this post was submitted on 31 Jul 2024
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Yes, he is quite apparently uninformed and doesn't know the hell about anything. Holy shit, saying the Library at Baghdad being lost either is no big deal? Jesus fucking Christ.
Hey, wanna guess what happens when a central repository for copies and copying is lost? There are fewer chances for copies to be made. This is... this is not exactly high-level historiography.
This is why I fucking hated AskHistorians back on Reddit. They'd remove actual well-researched comments for not being cited properly, and then leave up absolutely unsupported dogshit assertions up like this because it 'sounds right'.
Holy fucking shit, Does he not understand the difference between modern mass-printing and pre-modern script transmission?
Tens of thousands of copies of works would have potentially hundreds of years' worth of copying added to their stock. The idea that there's a fucking boolean switch here is just... beyond stupid. God have mercy on this posters soul.
How many Classical works do we know of only because of one or two early copies of that managed to survive long enough to be transmitted by a more interested and more wealthy era? "Hurr hurr if they were important there would have been more copies". Jesus fucking Christ.
EDIT: Searched through the commenter's history out of curiousity. They seem to otherwise have informed takes, which makes their position on the library's importance all the more baffling.
Friend, you’re oddly hostile and emotional about this - especially considering your lack of knowledge concerning the historical event in question. Like many, you appear to have conflated the burning of the Library of Alexandria by Caesar in the 1st century with the decline of the Library and later murder of Hypatia in the 4th century.
I would suggest you check out Hypatia : the life and legend of an Ancient Philosopher by Edward Watts for more details of the nature of the political conflict involving her, Orestes, and Cyril. I would also suggest you calm down and learn more about historical events before you start cussing people out.
The meme says "still upset about the Library of Alexandria", and most people associate that with the burning of the Library of Alexandria, not 'the decline' afterwards. You were the one who brought up Hypatia, to which I only responded to demonstrate the absolute fucking absurdity of asserting that it was not a 'religious issue' when the core matter was that the Christian mob felt that the wretched pagan whore was leading poor Orestes astray from reconciling with God's Church (and Bishop Cyril, conveniently, who was definitely known for his tolerance /s)
I'd suggest you take your tone policing and shove it up your ass. I don't give misinformation asspats and a hall pass just because it's stated without emotional terms.
People don't stop passing around misinformation because it's politely corrected and implicitly legitimized and treated with dignity. They stop passing it around because they learn that it's not welcome where they're trying to pass it around.
EDIT: I was curious, so I actually did check out Hypatia: The Life and Legend of an Ancient Philosopher. It's quite good. It's also quite explicit in placing her killing within a religious context, so, thanks for reinforcing my point, I guess.
Well it would help if instead of being a dick about it and being all gasp shock and horror, maybe post some sources supporting your claims? "I don't even know where to start" Oh humbug this misinformation! About something that happened thousands of years ago and has zero modern day relevance.
Maybe the whole library of Alexandria thing is an American thing? I had hardly heard of it until later on the internet. In the ancient history classes I had it was only briefly mentioned and more because of the politics around the thing than the thing itself.
Every source I can find (and I'm not counting any Reddit post as a source) says not much was actually lost, the library had been in decline for a long time before the fire and there were a lot of libraries. Just because it was a prestigious and big one, doesn't mean it's important when there are libraries in every city which combined hold even more knowledge. Moreover it is widely accepted that the libraries didn't contribute that much to the survival of ancient knowledge to modern day, but instead the many copies floating around. Especially medieval monks who did nothing all day except for making copies.
And I have to wonder what knowledge you think was actually lost? It isn't like the ancients were known for their application of the scientific method. Some of the things the ancients did were really impressive and cool, but they didn't have a whole lot of knowledge compared to the past 100 years. No doubt some cool stories and poems were lost, which is a shame, but not something to get this worked up about.
Jesus fucking Christ. Why are you even here in a History community if that's how you feel?
The decline of the library as an academic institution and the loss of a significant portion of its collection (and by some accounts a significant portion of the storage of the building itself) are two different things, and most people talk about the latter, not the former.
...
Oh, okay, like how if a warehouse with the largest (and non-neglible) portion of the world's silk reserves burns down, it's okay, because there's more silk elsewhere. Definitely doesn't effect anything, not even with a fungible commodity. Phew! I was worried for a moment that a large number of works with an already small number of copies were destroyed in one of the most centralized and well-known repositories in the world at a time when navigation even within a polity could be dicey! Good thing that's definitely not what happened, otherwise it might be a real tragedy for the preservation of human works!
What the fuck.
Holy shit. Where do you think those 'medieval monks' (which is a really odd one to hone in on, but we'll let that slide) copied scripts from? Where do you think those copies were stored?
For that matter, a great deal of knowledge was lost due to those same 'medieval monks' quite literally scraping off text to reuse vellum for their own works.
"Who cares? It's just history and literature! It's not like it's something important, like STEM."
Stop. Get help.
Have you cited a single source in this conversation? Do you have anything other than hostility? I’ve read some spicy history papers, but usually the insults are a bit less foaming at the mouth. I don’t think it’s “tone policing” to ask you to avoid insults in a conversation about history. Even my most dickish professor in grad school attacked arguments, not people.
This isn’t a “STEM” versus history thing. I have a degree in history, and have done substantial post grad work. No classicist that I’ve met gets worked up about the Library of Alexandria. The way that texts were preserved was by copying - important texts were copied more. There might have been some commentaries on Plato or Aristotle that could have been interesting, maybe some lost poetry, but folks have almost turned this into mythology.
Instead of writing whatever screed you are typing at this moment, why not spend that time reading that book I linked? Why not spend that time reading about the contents of the library?
Less cursing and more academic language, but otherwise similar if you ever read back-and-forth letters between academics on actual contentious topics. Academics also rarely dismiss events with "About something that happened thousands of years ago and has zero modern day relevance."
Jesus Christ, do I have to define tone policing for you too?
"And I have to wonder what knowledge you think was actually lost? It isn’t like the ancients were known for their application of the scientific method. Some of the things the ancients did were really impressive and cool, but they didn’t have a whole lot of knowledge compared to the past 100 years. No doubt some cool stories and poems were lost, which is a shame, but not something to get this worked up about."
You're absolutely right, nothing here that devalues history and the humanities by placing STEM as the only matter of importance, no sir. /s
At no point has that been disputed, and I already clearly laid out why the loss of the Library of Alexandria was damaging to textual transmission. Are you even reading what I'm saying?
Cool, so obviously the correct response is to dismiss the loss of tens of thousands of texts in the ancient world as no big deal. That's how bias works, right? If there's an equal amount of bias on the opposite side, the end result is truth. /s
As I wrote:
But hey, who needs verification when you can make arbitrary claims and hope that your opponent won't actually check your source?
Jesus Christ bro. Take an edible.