Bede

Berthold,

Hippocrates, Euclid, Archimedes and Aristotle were all dead by 200BC. Please explain why modern science did not arise in the Greaco-Roman world over the next five hundred years. Why was almost no progress made either in medicine, physics or maths by these people's pagan successors? Why is it that within five hundred years of western Christians getting their hands on all this knowledge in 1200AD, they had produced Galileo, Keplar, Harvey, Gilbert, Vesulius, Boyle and Newton (among others)?

Best wishes

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Clivedurdle

BBC Cosmology animation

Have a look at this!

Isn't part of the problem that followers of Aristotle froze their world view?

Introduction of the compass and gunpowder from China about 1200, and effects of Arab (Algebra) and Hindu scholars (zero) probably far more important.

Roger Pearse

I'm not an American, so may be mistaken. But am I not right in thinking that science was presented as disproving their religion to fundamentalists in the South?

If I were briefed to promote something, I don't think I would do it by insulting the religion of my audience!

Those who complain that "Fundamentalists are hostile to science" need to consider whether anything they themselves have done might have contributed to this.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Bede

Nice animation.

The problem with your hypothesis, Clive, is that it begs the question of why neither India, Islam or China managed to invent modern science as they all had the advances you mention before (often long before) Western Europe.

Others have suggested that native European inventions were the significant factor (eye glasses, mechanical clocks and printing were all invented in late Medieval Europe), but I'm not entirely convinced about this either. I think what these considerations tell us is that being the inheritor of the ideas you mention certainly helps, but is not sufficient to explain modern science. It is also interesting to note just how open Christian Europe was to all these new ideas. The idea of an all-powerful closed minded church just won't wash.

Best wishes

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

rob117

Saying that Christianity was the progenitor of modern science, or, conversely, that we'd by colonizing space by now if it wasn't for Christianity's backwardness, is oversimplifying either way. Religion is not the only cultural aspect after all, and is, in my view, largely irrelevant in this specific circumstance. The Renaissance began in Europe around 1300 largely due to trade with the Muslim world, which itself traded with both India and China. Niether Christianity or Islam can be said to be inherently pro-science, as their founding doctrines belong to a pre-scientific age. Science flourished in the Muslim world during the Middle Ages, and later in Europe during the Renaissance, not because of religion, but because of secular necessities and secular economics, which ultimately led to secular pastimes and aesthetics. Religion would have been ultimately powerless to stop the tide of science; it tried that with Galileo, and failed miserably. But religious institutions usually left science alone, or even encouraged it, provided it did not contradict religious doctrine. An accurate understanding of cosmology contradicted Christian doctrine, and so the Church persecuted Galileo. Mathematics had no inherent effect on Christian doctrine, and so mathemeticians like Pascal and Descartes, who also happened to be Christian apologists, were supported. Ultimately, it's all politics and economics.

Chris Weimer

The Greek world requires a simpler explanation than the Roman world. The Romans had demolished Greece and it largely became depopulated. Romans, however, picked up on the Greek literary and philosophical advances and continued in that tradition. As for scientific advances, I think you ought to research a bit better what the Romans actually invented. Try looking up "dome" or "aqueducts" for example. Romans also had extravagant bath-houses and wonderful plumbing, something not re-invented on the same scale until well after Catholicism began to lose power.

Namely Aristotelian philosophy hampered those things, just like Confucian ideology did China as well. Perhaps you are familiar with Aristotle, no? I mean, he was a favorite of the church.

Galileo was silenced by the church, so I would hardly call him a product of the Christianity. Keplar was in Lutheran territory, so he couldn't be persecuted by the church. Vesalius was a famed Classicist and was denounced to the Inquisition, but was spared on behalf of Charles V. Newton held heretical views about the trinity and also thrived living in England safely away from the Inquisition of the Catholic church.

Chris Weimer

Namely the war with Christians during the Crusade campaigns strengthened the fundamentalist positions of Islam. Islam then also warred with India, detracting from their leisurely scholastic work. China was hampered by Confucianism which, like Christianity, was all about traditionalism.

Why would any establishment prevent eyeglasses? Come on, Bede, that's a horrible strawman. No one argues that the church was closed-minded towards every scientific advancement. Such a statement is ludicrous and deliberately created to deceive. Bad form.

Chris Weimer

Pointing out, Bede, that no one argues that Christianity was the only detriment to science. You should know better to make such an absurd strawman.

Clivedurdle

James Burke Connections and Dava Sobell Longitude (neither of which are academic!) summarize my views.

Individuals struggle away at something, their ideas get taken up or not, Kings play politics and need strong ships and good maps, printing presses get invented, we end up where we are today.

There are no underlying causes like religion - some religious people helped, others hindered. Their ability to help or not was constrained by their beliefs and the powers of the institutions they were in.

What if games are great fun - it seems the Nazis had got battlefield nuclear weapons in 1944...

NOGO

I have a similar question.
Jews who believed in the same God as Christians and lived right beside the Greeks can claim none of the science and math which were started by pagan Greeks. Why is this so?

Unlike my question Bede's question is totally contrived.
What about Ptolemy - second centur AD.
What about Hipparchus - second century BC.
Ptolemy's work was read by Kepler, Galileo and Copernicus and without which these gentlemen would have done strictly nothing.

Hipparchus laid the foundation of Ptolemy's work.

Bede here want to credit Christianity for the work of Kepler and others.

Here is where this nonsense comes from ...

It is the claim of every ideology that it did everything and without it man is hopeless.

Paul is perfect example of this.
Paul is obsessed with his God and simply does not have a thought in his mind which is not directed to Him.

1 Corinthians 8:6
But we know that there is only one God, the Father, who created everything, and we exist for him.

We exist for Him!
That pretty much sums it up.

Romans 16:16
Greet one another with a holy kiss. All the churches of Christ greet you.

A kiss is no longer a kiss but a holy kiss.
Mariage is no longer mariage but mariage in Christ.
In fact Paul tells his people that everything that they do must be done in Christ Jesus.

This obsession with faith, religion and God must be such that you cannot permit yourself a single thought without combining it in some way with Jesus or God. There is very strong peer pressure to do so. If not in your mind at least in the language that you use.

This sort of thing can also be observed in communist countries such as China. In the days of Mao everybody you spoke to would always combine any subject to communism and the party. Where would china be without communism and the party? And if you could not combine something with communism then you have to say that it is evil (ie bourgeois) and to be avoided, like music and the arts.

You just could not have a conversation with one of the believers without the subject of communism coming into the picture. Similarly I doubt that you could have a conversation with Paul without him talking about Jesus.

Of course many people just paid lip service to this nonsense.

Part of this nonsense is NOT to take credit for anything one does but give credit the ideology for it.

So you are a concert pianist and you are a good Christian you have to give God credit and take none for yourself who spend hundreds of hours practicing.

There are many living examples of this phenomenon.
Back in the middle ages it was common place.
Everybody was brainwashed to pay lip service to Jesus and the Church in everything that they did and most importantly credit God and not oneself.

So this brings me to Kepler.

Kepler like a good Christian credits his discoveries not to his hard work and lifetime passion but to God. Bede takes this as factual and claims that Christianity was a necessary element in the beginings of science.
Why?
Because Kepler says so!