Kosh

Because it was correct.

Vorkosigan

LOL. From the same place he got his monkey curiousity and ability to think in complex ways about the world. 3.5 billion years of evolution. A preference for the simple over the complex is not exactly uncommon in other cultures. Copernicus simply expressed it in the culturally appropriate format. After all, disgust with the complexity of the Ptolemaic system was widespread in early Renaissance thinking, and Copernicus was not the first person to attempt a reform. The Muslims had attacked the problems of Ptolemaic thinking some 400 years before Copernicus. Al-Biruni (d. 1048) rejected the idea that the planets moved in perfect circles, for example, since reason and observation militated against that.

I think really this quest to attribute all causation to Christianity and what it inherited from the Greco-Romans is simply going to fall apart in a welter of underdetermination. The roots of science go back to our origin as animals evolved to interact effectively with the world around us.

Why don't you just accept that at bottom, for all its facilitation of scholarship and argument, and local positive influences on science, the authoritarianism of Christianity is inimical to science, just as Soviet, Nazi, Islamic and other authoritarianisms are? Freedom of expression, thought and information are incompatible with Christianity. It's really that simple.

Vorkosigan

Gurdur

How very odd. So Christianity can facilitate scholarship but it's still supposed to be inimical to science ?
All those Quakers, just for example, all being so dreadfully authoritarian ?


I simply suggest we ignore such off-topic rhetoric, and stick with the actual point of the thread --- this being BC&H, indeed, and not GRD.

Bede

From Vork:

Trouble is this is quite an unhelpful explanation from the point of view of history. We don't want to know why humans developed science, but why Western Europeans did in the seventeenth century. So Vork is right but only in the general sense that doesn't move us forward. For instance, I would suggest people prefer ad hoc explanations added to existing models rather than tearing down the house and starting again. That's why Ptolemy built is massive structure on Aristotle's basic principles of circular motion and a stationary earth and also why reform of Ptolemy tended to make the situation worse rather than better.

Returning to Hugo and the neo-Platonists, let's turn briefly to another early Copernican, Giordano Bruno. No one claims he was a martyr for science anymore (perhaps a martyr for magic) but he did hold Copernicanism and an infinite universe. Why? Here's why he says quoted from the Ash Wednesday Supper at pages 266-70 of the new edition of Frnces Yates "Giordano Bruno":

So here we have another case of clear relgious motivation for a scientific hypothesis with mysticism thrown into the mix. Copernicus didn't hold an infinite universe, but he did say the earth moved. Perhaps they were both plugged into the same Hermetic tradition, newly translated by Ficino?

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Hugo Holbling

That's a very interesting point, Bede. Do you think Kuhn had something similar in mind when he was working on the idea of normal science? The Musgrave paper i mentioned may be of use to you because his treatment of the supposedly instrumentalist influence may add weight to this. I'll send a copy to you as soon as i can.

Yes; everyone shares the same evolutionary history, so to speak, but that doesn't help us explain why only Copernicus (and a few others) proposed shifting the earth.

Perhaps indeed. Apparently the "perfect artisan" idea applied as much to the notion of possible worlds and the extent of the universe as it did to the formal perfection of theories.

Family Man

Bede --

That these early Christian scientists are going to explain their positions in terms of their religion is a given. What I haven't heard is how we can possibly conclude that their Christianity caused them to come up with the theories that they did without just taking their statements at face value.

So you can see what I'm driving at (and I'm not sure you have understood what I'm trying to say) consider these two hypothetical statements I'm going to put into the mouth of Copernicus. I apologize in advance if in doing so I misstate Copernicus's position.

"I, Copernicus, decided to look into the problem of cosmology because I wanted to come up with a better calendar for marking Catholic holidays."

I can reference his religion, note that the issue that he mentions was a valid one at the time (however corny it appears today) and conclude that it is a plausible statement. There are elements outside of his statement that lends credibility to it.

Now consider the following:

"I, Copernicus, put the Sun at the center to glorify my Church and God."

Again, referencing Copernicus's religion, I am unable to come up with anything that would make this anything other than a pious statement by a believer that wanted to reconcile his scientific conclusions with his faith. This isn't that unusual: as you noted above, the failure of natural theology indicates how willing these early scientists were to ascribe theological significance to scientific conclusions. And as I noted above, the reaction of the Church to Copernicus's theories would seem to indicate that Copernicus's originality was lost on them -- ergo, Christianity had nothing to do with it.

I don't believe there is a good explanation for why science rose in the 17th century in Europe. If you know of one, I'd be more than happy to look at it however.

the_cave

The point is, Copernicus' beliefs (whether Christian, Neoplatonic, or both, or otherwise) helped him both to formulate hypotheses and to find support for his conclusions. This is true of anyone's belief system, or cultural environment. I suppose you can call this support for or against religion; personally I think it's rather neutral.

There's been a lot of recent work on this, actually. Some suggest it was a response to neo-Skepticism, which had become popular in the preceding century. I recommend Steven Shapin's "The Scientific Revolution" as a good starting-point. It's short and breezy, and has an excellent bibliography.

Peter Kirby

What about the interest in the budding technology of mechanical contrivance and the analogy of the world to a machine, such as is found in one of Bede's quotes of Copernicus above? That would be the new idea in Christendom, that the Creation is a machine, not that there is a wise Creator, which was always held.

[And developing technology (and medicine--the body is likewise governed by physical processes) has always been a strong driving force behind scientific research, though not the theory of Copernicus. He just had a good guess based on analogical thinking. Something of the same is true for even Galileo, who through his telescope saw the imperfections of the moon and concluded that the Earth is likewise a satellite, I recall. But Galileo did not have the mathematical formulas of Kepler--something of a mystic himself! But I suggest that the analogy of the universe to a machine, and all the implications about reasonableness and materiality and quantifiability, was a seminal idea of the Scientific Revolution.]

best,
Peter Kirby

Family Man

I'm unconvinced that this tells us anything meaningful. People will always find "support" in their belief system.

Thanks, I will be checking it out.

Family Man

The metaphor of the universe as a machine was new, yet I'm sure was justified in religious terms. And that is the point I've been trying to make -- that these fundamental tenets of science that were developed did not come from any particular religious belief. I will be researching this and, if wrong, I'll be the first to admit it.