A new and bewildering experience
A little learning is a dangerous things, said Alexander Pope famously. With due respect, I would reply, it can rarely be as dangerous as self-satisfied ignorance; especially ignorance not just of the what, of things, but of the how, of how to understand and learn about things.
I have got into the habit of visiting Quora, a website dedicated to exchanging knowledge, and answering the occasional question, especially those dedicated to history. A few weeks ago I answered this one: What were some technological advances made by Romans?
This was my answer. Bear in mind that I don't publish it here to argue about it, although of course I am willing to defend it if answered.
The Romans did not actually make many major technological advances; indeed, the despised Dark and Middle Ages were much more fertile in innovation and use of technology. What the Romans were is amazingly able to maximize the impact of such technology as they had. Just as the Roman legion was drilled and designed to multiply to its ultimate potential the power of a number of men wearing simple armour and armed with spears, swords, and shields, so Roman engineering maximized the potential of known techniques. Roman roads are not great feats of technology - they use naturally available material in fairly simple patterns - but they are fantastically tough and enduring, and even today, after 2000 years, any archaeologist will tell you what a Devil’s job it is to dig through one. Roman aqueducts were designed on the simple principle that water runs downhill, but they are amazing to look at and some of them still work. And so on.
Someone with an American-sounding name (I hesitate to insult America by ascribing this person to them without question) replied:
Wow, way to dissmiss 800 years of Roman contributions to history, by verbal down play.
Those aquaducts that are pretty to look at, are ancient and still standing. Most notably, because of Roman concrete that gets stronger as time goes on and can also set underwater.
The Pantheon is 2,000 years old and the best preserved and functial roman buidling that still stands. I challange any modern day building to last that long.
Do me a favor and save me some time here. Please research Roman technological advances so I don't have to spell it out. Seriously, it's like your trying to say the world is flat, when you understate the Roman contributions to humanity.
My reply:
Your sports-fan attitude to history is particularly out of place in that my family live in the city of Rome and I have the opportunity to see those aqueducts (which no longer work, as many tracts have been knocked down) and the city walls and the Coliseum and many other things very frequently - the last time no later than last month. You are teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, and you are doing it badly. Quora answers are not the place for a comprehensive survey of centuries, but for God’s sake, you want to claim that the Roman age was a hotspot of innovation and advance, and the best you can come up with is… concrete? I could have done better myself. In point of fact, not only was the Roman period less inventive than either the Hellenistic period which preceded it or the Dark and Middle Ages which followed it; it actually went back after a while. The Emperor Constantine, welcoming some Persian envoys to the wonders of the ancient capital, admitted that there were buildings there that they could no longer build. Many skills were lost in the terrible years between 250 and 293, including one of Rome’s most visible achievements, the art of sculpture. Compare a sculpture made any time before 250 and one made in the fourth or fifth centuries, and you can see the degeneration for yourself. But long before that, the great Hellenistic impulse to discovery and invention, powered by such institution as the Musaion and the Library of Alexandria, had died down. There was no Library of Rome, no centre of studies of the kind that Hellenistic Alexandria and Athens had fostered, and no imperial encouragement to scientific curiosity. As a result, Rome had no scholars such as Erastothenes; even Galen was a systematizer of previously acquired knowledge (and fallacious theories), and so was Ptolemy. The Romans deserve the praise I have given them, for using to the hilt and with brilliant insight techniques most of which had been invented before. They were not keen on innovation; in Latin, “novus” means both “new, unexpected” and “subversive, vicious, evil,” When the emperor Vespasian was shown an invention that could do the work of dozens of men - IIRC, it was some sort of crane - he rewarded the inventor generously (which, in the famously tight-fisted Vespasian, meant something), but refused to put it in use, saying that he would not snatch the bread out of the mouths of many poor labourers.
I did not even mention the bizarre notion that I should read Wikipedia to do this person a favour. And this, if you please, was his answer:
See how much time you wasted, but im glad you googled like I told you.
That is all.
This is bewildering. What on Earth does he think he is doing? He seems not to realize that he has been comprehensively answered, and answered in a way that challenged his intellectual and historical competence. He makes no attempt whatever to show he is not the fool I have made him sound, or the ignoramus I have made him sound also. He seems to think he has made me read Wikipedia - which he did not; while I don't despise Wikipedia, I simply did not need it on this subject. And he seems to think that this marks some sort of triumph.
Clearly, this person has never learned to argue. He does not know what amounts to an answer, to a refutation, or to a concession. He does not realize that sports-fan attitudes are out of place in serious debate. He is so incapable of understanding simple presentations of basic facts that he thinks I "dissmissed" (not, of course, just dissed or just dismissed) the Roman achievement which I described with admiration. And he seriously seems to think that he comes out well from the debate; he goes away wagging his tail, with every evidence of being happy with himself.
What a comment on education. What a comment on what he must have done at school. He must have some sort of interest in the past, or else he would not be even reading; just consider, then, how disastrous his every attitude has to be for himself. And he can no more realize it than he can fly.
I have got into the habit of visiting Quora, a website dedicated to exchanging knowledge, and answering the occasional question, especially those dedicated to history. A few weeks ago I answered this one: What were some technological advances made by Romans?
This was my answer. Bear in mind that I don't publish it here to argue about it, although of course I am willing to defend it if answered.
The Romans did not actually make many major technological advances; indeed, the despised Dark and Middle Ages were much more fertile in innovation and use of technology. What the Romans were is amazingly able to maximize the impact of such technology as they had. Just as the Roman legion was drilled and designed to multiply to its ultimate potential the power of a number of men wearing simple armour and armed with spears, swords, and shields, so Roman engineering maximized the potential of known techniques. Roman roads are not great feats of technology - they use naturally available material in fairly simple patterns - but they are fantastically tough and enduring, and even today, after 2000 years, any archaeologist will tell you what a Devil’s job it is to dig through one. Roman aqueducts were designed on the simple principle that water runs downhill, but they are amazing to look at and some of them still work. And so on.
Someone with an American-sounding name (I hesitate to insult America by ascribing this person to them without question) replied:
Wow, way to dissmiss 800 years of Roman contributions to history, by verbal down play.
Those aquaducts that are pretty to look at, are ancient and still standing. Most notably, because of Roman concrete that gets stronger as time goes on and can also set underwater.
The Pantheon is 2,000 years old and the best preserved and functial roman buidling that still stands. I challange any modern day building to last that long.
Do me a favor and save me some time here. Please research Roman technological advances so I don't have to spell it out. Seriously, it's like your trying to say the world is flat, when you understate the Roman contributions to humanity.
My reply:
Your sports-fan attitude to history is particularly out of place in that my family live in the city of Rome and I have the opportunity to see those aqueducts (which no longer work, as many tracts have been knocked down) and the city walls and the Coliseum and many other things very frequently - the last time no later than last month. You are teaching your grandmother to suck eggs, and you are doing it badly. Quora answers are not the place for a comprehensive survey of centuries, but for God’s sake, you want to claim that the Roman age was a hotspot of innovation and advance, and the best you can come up with is… concrete? I could have done better myself. In point of fact, not only was the Roman period less inventive than either the Hellenistic period which preceded it or the Dark and Middle Ages which followed it; it actually went back after a while. The Emperor Constantine, welcoming some Persian envoys to the wonders of the ancient capital, admitted that there were buildings there that they could no longer build. Many skills were lost in the terrible years between 250 and 293, including one of Rome’s most visible achievements, the art of sculpture. Compare a sculpture made any time before 250 and one made in the fourth or fifth centuries, and you can see the degeneration for yourself. But long before that, the great Hellenistic impulse to discovery and invention, powered by such institution as the Musaion and the Library of Alexandria, had died down. There was no Library of Rome, no centre of studies of the kind that Hellenistic Alexandria and Athens had fostered, and no imperial encouragement to scientific curiosity. As a result, Rome had no scholars such as Erastothenes; even Galen was a systematizer of previously acquired knowledge (and fallacious theories), and so was Ptolemy. The Romans deserve the praise I have given them, for using to the hilt and with brilliant insight techniques most of which had been invented before. They were not keen on innovation; in Latin, “novus” means both “new, unexpected” and “subversive, vicious, evil,” When the emperor Vespasian was shown an invention that could do the work of dozens of men - IIRC, it was some sort of crane - he rewarded the inventor generously (which, in the famously tight-fisted Vespasian, meant something), but refused to put it in use, saying that he would not snatch the bread out of the mouths of many poor labourers.
I did not even mention the bizarre notion that I should read Wikipedia to do this person a favour. And this, if you please, was his answer:
See how much time you wasted, but im glad you googled like I told you.
That is all.
This is bewildering. What on Earth does he think he is doing? He seems not to realize that he has been comprehensively answered, and answered in a way that challenged his intellectual and historical competence. He makes no attempt whatever to show he is not the fool I have made him sound, or the ignoramus I have made him sound also. He seems to think he has made me read Wikipedia - which he did not; while I don't despise Wikipedia, I simply did not need it on this subject. And he seems to think that this marks some sort of triumph.
Clearly, this person has never learned to argue. He does not know what amounts to an answer, to a refutation, or to a concession. He does not realize that sports-fan attitudes are out of place in serious debate. He is so incapable of understanding simple presentations of basic facts that he thinks I "dissmissed" (not, of course, just dissed or just dismissed) the Roman achievement which I described with admiration. And he seriously seems to think that he comes out well from the debate; he goes away wagging his tail, with every evidence of being happy with himself.
What a comment on education. What a comment on what he must have done at school. He must have some sort of interest in the past, or else he would not be even reading; just consider, then, how disastrous his every attitude has to be for himself. And he can no more realize it than he can fly.