In the Light of the Above: Medieval Conflict - Faith and Reason

Under the protection of the law, we've come to expect the benefits of science and technology will continue to carry us along towards ever higher standards of living. So, we make sure, through an educational system that teaches people that the only way to go is up. That the way to succeed is to take nothing for granted. To question everything. Always to expect to find a better answer. As a result, we're basically forward looking. Which is ironic, considering how we began by being almost exactly the opposite.

James Burke

Introduction of the knowledge from captured Islamic Spanish libraries transforms the Europe&apos;s conception of knowledge and the fact that it can advance.

Robin Bextor

Some Of Us Still Don&apos;t Get It.

It&apos;s an exemplary episode, covering the Dark Ages that followed the fall of Rome to the diffusion of Aristotle&apos;s ideas about reason, eight hundred years later. It covers much the same territory as a couple of episodes of Eugen Weber&apos;s lectures on Western Civilization -- also free, somewhere on the internet -- but Burke, though not exactly wittier than Weber, is still more entertaining. And instead of showing us artifacts from Medieval Cordoba, as Weber does, Burke walks through the mosque and shows us the books that the Spanish conquerors found there.

After Rome and before the Crusades, everything was a symbol for something else. The rose was red for the blood of Christ, the thorns represented the Devil, the green leaves stood for innocence, and so forth.

The Arab&apos;s translations of Aristotle turned all of this mysticism upside down. Logic dictated that things were as they were for natural reasons, not because God had ordained it. Not that Aristotle had all the answers. His extensive study of animals and plants were a jumble of disorganized observations. But if his answers weren&apos;t all correct, they were at least different.

The episode ends with the New Logic diffusing through Europe -- those terrific cathedrals borrowed their architectural principles from the Arabs, for instance -- and the Roman Catholic church beginning to do its best to suppress most of them.

I described it as entertaining, and it is. The episode begins and ends with Burke stopping his car for a red light at a traffic light in the middle of the desert wasteland of Tunisia with neither another vehicle or a single road in sight. He waits until it turns green, too.

It's an exemplary episode, covering the Dark Ages that followed the fall of Rome to the diffusion of Aristotle's ideas about reason, eight hundred years later. It covers much the same territory as a couple of episodes of Eugen Weber's lectures on Western Civilization -- also free, somewhere on the internet -- but Burke, though not exactly wittier than Weber, is still more entertaining. And instead of showing us artifacts from Medieval Cordoba, as Weber does, Burke walks through the mosque and shows us the books that the Spanish conquerors found there.

After Rome and before the Crusades, everything was a symbol for something else. The rose was red for the blood of Christ, the thorns represented the Devil, the green leaves stood for innocence, and so forth.

The Arab's translations of Aristotle turned all of this mysticism upside down. Logic dictated that things were as they were for natural reasons, not because God had ordained it. Not that Aristotle had all the answers. His extensive study of animals and plants were a jumble of disorganized observations. But if his answers weren't all correct, they were at least different.

The episode ends with the New Logic diffusing through Europe -- those terrific cathedrals borrowed their architectural principles from the Arabs, for instance -- and the Roman Catholic church beginning to do its best to suppress most of them.

I described it as entertaining, and it is. The episode begins and ends with Burke stopping his car for a red light at a traffic light in the middle of the desert wasteland of Tunisia with neither another vehicle or a single road in sight. He waits until it turns green, too.

Introduction of the knowledge from captured Islamic Spanish libraries transforms the Europe's conception of knowledge and the fact that it can advance.

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In the Light of the Above: Medieval Conflict - Faith and Reason

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