Notre-Dame Cathedral boasts three magnificent rose windows over its main portals. They speak of the extraordinary expertise of their artisans involved say in cathedral building. The further education of artisans, and their interaction with people of means, was a prime contributor to the rise of science around 1600. At that time, artisans could converse with learned people to achieve fine glass equipment, say. So, in essence, Sumer and Egypt invented the teacher, and Alexandria developed the scholar who was reinvented in Islam. The scholar was then further developed via the medieval artisan by evolutionary forces during early Baroque to become the modern professional scientist. For me this is the most remarkable historical event in human history.
Rethinking the Birth of Modern Science
In this second part of my essay on the birth of “science proper” (my term for introductory university science, that essentially starts with ancient Alexandria, just check your lecture notes, say on density, to see what I mean), I further explore complex interactions leading to species changing attitudes of humans towards natural law. I search for how scientific advancements, often born from the crucible of necessity and curiosity, have not only illuminated the mysteries of the natural world but have also offered solutions to our needs for comfort of body and soul (Some of my more general contemplations are in Archive - Beelining (substack.com), especially essay 1). Here I continue with the fall of Rome, leading up to this species changing event. I begin by concerning myself with the question, still begging for some definitive answers: To what degree were the dark ages a gap in science or a slow development?
The going into and coming out of the Dark Ages
The official end of the western Roman empire was 476, as one of the sackings of Rome. This date is often used as a marker of the onset of cultural decline called Dark Ages. The next century saw the wars in Italy between the Byzantines (or East-Romans) and the Goths which did a main part of the damage. The senatorial families were eliminated and the aqueducts into Rome, on which the city depended for fresh water, were destroyed.
Presently it is increasingly asserted that the transition from the Roman Empire to the Middle Ages is more nuanced than a straightforward decline. Recent scholarship often emphasizes continuity as well as change, and the term "Dark Ages" is increasingly avoided by historians for its pejorative implications. It is held that even as Europe fragmented into smaller, self-sufficient units, the remnants of Roman knowledge and practices persisted in altered forms. Some scholars argue that the term "Dark Ages” oversimplifies and undervalues the period's contributions to cultural and intellectual life. Instead, this era saw the preservation and transformation of knowledge in monasteries, the adaptation of Roman law to new political realities, and the gradual emergence of new forms of social and economic organization.
But, as I outline in the following, there are reasons for me to maintain some of the pejorative implications for the lands of the west Roman empire. This becomes especially apparent when one reminds oneself of the contrasting rise and vigor of the golden age of Islam, of its medicine or optics. Particularly science was thriving in Islam and practically absent in early Christianity, as formed in East Rome amongst others. Christianity was of a more fundamental character at the time, with its focus on divine law rather than the natural one. It is exemplified by early Church Fathers such as John Chrysostom in sayings like: “what blessing is there for me if I should know where the Nile rises?” With such opinions the river of science practice of ancient Alexandria dried up into something of an arroyo seco. Or in another metaphor, a jungle grew back over the land of the Roman Empire. It did so in fact also literally, as a taking over of natural growth and a reduction of human activity could have been as observed from space. Concerning West Rome’s downturn, look at some depictions by Piranesi. Savor the sheep grazing in the ruins, to see what I mean, or the lean-tos on the side of what looks like buildings erected by giants. One cannot simply close one’s eyes to such facts.
In the following I will give a timeline for what I consider more of a gap, albeit not a full one, as Islam and the Sassanides, if not the Christian Byzantines so much, did maintain a Greek influenced science understanding.
Timeline of Scientific Dormancy and Resurgence
End of the Western Roman Empire (476 AD): The traditional date for the fall of the Western Roman Empire, marking the beginning of the medieval period in Europe. The following centuries saw significant political, social, and economic turmoil in Western Europe, which proponents of the "dormancy" view argue led to a decline in scientific activity.
6th to 10th Century: Often pointed to as the period of greatest dormancy in Western Europe, in terms of scientific advancement. The collapse of the Western Roman Empire's infrastructure made the maintenance and expansion of scientific knowledge difficult.
Golden Age of Islam (8th to 14th Century): Starting roughly in the 8th century, with the establishment of the Abbasid Caliphate, the Islamic world became a center for scientific study and innovation. This period is often cited as when Islam began to "carry the torch" of science, preserving and enhancing the knowledge inherited from the Greeks, Persians, Indians, and others.
12th Century Onwards: The translation movement in Muslim Spain and the Crusades facilitated the transmission of Arabic and Greek scientific texts to Western Europe, sparking a revival of scientific interest and laying the groundwork for the Renaissance.
Exponents of the Scientific Continuity Views
Gerbert of Aurillac (Pope Sylvester II) (c. 946–1003): An example of scientific endeavor in the Dark Ages, Gerbert was a scholar and teacher who became Pope Sylvester II. Known for his work in mathematics and astronomy, he introduced the abacus and the use of Arabic numerals to Western Europe.
Al-Khwarizmi (c. 780–850): A Persian polymath who made significant contributions to mathematics (especially algebra), astronomy, and geography during the Golden Age of Islam. His works were among those that significantly influenced Western science during the Middle Ages.
George Sarton (1884–1956): Though not recent, Sarton's work laid the foundation for modern views on the history of science. His monumental "Introduction to the History of Science" traces the development of scientific knowledge from ancient times through the Islamic Golden Age, emphasizing the critical role of Muslim scholars in preserving and expanding upon classical science.
Ahmad Dallal: A contemporary historian of science who specializes in the scientific tradition in Islamic societies. Dallal's work often focuses on how Islamic scholars contributed to the development of various scientific disciplines, arguing against the notion of a complete dormancy of scientific progress during the medieval period.
Jim Al-Khalili: A theoretical physicist, author, and broadcaster who has written extensively on the contributions of the Golden Age of Islam to science. In his book "The House of Wisdom: How the Arabs Transformed Western Civilization," Al-Khalili discusses the profound impact of Islamic scholars on the Renaissance and modern science, highlighting the continuity of scientific endeavor through Islamic scholarship.
Exponents for the View of Scientific Dormancy:
Tertullian (c. 155–c. 240): Though he lived before the period in question, Tertullian's emphasis on faith over Greek philosophy exemplifies the early Christian skepticism towards classical scientific inquiry that proponents of the dormancy view argue contributed to a decline in scientific activity in the early Middle Ages.
John of Damascus (c. 675/676–749): A Christian monk and scholar in the Byzantine Empire who is more noted for his theological work than for scientific inquiry, reflecting the shift in focus towards religious rather than empirical understanding of the world during the early Middle Ages in parts of Christendom.
David C. Lindberg (1935–2015): A historian of science whose works, such as "The Beginnings of Western Science," examine the transmission of scientific knowledge from the ancient world to the Middle Ages. While Lindberg acknowledges the contributions of Islamic scholars, he also details the challenges faced by science in medieval Europe, providing a nuanced view of the period that recognizes both continuity and dormancy.
Edward Grant: A historian of medieval science who has written on the intellectual environment of the Middle Ages. In works like "Science and Religion, 400 B.C. to A.D. 1550: From Aristotle to Copernicus," Grant discusses the complex relationship between science and religion during the medieval period, suggesting that while scientific inquiry was constrained, it was not entirely dormant.
Charles Homer Haskins (1870–1937): Known for his work on the Renaissance of the 12th century, Haskins highlighted the revival of learning and science in Europe prior to the Renaissance commonly associated with the 14th to 17th centuries. His research suggests a more gradual end to the so-called "Dark Ages" than previously thought, with science and knowledge beginning to flourish again in Europe due in part to contact with the Islamic world.
These scholars represent a range of views on the development of science throughout the medieval period, emphasizing various factors that influenced its progression or regression in different regions. Their research underscores the complexity of this historical period, challenging simplified narratives of scientific history and highlighting the interconnectedness of cultures in the preservation and advancement of knowledge.
While these figures represent just a snapshot of the broader debate, they exemplify the complexity of the historical narrative regarding the continuity or dormancy of science through the ages. The transition from classical to medieval to renaissance science was not linear but marked by periods of regression, preservation, and eventual resurgence, influenced by a multitude of cultural, economic, and political factors.
Comparisons between of stressing continuity versus dormancy of scientific inquiry
The debate between these two perspectives is still ongoing. You can educate yourself here on some of its points and take sides. It is not just an academic exercise but a reflection on the resilience of human knowledge and inquiry in the face of societal collapse. While the argument for continuity suggests that the foundations of science were never entirely lost, the perspective on dormancy highlights the vulnerability of knowledge to the vicissitudes of history. Both viewpoints underscore the importance of preserving and understanding our scientific heritage, recognizing the efforts of those in history who kept the flame of inquiry alight, and learning from the periods in which it dimmed. Ultimately, this debate enriches our appreciation of the complex paths through which knowledge has been transmitted across generations, reminding us of the fragility and resilience of the human quest for understanding.
In the following I survey Islam’s role in preserving and continuing with Greek science.
Some highlights of the science of Islam
Islam was to reawaken the Greek tradition in what one can call an Islamic renaissance in advance of a western one. In a remarkable development a tribal culture, with low levels of literacy and a set of religious revelations, came within a hundred years to establish a systematic program of translation of medical or scientific works and gaining a working knowledge of it. It has almost no parallel in human history. The crucial moment was the overthrow of the Umayyad caliphate by the Abbasids in the eighth century. It resulted in the replacement of Arab tribalism by an imperial ideology. The educated elites of the caliphate’s conquered peoples flocked to its new capital, Baghdad (founded in 762). Mesopotamia again was to rule the world of understanding.
Islam, founded by Prophet Muhammad (-632), was based on Arabic language. This language was spoken in parts of the Arabic peninsula. It superseded Aramaic and Greek as a universal language in the Fertile Crescent and much beyond. During its golden age it formed an apex of the world as the active inheritor of antiquity. It became what we now call the West.
There were illustrious centers of learning in Baghdad, Cairo etc, with the University of al-Qarawiyyin (also written Al-Karaouine) in Fez, Morocco, according to some sources (UNESCO), being the oldest university or oldest continually operating higher learning institution in the world.
People like Avicenna (Abū ʿAlī al-Ḥusayn ibn ʿAbd Allāh ibn al-Ḥasan ibn ʿAlī ibn Sīnā, 980-1037, Persia) carried on the Greek tradition. He was a polymath with a focus on medicine or physics. His medical textbook was in partial use even in Europe into the 18th century amongst others like Celsus or Hippocrates (Paracelsus is known for having officially burnt Avicenna’s books, together with the ones of Celsus or Galen but not of Hippocrates). Avicenna says in his book of heaven and earth, that heat is generated from motion in external things. He is famous as a devout person with proof of deity to his name. One then wonders what he means by his saying: “The world is divided into men who have wit and no religion and men who have religion and no wit.”
An important feature of the scientific method is valuing doubt over certainty. The Arab scholar Alhazen (Ibn al-Haytham, 950, Basra-1040 Egypt) and the Persian scholar Razi (Rhazes) initiated the movement called al-shukuk in Arabic (meaning simply “the doubts”), which advocates for an early scientific method. It refuted the wisdom of Ancient Greek scholars on astronomy and medicine. Alhazen had the benefit of living in a period of competitive patronage of the sciences. He overthrew the millennium-old idea that we can see things because our eyes shine light on objects. His experimental optics, carrying forward the work of Abu Sa‘d al-‘Ala’ ibn Sahl, used curved mirrors and lenses, effectively discovering the modern law of refraction. Here are quotes of Alhazen: “Whosoever seeks the truth will not proceed by studying the writings of his predecessors and by simply accepting his own good opinion of them. Whosoever studies work of science must, if he wants to find the truth, transform himself into a critic of everything he reads. He must examine tests and explanations with the greatest precision and question them from all angles and aspects.” “I constantly sought knowledge and truth, and it became my belief that for gaining access to the effulgence and closeness to God, there is no better way than that of searching for truth and knowledge.”
Averroes (Ibn Rushd, 1126, Córdoba-1198) was a Muslim Andalusian polymath. Averroes was a proponent of Aristotelianism; he attempted to restore what he considered the original teachings of Aristotle and so preserve it eventually for the West. There it took some while for it to be overcome. This is also a time of great minds in the religions such as Rabbi Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides) in Cordova. Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed, written in 1190, comes very close to saying that the world has always existed, as Aristotle teaches, and Genesis most outspokenly does not.
In 1256 the Arab scholar Ibn (of Aleppo, Damascus and Cairo) Khallikan recorded the classical tale of an Indian king hoodwinked into granting a doubling progression of grains for each square on a chessboard. This is exponential growth, in our case “2 to the power x” for doubling with x=64 times as the fields of the chessboard. In the first field is one grain, in the second there are 2 and in the third there are 4 grains. It starts innocent enough. But multiply by 2 for 20 times and you are at roughly a million (p6). Do it for 40 fields or generations and you have a trillion (p12). Soon thereafter it results in a gift of more wheat than grown in the entire world. It is the type of growth that viruses multiply with, or cancer cells. Khallikan knew his doubling math, even though he had no notion of viruses. His memorable application was to startle a king with his Muslim math.
Islam contributed greatly to the ancient scripts, but it also was a source of them. By 500 the Romans had left accountings of Greek learning in their own short renditions, somewhat like newspaper articles. Some of these small packages made it through the dim journey through the Dark Ages. But the Arabs handed down the originals. From Arab translations came nearly all of Aristotle, the medicine of Galen, the astronomy of Ptolemy or the geometry of Euclid. These texts were then bundled into the late Medieval University curriculum in the West. It is hard to exaggerate the influence of Arab science, as it was profusely cited and venerated in most common and learned literature.
In particular, the city of Toledo was an important center of Muslim learning during the tenth and eleventh centuries. When the Christians took over in 1085, the transfer of power was peaceful. Though the majority of the Muslim elite emigrated south, their culture, such as their libraries, was preserved. The various communities of Arab, Jewish and Christian scholars continued to work together as Spain was a multilingual society in the early Middle Ages. The scale of Arab accomplishment was dazzling not only in science but also in literature, history, geography or philosophy. It left Latin scholars giddy with joy and awe.
The European scholars, coming to Toledo, were flabbergasted by the wealth of knowledge they found. It is hard to imagine by how much Arabic book culture dwarfed that of Western Europe. As an example, the twelfth-century scholar Bernard of Chartres owned twenty-four books. By comparison, in 1258, the city of Baghdad housed thirty-six public libraries stuffed full of scrolls. There were over a hundred book merchants. The largest medieval library in Christian Europe, at the Abbey of Cluny, boasted a few hundred books. The royal library of Córdoba stored 400 000. Translation had become therefore an ever-increasing enterprise that Muslims initially wanted to control with Andalusian market supervisors orders such as “Men should not sell scientific works to the Jews or the Christians”, apparently because in translating them they would then attribute them to their own scholars. Apparently Christian interest in Arabic science had become of concern to Muslim authorities that began to fear that their cultural superiority would slip to the north. Now, with the re-conquest, here were the full versions of The Elements and The Almagest (The Majestic), and other related works freely accessible and pouring to the north indeed.
One of the most important of the Toledo School of Translators was the intrepid Gerard of Cremona (1140–1187). He was in search of Arab and antiquity’s knowledge as Columbus was to be later in search for the spices of the orient. Gerard of Cremona must have been superbly bold. Setting off into the unknown in search of a single book, The Almagest, he was prepared for the hardship of traveling thousands of miles. He put up with learning at least one entirely new language. And he would settle on a new life in a strange country, relentlessly seeking to broaden his knowledge. And as a result of the determined, driven, brilliant man, the main part of known science came to the north. His Almagest translation was to reign for centuries until replaced by Copernicus. Violet Moller* vividly relates the times (The Map of Knowledge, 2019). Yet, as one thinks of Gerard of Cremona as one singularly positive force for the West, there is actually even a second one of identical names, and of the 13th century, who concentrated on medical works.
The august thinkers of Antiquity were to be collected in Raffaello Sanzio’s (1484-1512) painting The School of Athens. It should be an icon for scientists. Starting in 1509 he began decorating the first of four rooms in the Papal Palace. These Raphael Rooms, along with Michelangelo’s Sistine Chapel, exemplify the High Renaissance fresco. In the middle of a Roman bold palatial setting there are the Greek thinkers, Plato and Aristotle finger up and hand out. Plato’s gesture toward the sky is thought to indicate his Theory of Ideal Forms, in which the “real” world is not the physical one. Aristotle’s hand is a representation of his belief that knowledge comes from experience. Empiricism assumes that humans must have concrete evidence to support their ideas. Sulking Heraclitus sits apart. From our science point we search for Galen, Ptolemy, Euclid, each with paraphernalia of their profession; and we think we find them within their groupings, just like innumerable others thought they had. But we also encounter somebody with a turban in their midst. And this is Averroes, who has kept Antiquity’s tradition and expanded it. He is relatively recently in the grouping with Pythagoras. There are so many centuries that divide him from the others. But he is their keeper. As celebrative and iconic as the painting is of the Beeline, it is only Euclid who is taught today unchanged.
While Islam continued carrying the Greek torch of science, the story from the woods of Europe was less uplifting.
My view: A devastating loss of knowledge in Europe
As the world of the Roman Empire shrank, trade became local. The great trading vessels that were earlier plying their way across the open sea, from one deep-water harbor to another, were gone. So were the continuous ceaseless wagon transports of supply and trade over the network of the imperial roads. Over Europe, the great estates, established as part of the imperial economic structure, had no further reason to exist. The imperial roads were too expensive to keep up. Life had become provincial. Economic activity dropped sharply as the provinces split into tiny halfway self-sufficient units.
The loss was most severe in the field of knowledge. A variety of procedures, say in astronomy or building, were still practiced in their rudiments. But the reason for this practice was forgotten and so they could not be expanded on. One wouldn’t know anymore where the rituals came from. If confronted with a text from antiquity about the origins of the degenerated rituals, one wouldn’t understand it anymore. That’s just how we always did it, the saying would go (ritual dictated usually meant based on old experience without necessarily recalling origins and so not being flexible to adapt to new situations). The transition from this ritual dictated life to the logical Greek derived one, in all aspects of institutional life (economy, art, politics, etc) is my main criterion for the success in its application also vis-à-vis natural law (a similar situation would arise later in 3rd world countries, which took aspects of the West’s savvy without understanding their basis. It is a degraded know-how that was and is just rote memorization of some simple instruction without knowing where things came from. It is a historically recurring phenomenon and may eventually erase science as a life-giving force from this planet or has done so elsewhere in the universe already).
During the plagues of the sixth and seventh centuries the population of Europe was halved. Europe deteriorated further into almost impenetrable woods in which roamed wild animals: boar, bear, and wolves. Mostly men lived in the tiny clusters of huts scattered through the forest or in encampments among the ruined cities, as small kingdoms of barbarians had replaced Roman administration. It was an enormous fall from the original Greek grace.
The dwindling population subsisted on what they could grow in the finger-like forest clearings, or ‘assarts’. The forests were forbidding and only well-armed, often though ill intended, or those feeling the protection of spiritual courage, dared the woods. Gradually, the forests were pushed back. As the small communities grew, they became, by the eighth century, loosely linked in a manorial system, which was largely an autonomous entity, usually no more than a few square miles. There was no money, as the manor had to be self-sufficient. No substantial help could be expected from elsewhere. The manor had originally inherited a slave system from the Roman country houses. This developed into inherited serfdom. There also developed an armed class of knights. Courtly songs or sarcastic proverbs and jokes testified how these privileged people in the Middle Ages regarded peasants as ludicrously foolish and dumb. Songs known as pastourelles told about how easy it was for knights to have sex with peasant women or to rape them. Even some bishops preached that “those who work” are objects of pity and disgust. Alone from this rigid social system one would not expect that the know-how of the separate classes would mutually interact, something that changed after the plague years when laborers became more liberated. The ensuing mingling of the know-how between different classes precipitated then the rebirth and furtherance of antiquity’s science.
I have here used the increasingly less common term of Dark Ages for the time after repeated episodes of Rome’s fall to the so-called barbarians (various Goths) and the devastating war of East Rome with them. But it was also a time with an irresistible drive to tinker and redesign, to incrementally improve or upgrade technology after all. This of course, via the artisans mentioned above! In fact, Seb Falk* in The Light Ages (2020), holds that the Middle Ages were anything but “dark”. What with the first eyeglasses, the first mechanical clocks and the first universities! It was the initial atrophy of the circulation of a massacred empire that caused darkness. Slowly life would enter again as the severed parts started to grow together again. Yes, but wasn’t there a massacre before that?
Contemporary flareups of discussion
A similar attitude perspires from the more recent and controversial (Yes. Rome Did Fall - Brad DeLong's Grasping Reality (substack.com)) “The Bright Ages” by Matthew Gabriele and David Perry.
I hold the dark ages, at least at their beginnings, to have largely amounted to a loss of earlier human progress. But there is no question that they also contributed, on their lower flame, to subjects such as materials and artisanal know-how or the energies that were put into the study of spiritual matters. And there is glorious art that is by and large less susceptible to extinction under adversity. Art is more robust as an intuitive savvy, presented in an exaggerated way. I consider it to be a prophet of science proper, sometimes as glaringly as with the discovery of 3D perspective by Alberti. Art often prepares a mood for more daring-do in thought. Especially Leonardo functioned as a transitory figure between and artist- artisan and the slow change to a professional scientist that started in the Baroque, say with Kepler and Galileo and was to soon involve also most influential and rich persons as intermediaries, such as say Cavendish, before it settled with professionals.
In this respect, it remains puzzling to me, though, why the enormous subsequent enrichment of humans during the Renaissance didn’t produce science earlier. In any case, it prepared for its eventual re-appearance when the Renaissance morphed into the Baroque.
The new situation
Gilbert, Galileo and Kepler are for me the first science-proper representatives in the West. I judge this by their importance to introductory science education and the novelty, importance and sweep of their understanding. Galileo/Torricelli played a prominent role in my present essay beelines from vacuums to DNA. Kepler demonstrated the elliptical orbits of the planets, assuming some sort of magnetic attraction that Newton clarified as gravity.
Kepler's insights into celestial mechanics are framed as part of a larger shift towards empirical research and the use of data to inform scientific understanding, a departure from the reliance on philosophical speculation that had previously dominated. The competitive dynamics between Kepler and contemporary figures like Galileo contributed to the foundations of modern science through their respective contributions and methodologies. The broader implications of scientific research during Kepler and Galileo's time included its role in challenging existing power structures and religious doctrines, as well as its impact on future generations of scientists and thinkers.
But there are many people and factors before them that were preparing the mental soil, so to speak, for subsequent science sprouting to become possible. Let’s call them science preparers, and the time one of a “science advent”. As a quick example, there is Copernicus of the solar centric system, continuing on the first wave science proper of Aristarch. In medicine there is Paracelsus, shedding unwarranted old authority and starting to use inorganics for healing. I even include Columbus of the discovery for the West of America through what one can consider a scientific instrument of discovery, the seagoing vessel, propelled by the wind in a math dictated way.
Setting the stage - condemning Aristotle - educated artisans - the hard quest of monks
In a short summary of the preparatory times, I want to emphasize first the importance for scientific thinking of the bishop of Paris in condemning Aristotle in 1277. According to Pierre Duhem* (asterisk denotes author, in this case a physical chemist of renown), this must have set an extraordinarily liberating signal for people to think beyond Aristotle’s coercive limiting views. Just remember the vacuum question. So, when you consider your enlightened views, think some of a historical bishop in Notre Dame. You owe him some of your liberties and comforts. You may not have thought of it this way, but Aristotle was keeping them away from you, and the bishop only returned what you will distinctly consider as rightfully yours.
In addition, I take seriously the idea of Edgar Zilsel* (historian who committed suicide in California after WW2, having emigrated from his native Austria) that a convergence of artisans and learned people happened towards the late Middle Ages. Artisans were becoming increasingly more learned and financially independent. This allowed an exchange, eventually resulting in both groups learning from each other and even cooperating. A prime example is Leonardo but also include architects of the Renaissance who acquired know-how beyond tradition to initiate a new architecture in concert with their patrons. You have to thank Leonardo and others for their quest for understanding, and that their curiosity was directed towards the natural world by comparison of an earlier focus on the spiritual.
On the motivational level there was an unlikely earlier source of inspiration in the hard quest of monks to fathom the ways of the Lord and the savings of human souls. Their unending energy and organization of acquired knowledge in libraries can be seen as a foundation of a similar single-minded energetic approach of later scientists, rich or poor, fundamental or entrepreneurial, and their letters and libraries. This professional concentration and fascination, in fact, goes even further back to the splendid spaces of libraries in Greek antiquity such as the one of Alexandria. Or even further, say to scribes of the old River Cultures or hunter strategists and the likes. Its survival to this day was beautifully exemplified by a newly hired faculty member of renown at my place, making his visiting rounds, asking each of us: “and what is it that fascinates you.” To him, and to me, it is self-understood that scientists stand under a “fascination spell”.
Given the admirable energy of monks in collecting writings, a question arises about the importance of Christian cultural traits in science history.
Was a basic cultural foundation in Christianity necessary?
There is also a basic cultural foundation in Christianity that separated the West as a unique place. Unique through Christianity, yes, even as I don’t think it necessary, as science had prospered before under different conditions. But Joseph Henrich* in The WEIRDest People in the World (2020 with Western, Educated, Industrialized, Rich, and Democratic, for the acronym) argues that the West is “psychologically peculiar”, and this made it so successful. According to Henrich, the West is somewhat off center in its relative lack of otherwise common human attitudes such as tribalism, apparently going back to the mission of the original bishops condemning nepotism. In this line I want to emphasize the enormous motivation of practicing scientists to this day for doing their work for the good of humanity (early Chinese culture had no such incentives, working mainly for their individual good and avoiding authority’s reach). It has a similar fire for internationalism and inclusiveness that exemplified the great monotheistic religions such as Islam.
Henrich asserts that what makes the West so peculiar emanates from the fact that culture determines human life. And the West’s culture comes from the early Western Church or later Catholicism’s early peculiarities of anti-nepotism. This led to anti-divorce stands within monogamies, and the forbidding of marriage within kin, down long lines. This diminishing of the influence of family tribes enhanced the church’s influence. It was at the same time filling its coffers and changing the culture of the West.
Accordingly, there was an early instinct for a winning formula that the early bishops stumbled on. In essence, Henrich argues that the dissolution of strong kin-based institutions paved the way for a more individualistic psychology that fostered science and so made the West rich. Such simple rules triggered a cascade of changes, creating states to replace tribes, science to replace lore, and law to replace custom. This cascade produced what being weird means.
By comparison, the bulk of the world is utterly different. The difference in tribal and non-tribal cultures is even evident in such examples as that blood donations are strikingly lower in southern Italy (more tribal) than in northern Italy today. There therefore exists no uniform human nature. Rather it is shown that different memes govern it in different cultures with vastly different outcomes.
This, at face value, is a mesmerizing line of thought. But first I want to caution to keep being aware of some points. Within the above timeline, the West's habits accordingly were born out of bishops’ decrees; but beware of a time-delay of order of a millennium for purported effects to come into play! All the benefits of the bishops’ decrees notwithstanding, they didn’t exactly make them rich overnight. It wasn’t a winning formula from the outset at all. Rather, first it was a mode of operation that made people poor for nearly a millennium. These same poor people then switched to producing enormous riches and understandings from a special point on, which according to B DeLong in his Sloughing towards Paradise, is roughly 1870. When you dissect and parse it out, Henrich’s thesis doesn’t make full sense to me.
My instincts turn cause and effect around. For me, science made the West rich; science made it educated and individualistic, or weird in other words. It was more of a happenstance that science was taken up again from the Greek in a monogamous anti-nepotism society. To underline this point there is the golden age of Islam with science and its mesmerizing riches and scientific understanding now paradoxically in a polygamous tribal society.
As I outlined in another essay, science did away with superstition in Western learned society around 1700. But society had already achieved relative wealth during the late medieval and Renaissance periods. On this basis it broke through all bounds with the theatricality of opera. It altered the mindset and enriched society even more. Henrich's line of thought may be germane to parts of the character of the West; but it doesn't look as fully germane to the origin of science and its enriching of the West. It is more likely that the West turned “weird” because of the extraordinary success of trade first, with art following and then science that came into being for more complex reasons as growing out of these forces.
Art and science expanding together if with a time delay
Arts and the art of living have apparently greatly expanded together. There is material and intellectual richness in this founding time’s atmosphere. A public-minded spirit is abundant everywhere in the West, in its first golden days, and surely must be an originator of the spirit that led to science. Albeit it is even of longer standing with the shining examples of communal cathedral building. In fact, this line of public-mindedness, exemplified in Rembrandt’s Night Watch, is one that I will argue strongly for.
In addition, the moods, that the arts created, have seminally contributed to the motivation to understand the world. This “flair in the air” is an under-appreciated human capital.
Some of the arguably first scientific discoveries have, in fact, happened through art, such as the discovery of 3D representation in the Renaissance, starting around 1300. The dwarf Giotto and the giant Alberti are usually remembered for it. Another is the wealth of harmonies that could be created from rational ratios and tensions of vibrating strings and their measured duration in music, especially during the age of polyphony and onward, with roots even in antiquity through, say Pythagoras. Yet it took centuries after polyphony until things got more unfrozen in the West, all that music notwithstanding. The Renaissance was still largely and perhaps unexplainably inert in science, its artistic brilliance only more indirectly helpful over the longer haul. So, in my introductory chemistry classes I taught noticeable Alexandrian science in its quantitative nature, such as densities or buoyancy, but nothing that I recognize from the Renaissance. The opening of quantitative definitions of density or buoyancy will instruct young earthlings for eons to come.
Trade and info-exchange
Another idea, enriching our exploration of the birth and development of science, is the concept of "information exchange networks" and their role in accelerating scientific progress. This idea delves into how the spread and exchange of information—through trade routes, the printing press, scholarly correspondence, and early scientific societies—served as a catalyst for the rapid development of scientific thought and experimentation. It all started in earnest in Alexandria with its rich trade routes and extended networks of scholarly exchanges.
At later times the historical emergence of trade routes, such as the Silk Road, not only facilitated the exchange of goods but also the transfer of knowledge between East and West. This exchange included mathematical concepts, astronomical observations, and technological innovations.
Eventually, the practice of letter writing among scholars across Europe created informal networks of knowledge exchange. These letters often contained observations, theories, and critiques, functioning as an early form of peer review that fostered a culture of scientific debate and collaboration. They also led to the establishment of early scientific societies, such as the Royal Society in England and the Accademia dei Lincei in Italy. These institutions formalized the exchange of information among scientists, hosting meetings and publishing journals that shared scientific discoveries with a broader audience. They encouraged the cross-fertilization of ideas from different disciplines, and fostered a collaborative scientific community that could build on the work of others. This environment was essential for the iterative nature of scientific inquiry, allowing theories to be tested, refined, and either accepted or discarded based on collective evidence.
Today’s digital information networks and platforms like preprint servers, open-access journals, and scientific forums serve a similar role in accelerating scientific innovation.
Expanding of a general worldview
Several momentous happenings will have accelerated science’s advance in Europe. The dominating Islam’s higher learning was greatly reduced through the Mongol invasions. By contrast, in Europe, the Gutenberg printing press brought the writings of antiquity to broader readership, enhancing knowledge and discourse just at a time when the fall of Constantinople brought learned migrants to Europe’s heartland. And perhaps above all, there was the discovery of America through the scientific instrument of the oceangoing sail ship. The discovery showed that there exist worlds beyond the religiously revealed. The newly encountered cultures were teeming with cities and a panoply of religions and strange habits such as nudity or cannibalism, questioning the existing world view. The word discovery was invented as a result (D Wootton), and immediately misused to also mean the appropriation of said provinces. Here, discovery meant subjugation.
There remains an open question for the lack of Spain in the outburst of scientific creativity. After all, it led in the precipitating naval discoveries and was a beacon of art. Yet a slow decline, that somewhat later also affected Italy, becomes apparent. It even predates the defeat of the Armada in 1588. Something in its complex culture didn’t succeed. Was it too much subservience to religion or emperor? Like the de-emphasis of The Holy Romans through the devastations of the 30 Year War, Spain dropped out of contention and allowed a shift of progress to Western Europe.
Some of the most precipitating advances came in the form of practicalities from China with the discovery of gun powder and reading glasses for eyes, say, centuries before the scientific movements in the West. But it took the West to eventually discover their incendiary nature. It was Netherlander lens and spectacle makers who found that two of their lenses, one behind the other, could phenomenally magnify an image.
This reference, again to artisans, reminds of Zilsel’s thought that artisans became creative through better education and some financial independence. The telescopes allowed Galileo and others to study the night sky and make momentous discoveries. Great applications certainly helped science get unmoored. This Amsterdam / Venice flare-up of innovation is a major contributor to our present high living standards in material riches and understanding.
The West had quickly utilized gun powder for musket or cannon use, even when the Chinese focused yet more on festive firework displays. And so, cannon aim became an urgent scientific enterprise. Portuguese were the first to study trajectories, something Galileo made clear that Aristotle had made a fool of himself with the assertion that a projectile ascends linearly until it has spent its momentum and then suddenly starts to drop (the real trajectory as any rock throwing youth knows is something like bending over or in more learned lingo: near parabolic).
For my purpose this integral description of Europe, becoming educated, rich and restive, forms the backbone of the West’s bursting forward. Yet when I look at this comprehensive enrichment of intellectual soil, I should relax and say: there it is and here we have it. Science was preordained from a collection of factors that we can understand! But it still doesn’t work fully, for me at least. Wasn’t there something more explosive yet that took place around 1600?
Something more explosive yet?
It interests me because, after all, science history is not something dead but living forever in all introductory science instruction. Emperors go and lose relevance, Boyle’s law, and his quest for establishing the concept of scientific inquiry, stays. His methodological rigor, commitment to empirical evidence, and ethical stance on the sharing of scientific knowledge have had a lasting impact on the development of science. By advocating for experimentation and the mathematical formulation of natural laws, Boyle helped to transition science from a practice dominated by speculative philosophy to one grounded in empirical evidence and systematic inquiry.
And one can make the point that science’s logic is a founding element in many derived institutions such as traffic rules, the economy, law, education or simply the whole complex that maintains our good life. And as I have outlined repeatedly, it was a two-way street, a reciprocal stimulation within all cultural achievements that led to a great symbiosis amongst them. An example is the development of increasingly sophisticated accounting methods in business and trade. Lavoisier’s tax tables predisposed him to apply meticulous accounting also to chemical reactions and this is how he found out about the law of conservation of mass.
There are many aspects that make me feel somewhat comfortable with our knowledge of how science originated. But I still am left with the nagging feeling that something is still left out. In my unsatisfied quest for the origins of the appearance of science proper, I shall in my last installment of Changing our Animal Behavior, visit something that came to me suddenly and surprised me in the writing.
𓆤 𓆤 𓆤 𓆤