this post was submitted on 09 Apr 2025
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The scientific tradition was also exported to the rest of the world from Europe(and parts of Asia, I suppose) via colonialism, I do not see anyone complaining about that.
Is that why we use Indian numerals?
You mean arabic?
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hindu%E2%80%93Arabic_numeral_system
So yeah I read all that very interesting. It still seems to suggest the 1,2,3 that we use are called arabic, but still thanks for the wiki link.
Yes we call them Arabic because Europe got them from Arab mathematicians but they got them from India so for the purpose of showing math/science outside of Europe I highlighted India
Yes, Hindus call them arabic numerals as well, because their own numbering system looks different.
I am not dismissing the achievements of other civilisations, but this is hardly a counterargument.
India is, indeed, the only place on earth where a rationalistic tradition emerged similar to the Greek philosophical tradition, and they did achieve quite a lot in maths as well I believe, but their intellectual tradition did not achieve what the western intellectual tradition did. This is just a fact.
Modern science is a result of two thousand years of intellectual work, during which a rich variety of conceptual tools was formed on the basis of which science emerged. It did so out of a rationalistic tradition, that has been developed by Europeans, other Mediterranean peoples and Arabs, but the centre of which was western Europe.
The Enlightenment was only 300 years ago, and it only happened because the printing press (Invented in China, refined by Korea) allowed knowledge to spread outside of their given libraries
Before that Europe was very much anti-rationality and anti-science
Why did it not happen in China then? Also, as far as I understand, the Gutenberg press was made independently from the Chiense, and in any case this is not the sole reason for the enlightenment clearly.
Europe was not "anti-rationality", because western Europe has always had a very rationalistic culture it inherited the Greek philosophical tradition, western Christianity is quite rationalistic as well, compared to other religions and orthodox Christianity.
Without the medieval intellectuals, the universities, the scholastics, there would be no modern science. It did not suddenly appear out of nowhere, and it did take 2000 years of the development of conceptual tools for it to emerge.
2000 years not since the enlightenment, but since the beginning of philosophy in Greece, clearly.
This is just absurd. How can you say Europe was anti-science, if modern science did not exist, so it was impossible to be opposed to it? And Europe was literally the region with the most rationalistic intellectual culture in the world.
If you do not know something, do not pretend you do.
I just find this line comical when you pretend Europe was progressive from the Greeks through to modern times rather than seeing the Enlightenment as a return to those values
You should look into that Galileo guy and see how accepting of science Europe was
Progress is a modern idea. The enlightenment was not a return to these values, because it was very different from what came before it.
You might be confusing rennaisance and enlightenment.
You might want to look into that Copernicus guy:
In 1533, Johann Albrecht Widmannstetter delivered a series of lectures in Rome outlining Copernicus' theory. Pope Clement VII and several Catholic cardinals heard the lectures and were interested in the theory. On 1 November 1536, Nikolaus von Schönberg, Archbishop of Capua and since the previous year a cardinal, wrote to Copernicus from Rome:
Also, you should look into that Galileo guy yourself. He and his inquires were favoured by the church, until they weren't. It was a complicated matter, and to say that the church was opposed to science is just false.
what a strange troll.