Posted on 08/22/2008 9:38:37 PM PDT by WesternCulture
In 1527, a leaderless mercenary army took and sacked Rome. For three days the citizens of Rome were subjected to torture, murder, rape, pillage and all the other evils the kind of men a mercenary army was composed of could subject the citizens to.
|
|
|||
Gods |
Just adding to the catalog, not sending a general distribution. |
||
|
· Mirabilis · Texas AM Anthropology News · Yahoo Anthro & Archaeo · · History or Science & Nature Podcasts · Excerpt, or Link only? · cgk's list of ping lists · |
|||
At this point they would probably more accurately be called an “ex-mercenary” army. Nobody was paying them, which is pretty much why they attacked Rome. Loot would have to pay if Charles V or somebody else wouldn’t.
This is also well after the condottieri era, being a phase in the wars between France and Spain/Empire over control of Italy.
How about Reformation?
Two are in progress. The first is the Fanatic Ilsamic attempt thet has as its goal the rigid enforcement of Koranic thought.
The second reform is the secular liberal enlightenment movement that is already sucessful in much of Europe and well on its way in America.
Neither will be a Rennasiance and both are likely to produce Dark Ages.
All I know I learned from Will Durant and his 11 volumes
When I was young our parish built a new church in the modernist mode. It looks something like a very large egg. I had a high school priest who exalted in the modernism of my new parish church over the "old" (and thereby invalid in his mind) forms of the other catholic churches in the city.
The modernist fanatics have the same mindset of all the "experts" in the arts. The fallacy in their thinking is that new is always superior to old...even if it looks inferior. They never consider that maybe all the best designs have been made. I'm not saying that some future architect, painter, composer, etc. might come up with something brilliant. But we may have exhausted most of the great forms. At any rate I much prefer old (pre-twentieth century) to new in just about any art form you can name.
You are of course right.
This mindset carries over into other fields where it may be even more inappropriate. Thus the campaign slogans about “change,” with no real attention being paid to what type of change is meant. The assumption being that anything new is preferable to anything old.
No, it wasn't clear at all. I thought you were simply dismissing the last 30 years of Einstein's research. Whatever his earlier views might have been, in his mature years he was keenly aware that relativity and quantum mechanics contradict each other. And as Aristotle knew and ever Schoolman knew in the Middle Ages, a contradiction is always false. And Einstein knew that too.
(Or maybe you haven't had a real drink yet this weekend, fellow freeper:D? - Just joking).
I am a Vodka drinker. So tonight I will toast you when I have my third drink. Santé, cincin.
Actually, this, rather well known dilemma of Monsieur Einstein is exactly what I was aiming at in my comment. My impression too is he was, at least somewhat, distressed by the problems he faced. However, to genuine theorists like Einstein this problem could easily be done away with.
Well, I don't think it is a matter of an impression. It is a fact that Einstein spent the last 30 years of his life looking for a unified field theory. He knew there was a contraction between his theory and quantum mechanics. And no, the problem cannot be easily done away with unless you decide to throw logic out the window. Einstein tried for 30 years to find a solution, but he failed to find a theory that would resolve the contradiction.
Physicists today are still trying to find a solution. Super string theory and M-theory may be the key to unlock this tangled problem, but there still isn't a consensus among scientists. And then there is the problem of experimental data. There simply aren't any instruments sensitive enough to detect these proposed strings.
The logic that a contradiction is false hasn't change since ancient Greece, the Middle Ages, or the Renaissance. (Unless of course a man agrees with Martin Luther that reason is a great whore.) There may indeed be things in life that logic cannot explain. But that is no excuse to discard logic in its legitimate fields of application like science. In science as in logic and mathematics, a contradiction is still false.
With respect to WWII and WWI: IMHO Western Civilization has tried to rip itself apart two times within less than 100 years. What does that say about its future?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.