Using Human History as a guide Could Our Present Civilization Fall Into a New Dark Age?

[Cathbad]

I am not sure that everyone does have a desire to live forever - keeping going can be an effort.

Sooner or later, we'd want it to end.

But with one form of "immortality", we could choose when that was!

 

[Elventine]

Well, yes, some individuals and some corporations do fudge stuff or make exaggerated claims - however the concept of the peer reviewed journal is a key check and balance. I don't know if you are familiar with it but this is how it works.

1. A scientist or scientists do some research and write a paper on it, which has a summary, methodology of the experiments (types of equipment used, how it was calibrated), the results - tables of data and graphs, discussion of the implications of this and conclusions. Generally there are references to other such papers in the field.
2. The paper is sent to a journal. The journal editor will send it out to one or more reviewers who are scientists working in the same field at different institutions from the first scientists.
3. These peer reviewers read the paper, comment on it for ease of comprehension, accuracy of theories referenced, quality and quantity of data and whether or not the data justifies the conclusions drawn. They may also repeat a subset of the experiments to see if they get the same results (within the stated error margins) of the original researchers.
4. The reports from the peer reviewers are sent back to the editor of the journal, and depending on the type of comments the editor will either schedule the paper for publication, or send it back to the submitter with the comments from the peer reviewers and will then wait for it to be re-submitted with corrections, further supporting data or whatever else is required.
5. This cycle can easily take a year.
6. When a paper is published in a peer reviewed journal, other scientists in the field will read it, may also repeat an experiment, or in some way use it in their own research. They may then write papers which reference that paper.

I have on occasion seen published papers heavily criticised by other research groups and the publicly published ding dong can last years.

These scientific journals are available to buy from the publishers and there will be copies in University research departments, University libraries and the Science Reference Library at High Holborn. In my day you could walk in the SRL for free and read any paper. Generally people write to the SRL for copies of a particular paper and a photocopy is posted. Any University will not have every copy of every journal - it is too expensive - but they will have access to online search machines and you can order individual papers pertinent to your research that way.

The scientific literature goes back to the days of Newton. You can read Newton's papers on gravity in the Royal Society journal published at that time. Rigorous science is based on making accurate information publicly available, and questioning it. So things change with time. As a chemist I am familiar with the theory of phlogiston - which was overtaken by scientific experiment showing the existence of oxygen and how combustion really works.

I am very familiar with the idea of how scientific journals are supposed to work - however - they have on many an occasion been fudged themselves with peer reviews being bought. So yeah - science needs more than journals - they need a whole new ethic system - a law and someone to enforce it.

 

[Justin Swanton]

I personally believe, based largely on pretty much every scientist I have ever known (which is quite a few though not a statistically large sample) and based on my personal view of the integrity of the majority of people I have ever met, that the vast majority of scientist have an extremely high level of both honesty and integrity. I think that it is very unfair to condemn all science and scientists based on those few that hit the headlines with one scandal or another.

Good scientist absolutely do not do this, my experience has been that most scientist say something along the lines of "this is our current best model of xxxx." It is generally the media that ignores this and reports all scientific announcements as the final word. And if you take your example of nuclear power, I think you'll find it was mainly governments that were trying to paint it as harmless not the scientists.

I like this. My own experience is that most people are not outright frauds and scumbags, conning the general public as an easier way of making a living. Those that are, are more likely to be found on the stock exchange than in a lab. With this in mind I have a few questions to which I honestly don't have the answers (always better to affirm what you don't know so you can be sure about what you do):

1. To what extent does scientific ideology affect scientists? By 'scientific ideology' I mean - as mentioned earlier - a set of ground assumptions that cannot be challenged and must act as the starting point for any academic enquiry. Non-contentious examples are, by the very nature of the question, difficult to give, so let me stick my neck out and name a contentious one: the necessity of coming up with a natural and non-intelligent cause for the 4-base genetic prescriptive language found in DNA. Non-intelligent origins for everything that exists is a given, not to be questioned. Sorry if I keep returning to Evolution for examples, but that is one field of scientific enquiry I've looked into. And let me make clear that I don't have a problem with Evolution on anything except scientific grounds. If it is scientifically proven then I'm quite happy to accept it - but that's off topic here.

2. To what extent is 'science', as disseminated by the media and discussed on forums like this one, scientific ideology (as per my previous email) rather than strict science per se? An example: NASA has spent billions of dollars looking for signs of life in the Solar System. It is assumed from the start that life must have evolved from complex organic compounds, and that all that is needed for life to spontaneously generate is suitable conditions. This is affirmed as a scientific conclusion even though the theory that affirms it is, in scientific terms - well - still only a theory.

3. To what extent are scientists whose conclusions challenge the assumptions of scientific ideology excluded from public discourse - not debarred from doing science, just kept off the public radar? Scientists like these gentlemen.

 

[Justin Swanton]

By "dark," people also sometimes mean that they were pre-Renaissance, pre-Reformation and pre-The Age of Enlightenment. These changes brought about freedom to think, freedom to worship, and free will. Only after those changes could Science flourish in the way we know now.

A fairly cursory glance at pre-Renaissance, pre-Reformation and pre-Enlightenment society, at least in European society, is enough for one to realise that the individual was free to think, free to worship and remained in possession of his free will. Shall I give some examples?

So, if by "dark", Baylor means taking away those freedoms, and ideals such as liberty, tolerance, fraternity, constitutional government and a separation of church and state, well yes, we could very easily return to that kind of society based instead upon religious dogma, superstition, intolerance, authoritarian government. I'd say that the last year and a half has already started to take us down that Orwellian road, but I'm not allowed to say any more.

Every single human society before the French Revolution was built on the assumption that State and Religion had to work together, i.e. that a religion reflected the most fundamental and cherished convictions of the majority of the citizens and the state had to incorporate these in its legal system. Those societies gave us Aristotle, Plato, the Pantheon, the Sistine Chapel, Classical music, Michelangelo, Rubens, and so on and so on. To call it a 'dark age' is, well, what can I say?

As regards intolerance and authoritarian government, once 'religious dogma' and 'superstition' were removed from the equation, monsters like Hitler, Stalin, Mao Zedong and Pol Pot became possible, and with them things like the 50 million dead in World War II, the 6 million dead in the Holocaust, the 5 million Kulak dead and unknown millions in the Gulag, the millions dead in the Cultural Revolution, the 2 million dead in Cambodia (1/4 of the population), and so on. Removing religion doth not necessarily just societies make.

What's interesting at present is how intolerant and authoritarian Western democracies are becoming towards anyone who disagrees with their ideology. The whole gay rights movement, speaking in the name of liberty, tolerance and fraternity, is using the legal system to crack down on anyone who doesn't actively and publicly endorse their position. Here's a good example, but it's only one of many.

So, yeah, we need to define what exactly a 'dark age' is.

 

[Montero]

I am very familiar with the idea of how scientific journals are supposed to work - however - they have on many an occasion been fudged themselves with peer reviews being bought. So yeah - science needs more than journals - they need a whole new ethic system - a law and someone to enforce it.

1. Specific examples?

2. When I was doing my degree and learning how to do literature surveys, part of the education was learning the aim was for each journal. Some journals specialise in, or have sections for "notes" or "letters" - that is where if you have just come up with something exciting, but have not yet fully investigated it, or have fully investigated it but are concerned that someone else might be published first, you write a "note" or a "letter" - which explains the idea, gives some of your support, and is published quickly. So that establishes you as the first person to publish. This is then followed up by a far more in depth paper. The downside of "notes" can be that there is a greater level of oopsies.

3. Standard of the journal. Not all journals peer review to the same standard. It is expensive to peer review. Some journals are gold standard, others less so.

I don't think that science needs a whole new ethics system. What it could do with is more funding that is not tied to vested interests or getting out lots of research papers very quickly. The UK used to have that. The Science and Engineering Research Council. It wasn't perfect, but it was a body which provided government grants to research groups (who had to make their pitch) to carry out a particular research project. It had room in its remit to support blue skies research that didn't have any immediate application. There was also funding from industry - known as CASE funding. Some PhD students had SERC money, others had CASE money and an industrial sponsor to whom they also sent reports.

 

[Biskit]

So yeah - science needs more than journals - they need a whole new ethic system - a law and someone to enforce it.

That strikes me as a horrendous idea:
1: Suddenly, you daren't publish something a bit wacky for fear of prosecution.
2: Since when did any law stop dishonest people? If that worked, we wouldn't have had Enron, the Credit Crunch and all those other corporate scandals.
3: If you're going to have a law, you need a court to go with it. Where's your jury going to come from? What scientific qualifications are you going to demand for all those involved? Picking apart a fraud like that is not for the faint-hearted. In fact, the main pool of talent for that will be other scientists, and the people involved in the peer-review process.
4: From the handful of scientific fraud reports I've seen, the primary motivation is fame and reputation rather than money. How are you going to write a law that prohibits people from bending the truth so that others look at them more favourably? If nothing else, the high-price lawyers from the entertainment business are going to come out swinging.

 

[Montero]

@Justin Swanton
I agree with most of your post, felt this bit below was somewhat generalised and a bit harsh. Where humans are concerned, there is rarely unanimity of behaviour or aims, and sometimes a vocal group can be seen as being the only group.

What's interesting at present is how intolerant and authoritarian Western democracies are becoming towards anyone who disagrees with their ideology. The whole gay rights movement, speaking in the name of liberty, tolerance and fraternity, is using the legal system to crack down on anyone who doesn't actively and publicly endorse their position. Here's a good example, but it's only one of many.

.

I started to watch the YouTube video but it was too early in the morning for it. Speaking from general experience of life and of discussions on forums, I'd like to say I do agree that there are intolerant groups around in many areas of opinion. There always have been. As a re-enactor I have studied the English Civil War and there was at times extreme intolerance on both sides, and vicious mud-slinging - but this was not universal.
These days we have a general expectation of freedom of speech being supported - and there have been long legal and political fights to ensure the state allows this. (Speaking primarily of the UK as that is what I know the most about.) So I would in general agree that it is sad that a group that was looking for tolerance for their cause, would then act in an intolerant way. But campaign groups do tend to be people who are prepared to fight for their cause. Also, knowing when you have won is hard - in fact there is rarely an outright clear win - or rather what you have is that a war is a series of battles.

 

[Justin Swanton]

@Justin Swanton
I agree with most of your post, felt this bit below was somewhat generalised and a bit harsh. Where humans are concerned, there is rarely unanimity of behaviour or aims, and sometimes a vocal group can be seen as being the only group.


I started to watch the YouTube video but it was too early in the morning for it. Speaking from general experience of life and of discussions on forums, I'd like to say I do agree that there are intolerant groups around in many areas of opinion. There always have been. As a re-enactor I have studied the English Civil War and there was at times extreme intolerance on both sides, and vicious mud-slinging - but this was not universal.
These days we have a general expectation of freedom of speech being supported - and there have been long legal and political fights to ensure the state allows this. (Speaking primarily of the UK as that is what I know the most about.) So I would in general agree that it is sad that a group that was looking for tolerance for their cause, would then act in an intolerant way. But campaign groups do tend to be people who are prepared to fight for their cause. Also, knowing when you have won is hard - in fact there is rarely an outright clear win - or rather what you have is that a war is a series of battles.

It's worth spending a little time and doing some digging - the point behind the Lindsay Sheperd affair is that the law was invoked against her - the C16 bill to be precise. That law, to cut a long story short, obliges anyone to use whatever made-up gender pronouns non-heterosexuals require when speaking to or about them. There are about 15 pronouns (and growing) that replace the conventional 'he' and 'she'. Anyone who doesn't comply is liable to a hefty fine and, if they don't pay the fine, to jail time. This is not just a minority group being intolerant; this is a minority group whose intolerance is backed up by the legal system. Pretty dark-agey to me.

But this is all probably getting seriously off-topic.

 

[Dave]

A fairly cursory glance at pre-Renaissance, pre-Reformation and pre-Enlightenment society, at least in European society, is enough for one to realise that the individual was free to think, free to worship and remained in possession of his free will. Shall I give some examples?

So, you were free from serfdom and bondage under feudalism? Free from religious oppression? You were free to criticise the sale of indulgences by priests? Free to refuse to venerate religious images of saints? You were free to publish work that said the Earth revolved around the Sun? Free to question that the Earth was created in six days?

However, this will inevitably become a religious argument so I had best stop here. I know nothing about the 'gender pronoun' stuff except that it is the antithesis of tolerance as I would regard tolerance. While I believe we should allow people to hold other views, and have ancestors persecuted for their religious views, I guess I am hypocritical in that I believe that only as long as they stay in their box. When it comes to education and the teaching of science, I'm pretty much up there with Richard Dawkins, although I do find him an extremely intolerant man. And yes, this is now way off-topic and becoming political and religious.

I think it was clear that @BAYLOR simply meant "Can we ever loose our collective knowledge and return to a time of ignorance?" To take us back on track, I'd say it was possible, even inevitable, and I agree with previous posts that the bigger and more interconnected our society is, the harder and quicker that fall will be. We should probably discuss that, and is there anything we can do to prevent it?

 

[Justin Swanton]

So, you were free from serfdom and bondage under feudalism? Free from religious oppression? You were free to criticise the sale of indulgences by priests? Free to refuse to venerate religious images of saints? You were free to publish work that said the Earth revolved around the Sun? Free to question that the Earth was created in six days?

However, this will inevitably become a religious argument so I had best stop here. I know nothing about the 'gender pronoun' stuff except that it is the antithesis of tolerance as I would regard tolerance. While I believe we should allow people to hold other views, and have ancestors persecuted for their religious views, I guess I am hypocritical in that I believe that only as long as they stay in their box. When it comes to education and the teaching of science, I'm pretty much up there with Richard Dawkins, although I do find him an extremely intolerant man. And yes, this is now way off-topic and becoming political and religious.

I think it was clear that @BAYLOR simply meant "Can we ever loose our collective knowledge and return to a time of ignorance?" To take us back on track, I'd say it was possible, even inevitable, and I agree with previous posts that the bigger and more interconnected our society is, the harder and quicker that fall will be. We should probably discuss that, and is there anything we can do to prevent it?

OK, let me answer this if just briefly. It can be considered on topic as it clarifies how the popularly conceived dark ages actually worked.

So, you were free from serfdom and bondage under feudalism?

We find the thought of being bound to the land horrifying as we are in a society where living an educated and 'civilised' life means living in a city. But during the age of feudalism (which incidentally gradually disappeared and was gone by the late Middle Ages) there were no cities, and virtually no occupation other than working the land. Feudalism basically functioned on the tenant system: serfs rented the land they lived on and gave a portion of their harvest to their lord, who was effectively their landlord, keeping the rest for themselves. The 'rent' was not onerous since the lord would have had no way of disposing of a vast amount of agricultural produce. In return for his rent the lord protected the peasants from bandits and judged their cases in court. He was bound by law as to how he could treat his serfs - they were not his slaves to dispose of as he saw fit. The specifically 'serf' part of the arrangement was the obligation for the serf to stay on the land he inhabited, which wasn't a problem since he had nowhere else to go. There were, again, economically no other opportunities for him.

Free from religious oppression?

If you were a Catholic in Dark Age or Mediaeval Europe you weren't oppressed. You just went to church and practised your religion.

If you were not a Catholic you were free to practise your religion but with caveats. This part is important and perhaps difficult to understand: society then was a union of Church and state. The state was under obligation to uphold the religious convictions of its citizens in the way laws were framed. So marriage, for example, was legally monogamous. Non-Catholics were free to live by their own religious convictions but in their own town areas - the famous ghettos that, incidentally, were not necessarily any worse to live in than other parts of a mediaeval town - a pretty wretched place in any case by contemporary standards.

With this in mind, non-Catholics could not hold important offices in government (obvious since government was dedicated to preserving the tenants of the majority religion) nor could they make converts from Catholics. Why? Because inevitably if you made enough converts the next step was to organise an army and seize control of the territory you occupied, and impose your convictions in state legislation. This was why the Inquisition was set up: not to force non-catholics to become Catholics, but to prevent non-catholic proselytizers from starting a religious civil war. Religious reformers then were the equivalent of Marxist revolutionaries now.

You were free to criticise the sale of indulgences by priests?

Of course. The indulgence scandal came only at the end of the Middle Ages when churchmen changed indulgences from a spiritual practice into a moneymaking venture. Luther condemned it and rightly so, but that isn't what got him into trouble with the Church.

You were free to publish work that said the Earth revolved around the Sun?

Certainly you were. Nicolas Copernicus, a Catholic priest, came up with the idea a century before Galileo and nobody condemned him. Galileo got into trouble, not for promoting heliocentrism, but by affirming that the Bible was wrong in stating that the sun rose in the east. This provoked an over-reaction from the Italian Inquisition. In maintaining the Bible was not in error they threw out the baby with the bathwater and condemned Galileo's hypothesis. Bear in mind that his punishment was to remain under house arrest, able to receive visitors. He wasn't tortured or tossed into a labour camp or summarily executed. Later on the Church changed its attitude towards Galileo, affirming that the Bible, as we do, speaks in an everyday sense about things like the sun rising in the east and setting in the west, and isn't trying to use scientific language. It was all much ado about nothing.

Free to question that the Earth was created in six days?

Sure. Very few Church fathers (the super-theologians of Catholicism) believed that.

 

[Montero]

It's worth spending a little time and doing some digging - the point behind the Lindsay Sheperd affair is that the law was invoked against her - the C16 bill to be precise. That law, to cut a long story short, obliges anyone to use whatever made-up gender pronouns non-heterosexuals require when speaking to or about them. There are about 15 pronouns (and growing) that replace the conventional 'he' and 'she'. Anyone who doesn't comply is liable to a hefty fine and, if they don't pay the fine, to jail time. This is not just a minority group being intolerant; this is a minority group whose intolerance is backed up by the legal system. Pretty dark-agey to me.

But this is all probably getting seriously off-topic.

Totally unaware of the pronoun thing. I struggled learning German and part of my problem was remembering masculine, feminine and neuter, instead of just the English neuter. My personal preference with all of this is let's just have one pronoun - neuter. So in forms of title, going for the sci-fi "gentle-being" or "honoured one" or whatever. Not quite sure what made-up word for him and her would be neuter (and a search takes me to pages about learning German....). Incidentally, having just written sci-fi, I am vaguely aware that in some circles you have to be careful how you refer to science fiction. It might even be sci-fi which causes offence.......

Returning to Dark Ages topic and Medieval History. Not something I've read much about outside of Brother Cadfael and a few documentaries on Wars of the Roses (then called the cousins wars I recently learnt) but it is fascinating how once again the popular headlines on a period are just so wrong. As a former English Civil War re-enactor I have spent an awful lot of time explaining that not all puritans wore black, that people who wore black were rich and were just as likely to be royalist. Not all puritans were roundheads. There were some puritans who supported the royalist cause. etc, etc

I wouldn't actually agree that you have to live in the city (or town) to be civilised. There is a long history of country houses for city dwellers, at least back to Roman country villas.

Dark Ages - loss of knowledge - well one of the areas of knowledge which is in very limited circulation today is all the "crafts" - low tech ways of making stuff for yourself. If we do hit an economic dark age and have a plummet in wealth, that will be an area of lost knowledge that will hurt until people work it out again.

 

[Dave]

...one of the areas of knowledge which is in very limited circulation today is all the "crafts" - low tech ways of making stuff for yourself. If we do hit an economic dark age and have a plummet in wealth, that will be an area of lost knowledge that will hurt until people work it out again.

My friend tried to find an apprentice to work with an eighty-year-old man who was the only person left who knew a particular kind of coracle boat-building. There were no applicants and those skills have been lost now. It is ironic that sometime in the future, there will probably be a university research project to try to recreate his methods again.

 

[Vladd67]

If the sun was to flare in our direction with a Coronal Mass Ejection (CME) this could cause our electrical systems to crash, which could lead to all sorts of problems. This was a fear back in 2012 as this article shows.
Solar storms could crash computer systems this year, says space expert
A mass crash of computers would have a catastrophic effect on our civilisation. One which could take many years to recover from. Sadly we seem to be drifting into a semi dark age of knowledge as more and more people seem to be proud of their ignorance of subjects not related to celebrity, forget bread and circuses we are heading for an era of reality shows and soaps.

 

[Brian G Turner]

Some odd comments on Mediaeval Europe coming up - it certainly wasn't a place of pastoral bliss - so I'll tackle them.

there were no cities

Yes there were - smaller ones in northern Europe, but some pretty huge ancient ones all around the Mediterranean in southern Europe - Italy, Spain, and France come immediately to mind.

The 'rent' was not onerous since the lord would have had no way of disposing of a vast amount of agricultural produce.

The rent was whatever the lord decided on, and there wasn't much the tennants could do about it. Lords were rarely concerned about how efficiently they used their resources.

He was bound by law

His word *was* the law. Good luck to any serf trying to argue their way out of that!

If you were not a Catholic you were free to practise your religion

So long as it was Roman Catholicism.

Pagans, heretics, and infidels were rarely tolerated anywhere within Europe. Jews were so hated in Britain that they were expelled between the 12th - 17th century.

This was why the Inquisition was set up: not to force non-catholics to become Catholics

The Dominican Order began it's inquisition in Aquitaine, on Papal orders, to destroy the Cathars. It was done to ensure there was no opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, and restore it's authority in the region. Heretics were rarely regarded as Roman Catholics.

union of Church and state

There was no union of church and state until after the Reformation. Before then, the church was very much the property of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome - and Rome was very keen to exert control in national politics.

Henry VIII made himself head of the church and state precisely to negate this influence - his reasons were selfish, and had nothing to do with the rights of his people, especially not Catholic ones.

The indulgence scandal came only at the end of the Middle Ages when churchmen changed indulgences from a spiritual practice into a moneymaking venture.

The perceived greed of the church is a repeated motif throughout the Mediaeval period. There's a reason why monks are commonly portrayed as overweight.

 

[Justin Swanton]

Some odd comments on Mediaeval Europe coming up - it certainly wasn't a place of pastoral bliss - so I'll tackle them.

Okey-doke. There's never been a time in human history of bliss, pastoral or otherwise. The best one can hope for from any human social setup is that it works reasonably well and that its lapses are not systematic nor horrific.

Now for the list:

Cities
We need to be clear about which period in the past we are talking about. Late Mediaeval Europe did have large towns/smallish cities, but the post-Romanitas to Dark Ages did not - say AD600 to the thirteenth century. Rome, once the biggest city in the Empire, dwindled to a largish village and things weren't any better elsewhere with the notable exception of Constantinople, capital of Byzantium.

Rent
Mediaeval lords weren't fools, at least not to that extent, and no, they had no use for huge piles of food they could neither eat nor sell. It wasn't about efficiency, it was simply about a limited demand.

Law
There was an unwritten contract, cemented by custom, between a Mediaeval lord and his serfs, that was not one of slavery, and which limited what he could do with his serfs. The notion of arbitrary dictatorship, built on force, is something peculiar to our own times. It was foreign to the period we are talking about.

Non-catholics
As a standing practice non-catholics were never forced to convert and were free to practise their own religion within their own communities provided they didn't proselytize outside of them. It was a sensible arrangement that worked much better than the current legislative drift, in which people are being forced legally to act against their consciences. Wedding cakes, anyone?

Like any social arrangement, it didn't work perfectly all the time, people being what they are. But it worked most of the time which is as much as one can hope for.

And let me quote the rest:

The Dominican Order began it's inquisition in Acquitaine, on Papal orders, to destroy the Cathars. It was done to ensure there was no opposition to the Roman Catholic Church, and restore it's authority in the region. Heretics were rarely regarded as Roman Catholics.

The Cathars, like any religious innovators in that period, started the fighting by plundering Albi. There could never be a question of a political live and let live. Sure, there were atrocities on both sides, but once that religious civil war started, it could not be stopped unless by one side gaining a victory. Heretics, incidentally, were never regarded as Catholics by the very fact of being heretics.

There was no union of church and state until after the Reformation. Before then, the church was very much the property of the Roman Catholic Church in Rome - and Rome was very keen to exert control in national politics.

Don't quite follow this. The church was the Roman Catholic Church. There wasn't anything else, unless you count transient heterodox movements like the Cathars. There certainly was a union between Church and state insofar as the legal system upheld the convictions of Catholics.

The Papacy throughout the Dark Age period had very little direct influence on national politics. It was only from the 12th century onwards that the Popes began to exert a limiting effect on the kings and notably the Germanic emperors, who tried to place their own men in control of the bishoprics and turn the Church into a department of state, rather in the way the Byzantine emperors had suborned the Orthodox Church. The Popes broke the back of this tendency and in consequence became politically very powerful. They then overreached themselves, claiming direct authority over king and emperor rather than just acting as a counterbalance to royal abuse of power. Once the Papacy become politicized it lost its moral authority. Philip the Fair, king of France, led the rebellion of the European monarchs against the political popes and Rome ended up losing most of its influence in European politics.

Henry VIII made himself head of the church and state precisely to negate this influence - his reasons were selfish, and had nothing to do with the rights of his people, especially not Catholic ones.

Henry VIII made himself head of church (he was already head of state) purely to get rid of one wife and acquire another. The papacy at that time had very little influence in how he ran his kingdom.

The perceived greed of the church is a repeated motif throughout the Mediaeval period. There's a reason why monks are commonly portrayed as overweight.

Check out Mediaeval paintings of hell: full of clergymen, bishops and even popes among them. These you will note are paintings in churches, commissioned and paid for by the clergy of those churches. The Church, like any human institution, is going to have its share of rotten apples, but Catholics never hesitated in calling a rotten apple anything else but bad.

 

[sknox]

Chiming in. Yes there were indeed cities, with populations in the thousands or tens of thousands. A couple reached a hundred thousand by the late MA. The great majority of Europeans were indeed in much smaller communities.

Feudalism is a concept historians have labored for half a century to eradicate. You can see with what success. But that's a different topic from farmers all-but-owned-by-lords motif brought forward here. There was a wide range of landholding and a wide range of rights that went with it. Broadly, we should distinguish between free peasants, serfs, and slaves. Even more broadly, serfdom declined over time in western Europe, free peasants were the norm in the east but that changed dramatically at the end of the MA and into the early modern period. The narrative is complex.

As for law, kings and lords were held to operate within the law and were not to behave arbitrarily. Accusing a lord of doing so was a standard excuse for rebellion. It would be misleading to say peasants had rights, but they did have customs, and these were supposed to be protected by a lord. This doesn't mean peasants (or serfs) were free from exploitation--as Brian observed, most lords didn't care two figs how their peasants were doing--but they were not without protections. Serfs had it rougher. But there were a hundred gradations between hapless serf and free peasant. Even serfs could claim things like protection from being forced to work more days a week than was customary for the region.

As complex as is that narrative, even more is that for religious freedom, a phrase that most medieval people would find offensive. But criticism of the Church and churchmen absolutely did go on, persistently and widely, from the earliest of the medieval centuries. That there was criticism of the wealth of the religious is only natural when a religion idealizes poverty. People held clerics and monks to a high standard, one created by those same clerics and monks.

Like kings, popes and bishops tried hard to enforce their will, but they lacked the apparatus. Poor communications, willful subjects, competing traditions, all conspired to thwart a ruler's will. The Church laid claim to far more than it ever actually held. Over and over we see not only laymen but even churchmen thumb their nose at Rome (or at a local bishop). Heck, even Romans thumbed their nose. They beat up a few popes in the streets and ran others out of town, tail between their legs.

The business about heresy is even more complex. Did you know St Thomas Aquinas was a heretic? It was not a fatal accusation. Those Cathars, though, they were genuinely heretical. They believed in two co-equal gods. They believed this world was created by the Devil. They denied the Trinity. Heresy is more than just a difference of opinion, it's a difference about the fate of the world and of immortal souls. If you believe in that sort of stuff, then heresy is nothing to play around with. It's worse than treason. That said, and again I'm going to generalize dreadfully, there was a good deal more room for--let us call it differences in doctrine and practice--in the earlier MA than in the later. One common explanation is that as the Church more and more clearly defined its doctrine, working out explicitly what had been left implicit and unexplained, the lines it drew left more and more people on the wrong side. The more laws you have, the more crime you have. And by the 16thc, European were downright law-happy.

Anyway, no such thing as feudalism and no such thing as the Dark Ages.

 

[TitaniumTi]

In terms of disruption to present society, I’m worried by the intersection between fiat money, electronic financial markets and the vulnerabilities of computer technology. However, I’m neither an economist nor an IT expert, and I’d be happy to be proved wrong.

I don’t know about the possibility of a descent into a new dark age, but I suspect that societies seem stable until they’re not.

 

[Elventine]

@Montero

I could but don't have the time at the moment to look it up.

Well, I would think that finding unbiased funding would be a part of the new ethics system. The fact is that as you said - most scientific research is done by and paid for by companies and people with invested interests in certain results and so hire people with invested interests in certain results. To make sure of getting those results. This is part of the biased that is fundamental to science.

Thus my statement that the system itself needs an overhaul.

I think that the scientific journals work in a similar way. But they fail at it.

@Biskit

You don't need a court what you do need is some form of internal law that is upheld - As it is at the moment there sort of seems to be an attitude of "oops!" from the scientific community which is just sort of the wrong one when you are shown to have some major flaws in your system and people are starting to question the validity of all that you do.

Accountability would be a good step forward, more catches in place to make sure that it is harder to falsify research, and more attention put on ethical standards within the scientific world.

Hold yourselves to a better standard!

As for fear of prosecution. Who said anything about prosecuting people? A very American way of viewing things there. If the research turns out to be falsified - fire their ass's. Fire all who backed up that research - fine whoever funded it and right there and you will have a lot more accountability.

 

[Justin Swanton]

Getting away from the Middle Ages for a moment, there doesn't seem to be anything on the immediate horizon that could plunge humanity into a dark age. Politically the world is very stable, North Korea notwithstanding. So long as the USA rules the waves, no other nation will try anything spectacular like start a world war. There are plenty of oil reserves, enough for most of this century after which point there is no overwhelming obstacle preventing a transition to an HEP, wind and solar powered electrical industrial complex. Barring an asteroid impact, I just can't see anything that would turn the world upside down.

Of course nothing lasts forever, least of all political institutions, but I have this horrible suspicion the rest of my life will pass in fairly undramatic circumstances.

One scenario: Kim fits nukes into the keels of yachts and gives them to Islamic fanatics who sail into the harbours of every US coastal city and then push the button. It's possible...

Edit: nearly half of the US population live on or near the coast. Mwahahaha....

 

[Dave]

Please could people only comment on what I have actually posted and not about what misconceptions other people think I may have had/meant to say or popular misconceptions they believe I may hold, otherwise, if you want a reply, reference which particular comment you are replying to. Just as one example, at no point here have I mentioned "slavery." We still have no clear definition here about what kind of society we are postulating the world could revert to, therefore people are cross-discussing societies covering thousands of years and spread over several continents. There is no one size fits all. Is there any other society that would offer as many freedoms as living in Europe in the early twenty first century? So, we can all agree that losing it would be a bad thing? Isn't that all we need to agree upon?

@Elventine Funding, whether for scientific research or when it is a decision between a road or a railway line, is always going to be biased. In a capitalist society, the person with money makes the choices. Do you think governments are not biased? Or is it only companies who are biased? You do realise that companies do research to gain commercial advantage? Pure science rarely brings any immediate usefulness, but even an amateur scientist only does research that interests them personally. Isn't that a personal funding bias?

We have already shown you how scientists and scientific journals cannot be biased and how a someone who falsifies research would be treated. Still waiting on the examples to the contrary to be provided.

@Justin Swanton Please do move on from the Middle Ages, but please let's not bring current affairs into this thread too!