Bede

joedad,

Good question and a can of worms.

Science is derived from the Latin for knowledge - scientia. Until the nineteenth century, the word was applied to most forms of learning and theology was the queen of the sciences. To make matters worse, art, from the Latin for skill, was applied to many subjects as well. So was philosophy (Greek for love of knowledge). The seven liberal arts were (liberal as in what a free man should learn) - grammar, rhetoric and logic (the trivium) and arithmatic, astronomy, geometry and music (the quadrivium). The quadrivium were also called the middle sciences, and were taught in the Arts Faculty of universities.

If you aren't confused by now, you soon will be.

What we call science most closely approximated to natural philosophy - the study of nature created by God. Hence Newton called his master piece, the Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy. Within this subject was the science (or art) of physics which was thew study of change. Outside it was metaphysics and ethics (the three philosophies, with natural philosophy) and also natural history which we might call biology.

Science gradually came to mean a whole load of separate fields including chemistry, the electricians, geologists etc and eventually these all took the word over as they wanted an overarching heading. In the 1830s it was decided to call practioners of these arts, er sciences, scientists. Hence when historians of science say science started in the 19th century they mean that it was only then all the different fields came under one heading and further more only then did science detach itself from God.

By modern science I mean this, but personally, I am happy to use the term science to cover the fields it eventually did cover, even if at the time the practioners didn't use the word. Most historians of science date modern science from the seventeenth century and note it differed a great deal in both success and form to earlier efforts.

The origin of the conflict hypothesis is with the French philosophes in the second half of the eighteenth century. Paine was a huge fan until their successors tried to cut his head off. But it only become common currency after the propoganda of Huxley, White, Draper and others in the mid-nineteenth century.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Goliath

Bede,

Does Stark prove that in all possible worlds without xian theology, science could not have risen to the status that it is held in this world today?

If not, then I find his claim highly dubious. Frankly, I'm often amazed that science did rise, despite xianity.

Sincerely,

Goliath

Goliath

Although, I won't defend the rest of the statements, it is true that 1+1+1=1
.
.
.
...in a field of characteristic 2.

Sincerely,

Goliath

lpetrich

Bede:
1) The Catholic tradition (and we are talking about medieval Catholics) does not depend on the bible alone but on the twin pillars of the Bible and tradition handed down through the church.

Very ingenious. It's whatever the Church wants it to be, it would seem. So if the Church decides that Earl Doherty is right and that a historical Jesus Christ is a myth, does that mean that "true Christianity" means believing that the only "real" Jesus Christ is "spiritual" or whatever?

It is no use saying that isn't True Christianity as that is what medieval scholastics believed and we are talking about medieval scholastics.

Medieval scholastic philosophers are just medieval scholastic philosophers; I don't see how medieval scholasticism deserves the lofty mantle of "True Christianity". And although I think it likely that modern science emerged out of medieval scholasticism, I don't see how modern science implies the truth of that school of philosophy. It's like saying that to be a good mathematician, one must believe in reincarnation and refuse to eat beans, as Pythagoras had done.

2) I find the term Bedianity grossly offensive. It also personalises the argument and should not be used.

OK, if you guys insist, I won't use it. But I don't see how it is much worse than "headbanger".

(early modern science perceived as a quasi-theological enterprise...)

That may well be the case, but their opponents were not Satanists or Christ-haters or whatever.

The church didn't support the flat earth,

True.

it didn't prevent human dissection,

But the Church had not unhesitatingly endorsed it.

no scientist was attacked for scientifc views before Galileo and none afterwards either.

"People give ear to an upstart astrologer who strove to show that the earth revolves and not the heavens of the firmament, the Sun and the Moon. Whoever wishes to appear clever must devise some new system, which of all systems is of course the best. This fool wishes to reverse the entire science of astronomy; the sacred Scripture tells us that Joshua commanded the Sun to stand still, not the Earth." _-- Martin Luther

Referring to Psalm 93:1, "Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?" -- John Calvin

Also, after making Galileo recant, the Church forbade the teaching of heliocentrism for two centuries.

The Dark Ages were not caused by Rome turning Christian and didn't happen anyway.

How were they not "Dark Ages"? For starters, not much literature survives from non-Byzantine Europe around 500-1000 CE or thereabouts. The main survivors are various chronicles and largely-fictional saint biographies.

The Middle Ages were an age when reason was enthroned and revered.

LOL.

The Renaissance was not anything but a logical continuation of the Middle Ages.

It had such causes as economic growth and the rediscovery of the Greco-Roman classics, as learned from refugees from Constantinople.

Copernicus was not placed under any pressure at all.

I would not be so sure. He published his magnum opus only at the end of his life, and his friend Osiander attached a preface describing Copernicanism as a speculative hypothesis without any special claim to truth. Thus supporting what Family Man has called "fictionalism".

So if Copernicus had been under no pressure, why didn't he advertise his theory far and wide?

No one was ever executed over science.

Does one have to execute people to suppress disliked ideas?

And that's like defending the Lysenkoites because the great biologist Nikolai Vavilov had not been executed.

The church did not deliberately impede science.

Except when it included hypotheses contrary to the Church's cherished beliefs.

Why had it ever been necessary to present certain ideas in fictionalist form?

Toto

Bede has also agreed not to use terms like headbanger (right, Bede?)

Thanks to all.

lpetrich

Bede is quite correct that science used to be called "natural philosophy", and that "science" was only applied to it in the 1830's, but that's about it. Saying that it had been a branch of theology before that is like saying that philosophy in general is a branch of theology.

Bede

I didn't say this. I said theology was concidered a branch of science and the most important one. This is true and uncontroversial as is everything else in that post.

Vorkosigan

I do not agree with this at all, for reasons I have already outlined in numerous threads, and to which you have never replied. The only headbanger on this topic is you.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

We already know this is wrong. Remember our example of Heliocentric teaching and China? The Index? You cannot win by repetition what you have lost in the actual argument. A perfect example of headbanging on your part.

A real scholar would have a well-rounded view of the topic that would include clear thinking on the overall effect of Christianity on science, and would show where it both impeded and facilitated, and would not confine itself to the narrow issue of whether scientists were executed. What do you think Descartes meant when, after he heard of the Church's move on Galileo, he remarked "It is not my temperament to set sail against the wind." Your remark that the science-religion conflict is a 19th century propaganda invention is nonsense. Every single 17th century thinker wrestled with the twin problem of the Church's authoritarian control, and the fact that its natural history was bullshit (a key stimulant to the growth of science, and one always neglected by scientific historians writing on this topic). I have also pointed out many other problems caused by religion, such as Newton wasting his brilliance on one and a half million words of theological fantasies -- and he was hardly the only one.

I realize that you will of course ignore this post, as you always do. But I put it here to remind other participants in this thread that there is a vast wilderness to this argument which you have simply never explored, preferring to stay in the comfortable, well-lit room you have built for yourself on this topic. Science arose because of a complex set of causes of which Christianity was a highly ambiguous and contradictory one, primarily for reasons that had nothing to do with Christianity.

Vorkosigan

Adora

This is all very pretty and interesting and all, but aren't we overlooking an important sociological evolution here?

Religion is a political system as much as or more than any other facet of its existence. It exists to give power to people (ie- "politics") whether that's in a heirachy, a pseudo-"democracy" or a monarchy. The scientific arts throughout history would have gone on the way they did whether religion said they could or not. Human's desire for knowledge about their universe is an insatiable desire and as long as there are those with more brain cells than the unwashed masses there will be those wishing for true evidence and logic in the description of this universe and not just the usual "We Don't Know" ie- "The Great SkyBrat Did It". The "scientists" of history, whether alchemists or Darwin himself, had to work in the context of their times, and if that context was overly religious or superstitious, they would try and make gold out of pseudoscientific formulae. Or they would discover new theories about how the world came to be, and consequently cause a crisis of faith within the clergy because so many of them were as well educated as Darwin himself and had hobbies such as entomology or taxidermy and could see his theories in work.

Of course the different Christian church persecuted those who discovered things in the scientific field that weren't beneficial to them. Just as all political institutions do. When something has power the number one thing on their list is keeping that power. And logically, that also included embracing scientific theories that somehow supported the power of the church. Again, just like now. You should see some of the totally warped 'scientific' research they use in the Catholic Church's Anti-Condom propaganda (evil evil evil men). It isn't a matter of which science they embrace at which point in time, it's about the Christian religion acting as all powerful social institutions do since human society began.