Must All Good Things Come to an End?

The mighty Roman Empire did not result in the demise of Greek culture. In fact, Rome embraced the Greek worldview and admired the artistic and intellectual achievements of her vanquished neighbor. What, then, destroyed the energetic and exciting Greek way of life, characterized by a magnificent blend of mathematics, philosophy, art, architecture, literature, and so forth - neatly wrapped up in a package held together by the strings of a healthy, pagan, worldly love of life?

The classical worldview was not defeated by barbarians or by Roman legions. Ideas are too powerful to be defeated on the plains of battle. They can only be defeated by other ideas. The winners in an ideological battle need not be more correct or more logical. They simply must appeal to enough people willing to spread them - to fight for their acceptance.

The religious climate of the first century A.D. was mixed. On the one hand, there were the time-honored gods of Greece and Rome whose worship was linked to loyalty to family and state. There was, also, the thousand-year old monotheistic religion of the Jews, oddly enough respected by Rome. The Romans destroyed the temple for political reasons, not ideological ones. On the other hand, there were several recently established upstart religions - popular cults competing with the older, more established ways. These cults had several common characteristics. They promised immortality if the members believed in the cult figure. They had an initiation, or baptism, ceremony. Finally, they believed in an afterlife that was much more important than this one here on earth. Most of these cults, like the

Persian cult of Mithra or the Egyptian cult of Isis and Osiris are merely historical curiosities today. One of them has several billion followers today - Christianity, which is now anything but a cult.

The turning point in the spread of Christianity was its adoption by the Roman emperor Constantine as the official religion of Rome. (This is the same emperor who built the city of Constantinople - today Istanbul.) This assured its perpetuation after Rome fell in the fifth century (A.D.). By the year 1100, Christianity was the religion of Europe with the exception of Moslem-occupied southern Spain.

It was the otherworldly philosophy of early Christianity that spelled the end of classical thought. After all, if this world is just a testing ground for admission to heaven where the immortal soul will reside for eternity, then why make a fuss about this world? Moreover, the world is full of corruption, sin, and falsehood - certainly not a worthy place for painting or sculpting. Truth, of course, is not reached through observation or Socratic dialogue, but rather from revelation. The Bible says it all.

Even the Greco-Roman interest in astronomy/astrology is absurd. An omnipresent god who may be invoked through prayer replaced the mythological gods residing on the planets. Why pursue the study of mathematics when the real issue is salvation? This view, together with the barbarian invasions and the collapse of Rome, paved the way for the Dark Ages. The lights went out in Europe and would come back only dimly in the Middle Ages, as we shall see.

In Alexandria, one of the last holdouts of classical Greek thought, extant as late as the fifth century, a Christian mob set fire to the library and brutally killed Hypatia, a pagan mathematician (and one of the few famous women of antiquity in mathematics).

In the century before the fall of Rome, there occurred a division in the Roman Empire with the establishment of the Eastern Empire whose capital was Constantinople. Later called the Byzantine Empire, it lasted until 1453 when it was overrun by the Seljuk Turks. In the last century of the Eastern Empire's existence, Byzantine artists and intellectuals fled to Renaissance Italy and brought with them a large number of ancient Greek manuscripts, thus reintroducing the influence of the classical world, thereby serving as a catalyst of the Renaissance (the rebirth).

To some, history is viewed as a succession of regimes. It is the repetitive play of "The Rise and Fall of ...", replete with a host of dates, that characterizes, to some, the march of events through the ages. While this view has some truth to it, it is the march of ideas through time that constitutes a significant part of history. And ideas can perish! Books, unfortunately, can be burned or lost. Proponents of an idea can be slain or jailed. The romantic poet wants to shout, "but the ideas live on!" while the realist accepts that ideas can be suppressed, at least for a while. Intolerant regimes, since the dawn of recorded history, have retarded or even eliminated movements through evil repressive measures.

In light of all this ranting, what a breath of fresh air awaits us as we study the Golden Age of Islam. Rising out of the desert in the seventh century on the coattails of Judaism and Christianity, a new monotheistic religion, Islam, united the various people of the Middle East with a mission of spreading the submission to the will of Allah (the Muslim name for God). Allah spoke through his messenger Mohammed who recorded his words in the Koran, the Muslim equivalent of the Bible. Having its origins in 622 with the flight of Mohammed from Mecca to Medina (known as the Hegira, meaning flight), the new religion spread like wildfire. By the year of Mohammed's death (632), the entire Arabian Peninsula had "submitted" to the will of Allah, perhaps influenced by the armed hordes of fanatical believers who made offers that couldn't be refused.

At any rate, the mission of Mohammed and his followers was wildly successful (the sword is sometimes mightier than the pen) and by the ninth century, the great caliphs seated in Baghdad held sway over an empire stretching from Morocco to Tibet - the largest empire up to that time.

Islamic designs on Europe heralded by an invasion of Spain in 711 were decisively stopped by the army of Charles Martel1 (688-741) in France at the Battle of Tours which ended in 732. (His grandson was Charlemagne, or Charles the Great). At about this time, Islamic incursions into Europe through Constantinople were thwarted by the army of Byzantium under Leo III (680-741). Christian control of Europe was now assured.

1He was known as "the Hammer."

The army of the Caliph Omar captured Alexandria in 641. When asked by his general what to do with the great library there (the very same one where Euclid had taught almost a thousand years before this date), Omar is alleged to have replied that if the teachings agreed with the Koran, the works were unnecessary and the library should be burned to the ground. On the other hand, if the teachings contradicted the Koran, the works were evil, and the library should - you guessed it - be burned to the ground Perhaps movements mellow with time. About one hundred years later, the great caliph Harun Al Rashid (765-809) and his successor Al Mamun (786-833) were patrons of the arts and sciences.

The new capital city of Baghdad, the construction of which started in 762, became the cultural center of the enormous caliphate. Al Mamun invited scholars and artists to his newly built "House of Wisdom" - a university in which contributors of all faiths were tolerated - and there flourished an outpouring of astronomy, mathematics, medicine, chemistry, literature, and so forth. In addition, much translating of Greek classics went on, thereby helping to preserve the works of great scholars such as Aristotle, Euclid, and Ptolemy for later generations.

2As a friend once said, "Death to fanatics!"

Mathematics from India, such as the influential work of the great Brahmagupta3 (598-665), introduced several interesting ideas, some of which, along with the work of Arabic mathematicians, developed into the Hindu-Arabic decimal number system we use today. They used a symbol for zero and had speedy algorithms to add, subtract, multiply, and divide with their numbers. Using only ten digits, they could represent any number using, of course, the brilliant position system. An idea first utilized by the Babylonians reappeared in a much-improved version.

In stark contrast to the Islamic mathematicians and merchants, their European counterparts were using clumsy Roman numerals still seen today on huge public clock towers. In case you have forgotten, Roman numerals are summarized in the box below.

I = 1
II = 2
III = 3
IV = 4
V = 5
VI = 6
VII = 7
VIII = 8
IX = 9
X = 10
XX = 20
L = 50
C = 100
D = 500
M = 1000

ROMAN NUMERALS

Notice how the complicated looking number

MMMDCCCLXXVIII

3He had approximated the length of the year to be 365 days, 6 hours, 5 minutes, and 19 seconds.

is simply 3,878 in the Hindu-Arabic system. Now imagine the problem 3,878 ÷ 364 being done by a Roman accountant! If we were in a sarcastic state of mind, we would wonder whether this contributed to the decline of Rome.

These clever Hindu-Arabic numerals finally found their way into Europe not only through books but, in addition, through trade between Christian and Arabic merchants in the ports of Italy. Arabic merchants brought oriental goods (with hefty markups!) to European ports hungry for silk and other Chinese goods. They calculated very quickly, to the amazement of their sluggish European customers. One such merchant, Leonardo of Pisa, also called Fibonacci, was a mathematician in his spare time. He wrote a book Liber Abaci in approximately 1200 that popularized the new Arabic arithmetic. Of course, this was before the printing press, and there certainly was no Manuscript-of-the-Month Club. Nevertheless, several handwritten copies spread across Europe and attracted some attention. The system met initial resistance, and one Italian community even outlawed their use, citing as the reason, that the copies were easy to alter.