I'll come to your defence, for once... you denigrate your own heritage.
we condescend to a culture that invented math and astronomy at a time when ours were squatting in caves speaking Gaelic.
The Irish Celts had an advanced and sophisticated - if very warlike - culture by 600 AD. Celtic Christianity was far more in tune with todays ethics... its artworks did not (yet) run to cathedrals, but pieces such as the Book of Kells, combining traditional motifs with a devotional and less prescriptive religion, show what it might have achieved. This got spoiled by the advent of Roman Catholicism, and Ireland despoiled by the Vikings. It was in the interests of the Catholic hierarchy, and later the English overlords and the Irish owing them allegiance, to paint the native traditions as rustic, clumsy and primitive (if not heretical). From the 9th century to the 19th - well, what chance does a population kept in peasanthood and poverty, under alien rulers and traditions, have of showing great culture or creating things of beauty?
Meanwhile primitive maths and astronomical observations were made by the ancient Sumerians and nearby peoples, and also by the ancient Chinese. After the advances of the Greeks, astronomy stagnated into superstition until the invention of the telescope and it started becoming a science: no real advances were made. The Muslim Arabs, like the Chinese, were skilled observers and recorders of astronomical events, developing an accurate calendar, but did not greatly advance understanding of what they studied.
The Arabic world did make invaluable contributions to mathematics, but this was much later - mainly 10th-12th century, I think, with refinements on geometry, the invention of the zero, place notation, and indeed both numerals (the 'Arabic numbers') and numeric substitution - known now by a form of its Arabic name, algebra (from the book Al-Jibr, attributed to the polymath Umar Khayyam).
Only with the Renaissance of northern Italy, and then the new-found stability and wealth coming to N/W Europe, were these achievements built upon and surpassed.
Now, doesn't that make you feel better? <g> |
