Timeline for How might knowledge of evolutionary theory impact a medieval society?
Current License: CC BY-SA 3.0
13 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| Jun 6, 2015 at 8:09 | comment | added | zeta | @Belverk: Whoops, I didn't notice that Belverk was the one to reply to my original comment (which was directed at ShamSeger's answer), and I assumed it was ShamSeger. Sorry for the mixup, Belverk; your comments sounded reasonable to me. | |
| Jun 6, 2015 at 8:05 | comment | added | Lostinfrance | @sumelic, it might be best to state explicitly whether your comment refers to Belverk's original question or ShemSeger's answer. | |
| Jun 6, 2015 at 6:32 | comment | added | zeta | That "all the great thinkers of the Dark Ages... were burned at the stake." Even allowing that this is an exaggeration, and that the definition of a "great thinker" is somewhat subjective, I don't think even the basic idea of this is exactly widely supported by historians. | |
| Jun 6, 2015 at 3:47 | comment | added | Belverk | @sumelic what assertions specifically do you believe are unsubstantiated? My statement comes from what I recall from lecturers with a Religious Historian and are ideas that were also covered on the tv show Cosmos, so I am pretty certain that there is at least some substance to them. | |
| Jun 5, 2015 at 3:37 | comment | added | zeta | What a ridiculous, unsupported set of assertions about history. | |
| May 30, 2015 at 2:36 | comment | added | Belverk | I agree it was a time when much was lost rather than necessarily repressed. Interestingly, the Islamic world was experiencing a sort of scientific golden age at much the same time, preserving and building upon the knowledge of the ancient world. It is my understanding that the Renaissance owes much to those early Muslim scholars. | |
| May 29, 2015 at 22:29 | comment | added | Oldcat | What made them the Dark Ages was the fact that people were too busy fighting for survival to write stuff down. The Catholic Church was a few men huddled in Rome under the thumb of the Lombards and had no influence outside a day's march. | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:21 | comment | added | Lostinfrance | @ShemSeger Actually, the historical western European Dark Ages (i.e. the period between the Fall of Rome and circa 1000 AD) were not ages of great persecution by the Church. Even when repressive, stable societies don't need to persecute; it is when rival paradigms contend that inquisitions arise. The historical Inquisition arose in the 12th century and peaked in the Reformation. This is relevant to the original question: if the theory of evolution were not an innovation it would probably have been long since absorbed into the arguments used by the rulers to justify the status quo. | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:14 | comment | added | Khwarezm | Developing a theory of evolution would have taken extended observations over a long period of time (and preferably over large areas of the world to see how different lifeforms act in different, and also the same environments), rigid record keeping and the ability to independently verify any results that lead to the an evolutionary conclusion, understanding what fossils are helps too. Your long lived character has the first part down but people would be taking him at his word without the other factors. Would this individual thus be an important religious figure? | |
| May 29, 2015 at 19:09 | comment | added | Khwarezm | You still had tons of people trying to use alchemy despite the Church's dislike towards it (as well as its fundamentally futile quest to turn anything into gold and find eternal life) which was integral to the development of chemistry. | |
| May 29, 2015 at 18:59 | comment | added | Khwarezm | This interpretation is flawed, the very concept of 'Dark ages' is not popular among historians today, certainly not one where the church crushed all science and thought. The truth is that science and development were held back as much due to a lack of education (which was mostly only preserved by the Church in Christendom), the fact that the scientific method had yet to be developed and the economic and urban decline that left Europe a lot less interconnected and more regionalised compared to the days of Rome. | |
| May 29, 2015 at 8:22 | comment | added | Belverk | This leads me to consider to what extent such knowledge might be repressed. Conservative authoritarian societies have always been resistant to any ideas that challenge the status quo. Evolution then might be seen as a challenge to the idea that the universe ordered according to the way it is meant to be, including perhaps the idea that peasants are in their proper place in the social order. That everything is as it always has been. | |
| May 29, 2015 at 5:21 | history | answered | ShemSeger | CC BY-SA 3.0 |