AW: [meteorite-list] RE: Doing the rounds

From: Martin Altmann <altmann_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu May 4 20:26:21 2006
Message-ID: <004c01c66fda$847cc180$4f41fea9_at_name86d88d87e2>

In fact without the church, we really would live in a dark age nowadays.
Smth which is always forgotten, as the discipline of History of Science is
mainly philology, a branch which since decades isn't directly en vogue.
For a period of about 800 years the church was the only institution
collecting knowledge, doing science and educating students.
And nowadays we wouldn't for sure live in such a technically and
scientifically developed (socially I'm not so sure) world,
if there wasn't done the enormous transfer of knowledge by the clerics in
mediaeval times of the classical sciences, which the Islamic scientist
rescued and enlarged. Already before 1000 A.D. the first Arabian texts (btw.
Astronomical treaties) were translated to Latin by monks, take as an example
the manual for using the planispheric astrolabe by Gerbert d'Aurillac (950 -
1003), the later pope Sylvester II. and in the main stream later in 13.th
century it was of course also the church, who cared for translating and
spread the scientific literature from islamic occupied Spain, mainly with
the help of Mozarabs and bilingual jewish savants.
Copernicus, Brahe, Kepler weren't isolated ingenious solitaires,
they founded on a tradition and a 600 years lasting history of ideas,
collected and taught by the scholars of the church.
Without church no antique knowledge, no renaissance, no reconnaissance, no
modern science.
It is astonishing to me, how few is taught today about those for the
development of the occident most important period in history on
universities. For astronomers & physicists science starts with Newton, as
science would fall suddenly like an apple from a tree and the philologists,
who could read the texts, rather like to occupy with novels about knights
and stuff,
and the normal consumers see on cinema Giordano burning, a pissed-off
Gallilei sitting in his villa, or think, that Columbus' achievement beside
of the enormous size of his nose was, that he didn't fell off from the disk
or are lost in the mists of Avalon.
Imagine, recently I read in two independent articles in the largest German
astronomy (one was from a Prof. of physics) magazine, that in mediaeval
times people would have thought and church taught, that the Earth would be a
flat disk, cause a round world would have been inconsistent with the bible.
What an incredible rubbish!!
(that prejudice about the disk firstly appeared in 17th century).

Buckleboo
Martin


 


 

-----Urspr?ngliche Nachricht-----
Von: meteorite-list-bounces_at_meteoritecentral.com
[mailto:meteorite-list-bounces_at_meteoritecentral.com] Im Auftrag von Rob
McCafferty
Gesendet: Freitag, 5. Mai 2006 00:23
An: britishandirishmeteoritesociety_at_yahoogroups.com;
meteorite-list_at_meteoritecentral.com
Betreff: [meteorite-list] RE: Doing the rounds

Don't worry about getting excommunicated. They can't
do that unless you're already a member. Though maybe
you are.

Incidentally, the Vatican's position has softened
tremendously in the last few years.

BBC Radio Scotland had the Vatican's Meteorite
representative on at about 830am this morning. I
didn't even know they had one of the worlds largest
meteorite collections let alone a representative to
talk about it.

I missed a lot of it because out on this island, the
reception isn't great and it's even worse since I tore
the ariel off the roof putting my car in a ditch a
couple of months back. What I did pick up was that
they agree with the scientists over the age of the
Earth and theologically speaking, they have no problem
with any of the theories over the creation of the
universe or even the concept of life on other planets.

Galileo has had 10 years to recover from the burns of
hell now so I'm sure he feels pretty vindicated. House
arrest isn't so bad, not if you've got a telescope, a
microscope, some meteorites and the internet so he
must have enjoyed it about 25% by my maths.

As a scientist who is a Christian, a lot of people as
me about the church changing it's stance over Galileo.
I tend to be rather glib in my response.
The wittiest repost is along the lines of,

"He got out of Hell on appeal which is no surprise
because guess where all the lawyers are"

It's a larf innit?

Rob McC

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Received on Thu 04 May 2006 08:26:12 PM PDT


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