Comment by piokoch | Hacker News Reader

Comment by piokoch | Hacker News Reader

Parent Full thread

This is so not true... For the whole Middle Ages people rarely could write, but still there were lawyers (yes, lawyers who could not write), doctors, scientists, poets, merchants, mighty and clever kings (yes, there were kings who could not write).

Middle Ages gave us crucial inventions that built European civilization (mills, windmills, agriculture inventions like three-field system, ships building technology and so on), also we have got well developed philosophy - especially scientific methods of reasoning and logic, that were cornerstone of all later science development.

How it was possible without writing?

Middle Ages life was simply not writing/visual oriented, it was based on speaking and listening and in no way people lost ability to think because of that. For instance PhD thesis was presented as a lecture followed by discussion.

When people wanted to "sign" something they were exchanging or giving some symbolic item (like a ring) and that's all. That's why various saints relics were so popular then, they were symbolizing people's affection, etc. Or people were just signing, as most people could write their names even though they could not write as we understand it today - despite many believes people in Middle Ages were quite educated, including "Third Estate", that is "the Peasantry", more, typically they were going to the same schools as rich people kids, the only difference was that rich people had to pay for the school.

I really recommend "Lumière du Moyen Age" ("Those Terrible Middle Ages!: Debunking the Myths") by Régine Pernoud, it nicely describes a really rich, open and dynamic culture that didn't really need writing.

"Middle Age" Europe is poorly named. It's based on an idea that ancient europe is Greece and Rome. Then, dark/middle ages. Then Renaissance and modernity.

The problem is geography. France, Britain, Germany and such were never part of the ancient world. Rome had colonies there. But, these were (relatively) short lived outposts of civilisation. Civilisation was never a dominant culture in non-Mediterranean "Europe."

In the East, civilisation existed for thousands of years before Rome. They always had roads, kingdoms, bureaucracy, restaurants, banks and such. Even in dark ages, after collapse... these were collapsed civilisations. They didn't revert to tribal, oral societies.

The european Renaissance (excl Italy) was never a Renaissance. It's the actual birth of civilisation in europe. It's the first time writing became a major thing.

I don't think it really matters if you do your PhD orally in a lecture or write a paper. The essence of it remains the same: you have to make your thinking concrete and form an argument that makes sense and is coherent. The exact form this takes isn't all that important, what is important is that you're the one doing the work instead of ChatGPT.

My other comment almost perfectly fits here too, so I won't repeat it in full[1], but only by doing the work yourself will you spot flaws and errors in your arguments; ChatGPT can't do that for you.

[1]: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=35913419

The moyen age had plenty of writing, it's just that most of it was religious writing: hymns and saints' and martyrs' lives, and treatises on the soul and so on. You have most likely seen the beautiful illustrated manuscripts produced by the monks in monasteries all over Europe.

The other thing that I have noticed is that a great deal of the art from the time is wonky and out of proportion. I was recently at the Musée Cluny in Paris and it was really striking how much of the art in there is pretty badly made, as if by very inept creators. La Dame à la licorne stands out in part because it's not that badly made (though mainly because it's an epic multi-piece tapestry that you'll never see the like of anywhere else). I also remember a statue of a saint whose creator was named (I don't remember the name but it was something like "Le maitre de St. Joseph" or perhaps he had the name of a city) and that was obviously head and shoulders above everything else around it in terms of craftsmanship, which had an almost modern quality.

Then I went to the Louvre and I noticed again how the art before and after the middle ages very clearly lacks this shoddy and haphazard quality of European middle ages art. The Greeks in particular practically worshipped proportion, and the Italian masters would not be caught dead painting an unbalanced figure, by the looks of it. But also Egyptians and Assyro-Babylonians, and all the earlier cultures seemed to take well-crafted art pretty seriously (the bad artists were probably flayed alive early on ... brrr).

So something definitely happened in the middle ages that did not do good to art and culture. Whether it had any impact in everyday life, the ability of people to produce food, build houses, etc, I don't know. There's certainly plenty of architecture that's survived from that time, so clearly not everything deteriorated.

Btw, I think it was the same in the Eastern middle ages too. You can see slap-dash ecclesiastical icons in Byzantine churches of the time. And when you visit Ravenna, and see the mosaics in St Vitale (which are from the very early middle ages), it is clear that something was lost in the ensuing years.

Perhaps we're about to sink into a new "dark age" (regardless of how "dark" was the original "dark ages"). Maybe we'll get lucky this time too, and the light will not be forever extinguished.

That's interesting but not sure it's relevant to the linked Tweet.

You understood the argument "When you lose the ability to write, you also lose some of your ability to think." very literally. Too literally.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com