Richard Carrier

Gregory Thaumaturgus, Panegyric Addressed to Origen 13

In other words, he didn't say not to read books on atheism or book by atheists on God, but not to read any books whatsoever written by any atheist, regardless of subject. That would have included all Epicureanism, and all scientific writings by Strato and Erasistratus, etc.

Instead, science that Origen regarded as permissable was described earlier, and note the emphasis (creation and divinity), which tells you which scientists Origen was having his students read, and what he regarded as the legitimate aims of science, Ibid. 8:

Bede

I'll be signing off with this too. Carrier's quotation about Origen doesn't quite say that Christians rejected atomism because it had a high explanatory value that led to atheism, but no doubt he knows of other sources that say so.

Let me end, though, my explaining why the last paragraph of hispost before this one is wrong. The idea that free inquiry is needed for the advance of science is one of the quainter and more naive myths of the enlightenment. Attached to it is the common misconception that science took off in Europe when the grip of the Church was loosened.

In the academic world there is a newish discipline called the Sociology of Scientific Knowledge (SSK for short). SSK made itself deeply unpopular with scientists because it insisted on studying them and not simply assume that they were objective and disinterested. This approach has taken some flack from the usual opponents of 'postmodernism' but it remains important because the questions it asks are good ones. The biggest question is "How do scientists do science?"

Getting back to the question of free inquiry, it was long assumed that if you put a lot of clever people to work without any strictures at all, they will produce something useful. We now realise that they won't. The problem is not that they won't think of anything, it is that they will think of everything with no way of telling the good ideas from the porkers. It's not my area of expertise, but I have long suspected that this was the problem with science in the ancient world - it was just too free and hence could never construct any linear research programmes. There was no authority to decide between Aristotle and Epicureus apart from everybody else's personal opinions.

What you need for science (and what we have today) is a strong, agreed authority responsible for training new scientists within the orthodox citadel and casting out heretics if they stray too far from the paths of righteousness. Thus, creationists, parapsychologists, Brian Josephson and most of the alternative medicine community are branded as heretics and excluded. And jolly good it is too, I say. I completely agree with this modus operandi of science even though, unlike most scientists, I see it for what it is. There is nothing much free about all this inquiry. Science sticks within orthodox methods and assumptions and thrives as a result.

What about the Church? True, this was the authority that once decided on orthodoxy and heresy. That power has now been taken over by science itself where it belongs. But science could only do this when it had already become sufficiently successful to become an authority in its own right. Before that, it sheltered under the authority of the Church and the result was largely benign. Magic, astrology, alchemy and the like were excluded from mainstream science. Theology was kept out of the question by forbidding natural philosophers to talk about it. Realist metaphysics was enforced. All in all, the Church was an excellent step-parent until science could stand on its own two feet. Then, like all adolescents, it started to rebel against its elders. Hopefully, now it is grown up enough to admit that it actually owes them a lot.

Best wishes

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Malachi151

Bede: I agree completely, but the strong framework that is needed is MATERIALISM.

All of the stuff about "free speech", "democracy", "free inquiry", etc. was the rage during the Enlightenment because the people who were "correct", i.e. secularists and materialists, were in the minority and needed the room to grow without interferiance.

The failure of our time has been the failure to establish secular materilism as the defacto worldview, enforced by the majority and taught as the foundation of thought starting in preschool.

This is what the Communsits wanted to do, but unfortunately Russia and China were not good places for such a movement to launch and historical events have undermined the efforts to establish secular materialism as the only valid worldview.

jjramsey

No, the framework is this: checking results against reality (i.e. experimentation) and allowing others to check results. Materialism may be an outcome of thinking within this framework, but it is only a particular conclusion from it, not the ultimate framework itself. Actually, Bede's description of this framework as a "strong, agreed authority" is inaccurate, since it is decentralized and not really a governing body of any sort.

Richard Carrier

You are completely correct and Bede is completely wrong. Malachi151 is also incorrect, in exactly the way you point out, but I won't belabor that point since it should be obvious. How Bede is wrong about this is more important, so I see I can't leave yet without saying why:

First, there is no scientific theocracy and no institution enforcing scientific dogma. As JJRamsey points out, scientific authority is necessarily decentralized, because scientific authority comes only from broad consensus--exactly the opposite of any Church structure, except those destined to fail. As Stark points out, religious institutions that share power by consensus, like the Quakers, eventually dissolve or become insignificant or are overtaken by strong authority-asserting churches--and as a sociologist of religion, Stark is right about that. That's why science never became a religion. Science only survives because outsiders (who know very little about it) value its products and insiders (who come from a very small segment of the total population) value its pursuit--and are free to pursue their idiosyncratic values to that end. As soon as either changes, science will end.

The Church never realized any broad value for pursuing science or for seeking to benefit from its results, until after scientists who deviated from previous values and practices demonstrated the value of those results and persuaded the Church to value the pursuit, by which time the Scientific Revolution was already unstoppable, and eventually bestowed such massive temporal power on its patrons (in the form of economic windfalls and growing empires), that the Churches had no choice but to play the game, too, or lose all political support. The Church was dragged into modernity. It did not lead the way. That's why I say scientists did not suddenly become free to pursue their idiosyncratic values because the Church gave them their blessing to do so. They became free because the Church lost the power to stop them.

Second, the authority of consensus that defines scientific authority is founded on empirical evidence as the final arbiter of authority. In other words, observation (and hence repeatability of observation) is the Supreme Court of science: science is successful only because scientists agree that any disputes within the scientific community will be resolved at the tribunal of observational evidence, not at the tribunal of any priest or leader or exalted committee. To put it another way, scientists chose to surrender all ultimate authority to the evidence that is observed by the entire community of scientists. That is what defines modern science--such that as soon as this agreement among scientists to surrender authority to the evidence dissolves, so will science.

This is directly and entirely contrary to the values and interests of any Church, which cannot, under any circumstances, surrender its authority to the evidence that every scientist can observe--because revelation cannot be observed by everyone, not even by every seminary graduate, and all Churches base their authority on revelation (i.e. scripture, as well as ongoing 'revelations' in the form of, e.g., the inspiration of the Mormon Prophet or the Catholic Pope or the alleged influence of the Holy Spirit on the Baptist synods, etc.). All monotheisms, in fact, do this, as Stark rightly points out again--he often gets his history wrong, but as a sociologist he is spot on. So take away the authority of revelation, and you have no religion, just a social club, and you then have no authority left except the authority of repeatable evidence. And when you base your beliefs on the authority of repeatable evidence, then you are no longer "doing religion," you are doing science.

So for Bede to pretend there is no difference between Church authority and Scientific authority, other than who has it, is just plain wrong. Indeed, it suggests a substantial misunderstanding of both science and religion. This seems clear when Bede thinks we are talking about "a lot of clever people [put] to work without any strictures at all." Exactly the opposite is the case: what makes someone a scientist is not mere willy nilly liberty, but being free to accept very specific strictures of method, consensus, and evidential authority. In other words, for scientists to exist, people must be free to assign ultimate authority on matters of fact to the evidence observable to others who would thus be persuaded (not compelled or intimidated) to agree. Churches cannot do that and therefore have never been in favor of it, except when they had no choice, and even then they still try to carve out a sphere of authority for themselves from the pie that remains.

Bede's analogy further displays a failure to understand the issues when he compares "creationists, parapsychologists, Brian Josephson and most of the alternative medicine community" with medieval heretics. Sorry, that doesn't wash. These people are not jailed, intimidated, shunned, threatened, or injured, nor are they all collectively condemned as evil and agents of Satan and a threat to social order. For analogies that actually fit, think McCarthy and Communism--there is no parallel to pseudoscience here, despite the complaining and persecution complexes of exposed frauds like Uri Geller. All that happens to pseudoscientists is that the scientific community--no priest, no committee, but the whole collective community--calls their bluff and tells them they are not doing science, which is not a declaration of dogma but an actual, observed fact. Insofar as any action is taken against them, it is solely to prevent them claiming (falsely) that they are doing science and to prevent them pursuing (fraudulently) money and resources earmarked for science. They are otherwise not prevented from speaking or writing or even from making a living on their nonsense, so long as they do it honestly. Try to imagine the medieval Church being so accommodating to heretics. They weren't even that accommodating to Galileo, even by the standards of the most sympathetic revisionist Church history today.

Another huge difference is that the "dogma" that scientists fix as "orthodoxy" is method, not conclusions. Again, there is no centralized authority that enforces this orthodoxy. It is simply the collective action of the entire scientific community, who have agreed to define themselves and distribute their resources according to the orthodoxy of methodology (which is itself subject to empirical revision through persuading the community, hence scientific methodology has continued to greatly advance), and then allow any conclusion to have authority that is produced by that methodology. There is no parallel here to what the Church did. The Church set itself up as an authority over which conclusions would be acceptable, and tightly controlled who would be allowed to assert conclusions at all. Again, the Church could not surrender its authority to evidence observable to a community, yet that is exactly what all scientists do. That is why no analogy can be constructed between the medieval Church and modern science.

Finally, "the problem with science in the ancient world" was not that it was "just too free and hence could never construct any linear research programmes." There is no contrast to build on here, because early modern science was no different in this regard. There was no institution controlling or coordinating scientific work toward any "linear research programme" until after the Scientific Revolution was already well underway, and even then, none of the institutions originally formed did this either--neither the Royal Society nor the Academy of Sciences enforced any "linear research programme" but simply supported individual scientists in whatever research they were doing, and both of these institutions were only formed well after Francis Bacon was dead, yet Bacon represents the first formulation of the ideals of the Scientific Revolution and hence was a product, not a cause of that Revolution. That's how far removed we are from anything Bede is imagining.

Hence the fact that "There was no authority to decide between Aristotle and Epicurus apart from everybody else's personal opinions" also describes early modern science. The only difference was that by the time of Bacon, it was observed that certain methods worked better than others, which he articulated explicitly (though he was not the first--you already see it being articulated in Gilbert, Galileo, etc.), and as a result a rising agreement started to grow as to method--not an institutionally enforced conclusion, but collectively arriving at the same "personal opinion" among many free individuals. Thus, the "authority to decide" that arose in modern science was nothing more than personal opinions that agreed with regard to method rather than regarding diverging principles and conclusions. The ancients I believe were already heading in that direction. Ptolemy's On the Criterion and Galen's several treatises on research methodology were so close to getting it right. Had an agreement arisen among enough other scientists that they were right, plus just a few improvements, then the Scientific Revolution would have occurred then. But the collapse of the economic and social system shortly afterward destroyed any chance of that happening. And once the Church gained power, all hope was lost. In many ways, I sincerely believe that any chance science may have had was torn to pieces with Hypatia's body and condemned with the "heretic" John Philopon.

Bede

Vork has recently retired because the internet has a habit of making us bad people. Rereading my initial responce to Carrier's last post, I realised the same was happening to me, again. Therefore, I have decided to leave the matter and merely register my disagreement with every last iota of his post. My disagreement comes after several years of academic reseach into the medieval and early modern relationships between science and religion, as well as the sociology and philosophy of science. I fear his thoughts are not so well informed and would probably not get him a good grade if he sat an exam at my university.

Best wishes and farewell.

Bede

lpetrich

Bede has a depressing tendency to rewrite history in the Church's favor and slam anything outside of what he considers the benevolent patronage of said institution. Like claiming that "true" chemistry is the result of the Church forbidding alchemy when "true" chemistry had in fact emerged from alchemy, and got its name from Sir Robert Boyle's rebranding move for the legitimate science in alchemy. This should be apparent from when he published The Sceptical Chymist: 1661.

And as to the Church steering scientists to non-theological explanations -- that seems like a big load of hooey. Non-theological explanations were ultimately preferred because theological ones tend to lack true explanatory power -- saying "Goddidit!" simply pushes the question back to why God decided to do one thing and not another.

Richard Carrier is right that there isn't some central authority that proscribes creationism, parapsychology, "alternative" medicine, etc.. In fact, I wonder if Bede was imagining something like the way the Catholic Church works, that is, top-down command, with the Church authorities deciding what Catholics ought to believe and not to believe.

Bede might even be thinking of something like how much of the scientific community boycotted the publisher of Immanuel Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision; but there is a gigantic difference between that and (say) burning Velikovsky at the stake.

I remember when cold fusion was first "discovered" -- a lot of other scientists tried to produce cold fusion in their labs -- and failed. I remember sitting in on a talk delivered by someone who had tried and failed to make cold fusion. It does not help that Pons and Fleischmann have been less-than-forthcoming about cold fusion, claiming that they want a patent on their method or something like that.

And it must be significant that early modern science ended up getting farther in Protestant countries than in Catholic countries, though France was at least a partial exception to that trend. But France has been more independent of the Church than most other Catholic countries; consider the anticlericalism of the 18th-century philosophes and the French revolutionaries.

So the Jaki thesis might imply that one ought to be a Protestant and not a Catholic.

And continuing in this vein, it might also imply that modern-day chemists ought to believe that there are only 4 chemical elements and that they ought to try to make gold with (al)chemical processes.

Malachi151

Question for Richard: You said that you had written elsewhere about the causes of the economic collapse of Rome. Do you have a link, I would like to read that.

(If anyone else has this info I would like it as well)

Thanks

Now, as for the role of "authority" in science, I perhaps mistated my point.

There is a difference between a framework and specific inquiries.

Science requires an autoritative framework:

1) The world is observable
2) The world is material
3) The world is explainable by natural means
4) Observations made in the present can be applied to solving problems about the past and future
5) Human perceptions are flawed, and thus must always be subject to confirmation by others

This "worldview", does indeed, IMO, need to be given authority and taught as superior to other worldviews.

I certianly also see no problem with establishing the materialist view through authority, if only to jump start the process.

What was bascially claimed by jjramsey is theoretically true, but we give authority to many conclusions because we dont' waste time having everyone re-invent the wheel.

We could bypass teaching children about gravity and the solar system using authority, and instead allow them to figure it out themsleves based on the scientific method, but I have a feeling that if we did this only about 1% of the population would figure out gravitational theory, if not less.

Richard Carrier

Right now, the most formal and detailed discussion I have online is here:

18.5. The Rise of World Christianity

But I have discussed different facets of the issue a few times on the forums (I think--I can't recall how often on the forums or on email lists, and I've often discussed it in live talks) and I may have brought it up in one or two other articles online, but the above link should suffice to make clear where I stand on this issue.


This is not "authority" in the sense of actual power, but "authority" in the metaphorical sense I have been using: this is not the authority of men or offices, but the authority of evidence and method. Evidence and method can't jail you or denounce you or chastise you for ignoring them. They do not of themselves possess any intentional temporal power. You must choose to obey them--by your own uncompelled consent. The analogy is therefore to what Bede meant by "everyone's personal opinion" rather than what I mean by "Church authority." Only when everyone's personal opinion volunteers, without compulsion, to submit to the authority of your list (1 thru 5) does science exist. And that is exactly what the difference is between scientific authority and religious authority.

I would also take issue with some of your list, though only because I distinguish methodological requirements, which are necessary, from methodological advice, which is contingent. Obviously (1), (4), and (5) are necessary to science, so one must voluntarily submit to their authority even to do science, though that is not sufficient to make one a scientist. (2) and (3) are not necessary to science, however, only contingent to it. We submit to (2) and (3) because it is good advice, and it is good advice because the history of past discoveries recommends them. Had that history turned out differently--had science confirmed one or more examples of supernatural facts in the world--then (2) and (3) would not be true of science, but something very different would have taken their place.

I think all you can actually assert as necessary are (2a) hypotheses about the world must be testable and (3a) the world is explainable. Otherwise, our preference for natural and material explanation is simply a contingent consequence of what we've found, in the same way that our preference for chemistry over Aristotle's four-element theory is simply a contingent consequence of what we've found--had we instead found Aristotle to be right, then we would be assessing hypotheses as probable that assume the four elements instead of the Periodic Table.

I have discussed this issue very recently with Paul Doland here:

The Rubicon Analogy

And I say something related to it here:

Only Theists Can Invent Science?


I agree, but it can only be given this authority voluntarily, never by intimidation or compulsion. You can't "force" someone to be a scientist. That is why "assigning authority" to a worldview has no parallel with the "authority" of the medieval Church. Today, if you don't buy the scientific worldview, you simply don't do science. No one shuns you or jails you or calls you in for interrogation or paints scarlet letters on your door. No one charges you a special tax or calls your friends and tells them you are a threat to national security and they would be wise not to be seen with you. That's the difference between assigning authority to a person and assigning authority to a method. A person can force his authority upon you. A method cannot. A person who assumes such authority can substitute his opinion and desires for yours and mess with your life until you comply. A method only tells you which opinions and desires conform to the method. Big difference. And it makes all the difference in the world.


If you mean compulsion or intimidation, I don't agree. Nor was that in any sense the case before or during the Scientific Revolution or centuries afterward. I can only assume you are referring here to education (given your next remark), which can only refer to the late 19th century to the present. But then the analogy breaks down again...


Actually, I believe we should be teaching all students the methods by which these things were discovered, with hands on experience demonstrating why those methods have come to be preferred and why they work better than alternatives (and this does not require "hiding" from them how it was done--so there is no issue of their "not figuring it out").

A major problem in this country is that for political reasons and mere expedience we have dumbed education down to the level of being a memorization game, rather than an actual skills-based education where students come out knowing how things are done, rather than knowing little more than how to win at Trivial Pursuit. I have direct experience of how this has all but destroyed history education, but it is almost as bad in science education as well, and the disinterest in skills-based education has also led to a failure to introduce the essential disciplines of logic, rhetoric, and law into the basic curricula for all students (and I would argue, philosophy should be there, too, at least in terms of how to do philosophy), an almost total removal of financial education, and a complete disinterest in teaching practical mathematical applications like how to critique the use of statistical arguments in politics and media.

But that's a soap box for another day. The relevant issue here is that students are not told they have to believe any scientific facts--they are only required to prove that they know what they are. That is a huge difference between forcing them to agree and obey those claims. Nor do we require parents to send their kids to such schools--so we don't even require kids to know anything, either. Such knowledge is only required if they are going to leach off the state for a free education. It's part of the deal: tit for tat. But the deal is not compulsory. You can send your kids to any idiotic school you please--or not at all (so long as you prove you are home schooling them). Thus, there is no authority compelling anyone to believe or advocate anything, or preventing any student from advocating what he wants. A student's education only tests what he knows, and he must know it, but he can still stand on a box all lunch period long denouncing those facts as false if he pleases. So long as he doesn't disrupt the student body with the incessant noise of his ranting, that's his civil right.

There is simply no parallel here whatsoever to the medieval Church.

Bede

OK, I’m back, calmed down and with some time on my hands. I’m on a research trip and the libraries have closed (I am sure RC can vouch for this being purgatory). Let me briefly run through some of the things wrong with RC’s reply to my substantive post above.

The first was his category mistake in assuming I was setting up an analogy between modern science’s authority and the medieval Church’s. I wasn’t doing anything of the sort. I was stating that the Church was the authority (undeniably true) and that it kept natural philosophy within bounds that excluded the occult, magic and theology (also rather hard to deny). OK, so the Church’s authority was different to the ‘free republic’ of modern science, but to the individual under that authority, it makes little difference whether it is consensus or dogma that counts. Science is not about freedom, it is about following the rules whosoever has laid them down. RC is also seeing modern science through rose tinted spectacles, of course, but that is only worth pursuing once he has had a chance to read the likes of Mary Midgley, Imre Lakaitos et al.

The argument is whether such an authority was necessary and whether its lack in the ancient world curtailed the rise of science. For instance, the medieval church would never have tolerated natural philosophers veering off towards something like late antique neo-Platonism (as happened and was stamped on in the late sixteenth century). Nor would it have allowed natural philosophers to waste time on trying to construct metaphysical systems (as the Averroists found in 1277). You can argue with the Church’s methods but hardly with its ability to keep the argument on track.

Of course, the dirty secret of those who claim that science was held back by the church is that no natural philosopher was ever executed for scientific beliefs. I can’t find any, aside from Galileo, who was even imprisoned. And given no one now accepts that Galileo’s trial was more than Pope Urban getting his own back for the humiliation of seeing his argument on the lips of Simplicius, we have remarkable few examples. Intellectual heresy rarely led to anything except a mild reprimand. That is probably why RC mentions Hypatia when he knows perfectly well that:

a) her death had nothing to do with maths or natural philosophy, being wholly political;
b) she was revered by her Christian students like Synesius (IIRC his name);
c) the earliest Christian chronicler abhors her death;
d) even the Prefect of the City she was murdered for supporting was a Christian.

There are several points of fact that count against RC’s claims, not all of which I have time for. First, he tells us about Strato and seems to imply that here was a man well on the way to modern science if only those horrible Christians hadn’t put a stop to it. What he doesn’t tell us is that Strato was writing in the third century BC and there were seven centuries before Christianity was in a position to put a stop to anything. He also fails to mention the enormous array of late antique philosophy that has come down to us, much of it by pagans like Simplicius. Edward Grant reckons that there are 30,000 pages of commentaries dating from within a few centuries after 300AD. That’s an enormous amount of philosophy when we are supposed to believe the evil Christians were stamping it out. It also explains why Strato is not longer extant. If you are a scribe in 400AD are you going to copy something that is already seven hundred years old, or the latest opus from Olympiodorus?

As I’ve already said, you can’t count the early Middle Ages against Christianity. The entire western Empire was overrun. I don’t like the term “Dark Ages” but it does describe pretty well the attitude of Saxon warriors to Greek philosophy. Of course, we have the Church to thank for keeping learning going in that environment (and I’m stunned whenever I meet someone who seriously tires to challenge that statement). Once medieval Christians got there hands on Greek learning they moved a lot faster than the pagans blessed with Strato in the third century BC. The trajectories that lead to modern science can clearly be seen from the late thirteenth century onwards.

Let’s deal with a couple of those trajectories. We find more all the time as medieval science gives up its secrets but these two will do. First, kinematics. From a standing start, the Merton Calculators gave us the theories of proportionality and the mean speed theorem by 1340. Then, in Paris, impetus theory was resurrected by John Buridan from the work of the 6th century Christian John Philoponus (whom RC seems to imply was sidelined due to his Monophysite beliefs when he was really extremely influential among his fellow Christians). Then Nicole Oresme proves the mean speed theorem geometrically and Albert of Saxony tries to describe freefall in c. 1400. Paris suffers badly in the hundred years war so we have to wait until after 1500 for Spaniard Domingo de Soto to correctly describe freefall. His work is brought to Rome by the Jesuits who pass it on to Galileo, himself writing on impetus in Pisa in the 1580s. He is the genius who moulds kinematics together in his Two New Sciences (and characteristically claims he invented the whole thing). A second trajectory is heliocentricism. Buridan asks about the rotation of the earth and Oresme solves the problems of relative motion. Nicolas Cusanus says a lot of things which feed into Italian thinking around 1500. Copernicus, educated in Italy, uses the same arguments as Oresme. Kepler explicitly draws on his religious beliefs to reject the Greek concept of circular motion and explains planetary motion.

It is very unlikely that I’ll be able to respond again. I would ask that RC show just a little bit of respect for scholarship that doesn’t have an atheist imprimatur.

Best wishes

Bede aka James Hannam
PhD Cand, History and Philosophy of Science, University of Cambridge