The Middle Ages

Essay by lord_foster May 2004

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The Question:

Over the past five hundred years, scholars have disagreed in their assessments of the Middle Ages. Some have seen the period "as a sterile age in which government had degenerated into feudal anarchy, religion into superstition, and scholarship into pedantic quibbles of schoolmen over texts that they scarcely understood" and whose main value was in transmitting--though imperfectly--some legacy of more glorious Creco-Roman past to those who followed. On the other hand, some have seen it as a period of energy and creativity that made important original contributions to modern Western European civilization. Which view is more valid? Support your argument.

The Answer:

The Middle Ages was a time of great intellectual thought that led to many discoveries and theories about humans, the earth, and everything surrounding us and it. To give no credit or to call it a "sterile age" is a distorted, ignorant viewpoint of a modernist that sees

nothing good of the past and is stuck on the present and things that affect the present.

Sadly, without the past experiences and discoveries that lie in distance past, we could not enjoy what we enjoy today nor would we have advanced as far as we have today. So without giving credit and placing credit where credit is due we are taking everything we enjoy in our luxurious lives for granted.

One important discovery, made by Muslims in the Early Middle Ages that has affected every human being on this planet was, according to coffin is, "...Muslims considered

the possibilities that the Earth rotates on its axis and revolves around the sun..."(279). This intellectual thought was the invent of Muslim philosophers and scientist of the early middle ages. Europe Philosophers and Scientist didn't come up with this same theory for many centuries thereafter. They were also responsible...