Methinks there's a bit of revisionist history happening here.

The Dark ages preceded the Renaissance by quite a while and during that time, all knowledge was retained by the Church and was pretty much kept to itself.

The Dark Ages was a stagnant 500 years of ignorance and religious suppression in the West where not much was achieved in any field.

Most people may not be aware that as well as the general population, many of those monks who laboriously copied and illuminated the Bible were in fact illiterate.

Knowledge was power and not something to be shared.

A hundred years before the "official start" of the Dark Ages, pagans were being persecuted, tortured and slaughtered in Christian death camps in Skythopolis, Syria and their temples were being torn down or converted into brothels and stables. Not a pleasant time for anybody.

the truth of histry isnt to be found in words...words have allways been the domain of pr...propaganda...that being said once cheap paper from hemp was found...the restriction of the word was lesson-ed...finally we could share ideas in word..and build on others thoughts

pre this the domain of the word was restricted to those with the ability to collect it...think of missionmaries finduing new people with new inventions...like china etc..with its wood printing blocks..or its gun powder...cannon..venetian glass..algebra..porcelain..silk..hemp

the church during the long dark age's ruthlessly tried to suppres knowing...but by the same token..taught the elites..hold records..provide a elitist knowledge base..from which education/charity/and..yes war..medicinal-malfeasance/racial/religious..oppression too..expanded

its not good ..to live in the past...as much as its..not best..to fixate exclusivly..on the future...to the exclusion of the present...

currently we are under massive ..instant..censorship...but little realise it..in the wealth of our enjoined past recordings/writings/red herrings/faulse flags/black swan events..

we are..allowed..to acces..butt crumbs..of the rich bw-itccches tables..yet its still a feast

Wobbles,

I find it difficult to accept "a stagnant 500 years of ignorance … in the West where not much was achieved in any field." The fact is quite a bit was achieved in Europe. To name but two that I know of:

Bede (673-735) detects the precession of the equinoxes and links the tides to the phases of the moon.

John Philoponus (490-570) develops the theory of impressed force to explain why objects such as arrows keep moving after they have been given a shove. This overturns Aristotle's physics and leads eventually to Newton's laws of motion.

Both of these are, for the time, PARADIGM BREAKING insights rather than mere extensions of previous knowledge.

The problem with dismissing Stark's thesis out of hand is this. Few can argue that by the 12th Century Europe was the global leader in science and technology. Such leadership does not, however, spring out of the blue. It is only possible if there is an established culture of scientific enquiry and the INFRASTRUCTURE to sustain it. That culture must have been nurtured during the so-called 'dark ages'. And the infrastructure must have been built over the same period.

As Stark point out, the infrastructure of Europe's knowledge economy could not have been built without generous funding from the Catholic Church.

Perhaps Wobbles we are both blinded by our antipathy towards the Catholic Church.

As for the persecution of pagans, etc, that shows the Catholic Church was a brutal imperial power. It is not germane to the issue of whether they nurtured a scientific culture and infrastructure in Europe.

The contrast with Dar-ul-Islam is stark. Islam conquered a region with an EXISTING culture and infrastructure of science. During the early period (700 – 1000) Muslim scholars easily outshone European ones. Then science in Dar-ul-Islam died a slow death. The so-called "golden age of Muslim science" seems to have been the tail end of the PRE-EXISTING SCIENTIFIC CULTURE that Islam allowed to wither on the vine.

I've read somewhere that scientific and intellectual development seems to be associated with countries that have four seasons as opposed to just a wet and dry season. This could make sense, as in hot climates it's just too uncomfortable to try and study; all you are thinking about is a change in the weather.

Maybe the inspiration comes from passing through a cold, dark winter where one can't do anything much but to think about things to spring and summer when the ideas that have brewed over winter burst forth and are implemented.

This is just one idea. I'm sure the reasons why human development has been more advanced in some parts of the world over others are quite complicated.

Steve,

Does Rodney Stark have peer reviewed journal articles? Key civilizational writers Toynbee, Gibbon, Quigley, Wells and Mc Neil would disagree with him. Comparative Western and Sino studies indicate that China grew its knowledge gradually from ancient times and did not experience any deep Dark Ages,whereas, when it is graphed, and it has been, there is a clear drop in measures of Western innovation (Jin). I have seen primary research on the topic.

When discussing this topic, it is usual to distiguish between technology,experiment and science, as Jin did.

Stone axes are techology, alchemy is experiment. Science requires the application of theory to practice: e.g., the steam engine or the discovery of Pluto. It is this esoteric front-end that tends to lead authors to cite the Greek method.

Several technologies were no doubt developed in the DA. Incidently, I am not saying the there was no progress, only that the progress was slower than in other periods in the Western path and slower than China.

If Stark is not distinguishing between technology, experience and science, that is problematic.

stevenlmeyer,
Thanks for calling our attention to Rodney Stark’s 2004 book, and especially for your fair posts here.

I think the simple answer to your last question is that one cannot “explain why”: One cannot objectively decide which historical contribution, influence, event, institution etc. was more important than others or even decisive. As I said on another thread, in distinction to problems in science, you cannot experiment by creating another historical development (in a laboratory) replacing this or that “precondition” - e.g. by injecting Greek philosophy into another culture unrelated to Christianity and Judaism - to see how necessary the precondition was.

We have Whitehead saying “Faith in the possibility of science, generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology." (Science and the Modern World). Of course he was a Christian (although not mainstream, especially for his time), and there are atheist philosophers and historians who see it differently.

I myself prefer not so much a necessarily Christian points of view, but points of view presented by professionals of whatever world-view, even when I know that also in that case, their faith or “unfaith” will show through. Similarly, when reading about speculations related to problems with the anthropic principle: a professional speculation is for me more insightful (and - in distinction to the case of human history - I can demand that their faith or “unfaith” should not show through) than an unprofessional speculation trying to “prove” or “disprove” Divine cause and purpose.