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Middle Ages

Decent Essays

There is a commonly held idea that the middle ages in Europe (476 CE-1500 CE) were a backwards period of stagnation and scientific degeneracy, caused by the brutal suppression of science by the evil Catholic Church, and eventually overcome due to the work of enlightened thinkers such as Galileo and Newton. This idea of these ‘dark ages’ has existed since the 14th century, and has continued to gain popularity through the early modern era as historians used it to compare their ‘enlightened times’ to the ‘dark and primitive ages’ of the past. While this narrative is not entirely without merit, the number of manuscripts produced during this time period was significantly lower than the times proceeding it (Buringh, Zanden. 2009), it both fails …show more content…

First is that ‘scientific progress during the middle ages’ or ‘the middle ages’ refers specifically to the middle ages in Europe, and that, for the purposes of this essay, Europe does not include the Byzantine Empire or Russia. The reason for this distinction is that Europe, with the exception of these two places, was unified by the Catholic faith and latin language. Areas that are outside the influence of the Catholic Church are therefore outside the scope of the argument being refuted by this essay. The reason for the exclusion of the rest of the world is that the argument that there was no scientific progress in the middle ages is inherently focused entirely on Europe as it ignores the developments made by Islamic scholars during this time period, including the creation of an early version of the modern scientific method. Second is that ‘science’ or its variants refer specifically to the modern practice of performing experiments in order to gather evidence to prove points, while ‘natural philosophy’ refers to the academic discipline of the middle ages which attempted to use logic and reason to explain the natural world. ‘Natural inquiry’ is used as a catch-all term to refer to either or both …show more content…

In September of 476 CE the last Roman emperor of the west was deposed and with this, the already failing, Western Roman Empire dissolved. As discussed in Dr.Peter Heather’s analysis in Ancient History in depth: The Fall of Rome, the effects of this were felt on nearly every level in Europe but impeded the development of natural philosophy in three main ways. First is that Roman infrastructure, which had previously allowed for trade and information to freely flow throughout the empire, was suddenly no longer being maintained and defended. This left most philosophers cut off from each other and unable to collaborate. Second is that the fall of Western Rome led to the immediate and rapid de-urbanization of Europe. This is because the loss of the strong central empire led to the region almost immediately fragmenting into hundreds of small kingdoms. These kingdoms lacked the professional military of Rome, and could not collect taxes or exert control over their subjects as Rome did. With taxes no longer a major part of day to day life and unified Roman market for goods suddenly non existent, much of the population turned to farming and spread out into more rural areas. Third is that, with the loss of both the central Roman bureaucracy and market, literacy

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