Thesis: the average 18 year old student in, say, York in AD 800 (the middle of the so-called "Dark Ages") had read more, knew more languages, was better trained in logic, could read more music, knew more mathematics and astronomy than the average student from a university today.
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Replying to @johnpauldickson
Slightly misleading, not wilfully so, I’m sure. What percentage of 18-year-olds in 800AD were students? V few, I’d guess. I’d imagine most 18-year-olds then would have been illiterate.
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Replying to @kevinmitchell50
A small percentage. But I’d those that were students—rich or poor—were better educated than we are.
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Replying to @johnpauldickson @kevinmitchell50
That’s quite a stretch. Huge amounts of the subject matter would have been based on Aristotle & would have been frankly wrong. The medical stuff would have been highly superstitious, & even the concepts of cause&effect were not well understood “because God did it”
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Replying to @johnpauldickson @kevinmitchell50
As for Rhetoric, ya it is a useful skill. However rhetoric for poor ends is mere sophistry & produces neither a moral character nor truth
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Replying to @AgeofVictoria @kevinmitchell50
But their rhetoric was the good stuff - Aristotle, etc., not the sophistry stuff.
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Replying to @johnpauldickson @kevinmitchell50
I am not putting Aristotle down. For his time and place he was an incredible thinker. But the advances in the study of logic (Russell, Wittgenstein etc) show how much else there was to discover in the field.
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Replying to @AgeofVictoria @kevinmitchell50
But how many kids study that? Hardly any. I'm sticking with my average student in 800 being better trained in formal logic than the average today.
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Lol oh my God man The existence of computers and the fact that learning to code is a lucrative profession that many people take up as a hobby in their youth means the concepts of formal logic are LEAPS AND BOUNDS more commonly known today than in the past
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