Talk:European science in the Middle Ages

message: "During the High Middle Ages, however, the West had begun to reorganize itself and was on its way to taking again the lead in scientific discovery."
I changed it to: 
"During the High Middle Ages, however, the West had begun to reorganize itself and was on its way to become advanced again." 
You can change it to something else, but don't revert this change back because: 
1. Europe never had a "lead on scientific discovery" untill the 16th century. 
Although the Hellenistic period of the Mediterranean was impresive, it was not any more advanced then the Chinese and Hindu ciilizations of the years 200 b.c - 200 a.d 
2. The Renaissance started small in the Late Middle Ages, but it's great discoveries and advances came first after year 1500.
Therefore the phrase is biased and should be edited out. 
I Also apologize for my english.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 85.165.214.150 (talk) 17:14, 4 January 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  Eurocentric bias 

message: Here is a selection of quotes from academic work on post-Roman Europe. Beginning with the work of historians such as  Peter Brown in the 1960s, the community has increasingly rejected the popular narrative of the “dark ages" as stagnant.
The quotes were not chosen to give the details of the reassessment. They were chosen to give evidence on the current understanding of professional historians of the middle ages.
* From a compendium of recent papers on the postclassical world (Bowersock,  Peter Brown, Grabar): “Scholars, students, and the educated public in general should treat the period between around 250 and 800 as a distinctive and quite decisive period of history that stands on its own. It is not, as it once was for Edward Gibbon, a subject of obsessive fascination only as the story of the unraveling of a once glorious and ‘higher’ state of civilization. It was not a period of irrevocable Decline and Fall; nor was it merely a violent and hurried prelude to better things.”
* From a 2008 paper by Walter Goffart: "The period known as the early Middle Ages followed the later Roman Empire; but did it do so as night follows day or as morning follows dawn? … New stories have been told, especially in the last half-century. They have particularly affected the Roman landscape. In 1964, A. H. M. Jones published a decisive reevaluation of the late Roman world. Jones contradicted the Herder-like thesis of internal Roman decay. He argued forcefully that the later Empire was domestically sound; the internal problems of the Empire did not add up to decline. Other encouraging news soon came. As early as the 1940s, and even earlier for art history, scholars had arrived at positive assessments of the intellectual, artistic, and religious life of the late Roman world." See another of his papers and some interviews: http://www.constantinethegreatcoins.com/articles/Goffart_Rome.pdf, http://smuhlberger.blogspot.ca/2009/06/walter-goffart-on-rome-and-barbarians.htm
* Christopher Wickham, in his 2009 popular history of years 400-1000: “It is now possible to write a different sort of early medieval history. Until the 1970s its lack of evidence put researchers off; and a moralizing historiography dependent on the storyline of failure saw the centuries between 400/500 and 1000 as inferior. … It seemed obvious that it was a Bad Thing, and that European and Mediterranean societies took centuries to recover from it.”
* From a review of Julia Smith’s “Europe After Rome” (not available online sadly): "The 500 years following the collapse of the Roman Empire are still popularly perceived as Europe's 'Dark Ages', dominated by barbarian invaders, superstition and the struggle for existence. Julia Smith sweeps away this view, and instead reveals a time of great vitality and cultural diversity. She introduces us to men and women of all levels of society from slave to emperor, and through a huge range of original sources, allows them to speak to us in their own words."
* Or see any of the following: Matthew Innes’ Int. Early Med. West. Eur., Walter Ullmann, Jean-Pierre Devroey, Philippe Depreux, practically anyone who works in medieval history... Almost any history book on the middle ages begins with a caution about seeing them through the modernist teleology.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.84.219.233 (talk) 21:23, 30 January 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  "Stagnation" 

message: I have provided some text in Carl Sagan's page with academic sources on Carl Sagan's misconceptions about the history of science in Middle Ages, and his belief in the "Conflict thesis" which is utterly refuted by the historians of science.
However, I fear that there are some with no knowledge about the history of science, who probably will not grasp that Sagan did indeed hold some popular misconception (Dark Ages Myth, Hyapatia-myth, Library of Alexandria-myth and especially the Conflict Thesis he believed in)
Here it is:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Talk:Carl_Sagan#Criticism_section_again
Perhaps you all should attend the discussion and clarifying the issue.
En historiker (talk) 22:45, 30 December 2017 (UTC)
thread_title: To the editors with interest of the history of science in European Middle Ages

message: from: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User_talk:William_M._Connolley#About_almagest
So:
It was not "Almagest"(Ptolemy) that laid the frames for Copernicus, but “Epitome of the Almagest"(Peuerbach and Regiomontanus) that did it. - And I provided the two sources.
"Almagest" and “Epitome of the Almagest" are not the same works.
Do you have objections?
En historiker (talk) 21:48, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: This is re my revert of your edit, . I've confused two works, but I don't see how that really helps you. Your chain of causation has become too tenuous: Byzantium preserved the Almagest, but that wasn't what sparked Copernicus, it was the Epitome. So why isn't that WP:SYN? William M. Connolley (talk) 22:04, 13 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  About Almagest 

message: Is this true:
: as Galileo cited Philoponus substantially in his works when Galileo also argued why Aristotelian physics was flawed during the Scientific Revolution?
I've read some G and I can't recall this; but my memory might be faulty William M. Connolley (talk) 22:05, 15 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text: No-one spoke up for this, so I removed it. I then browsed the John Philoponus and the connection to Byzantium seemed rather thin, so I cut more William M. Connolley (talk) 16:56, 17 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  I agree with En Historiker John Philoponus is a well documented Byzantium scholar who did indeed criticise much of Aristotle's theory in particular his theory of motion. It was Philoponus who first developed the impetus theory, which became dominant in the Middle Ages and was the starting point for Galileo's route to his laws of fall. So please do not remove again. Thony C. (talk) 07:46, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  In that case, as I said, his page requires some work to make the connection to B clearer William M. Connolley (talk) 09:47, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
replies: text:  In the sixth century Alexandria, where Philoponus lived and worked, was part of the Byzantine Empire!Thony C. (talk) 06:23, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
thread_title:  This served as an inspiration for Galileo Galilei ten centuries later