Science & Islam / Science & USA

[pkt]

There is an interesting piece about "Science and Islam" on Radio Nederlands. The 3 topics covered are
1. Why do tires slip when the road is wet?
2. Science and Islam.
3. Was the Egyptian queen Cleopatra just a sexy seductress, or was she in fact a scientist and philosopher?
click on
http://www.rnw.nl/science/html/041108rf.html
This report was featured in Research File. Listen to the programme in full. (29:30) minutes.
It's very informative. Well worth listening.

The reason i bring this up here is because of the fact that when the Crusaders reached the Holy Lands, they were astounded by the sophistication of the sciences in the Middle East.

I think we generally know that Europe, after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, fell into the Dark Ages.

OTOH, the Muslims took the knowledge from ancient Greece, as a reult of their curiosity, open-mindenes, and greed to apply alchemy to change anything into gold, or what have you make these knowledge blosom.

One of the contention of a Muslim scholars doing research in London is that the Muslims deciphered part of the Egyptian hyroglyphs before the French did it completely using the Rosetta Stone.

The salient point in this discussion is this:
We know what happened to the glory that was the Islam world as the centre of knowledge in western Asia and Europe - China was another centre as marco polo discovered - in that 500-year period after teh Dark Ages.

Can what happened in the Islamic world happen to the USA now that the evangelists and religious zealots will be changing things in the next 4 years.

I know, I know, 4 years is a short time when we're talking history; but will this be the start of the slippery slope?

This is especially pertinent when we take into consideration
a). the astronomical debt as well as the trade deficit that the USA has accumulated;
b). the corruption in the US society - to wit Enron, to wit electoral jerrymandering, to wit Haliburton getting Pentagon contracts without tender, ad nauseum.
c). the splitting of the USA into two opposing camp and no one seems to be willing to compromise.

PK

[Gav]

Actually PKT you are incorrect about Europe falling into the Dark Ages when the Romans left. I speak mostly about the UK however at least some of this must be true for elsewhere in Europe. The Dark Ages were thought of as such beacuse there was no written evidence left by the people who remained. It is somewhat naive to think that he the Britons reverted to Savagery just because the Legions uppped and left. There is a lot of evidence that, in fact, during this period there was a flourishing of art and literacy (although evidence of this is limited to Stone carvings on headstones). It was definitely a period of change altbhough quite what that change was is open to debate. There is, for instance, no record of the Anglo Saxons - despite them being mentioned later. There is considerable evidence that trade with the continent continued long after the Romans left and that the Britons continued to have links with the Byzantine court.

You should really refer to the dark ages as the middle ages.

[Robert (2)]

Gav,

Best to think of Middle Ages 1000 AD to 1400 AD, Early Middle Ages 700 AD to 1000 AD, Dark Ages 500 AD to 700 AD. There is considerable evidence of trade reduction following the retreat of Roman power (esp. in the period 500 AD to 700 AD) and that literacy diminished in a dramatic fashion (Alfred's comments re his clergy being an example).

It is true that the dark ages are known as such because of the lack of written evidence (the same is true of numerous other 'dark' ages in history such as 1000BC to 600BC in Greece, or 200BC to 100AD in Central Asia). It is also true that much classical law, writing, and culture survived through the period. However, the picture painted by a recent British TV program (Channel 4 I think) that it was a great flourishing time is selective revisionist nonsense.

Though the reality is inevitably much more nuanced than can be expressed in a short post, it is not unreasonable to describe the period 500 AD (about a century after the Romans left) to 700 AD (when we pick up the first of our new sources) as a backward step, in terms of art, literature, politics, economics etc.

Robert

[esskreemr]

Originally Posted by pkt

Can what happened in the Islamic world happen to the USA now that the evangelists and religious zealots will be changing things in the next 4 years.

I know, I know, 4 years is a short time when we're talking history; but will this be the start of the slippery slope?

This is especially pertinent when we take into consideration
a). the astronomical debt as well as the trade deficit that the USA has accumulated;
b). the corruption in the US society - to wit Enron, to wit electoral jerrymandering, to wit Haliburton getting Pentagon contracts without tender, ad nauseum.
c). the splitting of the USA into two opposing camp and no one seems to be willing to compromise.

PK

You've left out:

1) Expansion of the EU
2) The deliberate provocation of several leading countries by the U.S.
3) Stifling promising research based on religious beliefs
4) A refusal to accept scientific evidence as legitimate
5) A bellicosity that has pissed off virtually every traditional ally in some manner
6) Government sanctioned intolerance.
7) A general negelect for the values inherent to the Constitution and the bill of rights
8) America has now become a LLC.

Did I leave any out?

[Gav]

Robert,

I know all of that.

To be honest I didn't have the time to type in a response that I thought would illustrate all of my points successfully.

I thought that the Channel 4 series [which I see you picked up on] was a bit nonsensical although there was some interesing stuff in it.

[Maeve_Mari]

Oh Heavens. I felt bad enough about the state of Bush for the next four years, but a complete decay and reversal is too much to have to consider.

Very compelling report and worth the read!

[lochinvar]

I would like to take a moment and answer some of these points in detail:

Originally Posted by pkt

The reason i bring this up here is because of the fact that when the Crusaders reached the Holy Lands, they were astounded by the sophistication of the sciences in the Middle East.

I think we generally know that Europe, after the fall of the Holy Roman Empire, fell into the Dark Ages.

OTOH, the Muslims took the knowledge from ancient Greece, as a reult of their curiosity, open-mindenes, and greed to apply alchemy to change anything into gold, or what have you make these knowledge blosom.

Let's pause for a moment to explore these sweeping generalizations.

Consider the state of the world c. 500-1100. Although it is generally accepted that the state of learning declined in Western Europe during and after the period known as the Barbarian Migrations, this is only understandable in light of the fact that the countryside was being burned/sacked/looted every other year or so by Huns, Avars, Goths, Vandals, Scots, Picts, Franks, Saxons, Burgundians, and what have you. It's difficult to maintain a tradition of scholarship when one must flee and/or hide with depressing regularity and constantly expend one's energy in rebuilding one's farm in order to eat.

On the other hand, the Eastern Empire was alive and well during all this, and the "ancient wisdom" of the Greeks and Egyptians was not only preserved but expanded by the scholarly communities there. Much of what the Crusaders found and marvelled at was not the exclusive property of Muslims alone but was the result of a fertile cross-pollination between the various Turkic and Persian empires on the one side and the Byzantines on the other.

The "enlightened sciences" that the Franks and Germans brought back with them from Palestine was an amalgam of joint Byzantine and Muslim thought, so intermingled that it is difficult to say who contributed the lion's share to the mix. However, as much credit must be given to the continuous existence of the Roman Empire in the East as is given to the various Muslim states with which it interacted. To state categorically that "The Muslims preserved the ancient knowledge of the Greeks" is a bald generalization that only tells half the story.

One of the contention of a Muslim scholars doing research in London is that the Muslims deciphered part of the Egyptian hyroglyphs before the French did it completely using the Rosetta Stone.

This may be true; further evidence is required. What we do know is that whatever understanding of Egyptian hyroglyphics the Muslims may have developed, it didn't survive in any meaningful form to contribute to the general body of world knowledge. Champollion still deserves the spotlight for that.

The salient point in this discussion is this:
We know what happened to the glory that was the Islam world as the centre of knowledge in western Asia and Europe - China was another centre as marco polo discovered - in that 500-year period after teh Dark Ages.

Uh, no, we don't know what happened. If you mean to imply that somewhere between 700-1200 Islam fell into its own "Dark Age", the record doesn't bear that assertion out. Islam as a center of knowledge in western Asia declined as a direct result of being overrun by the armies of Ghengis Khan, and was driven further into decline by the butcheries of Tamurlane--both being events that I think you will agree won't be repeated anytime soon.

Can what happened in the Islamic world happen to the USA now that the evangelists and religious zealots will be changing things in the next 4 years

I know, I know, 4 years is a short time when we're talking history; but will this be the start of the slippery slope?

This is hysterical doomsaying at its worst, the political equivalent of Chicken Little. The "religious right" doesn't have nearly as much clout as you seem to imply, and I doubt very much that they will be able to further their "hidden agenda" to the extent you seem determined to believe they will.

This is especially pertinent when we take into consideration
a). the astronomical debt as well as the trade deficit that the USA has accumulated;

These are problems, to be sure, but they are nothing new. They have been ongoing in one form or another since FDR. They are hardly a sign of the apocalypse.

b). the corruption in the US society - to wit Enron, to wit electoral jerrymandering, to wit Haliburton getting Pentagon contracts without tender, ad nauseum.

Again, you put these forth as something new and unprecedented in US history--I assure you, they are not, nor are they peculiar to this century. I refer you to the administration of Ulysses Grant for comparison.

c). the splitting of the USA into two opposing camp and no one seems to be willing to compromise.

Again, nothing new. The history of the US is repleat with these polarizations, the most extreme example being the War Between the States; however, the fight over the Silver Standard and Free Soil were as divisive and partisan.

In short, I find your analogs to be spurious and your conclusions unwarrentedly alarmist. We may very well be heading into a new Dark Age, but in the absence of any compelling evidence (which you haven't presented), we most likely are simply heading for four more years of Business As Usual.

[lochinvar]

Originally Posted by Gav

(snip)It is somewhat naive to think that the Britons reverted to Savagery just because the Legions uppped and left.(snip)

Everyone knows that the Britons sustained their state of Savagery straight through the time of the Legions--who unsuccessfully attempted to stifle it--and have steadfastly resisted any and all attempts to civilize them even unto the present day!

[S. Hunter]

I agree wholeheartedly with Lochinvar - People here do NOT understand the religous right at all. I have many friends who are members thereof by most definitions, and they are only really opposed to government funded infant stem cell research and abortion. They are not all loony people who want to opress women, kill minorities, and take the world back to the middle. Bush is also not very right wing by most of their definitions - And on top of that, most people I see talk on here are insane and fanatical about how they attack Bush. I dont like the guy, but would it hurt civilization so much too be civilized? MAYBE, just MAYBE that is why your guy didn't win last election cycle. Prop up your own ideas for once, I'm sick and tired out constant attacks. As much as I despise the Right, for the most part they seem to have a more defenseive than offenseive stance on things.

(Whoah, that got off track)

[Inquartata]

No, no, no, you don't understand that the people who hate Bush are smarter than everyone else, so when they predict the end of American civilization you must believe them!

Seriously, every great nation eventually either disintegrates, is destroyed from without or falls into senescence and withers into obscurity. It will happen to the US, too. Just a matter of time. But will it happen any time soon, or as a result of the "problems" mentioned above? I think it doubtful. Rome survived horrible mismanagement, corruption, invasion, wars, plagues and successions of bad and even insane rulers for a thousand years. I scarcely think the Republic is so much more fragile that it will crumble under a deficit and Enron.

[pkt]

Originally Posted by lochinvar

I would like to take a moment and answer some of these points in detail:Let's pause for a moment to explore these sweeping generalizations.

...

In short, I find your analogs to be spurious and your conclusions unwarrentedly alarmist. We may very well be heading into a new Dark Age, but in the absence of any compelling evidence (which you haven't presented), we most likely are simply heading for four more years of Business As Usual.

loch,
[BTW, is the first letter of your name "L" or "I"?]

I agree with your last point: I aim to be provocative by putting forth these points. did you hear the almost 30 minutes of the RN broadcast. I thought it was quite well done.

That said, I have to say that your response was very good and well reasoned.
It's obvious you're a student of history which I admittedly am not.
Thank you.

In fact on the point of the splitting of the US into red and blue states, i also stand corrected. If one studies the results, there are some 'grey' states that are very much split very much down the middle: there are 23 states where neither Bush nor Kerry won more than 55% of the vote. e.g. Colorado: Bush 52% / Kerry 46.8%.

So we should re-colour the map with United states of Canada and Jesusland. As noted somewhere else, i think most Canadians very much object to using the name "United States of Canada". I shan't repeat myself.

There are other similar nuances of the vote too re the 11 states that voted to ban same-sex marrige, etc.

PK

[lochinvar]

It begins with "L", but in a fit of laziness I didn't bother to hit the shift key that day...

[Westley]

This is more just an interesting tidbit, but according to the Mormon's, the Middle Ages were a period called the Apostasy in which God turned his back on the earth. Now THAT is scary.

[lochinvar]

The Mormons also believe that Joseph Smith wrote the Book of Morman by translating gold pages through special crystal lenses.

I think it takes more faith to be a Latter Day Saint that it takes to be some other religions...I just couldn't suspend my disbelief quite that much...

[Westley]

It's not such a leap when you learn more. Even if it's not true, we still believe most everything the protestants teach, and nothing contradicts to their beliefs. We just add more, like no coffee. Mormon's are really cool. They're great people, real nice, and kind, and honest. They may have odd origins, but where they come from isn't as important as what they've become. And we make a hell of a lot more sense than some other religions- case and point- Jehovah's Witnesses.

[Soldier]

Yes, you just add more. Including things which do contradict Catholic and Protestant beliefs - hence the widely-held consideration that Mormons are not, in fact, Christians.

Also, you cannot make statements such as "Mormons are really cool. They're great people, real nice, and kind, and honest." This is no more accurate than saying all Christians are right-wing wackos who hate gays and blacks.

Also, how much sense you make is completely relative. I happen to think that Jehovah's Witnesses make a lot more sense than Mormons.

And finally, I think the phrase you wanted is "case in point".

[Westley]

This is just from the Mormon's I have met myself. 90% of them are really great people. Much higher percentage than the rest of the population. If you want to say things like Mormons make a lot of sense, back it up. Show where catholicism disagrees with us. And BTW, I can show you 5 things that disagree with the new and old testament for every one that disagrees with the Bible and the church of Mormon. On another note, let's try to keep this coversation civil. We all have our own beliefs. And we are entitled to them. Our point is to share them, not shove them down other people's throats.

[CutLass]

Originally Posted by Westley

???

Who is cupcake and why do you miss her/him?

[Soldier]

Originally Posted by Westley

This is just from the Mormon's I have met myself. 90% of them are really great people. Much higher percentage than the rest of the population. If you want to say things like Mormons make a lot of sense, back it up. Show where catholicism disagrees with us. And BTW, I can show you 5 things that disagree with the new and old testament for every one that disagrees with the Bible and the church of Mormon. On another note, let's try to keep this coversation civil. We all have our own beliefs. And we are entitled to them. Our point is to share them, not shove them down other people's throats.

I think I was perfectly civil, thank you. I simply pointed out some corrections.

First, there is the major disagreement in the Mormon belief that Jesus traveled the world preaching after his ressurection. Second, to name another, Mormons believe that God has an actual physical body - thus disagreeing with the "alm