Potassium has the chemical symbol K, which comes from 'kalium'; a neo-Latin term from the sixteenth century derived from 'alkali', which comes from the the Arabic 'al-qalyah', which means "plant ashes" because the Arab scholars of the Middle Ages first isolated potassium and other metallic salts in the ashes of plants.
In the sixteenth century, other Western scholars likewise discovered potassium in a substance that had been used for centuries called 'potash'... which is the burnt ashes of plants. 'Potash' became 'potassium' but to keep it sounding classical, they kept the K symbol for kalium (as the main purpose for neo-Latin was to make things sound important.)
It's fascinating to me how much early knowledge came out of Arab cultures. Doubly sad if you look at the state of affairs there today.
(05-30-2014 03:07 PM)Machiavelli Wrote: Potassium has the chemical symbol K, which comes from 'kalium'; a neo-Latin term from the sixteenth century derived from 'alkali', which comes from the the Arabic 'al-qalyah', which means "plant ashes" because the Arab scholars of the Middle Ages first isolated potassium and other metallic salts in the ashes of plants.
In the sixteenth century, other Western scholars likewise discovered potassium in a substance that had been used for centuries called 'potash'... which is the burnt ashes of plants. 'Potash' became 'potassium' but to keep it sounding classical, they kept the K symbol for kalium (as the main purpose for neo-Latin was to make things sound important.)
It's fascinating to me how much early knowledge came out of Arab cultures. Doubly sad if you look at the state of affairs there today.
(05-30-2014 03:07 PM)Machiavelli Wrote: Potassium has the chemical symbol K, which comes from 'kalium'; a neo-Latin term from the sixteenth century derived from 'alkali', which comes from the the Arabic 'al-qalyah', which means "plant ashes" because the Arab scholars of the Middle Ages first isolated potassium and other metallic salts in the ashes of plants.
In the sixteenth century, other Western scholars likewise discovered potassium in a substance that had been used for centuries called 'potash'... which is the burnt ashes of plants. 'Potash' became 'potassium' but to keep it sounding classical, they kept the K symbol for kalium (as the main purpose for neo-Latin was to make things sound important.)
It's fascinating to me how much early knowledge came out of Arab cultures. Doubly sad if you look at the state of affairs there today.
Yep, the Dark Ages were only "dark" in Europe.
Yea half your population dying in a plague and the rest struggling to survive famine due to abnormally cold temps and short growing seasons will set you back a century or so..
Still Ill take what the Greeks and Romans did for engineering and put it up as a "we carried our own weight"..
(05-30-2014 03:07 PM)Machiavelli Wrote: Potassium has the chemical symbol K, which comes from 'kalium'; a neo-Latin term from the sixteenth century derived from 'alkali', which comes from the the Arabic 'al-qalyah', which means "plant ashes" because the Arab scholars of the Middle Ages first isolated potassium and other metallic salts in the ashes of plants.
In the sixteenth century, other Western scholars likewise discovered potassium in a substance that had been used for centuries called 'potash'... which is the burnt ashes of plants. 'Potash' became 'potassium' but to keep it sounding classical, they kept the K symbol for kalium (as the main purpose for neo-Latin was to make things sound important.)
It's fascinating to me how much early knowledge came out of Arab cultures. Doubly sad if you look at the state of affairs there today.
Yep, the Dark Ages were only "dark" in Europe.
Yea half your population dying in a plague and the rest struggling to survive famine due to abnormally cold temps and short growing seasons will set you back a century or so..
Still Ill take what the Greeks and Romans did for engineering and put it up as a "we carried our own weight"..
(05-30-2014 03:07 PM)Machiavelli Wrote: It's fascinating to me how much early knowledge came out of Arab cultures. Doubly sad if you look at the state of affairs there today.
This.
The novelist Michael Crichton (1942-2008) touched on that subject with "Eaters of the Dead" which he wrote in the early/mid '70s and was made into an almost unbelievably incoherent movie called "The 13th Warrior" starring Antonio Banderas.
(05-30-2014 03:07 PM)Machiavelli Wrote: Potassium has the chemical symbol K, which comes from 'kalium'; a neo-Latin term from the sixteenth century derived from 'alkali', which comes from the the Arabic 'al-qalyah', which means "plant ashes" because the Arab scholars of the Middle Ages first isolated potassium and other metallic salts in the ashes of plants.
In the sixteenth century, other Western scholars likewise discovered potassium in a substance that had been used for centuries called 'potash'... which is the burnt ashes of plants. 'Potash' became 'potassium' but to keep it sounding classical, they kept the K symbol for kalium (as the main purpose for neo-Latin was to make things sound important.)
It's fascinating to me how much early knowledge came out of Arab cultures. Doubly sad if you look at the state of affairs there today.
Yep, the Dark Ages were only "dark" in Europe.
Yea half your population dying in a plague and the rest struggling to survive famine due to abnormally cold temps and short growing seasons will set you back a century or so..
Still Ill take what the Greeks and Romans did for engineering and put it up as a "we carried our own weight"..
Dark ages as commonly understood, are a myth. There was plenty of innovation and culture in that time. They were labeled as "Dark Ages" by Petrarch, who re-discovered Roman poets, and was bitter that the centuries had ignored them. So he labeled the era as "dark" b/c they didn't do what he thought important.
Yes, leftist scholars haven't changed in 700 years.
Now "Dark Ages" is used to refer to that era simply b/c there is little written from that time. I read an interesting theory about that the other day: the seas were dangerous due to piracy, predominantly from muslim lands. Thus the goods to make cheap paper weren't available, and it was back to parchment.
(05-30-2014 03:07 PM)Machiavelli Wrote: Potassium has the chemical symbol K, which comes from 'kalium'; a neo-Latin term from the sixteenth century derived from 'alkali', which comes from the the Arabic 'al-qalyah', which means "plant ashes" because the Arab scholars of the Middle Ages first isolated potassium and other metallic salts in the ashes of plants.
In the sixteenth century, other Western scholars likewise discovered potassium in a substance that had been used for centuries called 'potash'... which is the burnt ashes of plants. 'Potash' became 'potassium' but to keep it sounding classical, they kept the K symbol for kalium (as the main purpose for neo-Latin was to make things sound important.)
It's fascinating to me how much early knowledge came out of Arab cultures. Doubly sad if you look at the state of affairs there today.
Yep, the Dark Ages were only "dark" in Europe.
Yea half your population dying in a plague and the rest struggling to survive famine due to abnormally cold temps and short growing seasons will set you back a century or so..
Still Ill take what the Greeks and Romans did for engineering and put it up as a "we carried our own weight"..
Dark ages as commonly understood, are a myth. There was plenty of innovation and culture in that time. They were labeled as "Dark Ages" by Petrarch, who re-discovered Roman poets, and was bitter that the centuries had ignored them. So he labeled the era as "dark" b/c they didn't do what he thought important.
Yes, leftist scholars haven't changed in 700 years.
Now "Dark Ages" is used to refer to that era simply b/c there is little written from that time. I read an interesting theory about that the other day: the seas were dangerous due to piracy, predominantly from muslim lands. Thus the goods to make cheap paper weren't available, and it was back to parchment.
Actually, there was very little innovation during that period and if it weren't for the Catholic Church, whose clergy were almost the only people in the continent able to read and write, we'd have nothing from the fall of Rome until the Crusades. Only bright spots were Alfred and Charlemegne, who saw value in education, but the Vikings set them back several hundred years. It was a relatively bright period in Constantinople and that was about it.
(This post was last modified: 05-30-2014 03:31 PM by EverRespect.)
(05-30-2014 03:30 PM)EverRespect Wrote: Actually, there was very little innovation during that period and if it weren't for the Catholic Church, whose clergy were almost the only people in the continent able to read and write, we'd have nothing from the fall of Rome until the Crusades.
That's simply not true.
3-crop rotation. The chimney. Horse collar (some argue that came from China). Big inventions coming from the "Dark ages".
Writing waned, that's true. Doesn't mean that it was all gloom and doom. That's just a myth.
You'd be amazed at the history between the United States and the Middle East. The link below is for a book and is a very good, very easy read...it documents our relationship going back to just before the revolutionary war.
(05-30-2014 03:07 PM)Machiavelli Wrote: Potassium has the chemical symbol K, which comes from 'kalium'; a neo-Latin term from the sixteenth century derived from 'alkali', which comes from the the Arabic 'al-qalyah', which means "plant ashes" because the Arab scholars of the Middle Ages first isolated potassium and other metallic salts in the ashes of plants.
In the sixteenth century, other Western scholars likewise discovered potassium in a substance that had been used for centuries called 'potash'... which is the burnt ashes of plants. 'Potash' became 'potassium' but to keep it sounding classical, they kept the K symbol for kalium (as the main purpose for neo-Latin was to make things sound important.)
It's fascinating to me how much early knowledge came out of Arab cultures. Doubly sad if you look at the state of affairs there today.
Yep, the Dark Ages were only "dark" in Europe.
Yea half your population dying in a plague and the rest struggling to survive famine due to abnormally cold temps and short growing seasons will set you back a century or so..
Still Ill take what the Greeks and Romans did for engineering and put it up as a "we carried our own weight"..
Dark ages as commonly understood, are a myth. There was plenty of innovation and culture in that time. They were labeled as "Dark Ages" by Petrarch, who re-discovered Roman poets, and was bitter that the centuries had ignored them. So he labeled the era as "dark" b/c they didn't do what he thought important.
Yes, leftist scholars haven't changed in 700 years.
Now "Dark Ages" is used to refer to that era simply b/c there is little written from that time. I read an interesting theory about that the other day: the seas were dangerous due to piracy, predominantly from muslim lands. Thus the goods to make cheap paper weren't available, and it was back to parchment.
This
There was nothing dark about the 'dark ages.' Western culture was forged in the dark ages and perhaps more important than anything the idea behind logic and the excessive of it reached new heights which made the Renaissance and Enlightenment possible.
Besides, the term Dark Ages refers to the political setting, having lost the 'light' of Rome. There was no centralized political figure or structure like in the past. In other areas of society things continued on as they always had.
Like I said, advances in understanding and application of logic were huge and unbelievably valuable.
(05-30-2014 06:39 PM)HeartOfDixie Wrote: Besides, the term Dark Ages refers to the political setting, having lost the 'light' of Rome. There was no centralized political figure or structure like in the past. In other areas of society things continued on as they always had.
Like I said, advances in understanding and application of logic were huge and unbelievably valuable.
I found the flagellants of the 14th century to be extremely interesting. If you don't know who they are, I highly recommend you read up on this strange movement.
"y'all" isn't southern dialect, and it isn't a contraction of "you all". it predates the entire country, and is actually a mumbled amalgamation of the old english "ye all".
(05-31-2014 03:18 PM)EagleX Wrote: "y'all" isn't southern dialect, and it isn't a contraction of "you all". it predates the entire country, and is actually a mumbled amalgamation of the old english "ye all".
(05-31-2014 03:18 PM)EagleX Wrote: "y'all" isn't southern dialect, and it isn't a contraction of "you all". it predates the entire country, and is actually a mumbled amalgamation of the old english "ye all".
(05-31-2014 03:18 PM)EagleX Wrote: "y'all" isn't southern dialect, and it isn't a contraction of "you all". it predates the entire country, and is actually a mumbled amalgamation of the old english "ye all".
. . .
Mmm, I don't know about that one.
neither do I. But it sounds good, doesn't it?
I have heard that y'all was used in England by the same group of English that settled the southern US. All the nifty sayings like "you've got me as nervous as a jitterbug." were a result of the Irish dialect. Southern speech has its roots in Gaelic.
(05-30-2014 03:07 PM)Machiavelli Wrote: Potassium has the chemical symbol K, which comes from 'kalium'; a neo-Latin term from the sixteenth century derived from 'alkali', which comes from the the Arabic 'al-qalyah', which means "plant ashes" because the Arab scholars of the Middle Ages first isolated potassium and other metallic salts in the ashes of plants.
In the sixteenth century, other Western scholars likewise discovered potassium in a substance that had been used for centuries called 'potash'... which is the burnt ashes of plants. 'Potash' became 'potassium' but to keep it sounding classical, they kept the K symbol for kalium (as the main purpose for neo-Latin was to make things sound important.)
It's fascinating to me how much early knowledge came out of Arab cultures. Doubly sad if you look at the state of affairs there today.
(05-31-2014 03:39 PM)oklalittledixie Wrote: We've all seen these guys around town, but many people don't know this is actually an anomaly in the gene pool.
![[Image: 71485_10152172397948376_333806223_n.jpg]](https://scontent-a-dfw.xx.fbcdn.net/hphotos-xpa1/t1.0-9/71485_10152172397948376_333806223_n.jpg)