Nomad

Is this what you call hypothesis and experimentation? I thought that what he did was from observation and reasoning alone.

Is it your opinion that the Age of Science was a misnomer?

Well, I think that Columbus was conducting an experiment, and putting his life, and that of his crew on the line to prove his theory. What do you think that he was doing?

I don't recall anyone else actually putting the mathematics of Ptolemy's calculations to the test, thought I do believe that most everyone who was educated had accepted them. Again I must ask if this is what you mean by science, because if it is, then it appears obvious to me that you and Bede (and Stark) are talking about something very different, and this would then explain why you all have been talking past one another.

Nomad

joedad

If you are asserting that this is not science I feel you are unduly wrapped up in semantics.YesI think he was trying to get rich.I think Bede and I are communicating quite well. As for Stark, I ought to have his book in a couple days.

Bede has indicated that he distinguishes between science and what he would call modern secular science. If you read Bede's and my last few exchanges, he certainly seems to agree that the ancients practiced science, though not the modern secular variety. Frankly, I am not historian enough to even discuss whether there is any merit to Bede's claim that secular scientific pursuit did not exist for the ancients. Today scientists go into their labs and use methodologies with no accounting for miracles and deities. Some scientists then pray and thank deities for giving them success and inspiration. Is this secular science?

Bede's argument that christianity begat modern secular science hasn't been made, but merely asserted. Maybe Stark can help me understand Bede's motivation. I hope so.

liquid

Arghhhhh!

Fundamentally, experimentation IS only observation and hypothesis making IS only reasoning.

The word hypothesis comes from the Greek hupothesis so the concept certainly existed in some form. And experiment comes from the Latin experimentum

His hypothesis was that he could measure the circumference of the earth using the shadow method. His experiment was to conduct the measurements, and we now know it's a valid method and not a bad estimate.

So only Xian Europeans qualify as experimenters and hypothesisers now huh? Aside from the debate we are having, which has conveniently narrowed to post-Rennaisance science, at least give credit where it is due.

Vorkosigan

That's actually an interesting assertion, on many levels. But the fact is that it is highly likely, as scholars have long speculated, that Columbus knew exactly where he was going. Remember that Columbus had traveled all over Europe, including Iceland, to collect info on the land to the west. That land was known to others; the Portugese had probably already sighted it, since in order to return to Europe from Africa one had to swing out wide into the Atlantic first. Fisherman also probably had been there, and of course the voyages of the Vikings are preserved in the old Norse sagas. Another clue lies in his cargo, which was not one that would taken in trade to the East. No, Columbus was not demonstrating to himself; he was proving to others.

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

Bede's distinction is one commonly used among historians of science....ancient sciences are referred to with ethnic designators: Chinese science, Greek science. I also agree with Bede's distinction completely. So the whole issue of whether Christianity hindered science is tricky, because science did not exist until the 17th century, really. A better way to view it would be: Did it hinder Europe's intellectual development? A complex question with many possible answers....and still, the question is not quite there yet, because it is laden with certain assumptions about about the nature of intellectual progress -- is one direction right and all others wrong? If not, how can there be hindrance?The best question would be: what was the effect of Christianity on the development of science in the West?

Vorkosigan

Vorkosigan

How would you test this hypothesis? Would you regard all the other Christian areas of the world that did not develop science as refutations of this?

GakuseiDon

Pot. Kettle. Black. So which worldviews produced a philosophy of rigorous methodology, joedad? I know you mean "modern science" in the second case, but it shows how easy it is to nit-pick at semantics. (Ed. Actually I see that joedad has done this less than most, so I'm being a bit unfair)

I've seen you make this statement a couple of times, but I don't know what you mean. How has Christian religious beliefs caused the removal of Christian religious beliefs from science? Do you mean science has disproved Christianity?

liquid

vorkosigan,

I don't think anyone is disputing that Bede's distinction is a valid one. What we are annoyed about is the plain refusal to make that distinction at the beginning of the thread, then the retreat to it when his former position was undermined.

This wasted a lot of time and it is hard to know whether this was done on purpose or not - it's certainly somewhat disingenious.

So there's a few loose ends about non-modern science that would be nice to tie up, and it is marginally relevant to the debate anyway by demonstrating that certaint aspects of the modern scientific method have arisen in other cultures in the past.

But if we wish to just have a debate about Rennaisance and afterwards, then that is something we can have, but from reading the OP it is clear that the claims were never set up in any such manner.

I would suggest, in fact, that a new thread is begun with a more specific claim if Bede really wants to have this out.

I suspect he might find that many of us would actually agree that Xianity has had some positive influences in that case, as well as some negative ones. I doubt he can demonstrate that this development was only potential amongst Xian cultures though; that standard of proof is difficult to achieve in historical issues.

joedad

Christianity contains sacred truths. Sacred truths cannot be disproven. So, no, science has not disproven christianity.

Science doesn't contain sacred truths. Scientific assumptions are open to examination, as arguments from authority are of no value. Conclusions cannot be inconsistent with factual data.

I submit that this "scientific" method of examining our environment did not suddenly dawn upon us a few centuries ago as the result of christian religious beliefs. That's all I'm saying.

Nomad

Yeah, I've been wondering about this myself. We had two big areas of Christian development by the 17th Century, the Catholic/Protestant Western Europe, and the Orthodox Eastern Europe. Science as we know it today did not really take off in the Orthodox part of the world any more than it did in the Muslim (or Chinese, or African) world.

Two key differences contributed, I think, to the worldview of the Christian West vs. that of the Christian East. The first was the Scholastic movement of the 12-13th Centuries (which saw the works of Plato, and especially Aristotle, revived, and then made to "fit" within the Christian beliefs of Aquinas, Bonaventure & Co.). The second was the Reformation of the 16th Century. Both events went pretty much unnoticed in the East, but they had a profound impact on how Western Europeans began to think. Coupled with the introduction of the printing press, and growing literacy rates (made possibly by the ability to produce relatively cheap books), and the rise of scientific exploration and discovery does seem more comprehensible.

Now, I am saying this is only my amateur, and untested, hypothesis. The theology that lead to the work of the Scholastics, coupled with the theology of the Reformers (and then, ironically, the Counter-Reformers) gave us the "seed" for scientific development. The growth of literacy rates made it possible for this "seed" to land in fertile ground, and then to develop. My interst would then be to see how Stark treats this hypothesis, or if he has a better one of his own. My own expertise is in the history of the ancients, not of the Middle Ages, and so I would have to rely upon the findings of historians of science and of the Middle Ages to better explain what made Europe sufficiently different from the rest of the world (Christian and non-Christian alike) to let the Age of Science begin.

Peace,

Nomad