Comments for The Not-So-Dark Ages at http://www.thecatholicthing.org , comment 1 to 13 out of 13 comments http://www.thecatholicthing.org Sun, 19 May 2013 03:49:36 +0100 FeedCreator 1.7.3 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-14519 Ivan, "passing it on" is not a merely. It required hundreds of years of travellers going accross about a third of the world well before the internal combustion engine. - jason taylor Thu, 22 Nov 2012 18:05:10 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2404 I think the question over there being two 'truths' -- one truth for religious ideas and another for science -- was confronted when Muslim philosophers like Averroes came in contact with thinkers like Aquinas. - Leonard K Sat, 25 Jul 2009 10:42:33 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2296 Christopher Dawson made this same argument--that it was Arabic speaking Christians that transmitted Greek philosophy to the Western Europeans, and that Islam did not pursue or achieve a synthesis with Greek philosophy-- more than 75 years ago in "The Making of Europe". I'm heartened to see European scholars rediscovering and reasserting this fact. - Nicolas Albonico Mon, 13 Jul 2009 05:50:47 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2291 Thank you again, Fr. Schall. Among the new, persuasive French writers one would also find the philosopher Chantal Delsol, whose books ISI has wisely been translating for us. Icarus Fallen is as great a help to negotiating the post-modern morass as one could wish for. RT - Ronald Thomas Sat, 11 Jul 2009 11:59:19 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2290 We traverse dangerous territory when we put our accidentals in front of Truth. Fr. Schall wrote a book called The Order of Things, and in it he puts things in such an order that a review of David Levering Lewis would be so utterly out of order as to make.............I can't even finish this sentence........ - Achilles Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:03:33 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2289 Jargon and semantic gymnastics aside, Fr. Schall's essay stands as solid commentary. The strong currents of multi-clturalism in the rivers of modern thought are not even tributaries to the ocean of truth revealed by the Great Western Tradition. That this notion brands us "racists" or "extremists" or "opressors" or whatever other idiotic label speaks nothing of the truth. Thank you so much Fr. Schall. - Achilles Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:02:47 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2288 Willie, The 'Arabic' number system is Indian in origin, it's the work of Hindus. Muslims merely passed it on. As for Algebra, it's a case of giving too much credit to children. Try working through a geometry book from from the ancient Greeks, it is subtle and challenging even for university students. Then go through the basic algebra credited to Muslims. An average 12 year old kid can master that stuff in a couple of months. But its a far cry from the vertiginous algebra taught in colleges now. - Ivan Sat, 11 Jul 2009 01:01:56 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2287 Fr Schall’s ‘not-so-dark ages’ are topical, too — apart from their synthesis of Platonic-Aristotelian political thought. Aquinas’s personalist principle is mediaevalism’s most gravid idea, with origins in Trinitarian anthropology: citizens are inter-dependent ‘individuals’ within society, while autonomous, free-willed ‘persons’: an analogy based on the Trinity. This feudal dynamism connects conservatism’s emphasis on individualism to a larger communal framework, based on Thomistic personalism. - Stephen MacLean Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:06:41 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2286 Another book making somewhat the same argument is Aristotle's Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Middle Ages (Paperback) by Richard E. Rubenstein - DPence Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:06:05 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2285 Very interesting. Fr. Schall should review a recent book by Dr. David Levering Lewis that, I think, discusses this topic. - Dan Deeny Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:05:46 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2284 What does Fr. mean: "Islamic scholars, as Gueguenheim shows, go through contortions to demonstrate that the Koran preceded the Old and New Testament. Therefore, Jews and Christians must have deliberately rewritten the text so that the Muslim interpretation of its own revelation would still hold." - W. Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:05:29 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2283 In a medieval phil class during study of Avicenna, Averroes, and Al-Ghazali, I came across some criticisms and read similar points as Fr. Schall: "Islam was not itself able to assimilate the Greek heritage. It proved too dangerous to the Koranic understanding of reality." - W. Fri, 10 Jul 2009 17:05:08 +0100 http://www.thecatholicthing.org/columns/2009/the-not-so-dark-ages.html#comment-2281 This is a great article because it sets the historical record straight. It cannot be denied that Islamic culture contributed greatly to the science, medicine and philosophy of the West during the Middle Ages. For sure we got Arabic numbers and Algebra from Islamic culture. In these days when it is in vogue to denigrate Western culture, one needs to be reminded that philosophy, science and medicine originated with Greek culture and was borrowed by Islam, and Roman culture contributed to our laws. - Willie Fri, 10 Jul 2009 08:26:53 +0100