Bourgeois Science or Why Study Abroad?

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

Previously, stories about the cheerful Munchausen were written and read like fairy tales. Tomorrow, it looks like they will be used to study the laws of physics and artillery work …

At one time, a publishing house asked me to translate a book by an English-speaking author dedicated to such an entertaining phenomenon as the ninja in the history of Japan. The book was fundamental, replete with illustrations, descriptions of wars, quotes from Japanese historical chronicles, in a word, it had everything. Except ninja. This title was mentioned only once - in the title of the book itself. In the text, in two or three places, their traditional Japanese name - shinobi - was encountered (by the way, in Japanese there are no sounds "zh" and "sh", and therefore there is no shinobi, no film "Fuji", no sushi, no jiu-jitsu; in such a buzzing, hissing reading, they came to Russian from English, but Mount Fuji - directly, from Japanese). For hundreds of pages, it was exclusively about the everyday life of the samurai, about their military campaigns and about those military tricks that the most intelligent of their shoguns (military leaders) went to. With the same success one could write about "ninja in the army of Jan Zhizhka" or "ninja in the campaign of Minin and Pozharsky." Since then, I have a strong belief that the Japanese themselves learned that they once had ninjas from American comics and cartoons about turtles of the same name, that is, about thirty years ago.

And just recently I started reading (thank God, not a translation) of another historical work written by as many as five scientists. I will not give their English names, but here this book is called "Wars and Battles of the Middle Ages 500 - 1500". The numbers, as you understand, indicate the period covered. Again, I was pleased with the number of pictures of knights and castles, as well as three-dimensional schemes of certain battles. But a sad déjà vu happened to me …

So in the chapter under the intriguing title "Marines of the Middle Ages", consisting of exactly two paragraphs, I did not find anything even remotely smelling of the sea, and at the end of it there was such a phrase, which does not at all understand what it was: "However, much of the credit here belongs to William the Conqueror, thanks to whose triumph at Hastings, the "vulgar Latin" brought by the French ennobled the even more vulgar barbaric dialects of the Saxons-Germans."

I got to the chapter "Siege" and … decided to sit down for this article. Because I read literally the following: “In the early Middle Ages, such new weapons rarely appeared. People used what they invented in antiquity, and most often medieval technologies were even inferior - and sometimes significantly - to those generally accepted in the ancient world, since at the initial stage, both in military affairs and in life in general, there was a tendency to lower standards in almost everything."

Do you understand what is written here? It is written here, in modern terms, that over time, technologies became more primitive, as if, say, in the Second World War, the people still invented Katyushas, and ours rushed to Afghanistan with muskets. There, panimash, the Middle Ages are gloomy and stupid, but here - Soviet stagnation, general stupefaction, etc. Moreover, the authors always write with knowledge of the matter, confidently, as if they themselves flew there and saw everything with their own eyes.

I am a skeptic in life, and therefore I do not call not under the banner of Fomenko, nor those who refute them, and this is not what I am talking about (although sliding into savagery for no apparent reason, you must agree, is rather strange). And I am leading her that such books are written, printed, read and translated into Russian in the vaunted West. And who will think with his head? Would you like such historians to teach history to your children somewhere in Oxford and Cambridge?

But in the same book, in the same chapter, another issue is dealt with - the issue of siege structures. Here I would already advise you to let your children go after Peter the Great somewhere in Europe to study engineering wisdom. Read what they write (illustrating the genius of the ancients in comparison with the medieval boobies): “During the siege of Rhodes (305-304 BC), the Greek army erected wheel towers, which were set in motion by a huge gate. The height of one of them reached 43 meters, and even metal plates covered several levels with soldiers and siege machines located on them. At the end of the siege, the "released" iron was enough to build the Colossus of Rhodes in the harbor (a giant [over 30 meters] figure of the sun god Helios)."

I hope you can imagine what 43 meters is. This building has 15 modern floors. Moreover, it is on wheels. Moreover, with people, in iron and with siege weapons. Moreover, it rolls not along the runway of the airfield, but over the hills and mud of Antiquity. It rolls towards the walls of the fortress not five meters, but obviously more, because whoever would have let it be built under the walls. Have you presented? I don’t want to think about what the wheels and axles of such a structure should be made of. But I can very clearly see what area the base of such a tower should be so that it does not tip over even at the time of construction: preferably not less than the same 40 meters, and preferably more - there is no counterweight. And if you have now seen all this lump of wood, iron and people, imagine how much it should weigh and what can move it. Is it not from "The Lord of the Rings" that historians drew such remarkable works of engineering thought? Moreover, did you notice what is said at the end? That from the remains of such a tower was not built anything, but one of the seven wonders of the world. Which entered this top list due to its "gigantic" growth - as much as 30 meters, that is, almost a third lower than some kind of siege tower. That's how historians write and do not reread it.

And most likely, they just spar on what they have learned and do not think. It's hard to think. This is not taught at Oxford. And we have almost stopped. But I would still refrain from relying on the foreign level of science and its teaching there. They fall short. Blindfolded. They don't argue. Even with ourselves. One comrade widely known in narrow circles said correctly: he is a “scientist” because he was taught, but not because he was taught.

Then I round off. I came across a painfully exciting book. I'm going to grow wiser. Contrary to.