Freethought & Rationalism Archive

Zeluvia · 01-05-2010, 11:01 PM

326 16.2.6
There shall be limits on the number of people entering the clergy; people shall not become clerics in order to avoid public service.

Gotta love that one, since it implies that clerics do not provide a valuable public service...

GakuseiDon · 01-06-2010, 01:40 AM

On the question of "Did Christianity aid or hinder the development of science?" Carl Sagan claims that it was Plato and Pythagoras that impeded the growth of science. It wasn't until the Medieval World overcome their influence that science was finally able to bloom:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_JSpolpWYEM

Quote:

Plato expressed hostility to observation and experiment. He taught contempt for the real world and disdain for the practical application of scientific knowledge. Plato's followers succeeded in extinguishing the light of science and experiment that had been kindled by Democritus and the other Ionians.

Plato's unease with the world as revealed by our senses was to dominate and stifle Western philosophy. Even as late as 1600 Johannes Kepler was still struggling to interpret the structure of the cosmos in terms of the Pythagorean solids and Platonic perfection...

In the recognization by Pythagoras and Plato that the cosmos is knowable, that there is a mathematical underpinning to nature, they greatly advanced the cause of science. But in the suppression of disquieting facts, the sense that science should be kept for a small elite, the distaste for experiment, the embrace of mysticism, the easy acceptance of slave societies; their influence has significantly set back the human endeavour. The books of the Ionian scientists are entirely lost. Their views were suppressed, ridiculed and forgotten by the Platonists, and by the Christians who adopted much of the philosophy of Plato.

youngalexander · 01-06-2010, 01:52 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by GakuseiDon

Carrier notes that later the Latin West lost interest in both Greek and Greek texts.

Yes, indeed he does, repeatedly.

Quote:

But Flynn's point is not that they didn't have Greek texts; they had them but didn't consider them as part of their heritage.

Ahh, there's the rub!

Quote:

Carrier in fact is saying pretty much the same thing as Flynn.

No, he is not!

Carrier says that the Christians were not interested in the scientific works which were allowed to decay into oblivion.

lpetrich · 01-06-2010, 07:35 AM

Some of Richard Carrier's speeches are recorded online in Richard Carrier Blogs: Hambone Videos

In one of them, he proposes that three values essential to science are

Curiosity
Empiricism
Progress

He stated in a comment in that blog entry that this is a short-short summary of his PhD thesis, The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire. He also noted that early Xian theologians had none of those values, something that he will be describing in that book.

Roger Pearse · 01-06-2010, 12:16 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

This is the subject of Carrier's PhD thesis. He provides a working definition of science and shows that the ancients did science, in terms of making observations, conductiong experiments, and building theories.

The ancients did not do science as we understand it. The idea is anachronistic. The science of the last couple of centuries is qualitatively different to the experimentation, such as it was, of antiquity, because of the different mental and societal attitudes involved.

Ancient science and technology is always an interesting subject; but let's be careful that we don't confuse ourselves with anachronism.

Quote:

Clearly the scientific method has continued to be refined. But are you going to claim that there was no medical science before the second half of the 20th century because there were no double blind, controlled tests of medicines?

This seems to involve multiple category errors. Surely it is meaningless to talk about medical science before scientific methods are involved, except in a loose sense? In view of the limitations of medicine in 1900, this particular branch of knowledge is an unfortunate one to choose! It really HAS altered so much in the last century.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Roger Pearse · 01-06-2010, 12:17 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Zeluvia

326 16.2.6
There shall be limits on the number of people entering the clergy; people shall not become clerics in order to avoid public service.

Gotta love that one, since it implies that clerics do not provide a valuable public service...

Does it? Or have you merely misunderstood it? <hint>

Clivedurdle · 01-06-2010, 12:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Roger Pearse

Quote:

Originally Posted by Toto

This is the subject of Carrier's PhD thesis. He provides a working definition of science and shows that the ancients did science, in terms of making observations, conductiong experiments, and building theories.

The ancients did not do science as we understand it. The idea is anachronistic. The science of the last couple of centuries is qualitatively different to the experimentation, such as it was, of antiquity, because of the different mental and societal attitudes involved.

Ancient science and technology is always an interesting subject; but let's be careful that we don't confuse ourselves with anachronism.

Quote:

Clearly the scientific method has continued to be refined. But are you going to claim that there was no medical science before the second half of the 20th century because there were no double blind, controlled tests of medicines?

This seems to involve multiple category errors. Surely it is meaningless to talk about medical science before scientific methods are involved, except in a loose sense? In view of the limitations of medicine in 1900, this particular branch of knowledge is an unfortunate one to choose! It really HAS altered so much in the last century.

All the best,

Roger Pearse

Are you sure about that?

Quote:

The Archimedes Palimpsest is a medieval parchment manuscript, now consisting of 174 parchment folios. While it contains no less than seven treatises by Archimedes, calling it the Archimedes Palimpsest is a little confusing. As it is now, the manuscript is a Byzantine prayerbook, written in Greek, and technically called a euchologion. This euchologion was completed by April 1229, and was probably made in Jerusalem. In this short video clip Abigail Quandt, Senior Conservator of Manuscripts and Rare Books at The Walters Art Museum, turns some pages of the book. It might surprise some people that Abigail is not wearing gloves. Actually it makes conservation sense. Her clean hands do no damage to the parchment and she can be more sensitive to the fragile folios if she is not wearing anything on them.

The prayer book, or Euchologion, is itself of some interest, and further information on its contents can be discovered in this website. However, to make their prayer book, the scribes used parchment that had already been used for the writings of other books. The books they took parchment from were as follows.

Firstly, and most importantly, they used a book containing at least seven treatises by Archimedes. These treatises are the Equilibrium of Planes, Spiral Lines, The Measurement of the Circle, Sphere and Cylinder, On Floating Bodies, The Method of Mechanical Theorems, and the Stomachion.

Of these treatises, the last three are of the greatest significance of our understanding of Archimedes. While the other treatises had survived through other manuscripts, there is no other surviving copy of On Floating Bodies in Greek — the language in which Archimedes wrote, and there is no version in any language of The Method of Mechanical Theorems and of this part of the Stomachion. The Archimedes manuscript was used for the majority of the pages of the prayer book. The Archimedes manuscript was written in the second half of the tenth century, almost certainly in Constantinople.

http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/...t_making1.html

Back Again · 01-06-2010, 01:14 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Clivedurdle

Are you sure about that?
http://www.archimedespalimpsest.org/...t_making1.html

Nice link, Clive. It nicely addresses what could happen to manuscripts that were no long felt to be relevant or important.

The works by Archimedes were geometry however and thus don't say much about scientific methods or THE scientific method. Geometric proofs start with a handful of axioms and are built up by successively introducing more theorems which are themselves all rigorously proven.

lpetrich · 01-06-2010, 06:37 PM

Jim Lippard has recently blogged on The Lippard Blog: Richard Carrier on the ancient creation/evolution debate

RC concludes that Galen did some reasonable science with his belief in intelligent design; Galen also anticipated Michael Behe's irreducible-complexity argument by nearly 2000 years.

Quote:

He concluded that while his evidence required an intelligent designer, they entailed that God is limited and uses only available materials. Galen, a pagan, contrasted his view with that of Christians. For Christians, a pile of ashes could become a horse, because God could will anything to be the case. But for Galen, the evidence supported a God subject to the laws of physics, who was invisibly present but physically interacting to make things happen, and that God realizes the best possible world within constraints.

Which intelligent design theory better explains facts like the growth of horses from fetuses, the fact that fetuses sometimes come out wrong, and why we have complex bodies at all, rather than just willing things into existence via magic? If God can do anything, why wouldn't he just make us as "simple homogenous soul bodies that realize functions by direct will" (or "expedient polymorphism," to use Carrier's term)?

However, early Xian theologians were very different.

Quote:

Tertullian, a contemporary of Galen, asked, "What concern have I with the conceits of natural science?" and "Better not to know what God has not revealed than to know it from man."

Thales, from the 6th century B.C., was revered by pagans as the first natural scientist--he discovered the natural causes of eclipses, explained the universe as a system of natural causes, performed observations and developed geometry, made inquiries into useful methods, and subordinated theology to science. There was a story that he was so focused on studying the stars that he fell into a well. Tertullian wrote of this event that Thales had a "vain purpose" and that his fall into the well prefigured his fall into hell.

I'm sure that Tertullian looked forward to watching Thales suffer there.

Lactantius believed that the Earth is flat, that only knowledge of good and evil is worthwhile, and that "natural science is superfluous, useless, and inane."

RC then compared those attitudes to some of those on display at the Answers in Genesis Creation Museum in Kentucky. "Human Reason" vs. "God's Word", and so forth.

Quote:

He also pointed out that there was a lost sect of Christianity that was pro-science, but we have nothing of what they wrote, only references to them by Tertullian, criticizing them for supporting Thales, Galen, and so forth.

That brings to mind an interesting counterfactual: what if that sect had not only survived, but had gained the support of the Roman authorities. I think that we would have had the modern-science revolution some centuries earlier.

GakuseiDon · 01-06-2010, 08:59 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by lpetrich

However, early Xian theologians were very different.

Quote:

Tertullian, a contemporary of Galen, asked, "What concern have I with the conceits of natural science?" and "Better not to know what God has not revealed than to know it from man."

I'm sure that Tertullian looked forward to watching Thales suffer there.

Right.

That's the same Tertullian who wrote this:
http://www.earlychristianwritings.co...tullian10.html

It [the intellect] is sharpened by learned pursuits, by the sciences, the arts, by experimental knowledge, business habits, and studies; it is blunted by ignorance, idle habits, inactivity, lust, inexperience, listlessness, and vicious pursuits.

Quote:

Originally Posted by lpetrich

Quote:

He also pointed out that there was a lost sect of Christianity that was pro-science, but we have nothing of what they wrote, only references to them by Tertullian, criticizing them for supporting Thales, Galen, and so forth.

In the same link I gave above, Tertullian criticizes Thales:
* For saying that the soul was made out of water
* For falling into a well as an example of 'the enormous preoccupation of the philosophic mind, that it is generally unable to see straight before it'. (Famously, Thales fell into a well because he 'studied the stars yet could not even see the ground at his feet'.)

Nothing about being 'anti-science' there. I'm not aware of any 'anti-science' writings in Early Christianity; nor 'pro-science' for that matter. Those topics were just not in scope in their writings, even if they had similar view of 'science' to ours (which I doubt).

Quote:

Originally Posted by lpetrich

That brings to mind an interesting counterfactual: what if that sect had not only survived, but had gained the support of the Roman authorities. I think that we would have had the modern-science revolution some centuries earlier.

Yes, we'd be driving spaceships to the stars by now!

01-06-2010, 07:35 AM	#54
lpetrich Contributor Join Date: Jul 2000 Location: Lebanon, OR, USA Posts: 16,829	Some of Richard Carrier's speeches are recorded online in Richard Carrier Blogs: Hambone Videos In one of them, he proposes that three values essential to science are Curiosity Empiricism Progress He stated in a comment in that blog entry that this is a short-short summary of his PhD thesis, The Scientist in the Early Roman Empire. He also noted that early Xian theologians had none of those values, something that he will be describing in that book.

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01-05-2010, 11:01 PM	#51
Zeluvia Veteran Member Join Date: Sep 2005 Location: Texas Posts: 5,172	326 16.2.6 There shall be limits on the number of people entering the clergy; people shall not become clerics in order to avoid public service. Gotta love that one, since it implies that clerics do not provide a valuable public service...

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