NOGO

Copernicus' book on the solar system was published in 400 copies. Most people who bought it probably did not finish reading it. The book was totally unaccessible to the majority of people. Yet it was placed on the index.

The church did not have to "pick" on anything. There are other ways. Ways which are still at work today.

After silencing Galileo, who was well known, which scientist would dare say anything which displeased the Chruch? Sojourner made an excellent case regarding conformity of thought under a totalitarian regime.


Bruno, Giordano 1548-1600
Italian philosopher who used Copernican principles in formulating his cosmic theory of an infinite universe. Condemned by the Inquisition for heresy, immoral conduct, and blasphemy, he was burned at the stake.


Has there ever been a society which has died of dissent? Several have died of conformity in our lifetime.
Jacob Bronowski

There is a holy, mistaken zeal in politics, as well as in religion. By persuading others, we convince ourselves.
Junius

The quest for certainty blocks the search for meaning. Uncertainty is the very condition to impel man to unfold his powers.
Erich Fromm

[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]

[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: NOGO ]</p>

Sojourner553

You can find it here: Paul Johnson, HISTORY OF CHRISTIANITY, Atheneum, New York, 1987, p 157.

But you have not demonstrated this. Not even a little.

You give a small number of individuals that are supposed to be representative of Christian scientists during medieval times. Roger Bacon is probably your best example. Very little is known of his personal life. He does appear to have spent some time in prison due to Church entanglements, but this was probably for his philosophical/theological views, unlikely due to his science.

You ignore that Church authorities were not, for the most part, friendly towards science. Remember the Church sanctioned belief in witchcraft. The superstition during this period was horrible. You attempt to apologize for this by noting a large majority of pagans were superstitious as well (while ignoring the minority that had more of a scientific outlook. Remember the Epicureans for example?) You never prove that Christians were “less” superstitious – instead you jump to the claim that times were just rougher in Christian times than pagan times (while ignoring the role the Christians played in bringing this abysmal socio-economic situation about).

Bede, to be perfectly honest – the BEST thing that can be said for the Catholic Church (and to some extent the Protestant Churches) during their conservative periods is that they tended to merely excommunicate early Christian scientists – NOT EXECUTE THEM. Executions seemed to be given for theological or political heretics, which were perceived as more of a personal threat to their authority. A lone scientists whom few understood was generally not considered much of a personal threat. Thus when Thomas Aquinas spoke of the necessity of executing heretics, he has theological and/or political heretics in mind.

Michael Servetus was executed for his theological views (he was a Unitarian or deist, instead of believing in the Trinity). The fact he was also a scientist was do doubt irrelevant. The authorities (here by Protestant authorities – ie Calvin) would have looked with disdain on much of his scientific views, but probably tolerated it.

But Bede the point is this: You keep giving me INDIVIDUALS, while ignoring the attitudes and dogma of Church AUTHORITIES towards observation, gathering of facts, and rational learning. If Christianity is to be credited with a scientific tradition, the Christian AUTHORITIES, I need more than a handful of individuals (who were often viewed suspiciously or threatened with excommunication/punishment).

I see the analogy like this: Suppose I were to say that communism is the most benevolent form of government there is. I could offer as proof that their philosophy is to help the poor and disadvantaged members of society.

You might (correctly) disagree, pointing also to the totalitarianism of GOVERNMENT COMMUNIST AUTHORITIES and asking me to fit this into my hypothesis. Would you then be persuaded if I gave you a small handful of INDIVIDUALS who were communist AND also very kind, benevolent. No – the ACTION OF THE COMMUNIST LEADERSHIP IS WHERE YOU WOULD RIGHTFULLY DEMAND TO ALSO SEE EVIDENCE.

In short – I find your examples grossly inadequate. So sorry. The Catholic authorities during most of the medieval period has an appalling record on promoting superstition and not science.

Now this does not mean there were not great Christian scientists, especially in more modern times (18th century on). {I really am very different from Intensity-- who attacked me viciously on this topic}

But remember Bede, when you think of the greatest scientists – the ones that revolutionized science, one sees non-Christians on this list too. Take Albert Einstein (an agnostic Jew) and Charles Darwin (who also appears to have gravitated towards freethought in his latter years.)

Indeed, I have seen statistics that there are a higher number of atheists in the field of science than any other general profession; and that freethinkers, Jews, and deists have always had a disproportionate role in the area of science than Christian given their numbers in the general population.

You will no doubt ignore this again. Then show an authoritative display of anger that you have really proved your position! No you have not. Just the opposite!

Why then did they put works such as the following on the Catholic Index of Forbidden Books???

They even put this wonderful Christian doctor on this Index when he tried to fight the superstition of witches:

Weyer's writings on this subject were placed on the Catholic Church's List of Forbidden Books.

Likewise, Galileo's works were not removed from the Catholic’s List of Forbidden Books until 1835—and even then--this was done under fierce opposition. As late as the 1870's, there were a flurry of books that attacked the Copernican theory of the universe, and attempted to bring back the earth-centered view.

Not to just pick on Catholics: Protestants leaders were also reluctant to give up belief in witches, even as the rationality of the Enlightenment two centuries later began to question their existence. In 1769, John Wesley, founder of Methodism wrote in his JOURNAL:

But why don’t you discuss why the Catholic Church didn’t question the authority of Aristotle (ahem after he was introduced back into Western society of course) in the thousand years after Aristotle’ death???

Uh Bede: Two of the three individuals on your list who “improved science” in the thousand years after Aristotle were PAGANS! Is the reason for this – because you are scraping for names? Also doesn’t this disprove your thesis that the ancient pagans were all mystical and not scientific?

Now as for Philoponus – excellent example! The only critique here is that he does not appear to have progressed past the stage of thought experiments (into field experiments). Minor critique though. The REAL question, (Philoponus was 6th century AD) –WHY DID THE CATHOLIC CHURCH NOT CARRY ON THE TRADITION OF ‘IMPROVING SCIENCE” after Aristotle and especially after Philoponus. (Perhaps it was because Philosoponus had monophysite leanings, and lived in Alexandria as opposed under the Western Catholic tradition??)
Again, please step outside the box: WHY WASN’T ARISTOTLES AUTHORITY QUESTIONED. WAS IT BECAUSE PEOPLE WERE TAUGHT NOT TO QUESTION AUTHORITY IN THE SOCIETY IN WHICH THEY LIVED???
Long list? Please. And I do not consider Aquinas’ writings “scientific”.

Hopefully looking for the truth is not “extreme” in your view. You have seen me argue in defense that Christians can be/have made great scientists. Intensity hit on me for that like a rabid dog, but I never backed down because I go for the truth no matter which side attacks me for it.

I have seen some books outlining pagan science. Guess you need to educate them Bede. Of course, I have seen no evidence from you on this, and these authors seem to have lots of examples and diagrams. Hmmm.

Were you then grabbing for apologies or did some of my arguments move you, for here is what you wrote earlier…

Only in the short term. Russia can be credited with initiating the space race which started a spur for new technology. But what happened? Soviet Science became subservient to a totalitarian ideology that stifled the creativity needed to sustain it. It’s common knowledge in the US that Soviet technology/science is far inferior today than Western science. I presume you really know this too.

On the contrary, the US founding fathers used a model of their principles of freedom the ancient Athenians. Even many of the buildings in Washington DC have the ancient Greek style in imitation.

“The important figures in eighteenth century France were people like Lavoisier, Lagrange, Laplace and Carnot…”

Great list. Carnot was also Prussian (and served on Napolean – an agnostic as I recall). But I quibble. Why not add the great Isaac Newton of England?? I am afraid my point was I did not understand where this was relevant to the discussion at hand.

Science is seen as an accretion of knowledge. Aristotle was at the beginning. It was his logical approach, his categorization of his observations that led to the systematization of science, where others could follow and improve upon it. It is not Aristotle’s fault that a latter theocratic society did not question his facts, but held him as a perfect (or almost perfect) authority that could not be improved upon!

But there have always been differences of opinion. What I remember is a famous line for St. Augustine that people who asked questions (such as what God did before he created the universe) would be consigned to a special bad place of hell.

I had thought you and I agreed the early Church followed the Platonic outlook that questioned one’s senses (ie observation). Either I remember incorrectly or you have changed on this Bede.

I await a few quotes from you to show otherwise. I was impressed how he did not feel epilepsy was a divine fit from the gods, but a natural condition that can be treatable. This is one reason why Hippocrates is considered the Father of Medicene.

Tsk tsk. You make major accusations with no details.

Lindberg is obviously personally religious, so he carefully downplays this – but if your read him carefully, he admits to the “non-scientific” side of the early Catholic Church. Even he acknowledged "there is virtually no science or natural philosophy in early medieval religious and theological works". His point is that if one defines scholarly as "religious or ecclesiastical", then there was indeed a great deal of scholarly activity associated with medieval times. This implies that maybe "serious scholarship" does not have to include the sciences.

But you have not proven dear Bede, whether science survived DESPITE early Christian outlooks, not because of it.

Are some Christian sects more friendly (or less opposed) to science than others? Do Christian Scientists make good scientists.

You have to be able to drill down to prove a theory – not stay up in the stratosphere. I am a financial analyst by training – and that is how I uncover all the pretentions and errors of others – drilling down to the details.

How do freethinkers, deists and Jews fit into this. Again, you have not proven whether THEIR role was really critical or not for the history of science in the West.

Here is an example of what I am looking for Bede: It has been touted that the theology of the Quakers made them great businessmen. Why? Their ethics called for hard work. Their complete honesty generated trust by all. Indeed they wanted fair-handed treatment even to Indians and blacks. See some of the details here, that can be documented.

Really? (Smile.) I cannot tell you how many teachers in my old Baptist sunday classes witnessed that Jesus was with them every minute, responsible for ever tiny trivial event during the day, etc, etc. I remember one teacher who had a small car accident and looked for ways that this was what Jesus wanted…

No it makes my looking for causes rational -- as opposed to apologetic and irrational!

BTW: if “the only cause is God directly” how is this different from “God being in direct charge of every event” ? If the latter statement is to rejected, should not the former? Or am I being too rational&#8230

(Of course, then again maybe you just made a typo somewhere because it was late, Smile)


Sojourner

[ November 07, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]

[ November 08, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

Bede

Sojourner,

Much more fun to be battling it out in public…

But Sojourner, you have mentioned almost nobody. You just assert over and over again.

Bacon was disciplined for publishing a book without permission of his order. This was a standard rule and wasn’t specifically against him. Actually, he is not my best example, it is just you happen to have heard of him.

First, witchcraft belief was, as you well know, near universal. Second, it was not until the fifteenth century that the church took action against witches - prior to that, it had often tried to insist they did not exist. Third, Christianity had nothing negative to do with the socio-economic situation in the Middle Ages. On the contrary, according to medieval historians like Keen and Southern, the Cistercian order was one of the most important economic boosts for the High Middle Ages. Do you know anything about this, Sojourner?

Sojourner, you say they tended to excommunicate scientists. Who? You state this was a trend and yet in my research I find this does not happen. Natural Philosophers were not excommunicated for scientific beliefs as far as I know. You dismiss my examples (some of the most influential and important thinkers in the Middle Ages) as unrepresentative individuals yet you have given me no examples of your thesis at all.

…. snip good stuff from Sojourner about heresy….

Sojourner, what is your evidence for the Church’s attitude? Have you got some examples of canon law or papal bulls? What about Peter Lombard’s Sentences – the single most important book of the Middle Ages after the Bible? The first book of that explains at length that we have to use reason, that there are natural causes to be investigated, that God is transient and uses secondary (natural) causes open to human rationality. Or Gratian’s Decretum, the standard book of canon law, that states unambiguously that scholars should know the pagan classics? Do you have better examples of the Church’s attitude than these?

What is your evidence for this? Remember, there is nothing wrong with being like Newton – believing Revelation and also being a great scientist. You cannot just say that because the Church was religious it must have also been anti-science. You need to show that in the Medieval Europe the use of reason, observation of nature and study of pagan knowledge were prevented by the church. Yes, the Church put faith first but that is not mutually exclusive with encouraging science. It does place limits but not so that science as a whole cannot advance.

This is true today because science is wrongly sold as being anti-religion. We are discussing history.

More later. I look forward to seeing more than bland assertions from you. Instead please find references to medieval documents or academic historians (not populists like the journalist, Paul Johnson) that support your claims that the church:

a) regularly excommunicated scientists;
b) promoted appalling superstition;
c) played a role in the economic disasters of the Middle Ages and not, contrary to the view of most historians, improved them;
d) discouraged natural philosophy.

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede’s Library – faith and reason</a>

Yellum Notnef

So let me get this straight. Witches are real now?

I thought "Witches" and "Witchcraft" were terms coined by the church to justify "getting rid of" the non-Christian competition in the snake oil business.

I`m confused. Why would the church deny the existence of an enemy that they themselves made up?

Can anyone make sense out of this for me? Preferably someone who does NOT think witches are real.

[ November 08, 2002: Message edited by: Fenton Mulley ]</p>

Bede

Fenton,

Witches are real. I have met a good few of them. Whether or not they have magical power, many certainly claim that they do. For a long time, the Church said they had no magical power, but eventually decided that in fact they did and it came from the devil. This made witches a very bad thing as far as most people were concerned and as many as 60,000 were executed in Western Europe from c. 1500 - 1700.

Yours

B

Yellum Notnef

How do you know a witch when you see one?

I have to say that this doesn`t sound very reasonable to me Bede and seems contrary to your "Faith and Reason" advertisement of your website.

Vorkosigan

<a href="http://www.franciscan-archive.org/lombardus/" target="_blank">Peter Lombard's Sentences</a>

The book is mostly concerned with horseshit theological nonsense, dealt with using reason. The tools are OK, but the first principles are all wrong. He was heavily influenced by Abelard, who got his ideas on logic....from who???

Yellum Notnef

Well I`m still waiting to here more about these witches from Bede.

While I`ve been waiting I did a little witch hunting of my own and I found a real nasty one. I somehow managed to get a picture of the beast before it attacked me and then fly away over the trees.
I warn you,this picture is NOT for the faint of heart.

Bede

So it was not Aristotle’s fault he was wrong. True, he did his best. But it is just as silly to say that his successors are at fault for not thinking him wrong either. Besides, as I have stated many times, the overthrow of the Aristotelian paradigm was a victory of Christianity that led to the rise of science.

Do you have a reference for this? It doesn’t sound very Augustinian to me.

I agree that the early (that is, before 800), Church was more neo-Platonic than Aristotelian. Whether this led to Kantian idealism as you suggest, I am not so sure. Certainly, writings by the Lombard, William of Conches and others in the 11th/12th century show this attitude was gone if it ever existed.

As I expect you know, Hippocratic medicine (the works attributed to him were written by many hands), is based on a philosophical system involving the four humours that correspond to the four elements. Illness is caused by an imbalance of humours which the physician should seek to correct (usually by bleeding). This is not science at all, and no less superstitious than claiming divine or magical causes. An unproved and irrational natural cause is no better than an unproved and irrational super natural one.

What evidence do you have of Lindberg’s religious beliefs? I am honestly intrigued as I have never seen any evidence for them. Perhaps your bias makes his objectivity seem like his bias.

‘Early Middle Ages’ means what you and I call the ‘Dark Ages’. Lindberg makes clear the Church had no problem with science at any period, although not a lot of it was about in the Dark Ages.

Given the numbers of errors you make and your use of secondary rather than primary sources, I would suggest you proceed like an analyst who bases all their work on the Op Ed pages of the New York Times.

Deists and freethinkers are not really my concern as they appear too late. Jews were important in Islamic thought but were too socially marginalised in Christian society to be able to (or want) to contribute much to it.

Well I have laid it out many times before to no avail, but just for you, one more time. For Joe’s benefit Christianity is defined as the religion whose theology and practice was defined by the recognised doctors of the church. Clearly this definition breaks down at the Reformation but will do for now.

1) Christianity holds that humans are rational creatures whose faculties are God given (Paul, Augustine and elsewhere).
2) Christianity believes the world was created by a transcendent God who set up laws under which the universe functions. These laws can be understood by humans using their faculties (best described by Peter Lombard after William of Conches and Peter Abelard had won the debate with mystics like St Bernard).
3) It is a literate religion willing to use secular and even infidel learning (as justified by Gratian and accepted by all schoolmen, especially Aquinas).
4) As no human authority is infallible, pagan thought can be used but also criticised (which is clearly what happened). Arabs tended to go for all or nothing (hence Al Ghazadi’s scepticism which was a massive blow to Arab science).
5) The Bible contains matters essential to salvation but it can be read figuratively (Augustine again, later William of Conches goes as far as to call a literal reading of Genesis absurd.). Compare the Islamic view of the Koran as being literal and God’s word.
6) Only on matters essential to salvation can the Church act to compel (justified by Aquinas and codified by Clement VI). This leaves science with a largely free hand.
7) The doctrine of God’s absolute power (used by all schoolmen from the Lombard onwards) means that nature cannot be said to work according to how someone (usually Aristotle) says it must (condemned in 1277 at Paris). This broke the back of Aristotle’s authority.
8) Science was a sacred duty and a way of glorifying God (although I have only read this in later work by Keplar, Boyle etc so it may be outside by boundaries here.)

Which just goes to show that you should not use twentieth century American Protestants as a template for your views of fourteenth century European Catholicism (or anything else, for that matter).

You misunderstood this point. There is a huge difference between a universe which God sets up according to unchanging comprehensible laws (the Christian view) and one where he does it all directly himself (the Moslem and apparently American fundie view).

Yours

Bede

<a href="http://www.bede.org.uk" target="_blank">Bede’s Library – faith and reason</a>

PS: Fenton, well done. You have broken the record for the fastest ever entry onto my 'don't bother reply to' list. Now get off this thread and open one of witches if you want.

Yellum Notnef

After reading through this thread and many others you have participated in I must say that your choice to ignore me is a blessing in disguise.

Thank you.