Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Gurdur · 09-05-2003, 04:06 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Sauron
Uh, no. Insinuations not necessary. That's why I included quotations from Russell - to avoid the charge of insinuation.

uh, yes.
You made insinuations from those quotations, which you even got wrong, to claim Russell wanted Creationism taught in schools.

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My objective was to substantiate my claim that that Russell is quite probably operating in bias. The quotations provide such evidence.

Your own posts show much deeper bias.
Should I then discount all your factual historical work as well simply because your bias is so glaring ?

(I include Russell's comment on White as part of his academic work. Tackle the facts, not the man, if you want to criticise it).

A pity, since as I said, I agree more with you than Bede.
But ho hum, since you're obviously so biased, obviously I must throw your historical work out the window.

Let's see; basic point made 3 times now clearly. How many more times necessary ?

Sauron · 09-05-2003, 04:18 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Gurdur
uh, yes.
You made insinuations from those quotations, which you even got wrong, to claim Russell wanted Creationism taught in schools.

Nonsense. I took those quotations at face value, and viewed them in the larger framework of Russell's other words and actions. That is why I said:

Russell has all the markings of someone who is trying to have it both ways: presenting the appearance of dispassionate researcher, while simultaneously trying to find whatever reasons he can to rehabilitate the history of christianity in western europe.

Quote:

Your own posts show much deeper bias.
Should I then discount all your factual historical work as well simply because your bias is so glaring ?

You're free to do whatever you like, Gurdur.

Quote:

(I include Russell's comment on White as part of his academic work. Tackle the facts, not the man, if you want to criticise it).

So if Duane Gish criticizes Stephen Jay Gould, I should treat that with the same level of respect or seriousness as if Anthony Fauci were to criticize Gould?

In a world filled with documents and sources, the bias and agenda of the person at hand are very relevant in addressing their comments. You seem to pretend otherwise, for some unknown reason.

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A pity, since as I said, I agree more with you than Bede.

Oh, yeah. That's *clearly* obvious from this current exchange.

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But ho hum, since you're obviously so biased, obviously I must throw your historical work out the window.

Knock yourself out.

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Let's see; basic point made 3 times now clearly. How many more times necessary ?

Pity you're so busy making your point, that you don't realize that I've answered already.

09-06-2003, 01:49 AM

Something more specific on White. The notes, all to academic articles and monographs, can be found in the original article here. These points are in addition to the ones made by Lindberg and Numbers in the article I linked to on the other thread.

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His examples of actual prosecution are few and far between which is not very surprising as the only scientist the Christian Church ever prosecuted for scientific ideas per se was Galileo and even here historians doubt that was the major reason he got into trouble. This is an embarrassment for White as he thought that in the Middle Ages especially, the Church was burning freethinkers left, right and centre. The lack of any examples of this at all is a serious problem so he is forced to draft in non-scientists or else to claim that prosecutions on non-scientific matters were scientific persecutions after all. Here are some examples:

+Roger Bacon has been a popular martyr for science since the nineteenth century. He was a scholastic theologian who was keen to claim Aristotle for the Christian faith. He was not a scientist in any way we would recognise and his ideas are not nearly so revolutionary as they are often painted. In chapter 12 of his book, White writes of Roger �the charges on which St. Bonaventura silenced him, and Jerome of Ascoli imprisoned him, and successive popes kept him in prison for fourteen years, were "dangerous novelties" and suspected sorcery.� This is untrue. As Lindberg says �his imprisonment, if it occurred at all (which I doubt) probably resulted with his sympathies for the radical �poverty� wing of the Franciscans (a wholly theological matter) rather than from any scientific novelties which he may have proposed.� [NOTE]

+In chapter 2, White informs us �In 1327 Cecco d�Ascoli, noted as an astronomer, was for this [the doctrine of antipodes] and other results of thought, which brought him under suspicion of sorcery, driven from his professorship at Bologna and burned alive at Florence.� Cecco D�Ascoli was indeed burnt at the stake in 1327 in Florence. He is the only natural philosopher in the entire Middle Ages to pay this penalty and was executed for breaking parole after a previous trial when he had been convicted of heresy for, apparently, claiming Jesus Christ was subject to the stars. This is not enough for White who claims, entirely without foundation, that Cecco met his fate partly for the scientific view that the antipodes were inhabited as well as dishonestly calling him an �astronomer� rather than an �astrologer� to strengthen his scientific credentials. [NOTE]

+In the same chapter White claims �In 1316 Peter of Abano, famous as a physician, having promulgated this [the habitation of the antipodes] with other obnoxious doctrines in science, only escaped the Inquisition by death.� We have no good evidence that d�Abano was under investigation from the inquisition at his death. However, he did gain a posthumous reputation as a sorcerer when spurious works were attributed to him. This may have led to the reports of his bones being dug up and burnt after his death. There is again, no evidence whatsoever that the antipodes debate or science had anything to do with the matter. [NOTE]

+It is hard to confirm some of White�s victims existed at all. �The chemist John Barrillon was thrown into prison,� he says in chapter 12 �and it was only by the greatest effort that his life was saved.� The great historian of science, George Sarton, with a better knowledge of the sources of anyone before or since, says this episode is �completely unknown� to him. [NOTE] Needless to say, White gives no reference.

+Vesalius, the founder of modern anatomy, is also held up as a martyr to science. White explains in chapter 13 �Vesalius was charged with dissecting a living man, and, either from direct persecution, as the great majority of authors assert, or from indirect influences, as the recent apologists for Philip II admit, he became a wanderer: on a pilgrimage to the Holy Land, apparently undertaken to atone for his sin, he was shipwrecked, and in the prime of his life and strength he was lost to the world�. His death was hastened, if not caused, by men who conscientiously supposed that he was injuring religion.� The trouble is that hardly a word of this has any basis in historical fact. Vesalius did go on a pilgrimage and was drowned on the way back. But there is no hint he was ever prosecuted and the idea his death was hastened by those who supposed he was injuring religion is simply wrong. [NOTE]

+Discussing the heliocentric system, White goes on �Many minds had received it [the doctrine of Copernicus], but within the hearing of the papacy only one tongue appears to have dared to utter it clearly. This new warrior was that strange mortal, Giordano Bruno. He was hunted from land to land, until at last he turned on his pursuers with fearful invectives. For this he was entrapped at Venice, imprisoned during six years in the dungeons of the Inquisition at Rome, then burned alive, and his ashes scattered to the winds.� In fact, we do not know the exact reasons Bruno was prosecuted but modern scholars like Frances Yates suggest it was because he was a magus who was trying to start a new neo-Platonic religion. He did believe the earth revolved around the sun but this was purely for religious reasons as he effectively worshipped it. In any case, it was incidental to his fate as were his other pseudo-scientific ideas.

One would like to take the charitable view that White really believed his theory and was not making up evidence to support a position he knew to be false. Instead, he skews the evidence by accepting that which agrees with his hypothesis while being sceptical of what does not. This means that he has included falsehoods that he would have noticed if he had taken a properly objective attitude towards all his evidence. The points given above together with Numbers and Lindberg�s criticisms noted in their article are sufficient, however, to prove White�s work as utterly worthless as history. Draper, with no footnotes or references cannot even claim to give an illusion of scholarship. Colin Russell, in a recent summary of the historiography of the alleged warfare sums up the views of modern scholarship, saying �Draper takes such liberty with history, perpetuating legends as fact that he is rightly avoided today in serious historical study. The same is nearly as true of White, though his prominent apparatus of prolific footnotes may create a misleading impression of meticulous scholarship�. [NOTE]

To this we must add his mis-charactisation of the Boniface Bull explained by Katharine Park and referenced above.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Gurdur · 09-06-2003, 04:22 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Sauron

Nonsense. I took those quotations at face value, and viewed them in the larger framework of Russell's other words and actions.

Rubbish. You twisted one (the Creationism accusation), you made crap insinuations from all the rest. Pure ad hominem.
I made a parody of your McCarthy-like insinuations all in blue in my post way above.
See my detailing of your McCarthyist-like tactics there.

Quote:

Oh, yeah. That's *clearly* obvious from this current exchange

Get it straight.
This is supposed to be an academic discussion forum, not something with agitprop and cheer-squads.
As I've repeatedly said, I am objecting to your agitprop McCarthyist tactics.
So I don't cheer your main thesis along publically enough according to you, so you're whining about that ?
This isn't some Stalinist Party meeting, you know.

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....Duane Gish criticizes Stephen Jay Gould.....

Agitprop bullshit. Crap insinuation.

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Knock yourself out. ....Pity you're so busy making your point, that you don't realize that I've answered already.

More simple rudeness and evasion.

Either acknolwedge that both Toby Huff's and Russell's academic qualifications are more than sufficient, or admit that what you are doing is introducing your own dogmatic belief hurdles for academic works.
Either way, I couldn't care less ---
if you do the first, at least this will be more in tune with SecWeb as more of an academic discussion board;
if you keep on with the second, you will of course have disqualified yourself from being taken seriously in academic discussions.

That's my last word on that till something new turns up.

MrKrinkles · 09-07-2003, 03:38 PM

Bede,

Who wrote that critique of White and where, exactly, is it located? I clicked on the link in the post and it sent me to your home page.

Thanks for your help.

Brooks

09-08-2003, 01:07 AM

Brooks,

Whoops! Sorry about that.

The link to my own essay wherein the [NOTES] are coded: http://www.bede.org.uk/conflict.htm

The link to Lindberg and Numbers own critique of White: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1987/PSCF9-87Lindberg.html

Hope you find this helpful.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

10-17-2003, 07:32 AM

Just a quick update for this thread.

You may recall Sauron cited an article by Emile Savage Smith "Attitudes towards dissection in medeival Islam" Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50 (1995) pages 67 - 110 in support of his claim that Islam had allowed human dissection. He had not, of course, actually read the article and instead quoted a paraphrase from the internet. I have now read it.

Savage Smith's case is essentially:

- there was no specific law against dissection although arguable this applied only to thw cutting up of non-Moslems;

- in all examined Islamic medical literature there is no record of human dissection actually happening;

- Galen's passages on human dissection provoke no adverse comment in Arabic works (although we should note that Galen was only allowed to practice on animals too).

Savage Smith concludes (page 105) "If indeed any medieval Islamic physician did undertake dissection, he must have felt the need to remain quiet about the details".

Hence, my original assertion that no human dissections took place under Islam hence remains very well grounded although I was wrong, with many others, to state that a specific religious injunction existed. The most likely reason for the lack of such injunction is that nobody even bothered to test the law in the first place. As Andrew Cunningham said in a lecture yesterday "The institution of human dissection is unique to the Western tradition."

As for my further comment that the Catholic Church did not resist the start of human dissection, Edward Grant can be added to the authrotiy of Park and Lindberg. (Incidently, Park has an aricle starting straight after Savage Smith's in the above journal). In his God and Reason in the Middle Ages (CUP, 2001) at page 112 Grant says:

Quote:

The dissection of humans was introduced into medical schools where it became institutionalised for the teaching of anatomy. This is no minor achievement. Except for Egypt, human dissection was forbidden in ther ancient world. By the second century AD it was also forbidden in Egypt. It was never allowed in the Islamic world [although we now know this should read 'never happened in the Islamic world' - Bede]. Astonishingly, its introduction in the West at the end of the thirteenth century went unopposed by the Church.

Note, it is clear from Grant's context that this is astonishing, not because the Church habitually opposed such things, but because all other societies had opposed dissection.

Thus is Sauron's case dead and having been dissected, fit only for burial.

Yours

Bede

Bede's Library - faith and reason

Layman · 10-19-2003, 07:48 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bede
Just a quick update for this thread.

...

Thus is Sauron's case dead and having been dissected, fit only for burial.

Bede, your science history Kung Fu carries the day again.

:notworthy

Thanks for the update and, apparently, the final word on this.

Sauron · 10-24-2003, 03:07 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Bede
Just a quick update for this thread.

You may recall Sauron cited an article by Emile Savage Smith "Attitudes towards dissection in medeival Islam" Journal of the History of Medicine and Allied Sciences 50 (1995) pages 67 - 110 in support of his claim that Islam had allowed human dissection. He had not, of course, actually read the article and instead quoted a paraphrase from the internet. I have now
read it.

This of course, grossly mischaracterizes what happened.

In the first place, the quotation that I gave was not a "paraphrase from the internet". I note your attempt to poison the well by belittling the source given; another classic Bede maneuver. The quotation wasn't a paraphrase at all; it was in fact, text from Savage-Smith herself, since she was the author of that same webpage. Her comment, then was actually Savage-Smith quoting herself, from her own article:
http://www.nlm.nih.gov/hmd/arabic/about.html

Quote:

The text for this Website was written by Emilie Savage-Smith, Ph.D., Senior Research Associate, The Oriental Institute, University of Oxford, Pusey Lane, Oxford OX1 2LE, England. As one of the leading historians of medieval Islamic medicine, Dr. Savage-Smith has written extensively about the history of anatomy, surgery, dissection, pharmacy and ophthalmology. She has also published books and articles on Islamic cartography, technology, astronomical instruments, divinatory equipment, and magical techniques.

So: one case of dishonesty, and another case of poisoning the well.

Secondly, I gave more than one citation to support the fact that dissection did take place in Islam.

Quote:

Arabic medicine and nephrology
Eknoyan G.
Am J Nephrol 1994;:270-8

During the Dark Ages following the fall of the Roman Empire, the Arabic world was instrumental in fostering the development of the sciences, including medicine. The quest for original manuscripts and their translation into Arabic reached its climax in the House of Wisdom in Baghdad, and the dissemination of the compiled texts was facilitated by the introduction of paper from the East. Foremost among the Arabic physicians were Rhazes, Avicenna, Haly Abbas and Albucasis, who lived during the period 950-1050 AD. Their writings not only followed Hippocrates and Galen, but also greatly extended the analytical approach of these earlier writers. The urine was studied and the function and diseases of the kidneys described. Despite the fact that experimentation on the human body was prohibited by religion, some anatomic dissection and observation seems to have been undertaken, and the pulmonary circulation was described by Ibn Nafis. Anatomic illustrations began to appear in Arabic texts, though they did not have the detail and artistic merit of those of Vesalius.

This is not only a recent and technical source, it is a peer-reviewed journal. Yet you claimed only a single source was given. We now add a 2nd case of dishonesty to your tally.

Moreover, ibn-Nafis' own words describe dissection:

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"The heart has only two ventricles ...and between these two there is absolutely no opening. Also dissection gives this lie to what they said, as the septum between these two cavities is much thicker than elsewhere. The benefit of this blood (that is in the right cavity) is to go up to the lungs, mix with what is in the lungs of air, then pass through the arteria venosa to the left cavity of the two cavities of the heart...�

At this point, I think the case is strong for dissection, at least for the purpose of experimentation, being performed.

Quote:

Savage Smith's case is essentially:

Bede, I'm sure you will understand if I do not accept your condensation of Savage-Smith's work. Indeed; given the bias with which you have tried to spin previous works to your own advantage, I think you will find *few* people willing to trust your summarization of any text.

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Savage Smith concludes (page 105) "If indeed any medieval Islamic physician did undertake dissection, he must have felt the
need to remain quiet about the details".

The quotation above was Savage-Smith pointing out that there were social and cultural pressures that frowned on dissection. And if a strong social taboo existed on the practice, one cannot expect that it would have been extensively documented by the individuals performing the act. As I expected, you deliberately excerpted a quote, devoid of its context. Bad move on your part since I have this article, Bede.

There is also other important context that you left out. Here is the entire paragraph, with your quotation in bold:

Quote:

It is the attitudes, both spoken and unspoken, in medieval Islam toward the idea of dissection or the preparation of a skeleton for study that are the particular focus of this study. The Christian physicians of the ninth century, responsible for turning the Greek anatomical writings into Arabic, displayed no compunction about the details of both human and animal dissection and vivisection, and the treatises containing such passages were well known and uncritically used by later Muslim physicians. In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, scholars expressed renewed interest in anatomy and the possibility of dissection. The evidence as to its actual practice, however, is conflicting and insufficient to allow one to draw definite conclusions. If indeed any medieval Islamic physician did undertake dissection, he must have felt the need to remain quiet about the details. On the other hand, the silence of the medical community regarding the details of dissection, combined with the lack of concern regarding dissection in the legal literature (neither condemning nor approving nor even mentioning it) implies a lack of activity. At this point I must, however, insert a caveat. The medieval Arabic medical literature, not to mention the Persian and Turkish material, is vast, and no claims can be made for having examined even the majority of the texts, most of which still lie in manuscripts unedited and unpublished. Vaster still must be the legal/theological literature and the fatwa treatises containing legal responses to question of law, of which even less have been published or examined by scholars. Many lifetimes of scholarship will be required to survey all the potentially pertinent material.

Context is a wonderful thing. Your strong, absolute assertion that no dissection took place under Islam is an assertion that withers under critical examination.

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Hence, my original assertion that no human dissections took place under Islam hence remains very well grounded although I was wrong, with many others, to state that a specific religious injunction existed.

Your original assertion is not well-grounded at all; Savage-Smith rebuts it on two specific points:

1. Savage-Smith points out that the evidence is not conclusive for a definite statement:

The evidence as to its actual practice, however, is conflicting and insufficient to allow one to draw definite conclusions.

2. Savage-Smith reminds the reader that her comments should be taken with a large caveat; i.e., that the majority of the evidence has not even been analyzed:

At this point I must, however, insert a caveat. The medieval Arabic medical literature, not to mention the Persian and Turkish material, is vast, and no claims can be made for having examined even the majority of the texts, most of which still lie in manuscripts unedited and unpublished. Vaster still must be the legal/theological literature and the fatwa treatises containing legal responses to question of law, of which even less have been published or examined by scholars. Many lifetimes of scholarship will be required to survey all the potentially pertinent material.

What made your assertion easy to refute was the fact that it was an absolute claim. Perhaps if you weren't so busy trying to use twist the history of science towards purposes of christian apologetics, you might not have done that.

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Thus is Sauron's case dead and having been dissected, fit only for burial.

Not by anything you have shown.

Sauron · 10-24-2003, 03:13 PM

Quote:

Originally posted by Layman
Bede, your science history Kung Fu carries the day again.

I think he hurt himself with his "kung pao fist" this time, however.

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Thanks for the update and, apparently, the final word on this.

As usual, Layman, you reach your conclusions too early and back the wrong horse in the race. You did that with the ossuary (authenticity conclusions far too early) and backed the wrong horse in the race (Shanks / Witherington / BAR).

Now, if you'd like to defend:

your previous position on the ossuary;
Witherington's current position on the ossuary;
Witherington's comments about carbon-dating the Shroud; or
Witherington's belief that God hides artifacts and then surfaces them to guide the faithful;
Witherington (and your) unproven claims about a pre-Lucan census that was somehow forced on Herod;

Why, just let us know.

09-07-2003, 03:38 PM	#55
MrKrinkles Junior Member Join Date: Jul 2001 Location: NW USA Posts: 93	who wrote the critique of White? Bede, Who wrote that critique of White and where, exactly, is it located? I clicked on the link in the post and it sent me to your home page. Thanks for your help. Brooks

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09-08-2003, 01:07 AM	#56
Bede Guest Posts: n/a	Brooks, Whoops! Sorry about that. The link to my own essay wherein the [NOTES] are coded: http://www.bede.org.uk/conflict.htm The link to Lindberg and Numbers own critique of White: http://www.asa3.org/ASA/PSCF/1987/PSCF9-87Lindberg.html Hope you find this helpful. Yours Bede Bede's Library - faith and reason

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