[Tloewald]

The article answers a question about the middle ages. No dishonesty there.

The LINK title starts with "Middle Ages". The author points out that while the Dark Ages (500-1000) were indeed dark, the Middle Ages weren't, and that the Church, far from suppressing early scientific investigation nurtured it. If the link title omitted the first two words it might be accused of dishonestly, but since it does not, it's your reading comprehension that's the problem.

[jackjeff]

The "Middle Ages" refers to the period starting with the collapse of the Western Roman Empire and ending with the discovery of America. So 5th to 15th century.

So conveniently redefining Middle Ages to start in the 12th century to make a point is not particularly honest. There was no scientific progress for more than half of the period commonly known as "Middle Ages" in Western Europe. That's a fact not disputed by the article.

Addendum: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Middle_Ages Middle Ages period is 5th to 15th century.

[Tloewald]

I usually understand the period from 500 to 1000 or so to be the Dark Ages (which weren't so bad as all that) and the period from 1000 to whenever the renaissance is considered to start to be the Middle Ages. While the dictionary definition might support your literal interpretation (with what I call the Middle Ages being the "high" middle ages, it seems to me that my understanding is pretty common, and jibes with the author of this piece who goes on to discuss exactly which periods he (or she) is referring to.

In any event, the writer of the original piece shows that significant advancement occurred during SOME of the middle ages, so my original point stands.

[coliveira]

"ending with the discovery of America"... I don't know what you learned in school, but the end of middle ages had nothing to do with America. What caused the end of the middle ages was the cultural renaissance of Europe. By the time America was discovered, the middle ages were finished for a few decades at least.

[dragonwriter]

> What caused the end of the middle ages was the cultural renaissance of Europe.

The Renaissance in Italy started well before the usual end date for the Middle Ages. There's a lot of things that motivate the dating of the end of the Middle Ages -- the discovery of the New World, the spread of the Renaissance to much of Europe, the completion of the reconquista, and a number of other things contribute.

[vorg]

Probably discovering the New World and movable type printing together had the most impact in ending the "Middle Ages" in Western Europe.

[vacri]

Speaking of 'not particularly honest', how about 'There are no scientific advances in Western Europe during the early Middle Ages, i.e. between 500AD to 1000AD"? It's not even a couched statement allowing a little leeway.

[Shivetya]

they key to the article isn't the years covered but the fact that the Church wasn't suppressing knowledge which many people have an irrational inability to recognize.

[Thrymr]

The church wasn't suppressing ancient knowledge for the most part, but it wasn't exactly doing much to produce new knowledge, either. That didn't really get going (in Europe) until the Renaissance and Scientific Revolution, although there was some progress in the late Middle Ages as the article points out.

For the most part, the article is about preserving and recovering old knowledge. That the Renaissance had some precedent in the late Middle Ages is not exactly new, but it does tend to be forgotten in simplified accounts.

[bane]

Right, the Church was actually in the habit of relying on "ancient" Greek sources, cherry picked to support various bits of doctrine or political stances. "Good learning" in the late middle ages meant learning these sources, which were already millenia old and long since surpassed by the Romans. But all that was lost and in the rediscovery of Western Culture that led to the Renaissance, the practice of building on more recent works, as well as reviewing ancient texts and ideas that had been dismissed by the Church helped begin the wave of humanism and inquiry that's defined Western thought since.

[scottlocklin]

Albertus Magnus, Witelo, Robert Grosseteste (inventor of the scientific method), Roger Bacon, Petrus Peregrinus, William of Ockham: obviously these guys never existed, and the foundation of the Universities in the Cathedral towns never happened.

[tjradcliffe]

The Dark Age is generally terminated at 800, with Charlemagne assuming the title of Emperor in the West. So the point that most of the Middle Ages (800 - 1200) saw relatively little scientific progress is not entirely wrong, although the article's point that the foundations of modern science were laid in the High Middle Ages (1200 - 1380) is well taken.