Post by timoneill on Aug 29, 2013 8:28:11 GMT
From my latest Draper-White gadfly on Quora:
It's hard to know where to begin with that lot. It's amazing - he's constructed a whole alternative reality version of western intellectual thought accepted by no-one but him.
Any suggestions on how to tackle this guy?
The little steam powered toy you mention was an aeolipile - something already described by Vitruvius about a century before Hero. And any Christian Romans from the fourth century AD onwards did exactly what the pagan Romans of the first century BC onwards did with it - absolutely nothing.
Just demonstrating your complete lack of understanding. At that time the dominant method of thinking about physics was something called “corruption and perfection”. Even Archimedes had his principles trapped in actual constructions (fulcrums, buoyancy, water-screws, etc). What Hero did was write down the idea in terms of pressure as a precursor to idea of a force. In other words, he was qualifying an unseen thing and giving it an abstract identity. Obviously, he didn’t finish it off, since it was probably beyond his personal capabilities. But the most important point is that he was on the very brink of what it takes to figure it out.
It would take a number of developments - in mathematics, metallurgy and machine tooling - to turn the simple principle behind this toy into a working steam engine.
Not it would not. They already had it functioning as an aeolipile itself. That is a steam engine. Run a belt from a gear on the axis to a wheel somewhere and you have all you need to for an automated generator. Combine this with the antikhythera device and you can automatically compute whatever positions for the heavenly bodies without having to turn crank yourself. After that it just is a matter of realizing that you can use more general gears to do whatever computing you like. They had the technology to make a steam powered computer, they just needed the right insight to do it.
If you want to claim that it was somehow Christianity that was all that was holding them back from making this leap then you need to explain what was keeping the Romans from doing so from the first century BC to the rise of Christianity.
[...] "... the Antikythera device ..."
You have the same problem there. Mechanical orreries like that device are known from earlier references and attributed to Archimedes. So if an orrery with a geared mechanism leads to computers so readily, what was stopping the Romans from making this leap so "easily"? They'd had these things since the third century BC, so why didn't they make this "easy" leap to mechanical clocks or computers or whatever? What stopped them?
Oh that’s easy, the Greeks just needed algebra. As advanced as they were, they needed a way to perform computation at the right level of abstraction to correspond to the abstraction needed to decouple mathematics from geometry and understand the concept of forces. They needed to do what Newton did for Kinematics. Similarly for the antikhythera device. It was a marvel of arithmetic. But it was not general to the level of algebra. For that you need *boolean algebra* (which is just Aristotle’s logic combined with normal algebra.)
They were well on their way -- with more time they would have gotten there for sure. The Greeks simply were not yet ready to understand what they had in the right way yet. But there was nothing that would have stopped them from getting there in a matter of a few centuries. Unless their mode of thinking was literally eradicated -- which, in the Roman Empire, they were. They were just missing time. It was the only thing they needed.
Note that while the Hellenistic tradition continued in the Arabic territories, and they did indeed develop algebra, they never had access to Hero’s Pneumatics, nor to the Antikhythera device. So that line of development was closed to the Arabs unless they rediscovered these things for themselves (and they did not -- 5 or 6 centuries was not enough time for them.) The closest they came was in development water clocks, which just didn’t reach the necessary level of sophistication.
" ... The Arabs managed to gain access to Euclid and Diophantus, and so were able to invent algebra easily."
"Easily"? And here's the other problem with your simplistic argument: you seem to think that, in some weirdly deterministic way, that its just a matter of having the right elements (and no evil Christian influence, of course) and - hey presto! - you get an advance in knowledge or technology.
Yeah, the reason I think this is because I have an avalanche of examples at my disposal that demonstrate exactly this. This is what happens when you pay attention to what actually happened in history rather than misinterpret everything you read; or just read completely non-technical authors. (The last guy I read was an non-technical author who couldn’t decide whether Diophantus or Al Khwarizmi is the proper “father of algebra” because he couldn’t decide who made the more important contribution -- as a technical person myself, I can see that there is no question it is Al Khwarizmi, but even modern historians have a difficult time with some of these issues.)
Understand steam can do work? Presto - steam engines! Except, ummm, that didn't happen for the Romans, without Christianity there as your excuse.
How could it, if they didn’t have a mechanism to understand it? You explain to me how you understand the concepts of pressure and force without algebra? And if you *do* have algebra, the scientific method, and all the precursor observations necessary, what extra magic do you think is required to figure it out? Because that’s how it *WAS* figured out.
I see absolutely nothing here: Newcomen atmospheric engine that could not be worked out by industrial Greeks if they had a concept of forces, and algebra. The problems were worked out empirically -- so no genius, no mechanical impediments, no special resources, no special precursor technology. I simply have no idea why you think any of that would be hard for people with the right environment. And the Greeks had *most* of what they needed (just not all -- their perfection and corruption based physics, and missing the algebra piece; they were just two steps behind.)
So why didn’t the Greeks have algebra or the concept of forces? Because they RAN OUT OF TIME. The arabs showed how to do this without difficulty -- they proceeded exactly from the Greek proto-sciences.
Okay, so got geared instruments? Presto - clocks and computers! Except, that didn't happen for your Romans either.
Clocks will not happen without a consistent power source (even the Arabs used falling water) -- they didn’t have that. Computers were not happening without algebra. They didn’t have that yet. But algebra + steam power solves both problems at once.
You can't reduce the history of developments and discoveries to this childishly simplistic calculus.
Oh no? And somehow the *ACTUAL* inventors of all those things could use this “simplistic calculus”? Fascinating. Why am I not allowed to assume actual reality of how things actually happened as being an available avenue for things might have happened?
"And why were the Nestorians kicked out of the Roman Empire? "
Christology. Next question. Did you think it was because they studied Greek philosophy?
You ridiculous idiot. If I had a different Christology today, would I be kicked out of my country? Just how stupid are you? Christology was the excuse used by the REAL reason they were kicked out. They were kicked out because the Christians in charge were narrow minded idiots! You sound like one of those morons who think the US invaded Iraq in 2003 because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
Hoo boy - this is like trying to educate a kid who just won't listen. The point is that your claim that "mainstream Christianity itself was rejectionist of hellenistic tradition" is plain and flat out garbage. This is why Boethius and Cassiodorus were happily translating various works which they didn't want to see lost due to the spiralling decline of Greek literacy in the west - something which had been getting progressively more prevalent since the third century (again, before Christianity).
How do you manage to say so many stupid things is so few sentences? The *WESTERN* part of the empire doesn’t *INCLUDE* Greece. Their rate of literacy was *NEVER* anywhere close to the Eastern part. Boethius and Cassiodorus were desperately trying to revive a tradition that never existed? No -- they saw the decline of intellectualism across the board -- specifically in Byzantium. The problem was that they were far too late. Euclid, Archimedes, Diophantus, etc, were, for all intents and purposes, already lost to them. The two of them did not have the intellectual capacity to recover them even if they had access to them. And that’s the point. But contrast, 3 centuries later, the Arabs are literally translating all of these people without any difficulty at all. (That’s because the Nestorians brought all this material with them to Persia, which was consumed by the Arabic empire.)
They didn't translate the other works you mention because they were amongst the very few people left in the sixth centuy who (i) had the skill in Greek, (ii) had access to the works in question and (iii) had the time. So they translated the works they thought most important to preserve first - mainly works on logic
Holy nuts -- the stupid. It hurts. It is their *LACK* of skill that was their whole problem. Either one of Euclid’s elements or Diophantus’ Arithmetica alone is massively more important than the sum total of everything written by all non-Spanish Europeans between 300 CE and 1400 CE. Nichomacus’ entry level stuff you could almost rediscover by yourself without the need to even bother translating them (except the nonsense about perfect and circular numbers -- but that’s pure garbage, anyway). No, his work was completely *UNIMPORTANT* because even that was completely unused by anyone after him.
Euclid’s Elements is *NOT* as hard as you might imagine. The whole point of the book is that it is written with axioms, then lemmas, then theorems. By its very nature is *has* to start easy, and build up the more complicated stuff later. That’s why Elements was so important. It takes you from nothing to mastery of geometry. But it does requires either innate skill, or a competent teacher who can help guide your through the material. But these were two things Boethius was missing.
If Boethius wrote anything on logic, it did not survive retransmission. We know this, because the first medieval European to actually use (Aristotle’s) logic in a non-laughable way was Peter Abelard over 5 centuries later. And you have to ask yourself why. Is it because Boethius was incompetent? Isidore refused to transcribe him? Perhaps the church burned his manuscripts? There isn’t a good answer to this, and you should know when to cut your losses.
Boethius and Cassiodorus were incompetent boobs (perhaps not for lack of trying) and represented the absolute height of Christian thinking -- and it was pathetic.
But they didn't manage to translate anywhere near as many as they wanted to. Boethius' program of translation was cut short - literally - by being executed by Theodoric the Ostrogoth. It was that kind of period.
But didn’t Casssiodorus, the supposed Christian Intellect, follow in Boethius’ footsteps? Where were the throngs of Christian intellectuals, perhaps from the Byzantine territories? Why didn’t they just step up and fix the situation? You are make a massive “forest from the trees” error. Or course there was the occasional smarter than average Christian. Fumes of the Hellenistic influence still existed even it its death. This sort of nonsense is what Dark Ages apologists cling to. They name names, and give titles, positions, and praise endlessly. But the moment you ask for a single concrete example, they (you) fold like a house of cards. “Boethius” is not an example -- it *WHAT HE WROTE* that matters. And 10 seconds checking into this shows what an embarrassment it truly was. Boethius is *NOT* the example of the intellectual Christian you need to make your case -- he is what *COULD HAVE BEEN* an example of someone to make your case -- except he was living in an environment of non-intellectualism. He had no proper teacher, because the entire intellectual culture had been smashed.
If Boethius wanted his program to at least reach some modicum of success all he had to do was translate *ONE* of Euclid’s Elements, Diophantus’ Arithmetica or Ptolemy’s Almagest. Each of these was rich enough to perhaps at least light spark in someone’s mind. Alas, the chances that Boethius could even *read* any of those, if he could have gotten access to them is basically zero.
But the very fact that these Christian aristocrats considered this program of translation worth undertaking shows your cartoonish crap about Christianity rejecting Hellenic knowledge is simply wrong.
You can’t even see how embarrassing this is for you can you? You have been reduced to finding a few examples of really the most pathetic attempts at an intellectual display, and you use this as a demonstration that the mainstream Christian ideology of the time did not have a hand in the eradication of hellensitic/intellectual traditions that existed before them?
That you even claim such a stupid thing shows you have zero grasp of the history of western thought in this period.
I’m sorry this is really a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Unlike you, I have an actual method of testing my understanding. I can actually ask very simple questions like “what is the actual substance of intellection thought of the Christians from 570 to 1240” and actually find my answers that way. I can do things like compare the medieval thought to the Greeks before them, the Arabs who were contemporary with them, or the enlightenment period that came after them. I chase down the claims by dark ages apologists like yourself and time after time, I find them completely hollow. I actually put my understanding to the test.
You just keep spouting more and more failed Google searches, in referential tones, without a single concrete example to back up a thing you are saying. Intellectualism is meaningless if it is unassociated with a concrete intellectual output. And when I read the crap you write it is always devoid of any concrete content.
You hung your hat on Boethius and Cassiodorus and I showed you what hapless morons these people really were. And rather than step up to my challenge you play the shifting the goal posts game.
Early Christian fathers who did reject "pagan" learning lost the argument to those who saw all learning as coming ultimately from God.
You really don’t get the inanity of such a statement do you? You cannot say such things, and then come completely empty handed when challenged to produce a single hellensitic thought.
Early Christian fathers who did reject "pagan" learning lost the argument to those who saw all learning as coming ultimately from God. Here's Clement of Alexandria on the subject: [...]
I’m getting sick of chasing down your nonsense. This guy lived before Paganism was eradicated from the Christian territories. To try to make the point you are making you have to find someone from the 5-6th century saying that. Obviously Paganism still had a huge influence, even on Christians between the first and 4th century. That’s the whole point -- there was a debate about this sort of thing. The Pagans lost. And the hybrids (the Nestorians) left (and no longer exist today). By 570 CE, the last Pagan was dead, the entire Roman European Medieval territory was basically 100% Christian, and the Hellenistic tradition was gone.
You think the ones that rejected pagan learning lost?!?!? Then where’s my Euclid? Where is my Diophantus? Where is my Ptolemy? And what were the Nestorians doing hanging around Persia?
Look, you’re just too shallow to be believed at this point. Your level of incompetence has gone beyond my patience at this point.
Do me a favour - go read some books on the subject of early Christian and early medieval thought.
I’ve read plenty on this. That’s why I know Boethius better than you. That’s why I am able to track down dozens of hellenistic publications by non-Chrisitians between the 2nd and 3rd centuries with relative ease (I knew where to look, obviously.) That’s why I’m not mystified by the dates 570 CE and 1240 CE while you are. That’s why I can see the significance of Euclid, Diophantus and Ptolemy, while you cannot. That’s why I don’t quote people from the wrong period saying wrong things that don’t help my case.
I’m not the one intruding on your posts, and I am hardly going to take advice from a brainless boor such as yourself.
Just demonstrating your complete lack of understanding. At that time the dominant method of thinking about physics was something called “corruption and perfection”. Even Archimedes had his principles trapped in actual constructions (fulcrums, buoyancy, water-screws, etc). What Hero did was write down the idea in terms of pressure as a precursor to idea of a force. In other words, he was qualifying an unseen thing and giving it an abstract identity. Obviously, he didn’t finish it off, since it was probably beyond his personal capabilities. But the most important point is that he was on the very brink of what it takes to figure it out.
It would take a number of developments - in mathematics, metallurgy and machine tooling - to turn the simple principle behind this toy into a working steam engine.
Not it would not. They already had it functioning as an aeolipile itself. That is a steam engine. Run a belt from a gear on the axis to a wheel somewhere and you have all you need to for an automated generator. Combine this with the antikhythera device and you can automatically compute whatever positions for the heavenly bodies without having to turn crank yourself. After that it just is a matter of realizing that you can use more general gears to do whatever computing you like. They had the technology to make a steam powered computer, they just needed the right insight to do it.
If you want to claim that it was somehow Christianity that was all that was holding them back from making this leap then you need to explain what was keeping the Romans from doing so from the first century BC to the rise of Christianity.
[...] "... the Antikythera device ..."
You have the same problem there. Mechanical orreries like that device are known from earlier references and attributed to Archimedes. So if an orrery with a geared mechanism leads to computers so readily, what was stopping the Romans from making this leap so "easily"? They'd had these things since the third century BC, so why didn't they make this "easy" leap to mechanical clocks or computers or whatever? What stopped them?
Oh that’s easy, the Greeks just needed algebra. As advanced as they were, they needed a way to perform computation at the right level of abstraction to correspond to the abstraction needed to decouple mathematics from geometry and understand the concept of forces. They needed to do what Newton did for Kinematics. Similarly for the antikhythera device. It was a marvel of arithmetic. But it was not general to the level of algebra. For that you need *boolean algebra* (which is just Aristotle’s logic combined with normal algebra.)
They were well on their way -- with more time they would have gotten there for sure. The Greeks simply were not yet ready to understand what they had in the right way yet. But there was nothing that would have stopped them from getting there in a matter of a few centuries. Unless their mode of thinking was literally eradicated -- which, in the Roman Empire, they were. They were just missing time. It was the only thing they needed.
Note that while the Hellenistic tradition continued in the Arabic territories, and they did indeed develop algebra, they never had access to Hero’s Pneumatics, nor to the Antikhythera device. So that line of development was closed to the Arabs unless they rediscovered these things for themselves (and they did not -- 5 or 6 centuries was not enough time for them.) The closest they came was in development water clocks, which just didn’t reach the necessary level of sophistication.
" ... The Arabs managed to gain access to Euclid and Diophantus, and so were able to invent algebra easily."
"Easily"? And here's the other problem with your simplistic argument: you seem to think that, in some weirdly deterministic way, that its just a matter of having the right elements (and no evil Christian influence, of course) and - hey presto! - you get an advance in knowledge or technology.
Yeah, the reason I think this is because I have an avalanche of examples at my disposal that demonstrate exactly this. This is what happens when you pay attention to what actually happened in history rather than misinterpret everything you read; or just read completely non-technical authors. (The last guy I read was an non-technical author who couldn’t decide whether Diophantus or Al Khwarizmi is the proper “father of algebra” because he couldn’t decide who made the more important contribution -- as a technical person myself, I can see that there is no question it is Al Khwarizmi, but even modern historians have a difficult time with some of these issues.)
Understand steam can do work? Presto - steam engines! Except, ummm, that didn't happen for the Romans, without Christianity there as your excuse.
How could it, if they didn’t have a mechanism to understand it? You explain to me how you understand the concepts of pressure and force without algebra? And if you *do* have algebra, the scientific method, and all the precursor observations necessary, what extra magic do you think is required to figure it out? Because that’s how it *WAS* figured out.
I see absolutely nothing here: Newcomen atmospheric engine that could not be worked out by industrial Greeks if they had a concept of forces, and algebra. The problems were worked out empirically -- so no genius, no mechanical impediments, no special resources, no special precursor technology. I simply have no idea why you think any of that would be hard for people with the right environment. And the Greeks had *most* of what they needed (just not all -- their perfection and corruption based physics, and missing the algebra piece; they were just two steps behind.)
So why didn’t the Greeks have algebra or the concept of forces? Because they RAN OUT OF TIME. The arabs showed how to do this without difficulty -- they proceeded exactly from the Greek proto-sciences.
Okay, so got geared instruments? Presto - clocks and computers! Except, that didn't happen for your Romans either.
Clocks will not happen without a consistent power source (even the Arabs used falling water) -- they didn’t have that. Computers were not happening without algebra. They didn’t have that yet. But algebra + steam power solves both problems at once.
You can't reduce the history of developments and discoveries to this childishly simplistic calculus.
Oh no? And somehow the *ACTUAL* inventors of all those things could use this “simplistic calculus”? Fascinating. Why am I not allowed to assume actual reality of how things actually happened as being an available avenue for things might have happened?
"And why were the Nestorians kicked out of the Roman Empire? "
Christology. Next question. Did you think it was because they studied Greek philosophy?
You ridiculous idiot. If I had a different Christology today, would I be kicked out of my country? Just how stupid are you? Christology was the excuse used by the REAL reason they were kicked out. They were kicked out because the Christians in charge were narrow minded idiots! You sound like one of those morons who think the US invaded Iraq in 2003 because Saddam had weapons of mass destruction.
Hoo boy - this is like trying to educate a kid who just won't listen. The point is that your claim that "mainstream Christianity itself was rejectionist of hellenistic tradition" is plain and flat out garbage. This is why Boethius and Cassiodorus were happily translating various works which they didn't want to see lost due to the spiralling decline of Greek literacy in the west - something which had been getting progressively more prevalent since the third century (again, before Christianity).
How do you manage to say so many stupid things is so few sentences? The *WESTERN* part of the empire doesn’t *INCLUDE* Greece. Their rate of literacy was *NEVER* anywhere close to the Eastern part. Boethius and Cassiodorus were desperately trying to revive a tradition that never existed? No -- they saw the decline of intellectualism across the board -- specifically in Byzantium. The problem was that they were far too late. Euclid, Archimedes, Diophantus, etc, were, for all intents and purposes, already lost to them. The two of them did not have the intellectual capacity to recover them even if they had access to them. And that’s the point. But contrast, 3 centuries later, the Arabs are literally translating all of these people without any difficulty at all. (That’s because the Nestorians brought all this material with them to Persia, which was consumed by the Arabic empire.)
They didn't translate the other works you mention because they were amongst the very few people left in the sixth centuy who (i) had the skill in Greek, (ii) had access to the works in question and (iii) had the time. So they translated the works they thought most important to preserve first - mainly works on logic
Holy nuts -- the stupid. It hurts. It is their *LACK* of skill that was their whole problem. Either one of Euclid’s elements or Diophantus’ Arithmetica alone is massively more important than the sum total of everything written by all non-Spanish Europeans between 300 CE and 1400 CE. Nichomacus’ entry level stuff you could almost rediscover by yourself without the need to even bother translating them (except the nonsense about perfect and circular numbers -- but that’s pure garbage, anyway). No, his work was completely *UNIMPORTANT* because even that was completely unused by anyone after him.
Euclid’s Elements is *NOT* as hard as you might imagine. The whole point of the book is that it is written with axioms, then lemmas, then theorems. By its very nature is *has* to start easy, and build up the more complicated stuff later. That’s why Elements was so important. It takes you from nothing to mastery of geometry. But it does requires either innate skill, or a competent teacher who can help guide your through the material. But these were two things Boethius was missing.
If Boethius wrote anything on logic, it did not survive retransmission. We know this, because the first medieval European to actually use (Aristotle’s) logic in a non-laughable way was Peter Abelard over 5 centuries later. And you have to ask yourself why. Is it because Boethius was incompetent? Isidore refused to transcribe him? Perhaps the church burned his manuscripts? There isn’t a good answer to this, and you should know when to cut your losses.
Boethius and Cassiodorus were incompetent boobs (perhaps not for lack of trying) and represented the absolute height of Christian thinking -- and it was pathetic.
But they didn't manage to translate anywhere near as many as they wanted to. Boethius' program of translation was cut short - literally - by being executed by Theodoric the Ostrogoth. It was that kind of period.
But didn’t Casssiodorus, the supposed Christian Intellect, follow in Boethius’ footsteps? Where were the throngs of Christian intellectuals, perhaps from the Byzantine territories? Why didn’t they just step up and fix the situation? You are make a massive “forest from the trees” error. Or course there was the occasional smarter than average Christian. Fumes of the Hellenistic influence still existed even it its death. This sort of nonsense is what Dark Ages apologists cling to. They name names, and give titles, positions, and praise endlessly. But the moment you ask for a single concrete example, they (you) fold like a house of cards. “Boethius” is not an example -- it *WHAT HE WROTE* that matters. And 10 seconds checking into this shows what an embarrassment it truly was. Boethius is *NOT* the example of the intellectual Christian you need to make your case -- he is what *COULD HAVE BEEN* an example of someone to make your case -- except he was living in an environment of non-intellectualism. He had no proper teacher, because the entire intellectual culture had been smashed.
If Boethius wanted his program to at least reach some modicum of success all he had to do was translate *ONE* of Euclid’s Elements, Diophantus’ Arithmetica or Ptolemy’s Almagest. Each of these was rich enough to perhaps at least light spark in someone’s mind. Alas, the chances that Boethius could even *read* any of those, if he could have gotten access to them is basically zero.
But the very fact that these Christian aristocrats considered this program of translation worth undertaking shows your cartoonish crap about Christianity rejecting Hellenic knowledge is simply wrong.
You can’t even see how embarrassing this is for you can you? You have been reduced to finding a few examples of really the most pathetic attempts at an intellectual display, and you use this as a demonstration that the mainstream Christian ideology of the time did not have a hand in the eradication of hellensitic/intellectual traditions that existed before them?
That you even claim such a stupid thing shows you have zero grasp of the history of western thought in this period.
I’m sorry this is really a case of the pot calling the kettle black. Unlike you, I have an actual method of testing my understanding. I can actually ask very simple questions like “what is the actual substance of intellection thought of the Christians from 570 to 1240” and actually find my answers that way. I can do things like compare the medieval thought to the Greeks before them, the Arabs who were contemporary with them, or the enlightenment period that came after them. I chase down the claims by dark ages apologists like yourself and time after time, I find them completely hollow. I actually put my understanding to the test.
You just keep spouting more and more failed Google searches, in referential tones, without a single concrete example to back up a thing you are saying. Intellectualism is meaningless if it is unassociated with a concrete intellectual output. And when I read the crap you write it is always devoid of any concrete content.
You hung your hat on Boethius and Cassiodorus and I showed you what hapless morons these people really were. And rather than step up to my challenge you play the shifting the goal posts game.
Early Christian fathers who did reject "pagan" learning lost the argument to those who saw all learning as coming ultimately from God.
You really don’t get the inanity of such a statement do you? You cannot say such things, and then come completely empty handed when challenged to produce a single hellensitic thought.
Early Christian fathers who did reject "pagan" learning lost the argument to those who saw all learning as coming ultimately from God. Here's Clement of Alexandria on the subject: [...]
I’m getting sick of chasing down your nonsense. This guy lived before Paganism was eradicated from the Christian territories. To try to make the point you are making you have to find someone from the 5-6th century saying that. Obviously Paganism still had a huge influence, even on Christians between the first and 4th century. That’s the whole point -- there was a debate about this sort of thing. The Pagans lost. And the hybrids (the Nestorians) left (and no longer exist today). By 570 CE, the last Pagan was dead, the entire Roman European Medieval territory was basically 100% Christian, and the Hellenistic tradition was gone.
You think the ones that rejected pagan learning lost?!?!? Then where’s my Euclid? Where is my Diophantus? Where is my Ptolemy? And what were the Nestorians doing hanging around Persia?
Look, you’re just too shallow to be believed at this point. Your level of incompetence has gone beyond my patience at this point.
Do me a favour - go read some books on the subject of early Christian and early medieval thought.
I’ve read plenty on this. That’s why I know Boethius better than you. That’s why I am able to track down dozens of hellenistic publications by non-Chrisitians between the 2nd and 3rd centuries with relative ease (I knew where to look, obviously.) That’s why I’m not mystified by the dates 570 CE and 1240 CE while you are. That’s why I can see the significance of Euclid, Diophantus and Ptolemy, while you cannot. That’s why I don’t quote people from the wrong period saying wrong things that don’t help my case.
I’m not the one intruding on your posts, and I am hardly going to take advice from a brainless boor such as yourself.
It's hard to know where to begin with that lot. It's amazing - he's constructed a whole alternative reality version of western intellectual thought accepted by no-one but him.
Any suggestions on how to tackle this guy?
