I don't think I can think of a period of history more sneered at and looked down upon in modern times than the Medieval one. Even the name we give that period--affixed during the so-called enlightenment, I've been told--is a bit of a slighting: the "Middle Ages" are so-called because we want to see them as a middle period between the greatness of Greece and Rome and the greatness of the Modern age (beginning with the Renaissance at the earliest). Often the period is portrayed as one in which the advance of learning was halted, particularly in the sciences and in the development of technology: those enamored of science as the source of all knowledge mock the Medieval as ignorant because they didn't know Modern physics (even in the Newtonian Mechanics sense of "modern," never mind Quantum Mechanics and Relativity Theory).
I can state from experience that most people today still don't understand "Modern" physics, though these are sometimes the same types of people who sneer at the Medieval for their own ignorance. The Medieval is at a decided disadvantage in that "modern physics" had not yet been developed--well, not entirely. After all, it was Pierre Duhem--a fairly "modern" physicist of some eminence in France--who discovered that the very groundwork of Newton's force laws (which are much of the basis of modern physics) was laid in the High Middle Ages by the theologian John Buridan, who is the first person known to have formulated Newton's First Law. As for technological advances, these progressed quite nicely, and included everything from the use of water-wheels to crop rotation. Their were also advances in art, architecture, and music, much of which can easily be found to be better than their respective modern-day counterparts, if not in utility then at least in aesthetics. The differences of culture can be attributed,
at least in part, to differences in philosophy.
To be fair, there were plenty of problems in the dark ages: the plagues (especially the Black Death), the invasions by barbarians, the general squalor of some areas. Are we that much better off 1000 years later? Yes and no. We have all the advantages of 1000 years of scientific, technological, and economic developments, and (at least in the West) our standard of living is much greater than that of any Medieval king. I suspect that, barring a nuclear holocaust or other widespread tribulation, our descendants 1000 years from now will enjoy a similar increase in standard of living.
On the other hand, we still contend with many of the same problems as the Medievals did, with some unique new ones thrown in for good measure. There is the possibility of nuclear war, though at present none of the parties posses such weapons seems overly inclined to begin such a thing. We may have discovered a cure for the plague, but HIV is quite prevalent, and STIs are borderline rampant even in the "developed" world. We still see a struggle between the Western powers and Islam, though the form of the struggle has changed a bit. And it seems to me at least that few people take comfort knowing that Hitler was the ruler of one of the "civilized" world powers, and not the modern equivalent of the Huns, the Goths, or the Vikings. The struggle against communism has nearly ended, and their body count exceeds 100 million
of their own citizens. As for the question of squalor, it's certainly present in our shining cityscapes (look no further than Detroit to pick one city from the wealthiest country in the world), which is all the more shameful in that our resources are great enough to overcome such things.
This is not to say that I am pining for the Medieval period, any more than I wish I could live 1000 years in the future. Every age has its greatness and its beauty; so too does every age have its decadence, its decay, and its sorrows. But no age can claim to have built itself up while ignoring wholesale the contributions of the past. Without the "Middle Ages" there could be no "Modern Age."
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This
originally appeared on my
Equus nom Veritas blog.
Tags: Musings Culture
