Antipope Innocent II

With respect, art school teachers aren't usually good sources of information about anything except art. They sure as hell aren't reliable sources of information about a subject as obscure and as obscured as Medieval science. Even most generalist books on the history of science or medicine say things about the Middle Ages which are total nonsense.

Very wise. But stick to specialists on Medieval science. And recent ones. This subject had been muddied by anti-Christian zealots for some time now. We atheists need to get rid of the ideologically driven fanatics who have confused our thinking for too long and embrace an honest and objective analysis of the facts. That's why the talk by Richard Carrrier (as reported by Toto) sounds depressingly like the usual partisan garbage: true in part, but wrong on key points. This doesn't serve intelligent atheists well.

It was somewhere in the recent Did the Church hold back medical advance. If you can't find it there let me know and I'd be happy to give you details of the revival of dissection in the Middle Ages and how this was sponsored and encouraged by the Medieval Church.

Yes, it is. There was a brief window wherein dissection was allowed in the Alexandrian schools. Galen benefited from the knowledge gained by this, but his own practical experience was with the dissection of dogs and pigs. Medieval and Early Modern researchers were eventually able to correct many of Galen's errors by finally gaining access to human cadavers.

Dishonour of the dead was the main reason for the Roman taboo that stifled the dissection of corpses until the late Twelfth Century. Then the wide dissemination of Galen led to curiosity about anatomy in the medical schools that were arising in the new Medieval universities. This curiosity led to a desire to examine human corpses. Here the Christian taboo about the resurrection came into play, but condemned criminals for capital crimes like murder were deemed irredeemably damned. So their corpses were ruled exempt from this taboo and became available for the new medical schools.

The result was modern anatomical studies - born, like most modern academic disciplines, in Medieval universities.

The answer to that question lies not in anatomy, but in the history of art. Symbolic, iconographic and even semi-abstract representations of the human body became the norm from late Roman times into the later Middle Ages. What's that got to do with an understanding of the human body? Not much. Symbolic, iconographic and even abstract representations of the human body are very common in our time. Does that mean we don't have or respect an understanding of human anatomy? If you look at an entirely abstract painting in a modern gallery entitled "Male Nude": do you conclude Twenty-First Century culture is ignorant of anatomy? Not at all.

Just because artists from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century had an aesthetic that based "good" art on "realism" and judged "realism" for the human form on anatomy doesn't mean that this is the yardstick for either (i) art or (ii) knowledge of anatomy. Medieval art, like Modern art, was based on other aesthetics and anatomy isn't actually very relevant to either. If you don't believe me, look at the carvings on the tympanum of Chartres Cathedral and look at, say, Picasso's Guernica. Anatomical? If not, does that mean the culture involved didn't understand anatomy?

Totally. The fact that most people's understanding of the Middle Ages is virtually non-existent and that what they "know" is prejudiced crap means that this sort of thing is commonly found on the internet even though those who have studied the Middle Ages know it's cartoonish garbage.

What bothers me is atheists who defend this nonsense simply because it fits some kind of anti-Christian agenda. That's ridiculous and it makes us look as dumb as Creationists.

Is that what we want?

No Robots

This may be the quotation you are looking for:

In Rome Leonardo continued his anatomical studies, apparently at the Ospedale di Santo Spirito and as well carried on studies in distillation and physics, or more particularly optics. Unfortunately such studies appear to have brought him into conflict with a German mirror-maker known merely as Giovanni degli Specchi who seems to have been envious not only of Leonardo's influence with their common patron but as well of the considerably larger stipend that he received. As a result of the slanderous rumors which he spread, including suggestion of sacrilege in connection with Leonardo's anatomical studies, the latter found himself in papal disfavor and barred from Santo Spirito. Hence Leonardo terminated his anatomical studies.—Introduction to Leonardo on the Human Body (or via: amazon.co.uk).

Magdlyn

Comments on this article?

http://www.calvin.edu/academic/medie...tique_main.htm

Magdlyn

And universities teach it in anatomy depts, apparently, as per one of my links.


Do you include all university anatomy teachers (science or art depts) as anti-Xtian zealots? Do they all base the info on myths purposely published by atheist zealots? It seems this "myth" about the illegality of dissection in medieval and early Renn times was popular long before secular humanism became popular (not that it is all that popular, as our discussion of the MJ/HJ controversy bears out).

Fanatics/zealots. Your language is colorful.


Thanks. I will go read.

I supposed desemination of correct anatomical studies did not begin until the printing press was invented. So even if 13th century guys were legally cutting open corpses, this info would not have been known to many for at least 200 yrs.


Perhaps this is addressed on the other thread, but are you claiming that the Roman taboo against dissection was made a law of the Xtian Roman Empire only as a holdover from pagan thought and was not backed up by Xtian theology?

Late medieval. From info gotten from Islamic scholars, who had not repressed Greek thought and had in fact added to it? Yet, you claim Church suppression had nothing to do with the loss of science in Xtian Europe? Why did it take contact with the Islamic Empire to kick start European science in late medieval times? I'm confused again.


No, but of course there is a difference between knowing the rules and breaking them, and not knowing the rules and just hiding your ignorance under a flowing robe.

Aesthetics? Is this a euphemism for theological repression?

And in the curricula of universities, apparently...

Antipope Innocent II

Er, and the evidence of this would be ... ? What, exactly? This is the kind of prejudiced crap I'm talking about. Who the hell is that article by? What on Earth are they basing this sophomoric nonsense on?

Stick to academic authorities on this subject, not some clown on the internet. The stuff on the net you find on this subject is invariably not only amateurish nonsense, but nonsense put up by clumsy amateurs with some kind of axe to grind.

Er, yup. Despite the fact dissection became a major feature of Medieval anatomy after centuries of neglect. Whoever wrote this clearly didn't have a clue.

Er yup - Charles Singer: a generalist writer of biology textbooks in the 1950s. I really think he's a specialist in medieval science and medicine. This is the kind of crap you can expect to find on the web.


I've been studying Medieval science for two decades and I've never heard of any "Dr. Benjamin Lee Gordon". Yet he's cited here as some kind of authority on medieval science?

Ummm, apart from that dissection that whoever wrote this crap seems utterly unaware of.

I would go on, but this nonsense is topped off with this ridiculous garbage:

Which is demonstrably wrong.

Moral? Most of what you find on this subject on the internet is utter crap. Try books by David C. Lindberg, A. C Crombie and Edward Grant if you want actual recent, non-partisan, academic work in the subject. Most of what you find on the net is either (i) dated, (ii) biased or (iii) both. Handle with care.

Magdlyn

To be honest, I'm not that interested in it to go and wade thru several books to dig out the discussion of the Church's reasoning against, and then allowance of, dissection. I find it quite surprising that you insist it was a holdover from a pagan Roman taboo, and not based on Xtian resurrection ideas. Esp since you admit there was resistance to dissection in the 13th cent based on this, and it was gotten around by using bodies of the "damned."

Could you please put the medieval dissection reasoning in a nutshell for us, since you seem to feel so, er, passionately about it? Perhaps you could dig out a quote or 2 from those books, if you own them. That would be very helpful.

I read the thread from Sept you linked to, and this was not discussed. From that thread,

Toto

Carrier made it explicit that he was discussing pre-Constantine Christian thinking. He stated that later Christians incorporated and developed pagan ideas, including some that were pro-science. He explicitly did not address Christian attitudes in Late Antiquity or the Middle Ages. I thought that I made that clear.

No, it is a deliberate decision to focus on a particular period in history.

My notes cannot reflect the tone of the lecture, which was not full of hostility to Christianity or meant to denigrate medieval or modern Christians. Carrier specifically discusse second and third century Christians, where you admit that there was an anti-intellectual tradition.

Antipope Innocent II

Yep. It's still crap. I know a geologist who was taught in his first year that the medieval Church said the Earth was flat was well. Utter nonsense. Moral? Most of what you're told about the Middle Ages by non-specialists is garbage.

No, but for a long time the only readily available work on medieval science was Andrew Dickson White's History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. That blatantly anti-Christian and poorly researched piece of polemic is responsible for many of the erroneous ideas that have become accepted as "fact" about the Middle Ages. White is the source of the nonsense about the medieval Church banning dissections, for example.

Yes, see above.


Combine secular humanists with an anti-Christian bias with Protestants with an anti-Catholic bias and you have some strong incentives to perpetuate myths about the Medieval Catholic Church. How do you think the Nineteenth Century myth of the "Medieval flat earth" became so widespread, despite being baseless?

Accurate, actually.

It was known to those who needed to know about anatomy well before the printing press. The first Western work of anatomy based on the new revival of dissection was the Chirugia of William of Saliceto in 1275, but the most widely used medieval text on anatomy based on dissection was Mondino of Luzzi (1275-1326) who wrote the influential Anatomia. Guy de Chauliac's Chirugia Magna (1360) was another widely used work.

Exactly. Dissection was banned long before Christianity became prominent. That's why Galen had to make do with dissections of pigs and dogs. It wasn't until the Medieval revival of human dissection that many of Galen's assumptions about human anatomy began to be corrected.

You're going to try to claim the Medieval Church "repressed" Greek thought? Are you sure you want to make that claim?

Since that "repression" never happened, yes - that's precisely what I'm saying.

Because when the Western Roman Empire collapsed, its already degraded education and book preservation infrastucture collapsed with it. Vast amounts of knowledge was lost and it took centuries for the extent of this loss to be (i) realised and (ii) remedied. One way that it was remedied was by Medieval Christian scholars of the Twelfth Century travelling to Spain and Sicily, teaching themselves Arabic and Hebrew and translating lost works into Latin with the help of Jewish and Muslim scholars. Look up the "Twelfth Century Renaissance" for details.

A flowing robe like this one? That's not the best photo, but if you go to Naumburg Cathedral and look at the original you can see the delicate veins in her left hand and the bones of her wrist in the right hand she's using to hold her silk cape up to her face. That's a Medieval scupture. More realistic than most, but not all Medieval art was stylised. And just because it was stylised doesn't mean it couldn't be realistic.

There's that word again. You have evidence that Medieval art was stylised because of "theological repression"? This should be interesting ...

Yes, as taught by non-specialists. Go to the History Department and talk to them about "theological repression" restricting art or "repression" stifling Greek learning and they'll sigh, make you a nice cup of tea and try to tell you the facts.

If, of course, you're prepared to listen.

Not really.

People keep using this word "admit" in strange ways around here. I don't "admit" that there was an anti-intellectual trend in Christianity in its first three centuries - there simply was. My only concern is for the accurate depiction of history, without any bias - Christian or otherwise.

So Carrier made it clear that this anti-intellectual trend eventually failed and was replaced by a desire for a synthesis between "pagan" and Christian apprehensions of the universe?" He made it quite clear that this led to the preservation of pagan knowledge and an approach to reason and observation of the physical world in the Middle Ages that laid the intellectual foundations of the later Scientific Revolution?

Toto

Carrier spoke for his allotted time on his allotted subject - EARLY Christian Hostility to Scientific Values. Your cheery summary of the next 1500 years of the intellectual history of the west smooths over quite a few slips and glitches along the way, but that would take us way off topic.

Antipope Innocent II

Really? So start a new topic Toto and let's get down to work. I'm very comfortable with my knowledge of intellectual history in that 1500 years. So start a thread, I'll roll up my sleeves and we'll see who makes "slips and glitches" and who doesn't.

Over to you. Whenever you're ready.