35278Y230The Witch Hunt: Mental Crossroads@myDiary

Q&@

WE OFTEN ASSOCIATE SCIENCE
WITH THE VALUES OF SECULARISM AND TOLERANCE?
If so, early modern Europe is the last place you would have expected a scientific revolution!
Europe in the days of Columbus, Copernicus and Newton had the highest concentration of religious fanatics
in the world, and the lowest level of tolerance. The luminaries of the Scientific Revolution lived in a society
that expelled Jews & Muslims, burned heretics wholesale, saw a witch in every cat-loving elderly lady and
started a new religious war every full moon. If you had travelled to Cairo or Istanbul around 1600, you
would find there a multicultural and tolerant metropolis, where Sunnis, Shiites, Orthodox Christians,
Roman Catholics, Armenians, Copts, Jews & éven the occasional Hindu lived side by side in relative
harmony. Though théy hàd théir share of disagreements & riots, and though the Ottoman Empire
routinely discriminated against people on religious grounds, it was a liberal paradise compared
with Europe. If you had then sailed on to contemporary Paris or London, you would have
found cities awash with religious extremism, in which only those belonging to the domi-
nant sect could live. In London they killed Caholics, in Paris they killed Protestants, the
Jews had long been driven out, & nobody in his right mind would dream of letting
any Muslims ìn?! And yet, the Scientific Revolution began
in London & Paris rather than
in Cairo &
Istanbul.

29 jul 2019 - bewerkt op 02 aug 2019 - meld ongepast verhaal
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