents a degree of security - although I do not have data on the level of crime in ancient Athens (which is one of the things required to test my claim), I felt that a city-state, which is a significant part From the identity of the individuals living in it over the centuries, it is a city that probably does what it needs to - it provides its citizens with the personal security for which people give up a certain part of their freedom.
Renaissance Italy is a different example. In my opinion, it prospered more than an earlier or later period also due to the absence of wars (before and after that it was full of wars). Furthermore, a large part of the greats of the Renaissance, starting with Leonardo da Vinci and ending with Galileo, received support from the Medici family who controlled affairs at the time - such support was almost impossible in the Middle Ages because there were no families that constituted such great economic power - and because power was a military concept And not economic (which means that his examination was done in wars). I do not claim that pig capitalism is beneficial for scientific development and personally I am not a fan of it, but if it is the Medici family with its unique characteristics it might work.
Anyway,
The two examples you mentioned are examples of large and powerful cities - with a very defined internal government and it doesn't matter at all what the system of government was (more than that, I agree with you that democracy is a more favorable environment for the growth of science, philosophy or art). My comparison is against the standard situation of the Middle Ages where the vast majority of the population lived in illiterate villages ruled by a local baron who was also illiterate and was called a noble. The nobleman did what he wanted and spent most of his time in stupid succession wars over the estate of several other villages in a distant land that he inherited from a distant aunt on his mother's side. When we are done with the succession wars, we will turn to deal with new succession wars in the estate where the villages in question are located, which in the meantime were burned, starved and looted by the warring gangs and finally passed from hand to hand - this is the situation of the absence of a central government and in which, in my opinion, science cannot thrive.
deer,
I disagree with your thesis that a strong central government is a factor that brings about scientific development. The boom in Greece was when it was divided into small city states. Renaissance Italy flourished when it was divided into duchies and principalities. In my opinion, totalitarian rule constitutes a barrier to scientific and technological development because it generally tends to conservatism.
I tend to agree with R.H.
Blaming Christianity alone for stopping technological development is a bit simplistic in my opinion, there have always been and always will be conservative elements who oppose the continuation of scientific progress and the significant question is why they are stronger in these or other periods.
By the way, it is worth noting that already in the Roman period, part of the philosophical and perhaps also the scientific development of ancient Greece was inhibited - the Romans did indeed build an empire for glory, but the greatness of the human spirit was not at the forefront of their attention, as can be seen in their disdainful attitude towards the Greek intellectual elite.
As for the Middle Ages, it should be noted that the church reached the peak of its violence precisely at the end of the Middle Ages and at the beginning of the Renaissance (the Inquisition was established only in the 13th century), when other spirits already began to blow, while at the height of the darkness of the Middle Ages there was no one to stop the science of Nablus at all did not develop.
In my opinion (and this is not a historical position for which I have backing), the halting of the progress of human thought in general and scientific development in particular in the Middle Ages, originates mainly from the absence of a central government. When various barbarian tribes fight among themselves for control of crumbling kingdoms, there are no central cities, no centralized government, no education systems and no personal security for the inhabitants - there is no fertile ground for scientific development and all are engaged in an existential struggle. It is not for nothing that one of the things that characterize the Holy Roman Empire of Charlemagne was the creation of a system of education (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlemagne#Education_reforms) but this, like the entire Holy Roman Empire did not survive long after him. On the other hand, central government alone does not guarantee scientific progress (see Rumi as an example) - if so, this is a necessary but not sufficient condition.
in brief,
In my opinion, one of the things that can perhaps be learned from the Middle Ages is the role of the lack of a strong central government in the development of a violent society that suppresses human development. Religion in its medieval version is only a tool that fills the void left by the absence of the civil central government.
to me,
It is a bit simplistic to place the "blame" of the Middle Ages only on Christianity, although there is no doubt that it played a decisive role in the matter. Other culprits are the invasions of the Germanic peoples into the Roman Empire and Islam afterwards.
The library you are probably talking about is the great library in Alexandria that was burned in three waves, by Julius Caesar, Christianity and the final death blow during the Muslim era.
It is indeed interesting to speculate about where we would be if there were no Middle Ages and Greek/Roman science would have continued forward. Maybe we were already in the stars or maybe we weren't today at all?
Another stopping point of scientific development occurred in China during the Ming Dynasty when China closed itself off and severed its relations with the rest of the countries.
I previously saw a program about ancient Greece, a program that talked about the technology and medicine developed there and which were very advanced, at that time for example they used tools for medical surgeries (some of them even complex) similar to the ones we use today, they reached the level of plastic surgeries on humans, and developed technologies Different in many other areas.
And what stopped all this development of the Greeks, according to what is said in the program, is the spread of Christianity, when the climax came when a group of Christians went and burned a library of scrolls (which was spread over many hundreds of dunams of land), a library that was unique in its kind at that time. A library that included all the scrolls in which the Greeks wrote down all the knowledge the Greeks had accumulated at that time, and after the aforementioned incident, about 90% of the knowledge the Greeks had accumulated in the fields of their technology and medicine was lost (because this was the only place where the Greeks stored all the knowledge they had accumulated) and this is probably what prevented from the Greeks to advance towards the industrial revolution even in that period.
Although the Greek cities were looted to the ground, not finding a similar device anywhere else could indicate that the device is (probably) a "prototype" spring of a device that was built - but never put into use - perhaps due to its complexity.
5 too early to understand the far-reaching consequences? Precisely today, when we understand so much about the "creation" etc., we see that the things you present are worth as much as the skin of garlic, and this is an exaggeration:
6000 is also:
"The pain is moments, the hookah is eternal" + "When the rooster crows, the morning is not yet wounded" + "The year of redemption" + "Pizza with mushrooms" + "Kiddoshin tract" = 6000!!
theintentionexperiment nonsense that works on people who think the earth is round and that humans live 6000 years will not work here.
And want food for thought? You will start reading things that were not written by pagans 5000 years ago.
Want something nice, food for thought?
If you take a Plutonic cycle which is Ramah-248 years. Multiply by 24-cycles and add 48 and you will get the last healthy cycle in the series. 6000.
This cycle is the equivalent of a longer natural-evolutionary cycle, which is reflected in the animal species and parts of humanity from the water and the ancient species.
It is possible that in the Maharal's legend of the Golem from Prague, there is something of that experiment to prove the possibility of this hypothesis with realizations (that reason is fulfilled), but then it was still too early to understand the far-reaching consequences of this.
As you suggested, maybe let the historian speak? Historiologically :)
In my opinion, the socio-economic model that will dominate in the future will be a certain type of technocracy - a situation in which technology is advanced enough to satisfy all of man's basic needs, without him having to finance himself.
Year:
What delayed the industrial revolution most of all were of course the Middle Ages in which religious rule froze the progress of the West from the 15th century to the XNUMXth century - a much longer time than the development of all inventions and scientific knowledge.
The industrial revolution began only after a long series of inventions and a huge improvement in scientific knowledge compared to the Greeks and Romans.
I am extremely surprised (-;