A Space & astronomy forum. SpaceBanter.com

Go Back   Home » SpaceBanter.com forum » Astronomy and Astrophysics » Amateur Astronomy
Site Map Home Authors List Search Today's Posts Mark Forums Read Web Partners

Science and the battle against the Dark Ages



 
 
Thread Tools Display Modes
  #1  
Old September 2nd 15, 04:54 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Uncarollo2
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 803
Default Science and the battle against the Dark Ages

The following is a speech given to honors students by Adam Frank.

Adam Frank is a co-founder of the 13.7 blog, an astrophysics professor at the University of Rochester, a book author and a self-described "evangelist of science."



The auditorium lights were low as the high school students filed in -- and I was on the stage with the teachers who led the school's honor society.

My job was to give a short speech to the new inductees whose grades and activities earned them their place in the auditorium. There were notes for the speech in my pocket but when the teacher lit a candle on the table with the student's certificates, I felt something shift.

"See that candle," I told the students when it was my turn to speak. "It represents knowledge. It represents the free pursuit of knowledge and its free exchange. It represents a light in the darkness for all of us."

"But," I told them, "that light can be extinguished. In fact, many times it has. Those times are what we call 'dark ages' and they are blanketed with suffering. Your job, from this day forward, is to ensure the light continues to burn."

That experience returned to me last week as I read about the destruction of Palmyra and the extraordinary bravery of the archeologist Khaled al-Asaad. Palmyra is UNESCO's world heritage archeological site in Syria of singular importance. Dating back to the 2nd millennium BC, Palmyra began as caravan oasis and grew to become the crossroads of several civilizations in the ancient world. Today, the site is rich with artifacts of that time.

When ISIS took control of Palmyra in May, archeologists immediately feared the extremists would destroy it as they had other ancient sites. In July, UNESCO warned the site was being looted on an "industrial scale" with artifacts sold off to finance ISIS operations. Searching for Palmyra's treasures led ISIS to Khaled al-Asaad, who had been the head of antiquities there for decades. According to published reports, al-Asaad refused to tell ISIS where other artifacts where hidden. For that act of defiance, the 82-year-old researcher was publicly executed. Since then, ISIS forces have destroyed or damaged significant sections of the ancient site.

There is enough horror surrounding ISIS to stagger the heart. But the destruction of these sites represents a particular kind of crime against humanity whose significance speaks directly to the topic of this blog: science and its place in human culture. Archeology combines physical science, social science and the humanities in the service of knowledge and memory. To the best of their ability, its practitioners deploy the tools of scholarship to recover the truths of our collective past.

But these truths are exactly what the ideologues of ISIS resist. It is exactly the knowledge of what existed before that they want erased. In doing so, they've shown us what the absence of knowledge and the absence of memory look like -- they've reminded us of what a 'dark age' truly means.

In the West, we think of the Dark Ages as the period between the fall of Rome and the Renaissance. While many historians argue that this long period showed greater cultural complexity than the usual caricature, it's clear that much was lost in the early centuries. In particular, Greek and Roman knowledge from astronomy to plumbing would take centuries to recover (ironically for ISIS, the vibrant Islamic empires of the time preserved many of Hellenistic Greek's greatest works).

But there have been other dark ages in other cultures. Examples include the Bronze Age collapse of 1200 BCE and the Greek Dark Ages of 1100 BCE to 750 BCE. The periods following colonization also constitute dark ages for many indigenous peoples. As the urbanist Jane Jacobs describes them, dark ages are a kind of extended cultural amnesia.



"Dark ages are horrible ordeals, incomparably worse than the temporary amnesia sometimes experienced by stunned survivors of earthquakes, battles or bombing firestorms.... During a Dark Age, the mass amnesia of survivors becomes permanent and profound. The previous way of life slides into an abyss of forgetfulness, almost as if it had not existed."

Jacobs provides a partial list of what got lost in the "forgetful centuries" after the end of Roman civilization: "the use of legumes in crop rotation to restore the soil; how to mine and smelt iron ... how to harvest honey from hollow-tile hives doubling as fences."

In a dark age, the knowledge that supported the previous vibrant and complex society is gone. But as Jacob observes, "A dark age is not merely a collection of subtractions. It is not a blank, as much is added to fill in the subtractions." Thus in place of what has been forgotten, we find older and more brutal forms of human being flooding back.

Dark ages can happen for many reasons, all of them are catastrophic. But what dies first is a vibrant civilization's knowledge: its treasure of methods and means; the record of its curiosity in art and science. Once that is gone, once that is forgotten, the long descent into brutality and suffering can begin.

This is what ISIS is showing us. Dark ages begin with an assault on knowledge and memory. What is occurring in Palmyra has happened before. As explosions topple its walls, we can hear echoes of the Library of Alexandria's destruction and the murder of its protector Hypatia 15 centuries ago.

Knowledge gained from science and scholarship, in its most democratically practiced forms, will always be threatening to someone. That is what I was trying to tell the honors students that evening. Our defense of that knowledge, our defense of the mechanisms used to obtain it must be vigorous, continuous and carried out with both stridency and an unrelenting compassion. The world will not likely get any easier as the planet's winds change and its seas rise. We will need all our traditions of free inquiry to see us through to new opportunities.

As I told those students that night, no one asks to find themselves in the position of holding back the darkness. That is simply fate. What we can do, however, is to remain stalwart in our determination to pass the light forward to those who follow.
  #2  
Old September 3rd 15, 03:32 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Quadibloc
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 7,018
Default Science and the battle against the Dark Ages

I warmly approve of the message of that speech.

However, while we need to be mindful of the value of our treasure of knowledge...
falling into a dark age is perhaps one of the lesser threats we face. ISIS is not
in a position to do that to the world as a whole.

Of course, the fact that we're not doing anything much about global warming
could mean that in a few decades there will be a revulsion against science
should catastrophic consequences ensue. This is a classic sci-fi rationale for
a dark age breaking out. And it's so unnecessary; we don't have fusion, but we
do know how to build breeder reactors. Even Thorium breeders - which can 'burn
the rocks' if need be - are only an engineering problem today.

Why am I not too afraid of a dark age? Because we're protected against it today
for the same reason that Europe, rather than other parts of the world, was the
place where the Industrial Revolution originated. Not because of bigger brains
in the White Race - but for the geographical reasons noted in "Guns, Germs, and
Steel".

Rulers tend to be afraid of technical change, as it may upset the status quo in
which they are in power. So they tend to restrict it everywhere - China being
the classic example, but it is far from unique.

Europe's mountain ranges ensured there were several competing polities - which
meant rulers had to tolerate technological progress, in order to be able to
keep up militarily with their neighbors.

Nuclear weapons in several hands mean the same thing for the world today.

John Savard
  #3  
Old September 3rd 15, 04:02 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
RichA[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,076
Default Science and the battle against the Dark Ages

Of course the downside of the monkeys destroying their countries is they now want ours. Isn't this why they invented nuclear weapons?

  #4  
Old September 3rd 15, 12:19 PM posted to sci.astro.amateur
Mike Collins[_4_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 2,824
Default Science and the battle against the Dark Ages

RichA wrote:
Of course the downside of the monkeys destroying their countries is they
now want ours. Isn't this why they invented nuclear weapons?


You think it's a good idea to use nuclear weapons on refugees?

Refugee Blues by W H Auden

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it the
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.

In the village churchyard there grows an old yew,
Every spring it blossoms anew;
Old passports can't do that, my dear, old passports can't do that.

The consul banged the table and said:
'If you've got no passport, you're officially dead';
But we are still alive, my dear, but we are still alive.

Went to a committee; they offered me a chair;
Asked me politely to return next year:
But where shall we go today, my dear, but where shall we go today?

Came to a public meeting; the speaker got up and said:
'If we let them in, they will steal our daily bread';
He was talking of you and me, my dear, he was talking of you and me.

Thought I heard the thunder rumbling in the sky;
It was Hitler over Europe, saying: 'They must die';
We were in his mind, my dear, we were in his mind.

Saw a poodle in a jacket fastened with a pin,
Saw a door opened and a cat let in:
But they weren't German Jews, my dear, but they weren't German Jews.

Went down the harbour and stood upon the quay,
Saw the fish swimming as if they were free:
Only ten feet away, my dear, only ten feet away.

Walked through a wood, saw the birds in the trees;
They had no politicians and sang at their ease:
They weren't the human race, my dear, they weren't the human race.

Dreamed I saw a building with a thousand floors,
A thousand windows and a thousand doors;
Not one of them was ours, my dear, not one of them was ours.

Stood on a great plain in the falling snow;
Ten thousand soldiers marched to and fro:
Looking for you and me, my dear, looking for you and me.
  #5  
Old September 4th 15, 04:28 AM posted to sci.astro.amateur
RichA[_6_]
external usenet poster
 
Posts: 1,076
Default Science and the battle against the Dark Ages

On Thursday, 3 September 2015 07:21:42 UTC-4, Mike Collins wrote:
RichA wrote:
Of course the downside of the monkeys destroying their countries is they
now want ours. Isn't this why they invented nuclear weapons?


You think it's a good idea to use nuclear weapons on refugees?

Refugee Blues by W H Auden

Say this city has ten million souls,
Some are living in mansions, some are living in holes:
Yet there's no place for us, my dear, yet there's no place for us.

Once we had a country and we thought it fair,
Look in the atlas and you'll find it the
We cannot go there now, my dear, we cannot go there now.


Blah, left-wing, blah.

Muslim radicals in many countries have murdered over 2 MILLION people in the last 20 years. Allowing tens of thousands of UNCHECKED Muslim refuges into Western countries is a BAD IDEA. Besides, where the F--- are the RICH Muslim countries in this? Where is Saudi Arabia, Kuwait? Where is CHINA?? Why is it always Europe and N. America are the dumping grounds for refuges?????!
 




Thread Tools
Display Modes

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

vB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off
Forum Jump

Similar Threads
Thread Thread Starter Forum Replies Last Post
America: The Dark Ages For Science Vesele Astronomy Misc 49 April 30th 10 02:29 AM
LIN LIANGTAI LIGHTS UP THE DARK AGES OF SCIENCE [email protected] Astronomy Misc 1 March 8th 09 11:20 PM
HOW TO LIGHT UP THE DARK AGES OF SCIENCE [email protected] Astronomy Misc 0 March 8th 09 01:15 PM
Good Ol' Ed Ending the Dark Ages of Science Ed Conrad History 0 November 30th 06 08:54 PM
ED CONRAD ENDING DARK AGES OF SCIENCE Ed Conrad Astronomy Misc 0 September 1st 06 01:30 PM


All times are GMT +1. The time now is 12:12 PM.


Powered by vBulletin® Version 3.6.4
Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Copyright ©2004-2024 SpaceBanter.com.
The comments are property of their posters.