Archimedes died in 212, and Sulla wouldn’t be born until 138. Sulla tore down the physical building of Plato’s Academy, but the Academic skeptics (by Carneades’ day the Academy had devolved into skepticism) had much less to do with science in its modern form than, say, Aristotle’s empiricism.
The Catholic Index Librorum Prohibitorum was never a serious obstacle to publication outside the Papal States: most secular authorities outside the Italian peninsula disregarded it.
I appreciate the correction and amplifications. Archimedes was killed by a soldier of Marcellus, not Sulla.
For me the central problem of the Index was not so much its secular effects (though it is easier to find those than you say; the secular prohibition on teaching Descartes, for example) but that by its nature it proclaimed that ignorance was a moral virtue.
Nazi Germany, fascist Italy, etc. There are way more recent and relevant examples than the fall of Rome.
Well, hopefully this will be an event more like one of those, limited in geographic extent and duration.
Where can one find this account by Russo?
> if we believe Lucio Russo's account
Lucio = light/luminous
Russo = Russian
Looks like yet another disinformation attempt by the Russians, disregard!
;)
Well, the last time this happened in the West, it was the conquest of Hellenistic civilization by the Romans, if we believe Lucio Russo's account. This was a gradual process that took centuries, but two notable events in it are the clear-cutting of Plato's Academy by Sulla in 86 BCE (whose soldiers also killed Archimedes) and the lynching of Hypatia by Christians in 415 CE. Western science didn't recover from that until somewhere between the 18th century, when Harrison solved latitude and Lavoisier began cataloging the elements, and 01966, when the Roman Catholic Church ceased to promulgate the Index Librorum Prohibitorum.
Despite the Dark Ages in the West, science did continue elsewhere in the world, and even progress, but did not reach the general level of Hellenistic science and technology until it resurged in the West after the Renaissance, centuries after the Dark Ages ended. Many places had very stable societies—Ming China, Tokugawa Japan, Australian Aborigines—without it.
So, how can we go back? There's no guarantee we can. But we will go on.