AAARRRGGH! The Ignorance! It Hurts!

I recently read an interesting artice on an engineering website entitled, French Army Revives Medieval Star Fort Patterns in North Africa. As a history buff, how could I not read an article with such an intriguing headline?

Studying mediaeval and early modern European history, I know quite a bit about the mediaeval period and since one of my specific interests in history is 17th century France, I'm also familiar with star forts, which is what made the title of the piece so intriguing. STAR FORTS ARE NOT MEDIAEVAL! They were first built in the mid-fifteenth century in Italy at the height of the Renaissance and were brought to perfection by the French military engineer, Sébastien Le Prestre de Vauban, Marquis de Vauban (1 May 1633 – 30 March 1707), commonly referred to as simply Vauban, as in 'The French are building Vauban forts in Mali'.

Neither mid-fifteenth century Italy, nor 17th century France are mediaeval, but it was obvious that not only the headline writer was ignorant of this fact. In the body of the article, the writer says, 'the French military has resorted to medieval tactics...'

This illustrates the deep problems with the lack of a common, shared culture. One of the greatest engineers of all times, Isambard Kingdom Brunel, was classically educated from prep school, through the University of Caen (the alma mater of Laplace and Poincaré), to le Lycée Henri-IV in Paris. He would not have made such an ignorant mistake.

Whilst this is not completely new, it has become worse over the past decades. I remember a cocktail party I attended 50 years ago. It was given by a member of the English faculty at my university. I was dating a member of the faculty so I went with her. 

As the 'conversation pods' separated it was American Lit people in one, English Lit people in another, further broken down by period, and in some cases by author. They basically had nothing in common, knowing little about any subject in the field except for their speciality.

I was quite lonely! I noticed another fellow standing in a corner. I began to talk with him, discovering that he was in the same situation. He had come to the party with his wife, who was in literature, but he was a historian. Even tho' his speciality was early 20th century America and mine was mediaeval and early modern Europe, we hit it off and are still friends 50 years later.

Part of the problem with civil discourse today (or should I say uncivil discourse?) is that so many people do not share the same culture as the people they're trying to talk to/convince/prove wrong, even if they were born and raised in the same society.