Posted on 05/21/2005 4:14:32 AM PDT by PatrickHenry
That's very cool.
I heard many surviving manuscripts were in Ireland, where the zealotry of the Inquisition and other such Chrisitan-State extremisms didn't penetrate for considerable time.
"...upon displacing water in his tub and realizing he had found a way to measure volumes,..."
Actually this is wrong. He discovered the concept of specific gravity. He was able to use it to show the king that his crown wasn't pure gold, as the story goes. As I recall the crooks that tried to pull a fast one on the king suffered some bad consequences. Maybe we need a king.
Great for Yersinia pestis (used to be Pasteurella pestis and it's friend in grime Rattus rattus, but the name change didn't fool the bug - still endemic in areas of NM and AZ)
The 6000 year doctrine (as I call it) was prevalent in the Middle Ages. For some reason the year 2000 was supposed to be the end and the second coming was scheduled. Again I don't know why.
So, why push progress and knowledge, etc, when in a few hundred years the world was coming to an end anyway?
Bad mindset.
This is great, PH, but what does the damn thing say? I hope it's not a recipe for fruitcake.
"Maybe we need a king."
I nominate PH for King.
Good catch ... and quite correct.
Well, a way of measuring volume without destroying the crown was an important part of the Eureka!.
Thanks, but I decline. Let's stick with the Constitution. Rather, let's restore the Constitution.
I HAVE trisected an angle using a protracter and a straight edge. ;-D
Actually, I meant a compass and straight edge. :-)
hey wait, how was he using Calculous if the Arabs hadn't taught us dhimmis Algerbra yet???
Interestingly, I have done that too. Yes, it can be done and it's simple when you see it.
Wish I knew how to post a drawing, but I might be able to describe it, step by step.
Well, if you figure it out, let me know. I've gotta divide this pizza three ways and it's getting cold.
With no one left who could understand the mathematics, the decision was made that the text was worthless.
The inquisition wasn't started until the persecution of the Carthusians by St. Dominic in southern France in the 13th century.
The first general suppresion of writings by the Church that I know of was the suppression of Averroes works also in the 13th century (following their suppression by Muslim authorities in the 12th century).
If you haven't studied the period closely, it is difficult to understand the depth of the decline that occurred at the end of the Roman Empire into the early Middle Ages.
Literacy was primarily an urban phenomenon in the Roman world, and by 600 AD, most cities in Europe had shrunk to no more than (at most) a few thousand inhabitants grubbing a living among the ruins.
You don't need a religious explanation to explain the loss of writings.
If hundreds of thousands of armed men roamed across North American killing, raping, looting and pillaging, not just for years but for decades stretching on into centuries, how many books would be left in America?
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