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Linguistic Clue Pushes Back Origin of "World's Oldest Computer"
Calopteryx points out a piece at New Scientist which suggests that the Antikythera mechanism may be even older than previously thought; an ancient Greek word on of the device's dials suggests the device may date to the early second century BC. The article is accompanied by a great animation of its (deduced) workings, too.
Watch, next thing you know that dial is how they got their ancient IP addresses.
"They confiscated everything, even the stuff we didn't steal!"
I disagree with you.
This not a free form stick and sand device.
It's a mechanical device that deterministically computes planetary data based on user input.
It's a highly specialized computer in my book.
My gut says someone is already thinking of adding this device as part of a movie plot. sigh...
A computer? That's the hot chick who crunches numbers for me.
This device is awesome and gives you a glimpse what the "Ancients" ("Stargate" pun intended) already knew and how much of our history is lost. Imagine for a moment if there had been an uninterrupted development from the knowledge that went into this little box for 2000 years. Makes Steling/Gibbons tale of "The Difference Engine" pale by comparison. I read a fascinating book about the discovery and science of this mechanism ("Decoding the Heavens": http://www.decodingtheheavens.com/) and it ist is truly mind boggling how much skill went into this box, 1500 years before we "modern" people build anything remotely as sophisticated. While reading the book I had some trouble to imagine all the wheels and gears described and the full res video is very helpful (can be found here: http://www.mogi-vice.com/Antikythera/Antikythera-it.html (italian)). Very well done, indeed, Signore!.
They didn't actually do that, but don't let that get in the way of your prejudice. About the worst they can reasonably be accused of is encouraging bright people to remain celibate.
Either way, though, it wouldn't have changed much. The Catholics did not control the entire world, and there was plenty going on outside their reach -- particularly in the Islamic world, where massive progress was made in mathematics, chemistry, and astronomy.
Nice troll though.
Wouldn't threatening leading scientists with heresy or witchcraft charges, crusades against a technologically advanced (and supportive of science!) civilization, and a general discouragement of literacy outside the clergy count as "holding back scientific research"? I think it does.
Nothing would have been changed, in the byzantine empire and the arabic world and china knowledge thrived, so basically
nothing was held back. I think technological jumps follow a cycle and currently we are at the height of such a development cycle which might slow down again for several decades.
The main root for modern science were some factors, call it the lazy well fed european together with the connection between mathematics and physics layed out by people like Decardes Leibnitz and Newton.
It could have been developed earlier in the arabic or byzantine world or in china, the foundations always were there and also the minds and some already did, but the theories did not stay long enough to have an impact.
For instance the first steam engine was designed in Alexandria, but it never had any impact due to inherent slavery being present, same goes for the connection of mathematics and physics and generally calculus which is the foundation of the connection, all done in greece to some degree but it had not any impact because mathematics were seen by the general public as being from a to esoteric angle and the people doing the connection did not make enough impact on society.
Same in the arabic world, they took the decade system with zero from india and developed it further again no impact.
Sometimes an apple is all you need to change the world.
And I dont think it would have happend earlier with or without the catholic churchs stance on things in the middle ages.
(Which were not that bad they preserved knowledge as well, but europe was piss poor and most people had survival in mind, things became bad later when the printing press was invented)
Happened all the way later, the funny thing is the so called dark ages the middle ages were not that dark, the witch burning happened way after the middle ages with their height about 300 years ago, but when that started to happen the genie in form of the printing press was already out of the bottle.
And even worse the catholics were not even the worst witch burners in fact in the later stages during the 30 years war in europe the offical roman view was even against it (the triggering books although were clearly catholic), but it was a mass phenomenon infesting the minds of the europeans at that time, and the protestants often being worse.
Also the stance of the catholic church towards science and the trial of galileo did not change anything and it would not have happened probably in the middle ages.
Ah to add an example the so called dark middle ages, were the foundation of the first universities in paris and there was a huge exchange between the scholars of france and granada (which was the science capital of that time)
The situation was simply that the roman empire was crushed and so in the european world science was lost what was saved mostly could be found in cloisters which also opened the first schools, the other roman world the byzantime empire still had it thriving but was constantly under war so they had higher priorities, but nevertheless all the science also went into the arabic world and from then again into europe!
Read Bachelard Formation of the scientific mind and weep. If only it were so easy and blame everything on the catholic church. For a very long period of time, it looks as if entertainment value was put way above scientific rigor... that and scientific thinking is quite a recent thing. From the book, experiment held around 1700 (from vague recollection): Electricity from a battery cell passes through a liquid and the experimenter's tongue. Experimenter then "tastes" the electricity. Taste through milk? "Soft and sweet" as opposed to electricity flowing through vinegar "strong acid taste". Anyway, interesting read.
bundaegi is good for you
If anything, the catholic church promoted the brightest minds and protected them. You know, when the roman empire fell, most europeans favourite hobby was still smashing their neighbours heads with axes. It wasn't even just the northern europeans, since the german tribes spread to all parts of the old western rome.
Luckily, the catholic church eventually converted these peoples and with that came a culture where even a quiet man who spent most of his life in a room doing experiments could be regarded a great man. That would not have happened without the catholic church.
For a very long period of time, it looks as if entertainment value was put way above scientific rigor
And we have recently returned to that dark age.
Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities. - Voltaire
I had always read that the Arabs were the repository of ancient knowledge, keeping good quality copies in libraries, not some cloister in some hick medieval village. (In fact, religion is often quoted as being the cause of the destruction of the library at Alexandria ...) Thus our numeric scheme (0..9, 10 ...). As much as many seem to deny (in the threads above) Religion has been accused of holding back scientific progress. If some halfwit religous nut calculates that the world is only 6231.1215926 years old, that is the age of the world! Thus evolution is a load of crap, since the world is demonstrably less than 7000 years old.
Better get of my soapbox now, before some deluded religious maniac threatens me with bodily harm.
One day in the far future:
"I've finished! The last peice of source recovered. We now know how this ancient artifact called Linux worked"
"Linux, what's linux?"
"Its a very old but staggeringly advanced computing system devised *before* the dark age of Microsoft. Its amazing to think that hundreds of years ago people had the ability to listen to music and watch videos whenever and whereever they wanted without being bound by the draconian licencing schemes, blue screens, poor driver quality and cost we have had to put up with for so many many years"
"Interesting, just think how advanced our technology would be now had Microsoft not had all heretics burned"
"Yes, it's a terrible terrible shame. What were they thinking?"
Funny enough, it wasn't the RCC. As much as they're dogmatic about religious things, they were (and to some degree still are) pretty lenient and progressive towards research and science. The RCC are hardly Luddites, and quite a bit of progress that was possible in medieval times was helped by Popes who wanted better artillery and more sculptures.
The RCC was a good scapegoat for emperors, though, if they wanted a cheap and easy way to get rid of gripers. Much like a lot of "terrorist" laws are today. Heretic, witch, communist, terrorist... why do you think the times change? The terms change, their use stays the same. It's a tool for those in power to intimidate their subjects and gain support for their quest to weed out the malcontents that dare to raise their voice.
The RCC wasn't keen on keeping literacy down. In fact, they taught it. Most charges of heresy and witchcraft against scientists were not raised by the RCC itself but rather by powerful individuals that were threatened by them. The Roman Inquisition was one of the most advanced judical systems in those times, and many people accused of heresy hoped to be subjected to the RI instead of a "worldly" court because your chance for a fair trial (as far as fairness went in those times) was heaps higher. You had the right to a defender who was educated in Roman Law, you had the right to be sheltered, in such a way that it is possible to you to prepare for your trial, the judges were not under the direct control of the Pope (actually quite often they acted against the Pope's interests) and your chance to go out free was not too bad, compared to other trials of that times. Maybe the best example on how much these Inquisition trials were aiming at finding the truth rather than a 'desired' result was the trial of Martin Luther, who, after all, challenged the RCC itself.
The Spanish Inquisition is the one we usually think of when we think of the term "Inquisition", with fake trials and torture and predetermined verdicts. This was by no means sanctioned by the RCC and actually just a tool of the local authorities, not one of the Holy See.
We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
If you read the comments, there is a hot but pointless discussion on whether this device is actually a 'computer'.
My father worked in RAE Farnbrough in the '40s and '50's. The first early 'Pilot-ACE' prototypes were developed by Manchester University and the National Physical Laboratory. Another less well known one was made for the Ministry of Defence and sent to Farnbrough for calculating things like air flow over wing profiles. The NPL director at the time seems to have had a deep distrust of computers, and the early versions were explicitly forbidden to execute conditional jumps ( IF..THEN..ELSE ). The computer would solve flow equations by shooting from the boundary conditions, and then stop. A human operator then had to press a key to instruct it to execute the jump back to the beginning of the loop to take the next iteration. I can only imagine how irritating Alan Turing must have found that - to go right to the edge of computational completeness, and then stop just short. Aaaaugh!
Arguments about who made the first computer tend to get rabid, fast, so people often define a computer as something that can make a conditions jump based on it's previous calculations, and not just like a player piano, rewinding its roll when it has detected the end. This is a nice, clear rule - either the machine can do conditional jumps or it can't - so it tends to get invoked when things get heated. The Antikythera mechanism had no need of a conditional jump. I have no doubt that the people who made it could have designed it to do so if they had wanted to, just as Charles Babbage could have done for the Difference Engine. However, in both cases, they did not, so in both cases, according to the narrow definition that requires a computer to do a conditional jump, this is a 'calculator' and not a 'computer'.
I suspect the Antikythera mechanism may have had immense value for calculating the tides and the safe dates for shipping. As such, you can imagine the ship's captain chucking it over the side in an emergency, like a U-Boat commander disposing of an Enigma machine, rather than let it be captured, and copied. Maybe this is why these devices have vanished so completely from known history.
Not more than many other churches, as soon as extremists have a certain percentage every religion starts to suck.
There are churches on the protestant side and on the orthodox side which are so extreme that the catholic church looks like a bunch of liberal hippies compared to them.
I would not even say the arabs are the safekeepers, probably almost the entire middle age society with western europe being the dark spot only. The biggest gate was Constantinople with their book copy shops from there the books went into the arabic world and also to some degree into europe.
For those countries western europe must have looked like Afghanistan looks now for us.
This is one of the biggest mistakes tought in schools that the middle ages were some kind of age where knowledge was lost everywhere while only a small subset of the world lost its knowledge (which it never had in the first degree since france never went into this stage after the roman empire collapse neither did italy really nor spain)
This not a free form stick and sand device.
"GNU/Stick and Sand" has the Four Freedoms.
Squirrel!
Luckily, the catholic church eventually converted these peoples
You make it sound wonderful. Yes, just like the Catholic church "converted" the natives living in the Americas. Oh, where are they today, anyway? That's right, most of them chose to die rather than be "converted". Now why would that be?
No, it's not burning people at the stake that brought about the renaissance. Progress and science continued East of Constantinople which less than 300 years after the fall of Rome, converted to Islam. During the golden age of the Islamic Caliphate, great progress was achieved in mathematics and natural science while Europe was embroiled in petty squabbles and eternally warring fiefdoms and baronies. The catholic church actively persecuted scientists as heretics, whereas the Islamic world embraced them (with certain limitations in the field of medicine, like not allowing dissections of the human body).
Then the Mongols invaded and destroyed the Islamic caliphate, and again a lot of progress and knowledge was lost in the world. Fortunately for Western Europe the big fish had eaten most of the little fish, and the squabbling local bosses had been forced to accept the rule of kings by then. This allowed for the organization of navies, the re-establishment of international trade and the establishment of universities - like Salamanca in Spain and Oxford and Cambridge in England. Finally Western Europe could afford to maintain scholars again. However what mostly happened is that they copied the knowledge that was coming from the East. It would be another 200 years before the Renaissance happened, and invention took off in the West.
No, please don't give me that line about how the church promoted scholarship. The ONLY thing the church did was force monks to copy old texts, and that's how SOME of the ancient knowledge was preserved. However monks weren't allowed to pass that knowledge on to the general public, and didn't communicate much among themselves lest they be called heretics.
It's no coincidence that the only "religious" scientist, Mendel, only had his work on genetics "discovered" 200 years AFTER HE WAS DEAD.
I suggest you read a few history books, and you'll see what a nasty political tool the Catholic church (or any church, for that matter) is. But remember, God needs your money.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
That's 20 I suppose. Mendel died in 1884.
Victims of 9/11: <3000. Traffic in the US: >30,000/y
And build universities and schools and fund scientists. Funny how Europe can have so many old universities isn't it?
[citation needed]
University of Bologna, founded in 1088 and received a charter from Frederick I, King of Germany and Italy in 1158.
Salamanca - founded by Alfonso IX, King of Spain in 1218
University of Paris - founded between 1160 and 1170 and later recognized by Pope Innocent III (who was a graduate in 1182).
University of Oxford - founded in the 11th century, not by any pope.
University of Cambridge - founded by students fleeing the University of Oxford...
University of Padua, founded 1122 by students of the University of Bologna
in fact, here's a link for you, where you can see that really not that many universities were founded by popes - especially outside of the Italian peninsula, and most of those were founded 200+ years after the first universities because Italy was starting to lag far behind the rest of the world. The renaissance may have begun in Italy, but if you look at the names of the great scientists, most of them are German, French or English.
I will argue that the pope's main interests in the universities was to assure that the "fourth" doctrine, theology, was taught properly, and that none of the other fields of study (law, medicine and philosophy) strayed from permitted doctrine.
Seven puppies were harmed during the making of this post.
You make it sound wonderful. Yes, just like the Catholic church "converted" the natives living in the Americas. Oh, where are they today, anyway? That's right, most of them chose to die rather than be "converted". Now why would that be?
Take a look south of the US border sometime. Most of the Central and South American population is of native descent. Of the ones that died, most didn't "chose" to, but died of imported diseases no one really had control over. The only large area of the Americas where natives were completely eradicated was North America, which happens to be the only area colonized largely by non-Catholic nations...
Full story in a Telegraph article: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/germany/1388038/Mysterious-gold-cones-hats-of-ancient-wizards.html
And, no it doesn't run linux but it may be possible to imagine a beowulf cluster of them.
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Oh boo hoo, science hasn't slowed down any, and it isn't as if current researchers are working on easier problems.
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
If Plato had had to get up off his ass and do some productive work once in a while, he might have had some more sensible ideas. Instead his anti-democratic notion of "philosopher-kings", and his metaphysical elevation of ideas over observations, have been toxic streams in Western thought for millennia.
Tom Swiss | the infamous tms | my blog
You cannot wash away blood with blood
If by prolific you mean terrible then I agree :)
If we define "computer" as "turing machine", then yes it is a computer.
People are using "IF-THEN-ELSE" as a touchstone for this. This is wrong. What the Antikythera machine is (if you're willing to encode the input and output digitally, which you may as well because of gear lash slop) is a Turing machine with an unwritable tape, otherwise known as an FSA (Finite State Automaton).
An FSA, since it's a Turing machine, does effectively do IF-THEN-ELSE operations. The important thing is that it is not programmable.
To put it in layman's terms, I could build a standalone computer that emulates the Antikythera, with the programming in ROM. It'll do everything the Antikythera does and vice versa, but nothing else. They are interchangeable. But mine does use IF-THEN-ELSE.
Years back people used the two phrases "Computer" and "Programmable Computer" fairly distinctly. These days the word "Programmable" has become implied, hence the confusion.
Maybe we should start saying "Nonprogrammable Computer" and "Computer" to clarify things.
But does it run Linux?
(Don't worry; I hated typing that joke as much as you hated reading it.)
No existe.
Have you read what you've quoted?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Library_of_Alexandria#Decree_of_Theodosius.2C_destruction_by_Theophilus_in_391
"In 391, Christian Emperor Theodosius I ordered the destruction of all "pagan" (non-Christian) temples, and the Christian Patriarch Theophilus of Alexandria complied with this request."
As far as I know, this is the most plausible version. Because Theodosius' decree is corroborated by other sources.
And the story of Caliph Umar is most probably a hoax.
The Spanish Inquisition is the one we usually think of when we think of the term "Inquisition"
I call BS.
If everybody thought of the Spanish Inquisition whenever they thought of the term "Inquisition", they wouldn't go around talking about how nobody expects them!
The most important question I have about the Antikythera mechanism is: does it compute utilizing a heliocentric solar system model? If it does, then constructing a device to model the existing solar system would have given you the heliocentric answer as the most simplified solution to the heavens very much pre-Copernicus.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
"Tell that to Geordano Bruno http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Giordano_Bruno [wikipedia.org] and all the others who were burnt at the stake for heresy."
Only one of the charges against Bruno concerned any his scientific views (specifically, the one about there being a plurality of worlds). All the others were about various non-standard theological ideas he'd been espousing, and his investigations into, and writings on several types of prohibited magical practices.
It should be noted that (a) Bruno's trial lasted for seven years, so this wasn't a case of him being railroaded to the stake on a set of trumped up charges and invented evidence; and (b) although the Catholic inquisition found him guilty of heresy, it wasn't them who burned him, or even asked for him to be burned (they actually petitioned for him not to be executed because he'd partially recanted), but Rome's secular authorities, who had legal jurisdiction over him once the trial had concluded.
I'm not going to change your sheets again, Mr. Hastings.
Hum. My english level is not good enough for me to take such a stance. Let's say I was happy to read his novels because they were easy enough for my poor understanding the moment I needed it. Now that I've improved a bit, I tend to read more mature books. Before you criticize me, just think for a moment how many fiction books you read in another language than your own (I don't need to know the answer ;-) ).
This said, I think there are wonderful novelists in the US at the moment, and this is pretty exciting. But even Clive Cussler is someone to be proud of, this is a kind of litterature we used to have at the end of the XIXth century in France, and in my opinion, we badly miss it. Alexandre Dumas was widely despised too, in his days, for plotting unrealistic stories, and lambasted for his "poor" style. Nevertheless, his books remains because they were bigger than life (and made better stories than historical accuracy would have produced alone ; Dumas used to say you could rape history, in order to produce beautiful offsprings).
Nowdays, most french novelists are writing about their own navel, and it's awfully boring. This is largely the product of the narrow minds of professional critics who value style over everything. Crafting a good story seems to be a lost art. Fear the day when you might think the same of your own country writers !