History and context of journalism lecture

I personally found this lecture awesome. The ancient history aspect is very interesting to me and full of revelations, for example I had no idea that the Greeks were origionally from Kurdistan. But yea, here are some notes.

Greeks:

·         Greeks originally came from Kurdistan

·         Greek, Persian and Sanskrit are all very similar. They can be translated into each other. Most European language is derived from Greek.

·         Greek was the source of the culture and Rome was the source of the power within the Roman empire

·         They kind of folded into one another.

·         Greek knowledge was remarkably advanced, many ideas that we consider modern were founded in Greece. For example Atoms. Though unable to see them the Greeks speculated on the existence of fundamental matter which formed everything.

·         The Roman Empire became decadent and corrupt. The main feature that brought down the Roman Empire was slavery.

·         Whereas Greeks had slaves, said slaves had certain rights. In Rome they didn’t.

·         The fatal moment for the Roman Empire was when the emperor was declared a god.

·         The romans came to embrace Christianity. This was strange because Christianity only had one god. In Christianity there was also the belief that everyone was equal.

·         The main problem with Christian/Jewish/Islamic belief is the cosmology.

·         The belief that the earth is only about 6,000 years old.

·         Christianity established in the orthodox world about 300 A.D.

·         This was the start of the dark ages, where no books, knowledge, science, economic growth or anything good happened.

·         Dark ages came to an end around 1300-1400. Contact with the Arab world helped. It was also the golden age of Islam. Arabs preserved far more of the ancient knowledge of the Greeks than western Europeans.

·         An example of lost Greek knowledge is the ability to build domes in architecture. The Greeks had the ability to make self-supporting domes. This ability was lost until the renaissance.

Aristotle:

·         Logic was invented by Aristotle.

·         It was the part of Greek science that was preserved by the catholic church in the western world.

·         The church used Aristotle’s logic to persecute heretics and defend Christianity.

Islam and Neoclassicism

·         Because Islam held onto more of the Greek knowledge they were seen by the western world as being far more advanced, it even being believed that they had flying carpets and buildings being crafted out of solid gold.

·         The truth was that they were slightly more advanced due to the Greek knowledge that they held onto.

Al Ghazali vs Avicenna

·         Al Ghazali was a religious fanatic who believed that all knowledge needed was in the Quran.

·         Avicenna was a mathematician, he used logic and believed that some of the knowledge in the Quran was wrong.