Medieval Times ca. 5001450

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Medieval Times (ca. 500-1450)

• It developed in closed conjunction with Christian
  thought
  
• Christian theology is dominated by the concept of
  creation
  
• All the knowledge is in the revealed book
• No why-questions
• Nature was subservient of man
• Natural theology God exists because of the order
  and harmony of the world which requires an
  intelligent being
  
• Knowledge kept by Muslims and Jews scholars and
  Christian monks

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Chinese Civilization

• They were equals to the Greeks on astronomy and
  military technology
  
• They were ahead in agriculture, iron working and
  civil engineering
  
• They lack scientific speculation, geometry
• Many descriptions of plants and animals

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Major Innovations (BCE)
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Han Dynasty (202 BCE-109 AD)

• Zhang Heng (78-139 AD) invented the first
  water-powered rotating armillary sphere,
  catalogued 2500 stars and over 100
  constellations, and in 132, invented the first
  seismological detector

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• Ma Jun (200-265 AD) improved the design of the
  silk loom, designed mechanical chain pumps for
  irrigation and created a large and intricate
  mechanical puppet theatre operated by a large
  hidden waterwheel
• Also invented the South Pointing Chariot, a
  complex mechanical device that acted as a
  mechanical compass vehicle that used a
  differential gear to apply equal amount of torque
  to wheels rotating at different speeds

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Tang Dynasty (AD 618-906)

• The four great inventions
• Compass (20 AD)
• Papermaking (200 AD)
• Movable block printing (200 AD)
• Gunpowder (300 AD)

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Song Dynasty (960-1279)

• In 1070, Su Song also compiled the Ben Cao Tu
  Jing (Illustrated Pharmacopoeia, original source
  material from 1058 1061 AD) with a team of
  scholars
• This treatise covered a wide range of other
  related subjects, including botany, zoology,
  minralogy and metallurgy

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Jesuits in China (16th.-17th. Centuries)

• A good deal of exchange occurred between Western
  and Chinese science and technology up to the Qing
  Dynasty (silk trade)
  
• The Jesuit China missions of the 16th and 17th
  centuries introduced Western science and
  astronomy, then undergoing its own revolution, to
  China, and knowledge of Chinese technology was
  brought to Europe

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Why there was not a scientific revolution in
China?

• Chinese political system was hostile to
  scientific progress (ships with more than 2 masts
  banned in 1433)
  
• The religious and philosophical framework of the
  Chinese intellectuals made them unable to believe
  in the ideas of laws of nature
  
• Individual human experiences express causative
  principles

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Islamic Renaissance

• Seek knowledge even if it is in China Muhammad
• Started in the 8th. century peaked in the
  9th--12th. centuries
  
• Appropriated knowledge from Greek philosophers,
  Indian mathematics and the Chinese
  
• Islamic rulers were sympathetic to science
• Need to develop the textile, paper, metal,
  agricultural, and shipping industries for trade
  reasons
  
• Mathematics, medicine, pharmacology, astronomy,
  optics, tides

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• Muslim rulers supported the intellectual elites
  of Christians, Jews and other thinkers together
  with Muslim scholars
  
• Distrust for natural law and casuality. Always
  reference to Gods will
  
• Acquisition of knowledge included the concepts of
  God, divine (order) purpose, design and morality
  
• Medieval scholars loved to make lists,
  encyclopedic, bestiaries

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Islamic Decline (15th century)

• After that, they only imported science and the
  kind of practical only
  
• In 1580 a chief religious scholar, the
  Seyhülislam ordered the destruction of an
  observatory three years after it was built
  
• Few printed publications on science even by the
  18th. century
  
• They use the writings of Galen to demonstrate the
  existence of God via design
  
• Shiites gave reasoning a larger importance.
  Todays example Iran
  
• Modern Muslim history is one of constant
  humiliation

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• Kept religious control over science development
• Did not encourage critical thinking
• In Europe, Pagan mentality arouse around science
  the occult took a back seat
  
• Isaac Newton worked on Biblical prophesy and
  alchemy but was careful not to publish anything
  along those lines

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• Fascination with the occult, pseudoscience
• Tie Nazism and September 11 to Darwinism
• Evolution disrupts their notion of harmony,
  order
  
• Current Muslim postmodernism means, among other
  things, rejection of foreign, modern ideas,
  schizophrenic behaviors, sense of apocalyptic
  phase in history, hostility toward Western ideas
• Al Quran is considered infallible
• There is considerable religious populism

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University of Sankore (Timbuktu, todays Mali)

• 14th.-16th. centuries
• Flourished because it sat between the great
  superhighways of the era the Sahara, with its
  caravan routes carrying salt, cloth, spices and
  other riches from the north, and the Niger River,
  which carried gold and slaves from the rest of
  West Africa

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• Traders brought books and manuscripts from across
  the Mediterranean and Middle East
  
• Timbuktu was home to the University of Sankore,
  which at its height had 25,000 scholars
  
• Scribes copied manuscripts brought by travelers.
  
  
• Timbuktu became a repository of an extensive and
  eclectic collection of manuscripts.

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• Books on astronomy, botany, pharmacology,
  geometry, geography, chemistry, biology
  
• Book on Islamic practices gives advice on
  menstruation
  
• A medical text suggests using toad meat to treat
  snake bites, and droppings from panthers mixed
  with butter to soothe boils
  
• There are thousands of Korans and books on
  Islamic law, as well as decorated biographies of
  the Prophet Muhammad, some dating back a
  millennium, complete with diagrams of his shoes.

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Mayans

• Zenith 250-900 AD
• Astronomy calendars, observatories
• Mathematics vigesimal system
• Medicine casts, dentures, surgery, herbal,
  mind-altering substance
  
• Production of pigments, ceramics, textiles

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Aztecs

• 14th.-16th. Centuries
• Astronomy The Aztec calendar had 18 months of 20
  days 1 year 360 days. They added 5 days
  called the "Nemontemi", or sacrificial days
  
• Herbal medicine
• Most writings (codices) were destroyed by the
  Spaniards

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More Medieval (except Spain) Developments

• Rise of Scholasticism (11th. Century)
• It meant lack of freedom of thought
• Truth determined by logic, not observation
• Blind faith in the Authorities
• Little intellectual progress until the 12th.
  Century when first Greek text started to be
  translated into Latin at Paris and Oxford

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Physiologus

• Anonymous, written in Alexandria III-IV
  centuries
  
• Bestiary
• Etymological explanation
• Distinctive characteristics
• Trait (moralizing, uncritical tales of animals)
• Translated to all vernacular languages of Europe
• Very much used until the Renaissance
• The mother of all bestiaries

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Saint Augustine, Bishop of Hippo (Italian
Peninsula, 354-430 CE)

• God gave nature the characteristics, the power of
  creating things
  
• Believed in spontaneous generation
• The successive appearance of lower species
• Some species might not have been in Noah's ark
• Between the 5th. and the 12th. all
  western knowledge was kept in
  monasteries

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Isidore of Seville(Cartagena, Spain, ca. 560
636)

• Etymology 20 volumes. The study of the
  histories of words. He believed that the names of
  things gave some insight into their properties
  
• 1 bestiary volume
• Copied uncritically from Pliny the Elder,
  Augustine. Introduced Aristotle to Europe before
  the Arabs
  
• Believed the Earth was round

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Albertus Magnus (Germany, 1193-1280)

• Opera Omnia
• Believed in spontaneous generation, the inherited
  of acquired characters, and pangenesis

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Roger Bacon (England, ca.1220-ca. 1292)

• Opus Majus
• Popularized the term experimental science
• The incompleteness of our knowledge
• Mankind acquires knowledge by reasoning and
  experience
  
• He believed in spontaneous generation