Hugo Holbling

Apprently Bede is able to read my mind - i'm not sure if that's a good thing.

I would indeed like to point out that Ockham's razor is useless before the fact and hence methodologically unhelpful; indeed, it could prove detrimental. I'll post some commentary later on your reply, Peter, but thanks for making it. For now, i'll focus on this remark:

Perhaps you're right here, but i don't see it. Nowadays we can all agree about certain so-called paradigmatic episodes in the history of science whereby our knowledge was improved, either by evolution in place of creation, heliocentrism instead of geocentrism or by classical physics giving way. What isn't immediately clear is what it is about these examples that make the one good science and the other bad; the point of much of the philosophy of science is trying to find an account that makes sense of what went before to show us where to look and what to do in future. Copernicus ultimately being "right" doesn't help us unless we know more: what was it about his approach that led him there? If there are certain features to it, can we systematize them to help us or is the endeavour doomed?

It seems the answer is "a little of both".

the_cave

I think you're right, this was a very important idea (I think Shapin mentions it first in the work I mentioned.) But the the curious thing is, why did it take so long for the machine-metaphor to change things? Clocks first became popular around the 13th or 14th century, and it looks like the clock was an important model for a lot of early mechanistic thinkers. So it seems it must have been the combination of the machine-metaphor with something else that finally got the ball rolling.

(A further question might be, why did Europeans become so fascinated with the machine metaphor, but not other civilizations?)

Family Man

Bede --

Bruno and Copernicus are not directly comparable. Bruno wasn't a scientist; he was a professional crackpot and gadfly. A delightful figure in some ways, but not someone you look to for an explication of scientific thought of the 16th century. He probably wouldn't be as well known as he is if he hadn't goaded the Church into executing him. And certainly not someone you take a face value.

Copernicus, on the other hand, was both a cautious scientist and a devout Christian. And, as you well know, statements from historical figures that tend to put them or their beliefs in a good light without external justification are looked at with suspicion. Why that shouldn't hold for Copernicus has me a little baffled.

I'm almost done with Lindberg/Numbers and I'll PM you when I post my analysis.

Bede

Family man,

Agreed. On reflection, we can't really compare the two.

Perhaps I can suggest something else?

If we found similar trains of thought to Copernicus's in a wide range of other non-mystical Christian thinkers, might that not be good evidence we aren't talking about an after the fact rationalisation? It is unlikely they would all use the same one and it would begin to look as if we had a quite well established idea. It would be especially helpful to find it in the writings of those like Aquinas, Oresme or Nicholas of Cusa who really don't have to prove anything as far as their orthodoxy is concerned.

I'm not saying it is there although I have found Copernicus much less original than he is often made out to be.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Family Man

That's an interesting thought, though I'm skeptical that it will tell us what we want to know. The problem isn't so much that the idea was original with Copernicus -- though I don't know for certain, but I'm fairly sure that heliocentric systems were proposed in ancient Greece. The idea that a system with greater explanatory power is preferable could also probably be found in ancient writings also. But I'm not arguing that these ideas are incompatible with Christianity; I'm arguing that these ideas were not inspired by Christianity. Finding other Christian writers with similar ideas will simply leave us with the same question we have with Copernicus: are they simply rationalizing their beliefs to their position? And there is the further question of why the Christian world in general failed to recognize the power of the ideas at first.

In short, I'm willing to listen, but I still don't think my concerns have yet been addressed.

Peter Kirby

Although I do truly think that mythology is important to every person in a society, I need to clarify one thing:

Copernicus is not the center of my understanding of science's origins nor the reason, whether in fact or in faith, that I hold the beliefs about science that I do.

Part of my subtext is that the life and times of Nicolaus Copernicus does not define the justification nor the method of scientific inquiry.

In large part, the justification and method of scientific inquiry is determined by personal and communal reasoning and experience in the present. Not just by a bunch of dead European males.

Indeed, our understanding of science in the present in large part influences our understanding of science in the past--and even if we got every fact correct, we would still judge a scientist in some respects "good" or "bad" based on the way that he came to his conclusions--vis a vis our own justifications and method.

So I don't belong to the Church of the Blessed Heliocentric Event so much as I want to de-emphasize the importance of the historical facts leading up to the first "scientific" formulation of "the earth goes around the sun" for an understanding of what science is all about.

After all, Bede, if Copernicus were an outspoken atheist, I doubt that would put a dent in your theological faith/reasoning. Yet some of the earlier discussions were along the lines of, if Copernicus were Christian, Christianity is true--which if not stated by Bede, was the reason for the vehemence of the response.

But I am still interested in the factual history of science along with my varied interests--mostly I just hear anecdotes from time to time, some of them false.

Also, I guess I should say that there can be "should-be-corrected myths" that make a good point. For example, the myth that Chris Columbus set out to prove the world round. Good point: if you have a good idea, even if people disagree, have some guts and vindicate it! Bad points: First, we misunderstand Columbus. Columbus wanted to find a new route to India. Monetary concerns were a factor. It's also culturally significant, e.g. that's why people in the Americas are called "Indians." Second, we misunderstand whatever "opposition" there was to Columbus. Anyone in Europe who could read, basically, had heard that the world was round and accepted it. The difference in opinion was on the size of the earth--and Columbus was wrong! Columbus lower-than-actually estimated the size of the Earth, and it is in this way he could justify the risk of the voyage--though he ran into a land mass first of course! (So non-factual beliefs can lead to good I guess, but for knowing how to do science I would rather look to Eratosthenes.) Third, we feed into other bad myths. For example, the myth that a corrupt religious establishment was trying to keep people from knowing the world was round. Poppycock! Though of course the religious establishment was corrupt in other ways, as religious reformers pointed out.

Also, there are stories that can make bad myths, understood as anything other than a tragedy. A futuristic novel where a man takes control of the military of the USA and annihilates the world in nuclear war could only be studied for "what went wrong."

Also, there are facts that, understood as good, can be mythologically bad. For example, the fact that people are born with genetic diseases naturally doesn't mean that we shouldn't care about treating those with genetic diseases, just let "mother nature" run its course or something. That would be a bad way to interpret the facts.

All that said, it can be useful to look at past scientists to understand how to do science. I would make a suggestion though. We should be looking at how people methodologically justify their answers if we want to undestand the epistemological foundations of science--not how people first think of them!

For example, "Dmitri Mendeleev is resented by high school students, and lauded among scientists for having come up with the idea that the natural elements can be arranged neatly and logically in a regular fashion, based on simple properties such as their atomic number. Mendeleev’s Periodic Table is one of the best examples of synthesis in science, an idea that brought about the ability to make predictions about the discovery of new elements. What is less known is that Mendeleev had the idea in a dream—not while he was sitting at his desk thinking about the order of the universe. There are other examples of scientific discoveries made, not through the stereotypical behaviors we associate with scientists, but during dreams, walks in the park, or sudden episodes of seeing a solution that wasn’t there until a moment earlier." (cite) -- not that the basis of science is dreamy or that we should verify hypotheses while sleeping or that everything you dream corresponds to reality! No, that's just how he got the idea which happened to prove right later. At best, dreams help the intuitive process of some scientists.

The same applies to theology, even when it gets things right. The first natural theologian looked at the world, wondered where it came from, saw the things that men had made, and postulated that a man with greater power--a god--had made the universe or gave it order at a certain point in time. (This is a just so story, of course.) In any case, theology got something right: this 4d generally relativistic universe does not have an infinite past. But this doesn't mean that questions of astronomy or cosmology should be submitted to this bronze age theologian! His hunch was right, but the basis of his hunch was not science. It was not until we discovered the "red shift" and the "cosmic background radation" that we had a strong scientific justification, as well as theoretical explanation, for believing that the universe is not eternally pre-existent. (Leaving aside the philosophical ideas about infinite regress, which didn't convince Aristotle for one.)

So, can theology or mysticism or occultism lead one to get the right answer in science, at least as it has for some men of the past--why not! That doesn't expose the theoretical grounding of science in theology, any more than a study of the roots of astronomy in astrological work (even if factually correct) could show that astronomers today implicitly presuppose that horoscopes are valid.

best,
Peter Kirby

Vorkosigan

Why, yes. Gurdur. Suppose we were not talking about Xtianity, but Russian Communism. Would you not agree that Soviet science made significant advances? Would you not agree that Communism facilitated science in many ways? And would you not agree that Soviet-style Communism, at base, is inimical to science? I think history would support that conclusion. The Soviet scientists evidently thought so, for they registered numerous complaints about controls on expression and inquiry.

There's no contradiction here, Gurdur.

Vorkosigan

Gurdur

There's an interesting claim elsewhere in another thread at the moment that peer review itself is inimical to science.......
which makes one wonder just what isn't.


And, in any case, this is completely off-topic, isn't it ?
It's not germane to the thread and OP whatsoever.
The point and topic is, what were Copernicus' motivations ?
Just as, for example, Newton's deism influenced his cosmology.

So do let's stay on topic, shall we ?

Vorkosigan

Yes, it does. Because in conversations like this, including academic discussions, the focus is generally on the positive influences. People search for causation in this or that ancient belief, text, or thinker, just as you are doing here. Such searches feed into Bede's need to find in Christianity a powerful stimulus for science. This is a subtle form of card-stacking. I have discussed negative stimulus before, but let's take another look at it.

In a sense this discussion has revolved around finding positive social explanations for singular individual acts, an interesting way to gloss over the inevitable problem of micro-macro level interactions as well as slip in claims about social/cultural determinism. Where do individual insights come from? They can be explained in part by failure of current knowledge to provide explanation for known facts. This failure is independent of other explanations. Dissatisfaction with Ptolemy was widespread as evidenced by attempts to reform and reconstruct the system, and this dissatisfaction, which manifested itself in at least two cultures, was not caused by some social stimulus. It existed because the Ptolemaic system did not provide a picture of Reality that corresponded to the actuality of Reality as humans understood it. This failure of the system is a form of causation of further inquiry which does not require any other social explanation. To argue against this point would in effect be to argue that Reality plays no role in scientific discovery, where this discussion looks like it is heading. One might note, in passing, that Kepler was seduced by Copernicus' system by the beautiful mathematical regularities of it "so pleasing to the mind," which he explained to himself as revelatory of God's mind....this desire for regularity and symmetry is innate and an important impetus to further understanding of the world. Copernicus did not propose "symmetria" because he was a Christian or a European or a Capitalist or Cleric or a Mathematician or a Mystic. He proposed it because he was a primate of the subspecies H. sapiens sapiens which has a strong innate preference for symmetry and regularity....and a primate who had a genetic gift that manifested itself in mathematical insight (like Kepler).

Another way to view Copernicus' act would be step back and view the progress of knowledge as a whole across the several cultures that were involved in it. Obviously there were numerous elements involved in, and solutions to, the problems posed by Ptolemy's system. But hundreds of intelligent people were proposing solutions involving manipulations or rejections of parts or all of the system, before and after Copernicus (in which case proposals often sought some ground between the Old and the New Astronomy, as Brahe and Descartes did). Copernicus was just one of them; moreoever, he was aware of many other proposals, which in turn helped him shape his own. There is a complex quasievolutionary process here that is not fully captured in discussions about what a single player did or did not do...the process is analogous to the old observation that in any disastrous period in the stock market, there is always a player who nevertheless picks stocks perfectly over the bad period. Is it skill, or just a statistical inevitability -- if there are enough players, one will guess correctly in all circumstances? There is a complicated interaction between individual personality (Copernicus rewrote the Old Astronomy but feared to publish), historical contingency (Copernicus probably never would have published had Rheticus not stopped by to urge him to), current technological capability (in math, astronomical instrumentation and observation, etc) and many other things, that is not at all captured in the search for this Idea or that Text. Was it skill, or just inevitability at work, that someone would make a proposal that corresponded very correctly with reality, at a time in which there existed sufficient other demand -- nascent capitalism, prestige competition among European princes for new knowledge, sufficient openness in Church circles, new technologies of observation and analysis, social shocks like the discovery of the New World, the end of a critical phase of European expansion and the beginning of another....and so on.

BTW, Bede, you wanted more info on the Church's teaching of epicyclic science in China. Here is a detailed article by Nathan Sivin on the topic. Sivin, for those of you who are not aware, is a giant of Chinese science scholardom, and a protege of Joseph Needham.

• "The Jesuit missionaries could and did give credit to Copernicus for computational improvements. They could speak with caution and prudence about almost every other issue. They could even bring up the possibility of the earth's daily rotation on its axis, so long as they promptly refuted it. There was, in fact, only one untouchable aspect of Copernican astronomy, namely the heliostatic (or heliocentric) hypothesis, the revolutionary displacement of the center of the celestial orbits from the vicinity of the earth to the vicinity of the sun. This reorientation, mathematically so simple but physically and philosophically so momentous, could not be so much as mentioned in China in the seventeenth century."

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Which topic, Gurdur? The overt one, or the subtext? And if you wanted me to stay on topic, why didn't you confine your reply to that point?

Vorkosigan