
Science and Tech of the Byzantine Empire - dnetesn
http://nautil.us/blog/the-hidden-science-and-tech-of-the-byzantine-empire
======
reese_john
John Von Neunman was particularly a huge enthusiast of the Byzantine empire. A
professor of Byzantine history at Princeton once said that von Neumann had
greater expertise in Byzantine history than he did. [0]

[0]
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Early_career_...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_von_Neumann#Early_career_and_private_life)

~~~
mandelliant
That's an awesome fact! I'm reading Von Neumann & Morgenstern's Game Theory
and Economic Behavior now and while I'm not surprised he's gifted in other
disciplines, it's amazing that someone can be _so_ deep in so many fields.

~~~
tmccrmck
You should read _Turing 's Cathedral_ if you are interested in Von Neumann's
life.

~~~
mandelliant
Thanks for the recommendation. I'm actually reading the biography of Turing at
the moment, so that sounds like a perfect follow-up.

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weeha
I can highly recommend History of Byzantium podcast by Robin Pierson.

"The History of Byzantium” is a podcast dedicated to the story of the Roman
Empire from the collapse of the West in 476 to the fall of Constantinople in
1453. Byzantine history is fascinating, world changing and largely forgotten.
Listen and discover who they were."

~~~
xPhobophobia
Thanks for the recommendation. I've been listening to Dan Carlin and his
history podcasts and am almost done with all of them. I needed something to
add to the queue.

~~~
isk517
You may want to consider checking out Mike Duncan's podcasts the History of
Rome and Revolutions as well. History of Rome especially since it was the
ending of that podcast at the fall of the west that encouraged the creation of
the History of Byzantium podcast.

~~~
eropple
Duncan in particular gets much better at doing his podcast after a few dozen
episodes. I'm pretty attuned to audio issues and almost dropped the podcast
about halfway in, but eventually he figured a few things out and it got a lot
nicer to listen to.

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tryingagainbro
Article aside, an Empire that manages to last hundreds of years (1100+ in
their case, and even more depending how you calculate it) must've been doing
quite a few things right.

Imagine how many enemies, crisis and emperors they had to go through, yet they
survived for a very, very long time.

~~~
lostboys67
Yes if only they had been obsessed with internal religious divisions and
fighting the Persians (ignoring the new threat from the west).

Not to mention the forth crusade!!

~~~
tryingagainbro
Quite a few old fashion Orthodox are still upset over it
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constantinople_(1204)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_of_Constantinople_\(1204\))
. Like in Islam....different factions debate and hold grudges for ever.

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elorant
It's kind of odd but as Greeks in school we learn little for the Byzantium as
compared to Classical Greece which pretty much dominates history books. That's
probably because Byzantium was never actually Greek, many emperors didn't even
speak the language.

For anyone interested in learning the history I would suggest John Julius
Norwich's trilogy. Impeccable work.

~~~
smitherfield
_> Byzantium was never actually Greek, many emperors didn't even speak the
language._

Huh? I'll admit I'm not that well-read about Byzantine history, but I had
always been under the impression that from the reign of Heraclius (mid-7th-
century) onwards[1] the court language was always or virtually always Greek.

[1] Which is also as good a dividing line as any between the "Roman" and
"Byzantine" periods.

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dekhn
The Arab Muslims also had an amazing science and tech culture which isn't well
appreciated today. Many of the revolutions in Europe in the Middle Ages
happened as direct outcomes of Arab Muslim tech. A few of my heros: Avicenna
(Ibn Sina) and Ismail al-Jazari.

~~~
Koshkin
To be fair, Avicenna was Persian, although he had been definitely influenced
by the Islamic science developed by the Arabs.

~~~
XMRBE
Both al-Khwarizmi (from whose name came "algorithm", and whose main work also
gave its name to "algebra") and al-Biruni (astronomer and geographer probably
most famous for the most accurate prediction of the Earth's circumference
since Eratosthenes) were also Persian rather than Arab as often incorrectly
claimed.

The question of the "nationality" of many Islamic Golden Age scientists is
interesting, with many people and nations claiming them as "theirs". There are
even Soviet [1] and Uzbekistani [2] postal stamps commemorating al-Khwarizmi,
since as his name implies he was originating from Khwarezm (now part of
Uzbekistan), which at the time was under Persian rule.

[1]
[https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/19...](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/11/1983_CPA_5426_%281%29.png/220px-1983_CPA_5426_%281%29.png)

[2]
[http://news.uzreport.uz/foto/2014/04/tmb1/13977401582.jpg](http://news.uzreport.uz/foto/2014/04/tmb1/13977401582.jpg)

~~~
mangodrunk
It's rather annoying how we're so loose with these terms, of Islam, Persian,
and Arab. Most of the important people of the Islamic Golden Age were
Persian/Iranian [1].

>"Culturally, politically, and most remarkable of all even religiously, the
Iranian contribution to this new Islamic civilization is of immense
importance. The work of Iranians can be seen in every field of cultural
endeavor, including Arabic poetry, to which poets of Iranian origin composing
their poems in Arabic made a very significant contribution."

> Science, medicine, philosophy and technogy in the newly Islamized Iranian
> society was influenced by and based on the scientific model of the major
> pre-Islamic Iranian universities in the Sassanian Empire. During this period
> hundreds of scholars and scientists vastly contributed to technology,
> science and medicine, later influencing the rise of European science during
> the Renaissance.

1:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Islamic_Golden_Age)

------
mcemilg
it is necessary to investigate their correctness. The "On fatal wings" story
is similar to Hezarfen's story. Maybe it's a story that has been around for
years.Take a look at that
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87eleb...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hez%C3%A2rfen_Ahmed_%C3%87elebi)

~~~
empath75
The source ‘Choniates’ was writing 400 years before that story is supposed to
have happened.

~~~
mcemilg
Well yeah I saw it. So then we know at least there are three people exists in
the history who they try to fly with robe. The Arab, Hezarfen and the French
guy. People are weird. These are some kind of wingsuit prototype.

~~~
UncleSlacky
Eilmer of Malmesbury was fairly successful, flying some distance. He broke
both legs but survived:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eilmer_of_Malmesbury#The_fligh...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eilmer_of_Malmesbury#The_flight)

------
KineticLensman
If Byzantium (Constantinople) had lasted just another 39 years (to 1492, to be
precise), then one could claim (sort-of) that the Roman Empire had lasted
until the West discovered America.

~~~
peterburkimsher
I'd argue that we are Roman.

When the western capital Rome fell, people moved east (imagine moving from
California to New York). But the Byzantines still called themselves Roman.

When the eastern capital was invaded by the Ottoman Turks, they moved west to
rebuild Rome - and started the "Renaissance".

There was no Renaissance, some magical discovery of ancient knowledge, with
masterful artists and scientists like the world had never seen. It was a
continuation of the Roman tradition!

In fact, one can even go back before Rome to Greece, to Alexander the Great
conquering Darius the Mede, to Medo-Persia, to Babylon, to Assyria, to
Mesopotamia.

Writing was invented in 3 places: Sumeria, China, and South America. But the
Mayan history is almost lost (3 books survive). Western culture split from
middle-eastern, and Indian civilisation got fragmented until the British Raj
forced everyone to learn English, a Latin language.

Since the dawn of history, there have been Western, Middle Eastern, and China
as world powers.

Only in this generation do we have machine translation (Google Translate) to
finally share our knowledge more easily between these cultures.

I propose a translated search. Pass the query through Google Translate before
loading results. Then if I want to know about the legend of a talking ox, I
can find it from Pliny (
[http://peterburk.github.io/pliny](http://peterburk.github.io/pliny) ) or from
the Chinese.

------
kwhitefoot
I feel I must defend Aristotle. At least we would need a lot more information
before we can conclude that Philoponos really knew what he was talking about.
Of course he was right but for this to be effective there needs to be a theory
and better experiments and that is what Galileo provided. I recommend Carlo
Rovelli's essay on Aristotle's Physics:
[https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4057.pdf](https://arxiv.org/pdf/1312.4057.pdf).

~~~
coldtea
> _Of course he was right but for this to be effective there needs to be a
> theory and better experiments and that is what Galileo provided._

It only needs the simple observation the kind of Philoponos did to refute
Aristotle's thesis. And his arguments show that he knew what he was talking
about -- very to the point.

What would need "a theory and better experiments" would be to create a physics
of falling -- Philoponos didn't do that (or said he did). He merely refuted
Aristotle. We celebrate Democritus atomic theory for far less (as he did no
experiments and it was just an idea he had).

------
mirimir
And it remains largely hidden, after reading this article :(

But there are a few interesting tidbits, and it's a quick read.

~~~
kwhitefoot
More like notes for an article really. Or a high school exercise in creating a
summary. I would give it something like "6/10, must try harder".

Might have been interesting to read if there had been more than clickbait so I
only read the first two of the six. The fact that the earth is a globe was
known at least 1200 years earlier than Symeon Seth because the circumference
had been measured by Eratosthenes <[https://www.thoughtco.com/eratosthenes-
biography-1435011>](https://www.thoughtco.com/eratosthenes-
biography-1435011>).

I'm disappointed, Nautilus is usually a bit better than this.

