l'oubli de certains champs d'étude

«We can now trace the interesting history of the loss and rediscovery of the doctrine of fallacies in western Europe. This is the best example in history of how a whole area of learning can become dormant and, in spite of a felt need for it, require the efforts of new and original scholars to bring it back to consciousness.

There is nothing surprising, of course, about the loss of manuscripts. The slow erosion of old documents goes on by war, flood, and simple dereliction even in the twentieth century, and the period between the sixth and twelfth centuries was not exactly a peaceful one for Europe. It is easy, however, to exagerate the loss and its causal role. Manuscripts disappear, in part, because people are not interested enough to save them ; and it is not fair to blame marauding Goths or Moslems without first reflecting that these people, too, had their scholars and their intellectual priorities.»
C.L. Hamblin, Fallacies, Methuen, pp.102-103.