Quote:
Originally Posted by Roger Rambo
I'm not sure that's an entirely accurate assertion. I don't think medieval peasents would remotely have the education or information networks to do, or distribute scientific research.
Like it or not, monastic institutions did help create a surplus of learned men who for lack of a better word, weren't really engaged in anything all that conventionally useful. The thing is, this also gave you a body of people who could preserve knowledge, do rudimentary research within the fields of natural philosophy, along with having the network of communication between other monastic/religious groups to transmit the information on a small scale.
Maybe what they did seems pretty inefficient from our eyes, and it didn't jumpstart the scientific revolution as much as the printing press did, but I don't think it's very historically accurate to say that religious institutions did NOTHING to preserve/advance science.
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Religious institutions were the ones advancing science because
no one else was allowed to.
Did the institutions advanced science? Yes. Were the institutions the
reason scientific advancements were possible?
NO. The plain fact is that any science not affiliated with the Church was crushed, burned, and not allowed to be published.
You give the religious institutions credit because you don't see anyone else doing science; I say they don't deserve the credit because everyone else who want to do science outside the institutions were KILLED. And their books banned.
If I ban all non-Asians from practising medicine, does that mean Asians get exclusive credit for healing people?