AH Challenge-Pagan Enlightenment:

Skokie

Banned
Vivisections are not science in its modern sense as they are made to watch things in their natural state.

That is a rarefied definition; vivisection is used to this day in science.

Most of the names you give are related to either astronomy (the cosmos could be mathematized because it wasn't regarded as a physical world in the strict sense) and medicine (that indeed had a proto-scientific method, but medicine has to get rid of the humoral theory to advance, and that happened OTL after the Enlightement, so I have totally ignored medicine for that matter)

The only examples that have a point for me are Ptolemy (wich was a follower of Aristotelian naturalism, in a time in which the mistifed hellenistic schools were much more mainstream, so he could not have sparked an enlightement in any way), Hero and Archimedes

So you concede that science existed before Galileo? ;)

(whih, BTW, created a lot of controversy with their work. A lot of effort was made in readapt their conclussions, for they could imply that some mathemathical forms have movement, something that platonist ideology regarded as little less than blasphemy) Still, Galileo is the first one that did science with a full conciousness of doing something different to the established method, so my point still stands.

Galileo's "full consciousness" is irrelevant. It would be correct to say he helped spearhead the modern scientific revolution, perhaps the greatest in history. But he wasn't the first to do science. Science emerged independently in several places, most notably in the Mediterranean and China, thousands of years before Galileo. Galileo actually had access to a decent amount of ancient science.
 

Goldstein

Banned
That is a rarefied definition; vivisection is used to this day in science.

Yes, and test tubes. But you can use a test tube without making science. As they have expalined me, science relies in experimentation. The image of Galen seeing a lung from a gladiator's open wound doesn't suggest me any experimentation.


So you concede that science existed before Galileo? ;)

Well, okay, I concede it, at least in the Ptolemy, Archimedes and Hero cases. I should have said "he was the first one who made science self-conciously". But you think that self-conciousness is unimportant, but it is not. When you are defying a methodological paradigm, it is the difference between creating a new one, or not to do it, as in China (I guess, as China is not quite my field. Do you have a good source about that? I'm very interested.) and the Classical Antiquity.
 

Skokie

Banned
Yes, and test tubes. But you can use a test tube without making science. As they have expalined me, science relies in experimentation. The image of Galen seeing a lung from a gladiator's open wound doesn't suggest me any experimentation.

Galen did a lot more than seeing a lung from a gladiator's open wound, including experimentation. He is a forgotten genius.

http://campus.udayton.edu/~hume/Galen/galen.htm
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galenic_corpus

Well, okay, I concede it, at least in the Ptolemy, Archimedes and Hero cases. I should have said "he was the first one who made science self-conciously". But you think that self-conciousness is unimportant, but it is not. When you are defying a methodological paradigm, it is the difference between creating a new one, or not to do it, as in China

You're absolutely right. It's important to note his defying a methodological paradigm insomuch as the part it played in launching a new scientific revolution. But! we're trying to answer the question "Did science exist before the rise of Christianity?" and "Was Galileo the first person to do science?"

(I guess, as China is not quite my field. Do you have a good source about that? I'm very interested.) and the Classical Antiquity.

Historian Richard Carrier's list with regard to the West is pretty good:

http://richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2007/09/books-on-ancient-science.html

"The Forgotten Revolution" by Lucio Russo is a particularly good read (though flawed). I don't know about China. I've only read about it in passing.
 
Last edited:
But not science. Science started with Galileo...

Modern science start with Galileo. Modern science is not the only iteration of scientific thinking and experimentation.

In any case. The issue at hand is the possibility of a pagan Europe's version of the Enlightenment. It all depends, IMO, if the Roman Empire falls or not. If it does, things might eventually roll around into a Renaissance and then an Age of Reason. However, if the Empire does not fall, it is more likely that technology will just keep progressing and get to an Age of Reason maybe a couple hundred years earlier. The Hellenistic world and the Romans that succeeded them were quite adept with mathematics and basic science (for the sake of getting Goldstein to stop whining we'll call it proto-science).
 
The Roman intellectual world was dead by the year 200, with the exception of mystic philosophy and religious thought. While many accuse Christians that they destroyed the ancient culture, in reality they simply filled a void. There would have never been a Roman Renaissance: it needed for Rome to die, to dismember, it needed fresh blood, be it persian, arab or germanic...

Rome was never a great culture. It provided many of the tools of sharing Greek knowledge throughout the known world, but its original output was mediocre. Cicero, Virgil or Seneca can hardly equal 800 years of Greek civilization. Look at Bactria, for example. Cut off from its original homeland, the Bactrian Greeks managed, in spite of their low population, to become inovators in Buddhist art, numismatics, state-building. Roman Britain becomes rural after only one generation.
 

Goldstein

Banned
(for the sake of getting Goldstein to stop whining we'll call it proto-science).

Whining? Excuse me? Have I been rude or non-argumentative?

The Roman intellectual world was dead by the year 200, with the exception of mystic philosophy and religious thought. While many accuse Christians that they destroyed the ancient culture, in reality they simply filled a void. There would have never been a Roman Renaissance: it needed for Rome to die, to dismember, it needed fresh blood, be it persian, arab or germanic...

Rome was never a great culture. It provided many of the tools of sharing Greek knowledge throughout the known world, but its original output was mediocre. Cicero, Virgil or Seneca can hardly equal 800 years of Greek civilization. Look at Bactria, for example. Cut off from its original homeland, the Bactrian Greeks managed, in spite of their low population, to become inovators in Buddhist art, numismatics, state-building. Roman Britain becomes rural after only one generation.

Er... aren't you a tad biased? While Stoicism relied a lot in the Sage figure, it was hardly mystical. It was pretty naturalist and rationalist, and one of the few systems that embraced atomist theory. Don't get me wrong, I love classical Greece more than any culture, but you're just wrong. To any people, in all History, necessarily had to happen anything.
 
Last edited:
Whining? Excuse me? Have I been rude or non-argumentative?

Er... aren't you a tad biased? While Stoicism relied a lot in the Sage figure, it was hardly mystical. It was pretty naturalist and rationalist, and one of the few systems that embraced atomist theory. Don't get me wrong, I love classical Greece more than any culture, but you're just wrong. To any people, in all History, necessarily had to happen anything.

I wasn't referring to Stoicism, who was already intellectually finished by 200 (that was the date I chose for this symbolic destruction). After 200, you have the highly mystical neo-platonism, the eastern cults, Christianity. After the ascension of the Severus Dynasty in 193, the sincretic religious thought becomes more important than any classical philosophy: you've got Elagabalus, you've got the Sol Invictus of emperor Aurelian, you've got the weird anti-Christian Getic group of emperors...

While I agree that Roman Stoicism is pretty interesting, it's also the only one that managed to resist. The classic works of Zenon of Citium and Chrysippos are forever lost and we know barely nothing of their teachings except bad historians like Diogenes Laertios or Roman writers, like Seneca, Epictet or Marcus Aurelius.

In fact that is a big problem. The Greek productions that resisted the test of time are so few we simply ignore many, many achievements of Elada. We've got barely nothing from the great figures of stoicism, epicureism, cynism, skepticism, atomism, few literature pieces, random historical chapters, not many books on science. My opinion is that if we'd had it all, Roman production would seem puny and barbaric, by comparison...
 
Whining? Excuse me? Have I been rude or non-argumentative?
You're complaining about the semantics of the word "science". It's enough for me to call it "whining".
Especially since I've only been up for a couple hours and am in an irritable mood.
 
The Roman intellectual world was dead by the year 200, with the exception of mystic philosophy and religious thought. While many accuse Christians that they destroyed the ancient culture, in reality they simply filled a void. There would have never been a Roman Renaissance: it needed for Rome to die, to dismember, it needed fresh blood, be it persian, arab or germanic...

Rome was never a great culture. It provided many of the tools of sharing Greek knowledge throughout the known world, but its original output was mediocre. Cicero, Virgil or Seneca can hardly equal 800 years of Greek civilization. Look at Bactria, for example. Cut off from its original homeland, the Bactrian Greeks managed, in spite of their low population, to become inovators in Buddhist art, numismatics, state-building. Roman Britain becomes rural after only one generation.

The Christians filled a void that they had a hand in creating. Even if Greaco-Roman intellectualism was in stagnation, it may have undergone a revival at some point. A new political ideology, a new ruling power or a great rival nation from outside the empire. Anything to kick-start it. But when the Nicean Christian clergy became merged with the Imperial Roman government, they outlawed nearly all other beliefs, forcing the dwindeling number of Polytheists to go underground, or immigrate, as what those few Hellenist intellectuals and scholars from the Platonic Academy of Athens whom left the eastern Roman Empire for Sassanid Persia during the Sixth Century. I honestly don't think the old culture of Rome needed to die off.
 
Last edited:

Skokie

Banned
I wasn't referring to Stoicism, who was already intellectually finished by 200 (that was the date I chose for this symbolic destruction). After 200, you have the highly mystical neo-platonism, the eastern cults, Christianity. After the ascension of the Severus Dynasty in 193, the sincretic religious thought becomes more important than any classical philosophy: you've got Elagabalus, you've got the Sol Invictus of emperor Aurelian, you've got the weird anti-Christian Getic group of emperors...

While I agree that Roman Stoicism is pretty interesting, it's also the only one that managed to resist. The classic works of Zenon of Citium and Chrysippos are forever lost and we know barely nothing of their teachings except bad historians like Diogenes Laertios or Roman writers, like Seneca, Epictet or Marcus Aurelius.

In fact that is a big problem. The Greek productions that resisted the test of time are so few we simply ignore many, many achievements of Elada. We've got barely nothing from the great figures of stoicism, epicureism, cynism, skepticism, atomism, few literature pieces, random historical chapters, not many books on science. My opinion is that if we'd had it all, Roman production would seem puny and barbaric, by comparison...

Well the Christians (mostly Greeks, btw) made sure we would never know, thanks to their penchant for preserving Christian hagiography over ancient history and science.

The Romans may have copied Greek art and poetry without matching them in terms of genius, but they were also the people who invented urban living, bridges, tunnels, indoor plumbing, soap and apartment living; who extended citizenship to foreigners and women; who, at their best, argued for the education and intellectual equality of women (Musonius Rufus), human rights (Seneca), abandoning capital punishment (Caesar) and ending cruel and unusual punishment (Cicero). The Romans provided the foundation for modernity. Modernity was in many respects the picking off of where the Romans had left off at the end of the 2nd century.

Alexandru H. said:
Rome was never a great culture. It provided many of the tools of sharing Greek knowledge throughout the known world, but its original output was mediocre. Cicero, Virgil or Seneca can hardly equal 800 years of Greek civilization. Look at Bactria, for example. Cut off from its original homeland, the Bactrian Greeks managed, in spite of their low population, to become inovators in Buddhist art, numismatics, state-building. Roman Britain becomes rural after only one generation.

I find your choice of examples here hilarious and ironic, especially in regard to Bactria's Greco-Buddhist heritage. Tell me, if the Greeks were such geniuses at state-building and Romans were such barbarians and no-goodniks, why is it that Bactria isn't today invading Britain to enforce Greco-Roman ideas rather than the other way around?
 
Last edited:
Just a small quibble, Skokie. Soap was manufactured among Celtic and Germanic tribes, while the cleansing agent of choice among the Romans was olive oil.

Thats it.
 

Skokie

Banned
I did not know that. Thanks.

According to wiki, the Romans scoffed at the way German/Gallic men tended to use soap on their hair more than their womenfolk. :D
 
, monotheistic religions imply a basically orderly universe, with laws that can be determined by observation. Without that basic assumption, you won't get philosophers trying to find the laws of nature.

I'm just comparing classical polytheistic Europe with medieval monotheistic Europe, when was most progress made?
 
I wasn't referring to Stoicism, who was already intellectually finished by 200 (that was the date I chose for this symbolic destruction).

Of course, since Christian scholars in Renaissance Italy revived them, there's no reason Pagan Europe couldn't as well.

Doubtful. Pagan religions tend to be polytheistic, with various factions among the gods fighting each-other. The result is a worldview that is basically chaotic and not likely to lead to the development of science.

I have to say, this seems... wrong, or at best a simplistic view more applicable to the Norse and pre-urban civilizations. Are you seriously claiming Chinese culture's view of religion was: a) based on gods fighting each other, and b) Intrinsically opposed to an orderly, rule-based view of the universe?

And let's not forget Christianity's hangups, either. It's not like Constantine Converted and forty days later people were making telescopes.

OTOH, monotheistic religions imply a basically orderly universe, with laws that can be determined by observation

"But still, it moves."

If you think that medeival christianity implied a basically orderly universe, you may wish to look at medieval Christianity. Yes, there was Aquinas, but he wasn't the only person around.


Lot's of good theories, that's true. Some of them look quite good by modern standards, providing you ignore the parts that aren't so accurate. What the Greeks didn't do was test those theories against reality, which is the heart of the scientific method.

On the other hand, it's not like Europeans engaged in systematic scientific thought for centuries, until, oddly, around the printing press.

And now your critique is that the Greeks are making up orderly worlds and not looking at the chaotic real one?
 
The Norse Mythology seemed to state that two rival factions of Gods went to war with one another before a truce between them developed into a fully-fledged alliance. Plus the Aesir were considered the protectors of humanity. So I don't think that they were necessarily chaotic.
 
I find your choice of examples here hilarious and ironic, especially in regard to Bactria's Greco-Buddhist heritage. Tell me, if the Greeks were such geniuses at state-building and Romans were such barbarians and no-goodniks, why is it that Bactria isn't today invading Britain to enforce Greco-Roman ideas rather than the other way around?

They invaded India and held an undisputable cultural domination in the area for 500 years. Roman Britain was pretty much gone in 100 years, without leaving anything behind.
 

Valdemar II

Banned
Norse religion compare best to Chinese religion, there was a orderly official faith Asatru (yes I know it the modern term for Norse Neo-Pagans, but it work here too), while a unofficial faith dominate the population the chaotic "Vanatru", a folk religion which they common people follow. Such a religion world view was common for most of Europe, with the convertion to Christianity the Asatru was replaced with Christianity, but the unofficial Vanatru survived just with Christian terms and a more low profile, but the chaotic worldview of the folk religion continue to the 20th century, and this was not a isolated case, most follower of Abrahamic religion also follow folk religions even if they try to deny it.
 
I'd say the classical Greeks were 2/3 of the way to the scientific method. They had the IMHO most important bits - the putting evidence first and using eyeballs and experiment to judge between theories. Try reading some Thucydides or Hero. The only bit they didn't have was the bit about not wasting time with unprovable theories.

I'm not seeing much difference between polytheists, atheists, or monotheists on genocide - all have done it plenty. And Greek polytheists were way, way ahead of modern monotheists on gummint. They had representative, republican democracy, like we do, and IMHO communism was startlingly similar to classical oligarchies, whom also had rules of a handful of aristocrats (Communist Party?), and distrusted money. I can't think of any form we have that they didn't; the only real difference is that we have more history and evidence of practice, when we care to use it.
 

Skokie

Banned
I'd say the classical Greeks were 2/3 of the way to the scientific method. They had the IMHO most important bits - the putting evidence first and using eyeballs and experiment to judge between theories. Try reading some Thucydides or Hero. The only bit they didn't have was the bit about not wasting time with unprovable theories.

Newton wrote endlessly about alchemy. That didn't mean he wasn't a scientist.

The Greco-Roman world had science. They lost the ability to do science and the full record of what was achieved for a combination of political and religious reasons. It can't all be blamed on Christianity, though they did play an important role in science's demise. Had a Neo-Platonist sect gained the totalitarian powers of the Christian Church, we likely would have entered a similar dark age. It might have been a little bit better (as it was under Islam; although they did more preserving of science than doing actual science) or a little bit worse. The deciding factor, I think, was the consolidation of power under one, very narrow clique. Empires or states that only allow One Idea are doomed to stagnation. What you need for science to flourish is a community that values curiosity and that enjoys a reasonable amount of freedom of thought.
 
Top