Bede

Vork,

Only Book 1 is on the web (my mistake, I fear I referred to it by accident) Book 2 is called:

"DE RERUM CREATIONE ET FORMATIONE CORPORALIUM ET SPIRITUALIUM ET ALIIS PLURIBUS EO PERTINENTIUBUS" or "Concerning the creation and formation of physical and spiritual things as well as many other matters relevant to this." Rather more important to science than the extented discussion of the trinity in book one. I suppose one day I should actually read it rather than depend on the discussions of Colish and Grant.

B

lpetrich

News to me -- did anyone ever get in trouble for maintaining that sorcery happens?

And this is a Church that endorsed miracle-working saints and saint relics, the demon theory of disease, etc. Belief in the reality of sorcery, as opposed to attempts to practice it, was all in character.

The Cistercian Order was not the whole of the Church, and how do their activities directly follow from Jesus Christ's teachings or whatever?

Does the example of Isaac Newton want to make Bede become a nominal Anglican who never goes to church, rejects the Trinity -- and who writes volumes about Biblical prophecies?

I suggest that Bede look at the explanatory structure and the paradigms that have been successful in modern science. No deities in sight, no demonstrations that Jesus Christ had been God, Son of God, and 1/3 of God at the same time, etc. The favorite reconciliations of science and religion picture religion as something different from science -- consider Galileo-Gould NOMA. And people of many different religions practice science. Yes, lots of non-Xians, like Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Buddhists, Shintoists, ... If science is uniquely Xian, then they would be incapable of practicing it, right?

I thought that that was an overly harsh evaluation, but I read that he claims to derive the Trinity from the Old Testament. The OLD Testament???

A curious rewrite of history, since the Church still supports Aristotle on the doctrine of the syllogism. Bertrand Russell once criticized Aristotle, and he got some responses from Catholics.

What happened is that too many scholars ended up regarding Aristotle's work as something like some extra books of the Bible.

That may have been a joke, but St. Augustine had been VERY preoccupied with sin. He maintained that babies are guilty of gluttony and jealously, and he wrote at length about a terrible sin that he had committed as a little boy: stealing some pears. Not surprisingly, he believed that we cannot possibly merit salvation; the view that we are capable of meriting it was declared the Pelagian heresy.

That seems almost rational compared to the Gospels with their exorcisms and magical spit therapy.

Bede thus contradicts himself about all those nonbelievers on the loose.

Then Bede ought to be explicitly referring to the teachings of the late-medieval Church.

St. Augustine also believed that we are so sunk in sinfulness that we can never be worthy of salvation. The belief that one can never do anything right on one's initiative does not do much to encourage inquiry.

That's deism, and it does not describe the theology of sin and salvation or the Church's miracle-mongering very well. Saints were celebrated for the miracles they had worked, not their understanding of natural law; I'm surprised that Bede has not flamed me over listing St. Genevieve's alleged miracles.

Except that they ended up regarding Aristotle as almost some extra Bible books.

Al Ghazali had taken a strict fundamentalist view.

Some theologians, maybe, but that did not stop the Church from demanding that heliocentrism be viewed as being "only a theory".

(...)

Except that that quasi-deist viewpoint was the viewpoint of only a few philosophers; most of the Church was MUCH more like that Baptist Sunday-school class.

What Bede calls the "Christian" view is really the deist view, and only supported by some philosophers, and not by the Church as a whole. The Church authorities may have looked the other way if these gentlemen made exceptions for all the miracles the Church recognized as real. And that was LOTS of miracles -- the miracles of the Bible and of numerous saints.

lpetrich

I think that what Bede is doing is defining "Christianity" as "the views of Bede's favorite medieval philosophers".

That being said, there is the interestring question of exactly how much modern science owes to medieval philosophy -- what strands eventually became recognizable as modern science or whatever.

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

NOGO

First.
Where does Christianity state that their God set up laws under which the universe functions??

Second.
This is totally wrong.
Science does not claim that the world has been created or even exists under a set of laws which we are discovering. What science claims is that man creates models which mimic the world.
The key word is "creates". For example light has two models, the wave model and the photon model. Neither one is what the "real" world is. These models are man-made tools and nothng else.

Third
Pythagoras discovered that musical intervals can be modelled with numbers, that is a rule (read law) based model. This led to mathematics and modelling the world based on mathematics such as Ptolemy's work.
The Greeks therefore believed that the world could be modelled mathematically without the Christian God.
That is where Chrisitans, not Christianity, Christians got the idea.

Bede, we are not interested in empty claims.
We need evidence.

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

NOGO

How did Christianity impede science?

Jews were known as "the people of the book" or something like that. Their belief that the Bible was inspired by God led them to venerate the BOOK which they called the word of God. The word of God is perfect and without error.

Christian bought into that. At first totally but with time this belief weakened. Today most Christians will admit to errors in the Bible but in the 16th century the Bible was still perfect or almost.

When Galileo was confronted with the story that Joshua ordered the sun and not the earth to stand still his inclination was to suggest that maybe the Bible was wrong. He actually suggested that it was told that way so that the ancients could understand. Most people in those days would not buy such assertions as they do today.

Galileo was therefore confronted with this dilemma. God created the world and God gave us the Bible. What happens when they contradict?

What has happened throughout 2000 years of Christianity is that Christians were forced to back off from the position that the Bible is perfect. Christians correctly understood that each time an error is admitted, the claim that the Bible is the inspired word of God is weakened. While some Christian groups backed off from the Perrfect Bible others, and in reaction to the trend, went the other way.

Galileo must have loved his science more than the idea that the Bible is perfect.
Cardinal Bellarmine, on the other hand, preferred not knowing any science if it meant questioning the Bible's truth.

My point is that the status of the Good Book as the word of God is an impedement to science.

Why then did Galileo, Kepler, and others managed to overcome this impedement?

All credits goes to them them, INDIVIDUALLY! One has to also admit that Christianity's total victory and a 1000 years had somewhat abated the original zeal.

NOGO

Aristotle must have been one hell of a guy. Perhaps an evil and powerful sorcerer.
He seriously misled people for centuries.

He was also the man to blame for science not appearing earlier. When his magic spell on people elapsed Christianity was free again to invent science.

Luckily for Bede absurdity does not kill.

Sojourner553

Hi Bede:

Of course. Let’s do try to keep this intellectual, and not personal. BTW: my husband and I would be happy to go out with you to dinner sometime if you make it over to the States.

I only have time now to answer a couple of your points. Will address more of them later.

Issue # I.
When I challenged you with “ You give a small number of individuals that are supposed to be representative of Christian scientists during medieval times.” Your response was:

So, Bede, I went back to your lists of individuals that you mentioned as representative examples of medieval Christian scientists in some of your earlier posts. Here are my summaries, taking YOUR examples of the best illustrated individuals:

First I am taking examples only from the period before 1200 AD (ie after 800 years of Christian in much of Europe and Asia Minor). This also keeps us talking about Catholics and not proto-Protestants/Protestants

**Boethius (c 480 AD) is considered the best educated Roman of his age. His masterpiece, The Consolation of Philosophy, and is a discussion of Platonic and Aristotelian philosophy. He was executed before he could complete the work by the Ostrogothic Christian king Theoderic because of his suspected political loyalties to the emperors of Constantinople.

**John Philoponus (early 500’s AD) – A Greek philosopher who wrote critically on Aristotle’s dynamic works. Truly a good example of a scientist – (although it is not certain he ever progressed beyond thought experiments-that is, experiments carefully thought out, but not actually performed. This is a minor point.) He is important because his refutations were the first logical criticisms of Aristotle (although much of it had still to do with philosophy: Is the universe is the single creation of a single God and not eternal, etc, etc.

**Bede (your pseudo name) (700’s AD) was a scholar and historian whose most famous work was The History of the Primitive Church of England. He wrote a number of commentaries on the Bible and had a special interest in music (ie Gregorian chants).

**Alcuin (born about 735 AD) was an educator, scholar, and theologian. He was Charlemagne’s chief educator and collected books from all over Europe. “His educational writings are mostly compilations… generally in the form of dialogues drawn from the works of earlier scholars… and were probably intended to be used as textbooks by his own pupils. “Alcuin, like Bede, was a teacher rather than a thinker, a gatherer and a distributor rather than an originator of knowledge” (quotes taken from the Catholic Library at <a href="http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01276a.htm)." target="_blank">http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/01276a.htm).</a> The importance of Alcuin and Charlegmagne is that education had revived and more people began to read and write, rather than the immediate improvement in quality of learning. Still this was an important first step.

**John Scotus Eriugena (c early 800’s AD) was an Irish philosopher and theologian born in Ireland. His work, Voice of the Eagle, is a compilation of lyrical mysticism, theology, and cosmology, containing the essence of Celtic Christian wisdom. In it, he meditates on the meaning of creation by the Bible fusing together Christian and Platonic philosophy along with ancient Irish wisdom.

**Isadore of Seville (was born in 560 AD; also patron saint of computers and the internet) who was a Spanish churchman and encyclopedist. His most famous work, Etymologies or Origins, was an attempt as a compilation of previous classical learning, including pagan works. “It was, however, a completely derived work, unenlightened by firsthand observation, and sometimes faulty in its scholarship.” His history of the reigns of the Goths, Vandals, and Suevi continues to be useful in studying the early history of Spain. He also wrote many treatises on theology, language, and natural history. His great learning and defense of education before the rising tide of Gothic barbarism was important to the development of Spanish culture. As Bishop of Seville, Isidore wielded considerable ecclesiastical power and his leadership was also credited for stamping out the Arian Christian heresy from Spain. (source for quote: <a href="http://www.orbilat.com/Encyclopaedia/I/Isidore_of_Seville.html)" target="_blank">http://www.orbilat.com/Encyclopaedia/I/Isidore_of_Seville.html)</a>

**Gerbert ( lived c.945–1003). In his youth he studied at Muslim schools in Spain and became learned in mathematics and astronomy. Under Holy Roman Emperor Otto III, he was chosen as Pope Sylvester. As pope, Sylvester aided energetically in the Christianization of Poland and Hungary and worked closely with Otto in the restoration of the Holy Roman Empire.. He wrote on theology, mathematics, and the natural sciences. Instead of being appreciated by the general public, this gave rise to absurd legends about the "sorcerer pope". He restrained mass panic in the year 1000 and advocated a Byzantine-style "symphony" of Church and State, opposing papal supremacy and repudiating the fraudulent Donation of Constantine

**Peter Abelard (born 1079)- Dialectician, philosopher, and theologian in France. His teachings were considered very controversial because they questioned the doctrine of the Trinity. He was summoned to appear before an ecclesiastic council at Soissons. While it is not easy to determine exactly what took place at the Council, it is clear that there was no formal condemnation of Abelard's doctrines, but that he was nevertheless condemned to recite the Athanasian Creed, and to burn his book on the Trinity. Note: the Athanasian Creed starts out: “Whosoever will be saved, before all things it is necessary that he hold the catholic faith; 2. Which faith except every one do keep whole and undefiled, without doubt he shall perish everlastingly…
<a href="http://www.ccel.org/creeds/athanasian.creed.html" target="_blank">http://www.ccel.org/creeds/athanasian.creed.html</a>
Under threat of condemnation by the pope, Abelard instead reconciled with his religious enemies through the help of Peter of Cluny, and lived out the remainder of his life at the monastery at Cluny. {indications are he had changed his earlier heretical views.}

**Adelard of Bath ((born c 1100 AD) A Scholastic philosopher, he. He wrote a number of original works on philosophy, all of them based on Plato. He was an extensive traveler through Greece and Asia Minor, where he came into contact with the learning of the Arabs. His importance is not as a philosoher, but rather that he was one of the translators who made the first wholesale conversion of Arabo-Greek learning from Arabic into Latin (including a translation of Euclid's geometry from the Arabic).

**Thierry of Chartres - A Platonist philosopher of the twelfth century, b. in France at the beginning of the twelfth century; Theodoric was an ardent lover of the Classics, and translated the "Planisphere" of Ptolemy. In philosophy he adopted the Platonic explanation of reality and the ultra-realistic theory of universals. He was influenced by neo-Pythagorean principles.

**Hugh of St Victor (born in 1096 AD) -A teacher, a theologian, and a mystic was. A great mystical writer, he was also a philosopher and a scholastic theologian of the first order. Hugh did much to lay the theoretical foundations for the medieval universities and for the development of the natural law tradition that produced St. Thomas Aquinas.

**William of Conches, (born c 1100 AD) - A twelfth-century Scholastic philosopher and theologian who taught of theology in Paris. After being warned by a friend of the danger implied in his Platonic realism as he applied it to theology, he took up the study of philosophy and the physical science of the Arabians. There is a good deal of discussion in regard to the authorship of the works ascribed to him. It seems probable, however, that he wrote glosses on Plato's "Timaeus", a commentary on Boethius's William devoted much attention to cosmology and psychology. He is one of the first of the medieval Christian philosophers to take advantage of the physical and physiological lore of the Arabians.


SUMMARY: There are no doubt some good men on this list, Bede. BUT FEW OF THEM WOULD QUALIFY AS SCIENTISTS, WHO USED OBSERVATION TO MAKE NEW DISCOVERIES!!! Instead the majority of these are philosophers or theologians.

Science today is generally viewed as OPPOSED to the Platonic view of the world (which holds that observation is not a valid method for finding NEW truths: indeed Platonic philosophy maintains observation can mislead one in their endeavor to uncover truths.) Therefore when your list is heavily represented by PLATONIC philosophers or general compilers/historians, it is very misleading to include this on a list that is supposed to be representative of early SCIENTISTS!!

Now, John Philoponus and Gerbert do belong on the scientific list, even though some of their views were mingled with poor information. You know: Like Aristotle! I include Philosponus and Gerbert by the same standard that I apply to Aristotle: Individuals who applied observation and rationality as a basis for acquiring new knowledge. Or course all inherited superstitions. The issue is who could muddle their way best through it, and IMPROVE on scientific learning, or forge the process/methods that others could follow in improving science!

Issue # II.

Roger Bacon was the BEST example on your list of a true scientist. No doubt he was one of the worst example of a Platonic philosopher/theologian (apparently your criteria for greatness). But if you remember, the topic is about SCIENCE, not religion.

Here is a summary I culled from the reference site.

So Bede, you ask me which scientists were threatened with excommunication? I probably should have substituted the term “punishment”, as the history is not always clear if excommunication was part of the punishment.

There are VERY few individuals that could be classified as scientists during the first 800+ years of Christianity. (Islam already had a higher number of scientists by this time, by comparison.)

That is one reason why I could not give you a “large list” of heretical scientist -- There were few scientists!!

But one can see that Roger Bacon was on the list (Boethius’ crime was political in nature not religious, so I exclude him here). Abelard was no doubt threatened with imprisonment if he did not "reconcile" himself with his enemies.

If I move up later in time ( Per Bede "Your challenge was “Natural Philosophers were not excommunicated for scientific beliefs as far as I know” ) Obviously you have forgotten the scientists Giordano Bruno, who was excommunicated and burned alive in Rome in 1600, (probably for questioning the Trinity and the existence of hell. Good scientists who question things also tend to question DOGMA.)

When one drills into the DETAILS Bede, with few exceptions the 800+ years I have shown is that the Catholic Church was an ultra-conservative religious authority that was ready to stamp out advancement in the sciences with few exceptions. (Sylvester II may be a great exception. Sadly, he does not appear to have influenced later generations of popes or the society in general. He was an individual before his times.)

Issue # III. You ignored my analogy on communism. Let me try another one:

Today, Muslim countries are considered largely fundamentalists with societies that do not maintain a pro science outlook.

Still you and I could find MUSLIM individuals and scientists who have been influenced OUTSIDE THEIR MUSLIM SOCIETIES -- and are active in trying to move the corpus of Islam thought in the direction towards a more scientific outlook

Does this make modern Islam “pro-science”? No because the main body of Islam’s dogmas and interpretations are opposed to that.

Could this change? Sure. Afterall, the Catholic Church is more pro-science in outlook now than probably any time in its previous history.

You see, I am not disagreeing with you that modern Christian theology cannot be “pro-science” for many of its outlooks. Where I disagree with you, is whether the Catholic Church had a tradition that was pro-science going back into Medieval times.

Just as with Muslim societies today, the answer is a resounding “No!”

Sojourner

[ November 09, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

Sojourner553

But killing large number of innocent people for witchcraft was not!


Actually Scholasticism appears to have an impact where witches were "interpreted" to be in league with the Devil and therefore deserving of death.
See quote below:


Of course I was speaking of the EARLY Middle Ages. This goes back to our private discussion where I see evidence that the Catholic Church’s outlawing of all other religions (pagan, Jews, even “other” Christian sects) created the climate that allowed for mainly Christian barbarians to weaken the Roman Empire.

Here is my source on witchcraft:

<a href="http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/DARKAGE3.TXT" target="_blank">http://mac-2001.com/philo/crit/DARKAGE3.TXT</a>
Sojourner

[ November 09, 2002: Message edited by: Sojourner553 ]</p>

Bede

Sojourner,

Thanks for the invite!

I'll deal with the rest of your posts later, but lets kill this witches issue. The papal bull that started witch trials was in 1484 and the Malleus was written as a response and enlargement of this. So, as I said, witch trials started in the late 15th century. You have not claimed that witch trials are evidence of the church being anti-science, and please don't because it would be a daft point to make. They are just plain irrelevant and the fact that the main period of witch trials almost exactly matches the scientific revolution makes a mockery of any such claim.

If you want to talk about witches, another thread, not about science would be best.

Yours

Bede

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

Bede

I fear your summaries are a bit one sided, we’ll let that pass, but your most important error is to judge everyone with your anachronistic twenty first century eye (except Aristotle, whom you largely exempt from criticism). We are not talking about who makes the best twenty first century scientist – we are talking about the men who made science possible. And philosophy and theology were vital to that story. All the men I listed used reason and rationality to solve problems, developed logical and mathematical techniques, helped bring old knowledge back into circulation and without them we would have no science. Certainly you have done nothing to carry your claim that the church was anti-science – that is it ever decried the use of reason and observation in natural philosophy.

‘Scientist’ is a nineteenth century word that we should never use to describe anyone prior to about 1600. But I do it too L. As I stated above, all the men I mentioned are important on the road to science – but of course none of them are scientists. Nor was a single ancient Greek (Archimedes came closest. Murdered by the Romans but for some reason we don’t go around saying they were anti-science. They weren’t – they just didn’t really care).

That site is usually quite good but they are wrong to claim Bacon’s superiors were against science or that this is the reason he was imprisoned. They admit the charge was ‘suspected novelties’ so they don’t actually know what he said that annoyed them. The assumption you make is it was science because you think the church was anti-science. Hence, your argument becomes completely circular. I understand it was actually his proposals for church reform that upset his superiors.

Well Sojourner, you have yet to come up with ONE case of a man being disciplined by the church for scientific views. You have yet to provide ANY evidence that the church was anti-science. How can you possibly maintain either of these views with such a complete lack of evidence?

You have given none but I grant that is a useful get out for you. You almost define people who annoyed the church (like Bacon and Bruno), for whatever reason, as scientific and claim the ones who did not were not. Another beautiful circle.

No he isn’t. Find me his condemnation and show me where is says he was disciplined for scientific views.

He had to restate the creed because of his views on the Trinity. He did not get into any trouble for scientific reasons. He does not even count as a man of science in your books.

That remark, Sojourner, is pathetic. Sorry, but it is. Good scientists all accept the dogma they are taught at college – I know this because I was simply told to regurgitate what I was told and original thought brought the professors out in a rash. And this was at Oxford, one of the world’s leading universities. If you know why Bruno was executed please publish your work because no one else knows. He was most probably killed for trying to start a neo-pagan religion, but again even you admit it probably has nothing at all to do with science. That said, I do accept that the reformation, far from being a good thing for science, led to a hardening of attitudes that caused Galileo being brought to trial. The one case in history where a scientist was prosecuted even if the science was just a smokescreen.

We have no evidence at all for your contention the church was anti-science. All we have is you re-interpreting lack of evidence to fit your hypothesis. You cannot do that in history. However, like I offered NOGO, I will meet you half way. If you are not satisfied with the evidence I have presented that Christianity encouraged science, then that is your right – the burden of proof is on me. But conversely you yourself cannot assert more than the fact that this means the Church and Christianity were broadly neutral in their effect. The fact you brand the medieval church ultra-conservative and hence don’t like it very much, is not sufficient for you to claim, without evidence, it was anti-science.

Your analogies with communism and Islam are elegant but irrelevant (and in the case of communism, false too, I think). Analogy is very dangerous in history and as we are discussing the pre-reformation church, that is the only place you are allowed to draw your arguments from.

Yours

Bede

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