Every educated person ought to study the ancient world. What we will find in those cultures is extraordinary and fascinating, such that thousands of Western scholars have spent their lifetimes mining the riches of these complex nations, without ever exhausting the richness laid down by ancient philosophers, poets and sages.
There’s one thing that each of these civilizations lacked, which wouldn’t make an appearance until the Christian Middle Ages: experimental science that yields a reliable understanding of the material world and hence technological advancements that better human life. Yes, there were careful and deeply insightful philosophical thinkers, and individual tinkerers whose curiosity drove them to test an invention or theory here and there. But no one ever followed up on the inventions of Archimedes, or systematically experimented to see where Galen had been mistaken.
At the risk of encouraging you, I invite you to read The Auld Blogge: Mike Flynn's Journal "The Age of Unreason", a Livejournal blog which does not seem to link gracefully. It appears to be by my SF-writing friend Michael Flynn. Use that as a search string and it should come up.
Mike's writings include fact article/story pair. You might get a kick out of these as they present his ideas on the subject well. Mike took a scholarly approach on these, deeply researching some medieval scholars, then placing them together and wondering what a revolution would have come about in science by placing these people together to exchange ideas. He then backed it up with a formal dialectic argument in which he proposed, countered, and defended the notion that it was precisely certain ideas of Christianity that made true science possible. The Greeks were clever folk, but still tended to believe one could figure out the universe from First Principles (i.e. talking a lot, using formal dialectic arguments and logic) without ever testing ideas physically. In part, this presumed that the Universe worked in whatever fanciful way the gods had dreamed up, and that the gods were in no way constrained by the Laws of Physics. Christianity, however, presumed that God did not break the laws he had used for creating the Universe, and that we could figure out how it worked by careful experiment.
"Quaestiones Super Caelo et Mundo", and "De Revolutione Scientarium In 'Media Tempestas' " by Michael F. Flynn, which appeared in the July/Aug 2007 Analog Science Fiction and Fact.
Mike specifically went after the prejudice we have in this modern time that Medieval Christianity was all about burning witches and condemning heretics, and generally making trouble for the honest scientist. He does a pretty good job of showing the freedom that was seen in these lines of reasoning in the great Universities of the time.
The older artwork might be they just copied something from nature? Certainly, nobody in this internet age would dare PhotoShop an ancient artwork!
Although knowledge of (1+sqrt(5))/2 seems to date back 2400 years that we know of, and it seems to be incorporated into many old designs. It can be extended to create infinitely detailed spirals.
The dialectic argument article seems to be well summarized in another of Mike's blogs, again with difficulty creating the link, but search
The Auld Blogge: Mike Flynn's Journal Bride of the Middle Ages
I will look it up. I've seen several variations of this argument, and I find them convincing. I have yet to see a good counterargument, but I have been pondering one myself for quite awhile.
‘What all the wise men promised has not happened, and what all the damned fools said would happen has come to pass.’
— Lord Melbourne —
