On 10/27/2011 5:35 PM, David Goehrig wrote:
probably:
sharp rise...
plateau...
collapse...
dark ages then begin.
As probably the only Late Ancient / Early Medievalist on this list, I feel a
need to correct this myth of the Dark Ages (which can be squarely blamed on
Edward Gibbon, and his personal issues with organized religion). As we managed
to work beyond a certain cultural bias brought on by Imperialistic 19th century
powers manipulating our perspective of the Roman world for political gain, most
historians who now study this era see it as an incredibly vibrant period of
political, technological, and cognitive change.
Most languages spoken in Europe today are a direct result of a massive growth
in technical language developed by people who married Classical thought with
new Germanic and Asiatic influences. Critical mathematical advances occurred
laying the groundwork for what would become symbolic logic and algebra.
If you focus on the then more populist and wealthy east, there is a straight
continuity. In the west, there is actually pretty radical change which gave
birth to the political structures that created the modern era (which
Classicists view as everything after 1066). While outside of Ireland, nearly
all knowledge of Greek was lost, those concepts were translated into vulgate
resulting in a vast democratization of thought. (seeds of the reformation)
dunno, I think the usual idea (not necessarily accurate, but common
perception) was that, following the fall of Rome, was a time where
everything generally sucked, where disease was everywhere, where people
almost invariably had mud on their clothes and faces, where sewage
rained from buildings, ...
then there was philosophers, founding for-fathers, and industrialization
and so on, and then all of the stuff going on in the 20th century, and
then one is more-or-less at the present (which was generally much
better, apart from WWII and the 60s, where the 60s was sort of a more
recent dark-age filled with hippies and similar...).
I guess elsewhere (back in the dark ages) people were building
cathedrals, and Muslims were off doing philosophy and developing Algebra
and similar (before the crusaders went and brought a bunch of stuff back
to Europe).
but, in Rome there was concrete and some instances of reinforced
concrete, which didn't come back into being until recently. also
apparently (on a documentary I saw involving Terry Jones) they (more or
less) had hamburgers in Rome, but these were not rediscovered until much
later... (but apparently they didn't have french-fries or soda, or use
cheese slices, making the modern form potentially more advanced...).
probably in any case, people had surpassed Rome probably by the time
industry was coming around, since AFAIK Rome had never industrialized
(it is a question if Rome could have industrialized had it not collapsed
first... say could the industrial revolution happened 1000 years
earlier?...).
just in my personal perception, the "modern" era probably began sometime
between 1985 and 1995 (or, somewhere between MacOS and Win95), or maybe
with the release of Quake in 1996. or, at least, this is when the world
I as know it more or less took its current form (but I am left feeling
old, as I am old enough to remember the "end of the era" that was the
early 90s, of the gradual death of MS-DOS and 5.25 inch floppies).
then a few times I have been left thinking about how terrible the modern
times are, but then I am left to think about the 1960s and 70s and left
to think they probably would have been much worse (or, at least, a
strange-looking world I can't particularly relate to, and filled with
people with overly promiscuous lifestyles and using lots of drugs and
similar...).
granted, others who have lived through these decades might decide to
disagree with me, which is fair enough.
also, apparently, it being younger people who watched "Jeopardy" and
"Wheel of Fortune", rather than these being primarily the domain of
older people, with the people having always having watched these shows,
rather than the show preference having been a result of the aging process...
also, people who were not old-looking back in the 90s (on TV and
similar) being much older looking now (and often born back in the 60s).
it is almost surreal sometimes.
and similar...
From a pure info technology standpoint, there is no plateau, merely a paradigm
shift which enabled new sources of intellectual growth. Just like we saw with
the advent of digital computing.
this is an interesting perspective...
I had not heard this position claimed before (almost always, it was "the
Romans were smart, but collapsed, and there was a period of intense suck
until either 'the Renaissance' or the 'Age of Enlightenment'...", or
according to others, "the Protestant Reformation", since the idea is
that the Catholics have fallen into a state of heresy or apostasy).
however, granted, history isn't really my strong area...
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