Newton more important than Einstein: poll

PhysOrg.com ^ | 23 November 2005 | Staff

[Torie]

It didn't seem to do in the Arabs.

[Sam Hill]

You never played Stratego?

[Torie]

Ya, I did about 40 years ago. I haven't thought about that game for almost the same time, until you mentioned it. Thanks for validating that I am not quite ready for being put into a conservatorship.

[AntiGuv]

When the Muslims attacked Syria in 634 it was merely seven years after Heraclius' triumph over the Persians in 627. The Persians were themselves attacked in 637. Had the equivalent attacks instead taken place twenty years later they should've easily been beaten back by both the Byzantines and the Sassanids.

[AntiGuv]

Of course it did in the Arabs. The Arabs never took Anatolia where the thema system was established. When they attacked Syria and Egypt, as I already mentioned, the thema system was not in place there. They were still barely in the course of recovery from the Persian invasions.

[Torie]

But if it was so good, why were not the newly installed Arabs send back to Mecca?

[AntiGuv]

*sigh*

[Torie]

Good but not great eh? :)

[MarkL]

And don't forget Newton's development of the calculus, though some say that he "borrowed" from Leibnitz, while others say he developed it independantly.

His work in mathematics was a major part of defining the "language" of science.

Mark

[Torie]

What religion are those living in Anatolia these days I wonder? Somehow, the Islamic message got out far and wide.

[AntiGuv]

The thema system was not developed to its full glory until the reign of Constans II, by the 660s basically. By that time, the Empire had otherwise fallen into decline and would soon afterward also get wracked up for a century over the silliest of nonsensical religious conflicts (they were fighting over whether or not icons are idols). Egypt and Syria had been the wealthiest provinces of the Empire, along with Anatolia, and their loss was irreparable. In other words, by the time that the Byzantines were in shape again, they were robbed of the men and grain of Egypt & Syria which was now part of the Arab arsenal instead. Moreover, the Monophysites of those provinces were happier (at that time) under Muslim rule than they had been under Orthodox rule.

[AntiGuv]

Anatolia was conquered by the Seljuk Turks and then the Ottoman Turks. Turks are not Arabs.

[Torie]

Moreover, the Monophysites of those provinces were happier (at that time) under Muslim rule than they had been under Orthodox rule.

Well, of course. I learned that in grammar school.

[Torie]

As I said, the message got out. I am aware that Turks are not Arabs. Just ask the Kurds. Maybe they are neither. :)

[AntiGuv]

And that happened because the Fourth Crusade sacked Constantinople and shattered the Byzantine Empire, and they were able to do so because they were invited in by some imbecile rivals to the Byzantine throne. Moreover, the ultimate reason (almost certainly) that the Byzantines were not in control of the lands where the Crusaders originated was because of the earlier Arab conquest of the southeastern provinces. Finally, had the Byzantines fended off the Arabs in, say, the 650s, the Turks would probably not have been Muslims anyhow.

[AntiGuv]

Although, to be sure, the Byzantine defeat by the Ottomans at Manzikert in 1071 preceded the Fourth Crusade sack of Constantinople in 1204, but the Byzantines recovered from the former. They would never recover from the latter, and inexorably fell to the Ottomans.

[AntiGuv]

If the Turks weren't Muslims then my guess is they'd be Buddhists, and Buddhists are very generally far less perfervid than Muslims. :)

[Torie]

Now you are stealing my repertoire, in this case one that I picked up from Churchill, perfervid. Have you no shame? You should write a book about history if Mohammed had been born 20 years later. Would we now be at the end of history if that had occured, putting aside the Chinese?

[AntiGuv]

History has a way of reasserting itself no matter what. But, to be sure, if the Muslim conquest had failed, then it's quite probable in my view that the Roman Empire would've been restored to the full height and reach of its power by the turn of the first millennium, and there's certainly an argument to be made that much of what history we would have now would be internal disputes in one sprawling imperium stretching at least from Iberia to Persia.

[AntiGuv]

By the way, the alternate history timeline that has always fascinated me the most is what would've happened if the Byzantine Empress Irene (frigid b!tch) had accepted the proposal of marriage by the Holy Roman Emperor Charlemagne.