Posted on 12/04/2003 11:18:40 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
To paraphrase the opening of a popular ESPN show, these four things everyone knows are true: Before Columbus’s first voyage, people thought the world was flat. When Copernicus wrote that the Earth revolved around the Sun, his conclusions came out of nowhere. The “scientific revolution” of the seventeenth century invented science as we know it. And the false beliefs and impediments to science are Christianity’s fault.
There’s just one problem: All four statements are false.
As Rodney Stark writes in his new book, For the Glory of God, “every educated person” of Columbus’s time, especially Christian clergy, “knew the earth was round.” More than 800 years before Columbus’s voyage, Bede, the church historian, taught this, as did Hildegard of Bingen and Thomas Aquinas. The title of the most popular medieval text on astronomy was Sphere, not exactly what you would call a book that said the earth was flat.
As for Copernicus’s sudden flash of insight, Stark quotes the eminent historian L. Bernard Cohen who called that idea “an invention of later historians.” Copernicus “was taught the essential fundamentals leading to his model by his Scholastic professors”—that is, Christian scholars.
That model was “developed gradually by a succession of . . . Scholastic scientists over the previous two centuries.” Building upon their work on orbital mechanics, Copernicus added the “implicit next step.”
Thus, the idea that science was invented in the seventeenth century, “when a weakened Christianity could no longer prevent it,” as it is said, is false. Long before the famed physicist Isaac Newton, clergy like John of Sacrobosco, the author of Sphere, were doing what can be only called science. The Scholastics—Christians—not the Enlightenment, invented modern science.
Three hundred years before Newton, a Scholastic cleric named Jean Buridan anticipated Newton’s First Law of Motion, that a body in motion will stay in motion unless otherwise impeded. It was Buridan, not an Enlightenment luminary, who first proposed that Earth turns on its axis.
In Stark’s words, “Christian theology was necessary for the rise of science.” Science only happened in areas whose worldview was shaped by Christianity, that is, Europe. Many civilizations had alchemy; only Europedeveloped chemistry. Likewise, astrology was practiced everywhere, but only in Europe did it become astronomy.
That’s because Christianity depicted God as a “rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being” who created a universe with a “rational, lawful, stable” structure. These beliefs uniquely led to “faith in the possibility of science.”
So why the Columbus myth? Because, as Stark writes, “the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack of faith.” Opponents of Christianity have used bogus accounts like the ones I’ve mentioned not only to discredit Christianity, but also to position themselves as “liberators” of the human mind and spirit.
It’s up to us to set the record straight, and Stark’s book is a great place to start. I think it’s time to tell our neighbors that what everyone knows about Christianity and science is just plain wrong.
which demonstrates that expertise in engineering confers absolutely no insight whatsoever into physics or biology.
But that's a quibble. The important point is that science was advancing, and the practioners had no problem viewing the world from within a religious mindset. It did not hold them back.
Not exactly. The Galileo legend is another distortion. Here's another eye-popping article for you: The Galileo Legend.
The Church has never held such a view.
I have been saying this for YEARS!!! What is NEVER discussed (because it is politically incorrect to talk about it or view it as even remotely a good thing) is how in WESTERN civilization, much of the early days of science were begun in MONASTERIES!!! Anyone who has had any general exposure to Biology or Anatomy/Physiology has been taught about Gregor Mendel, a MONK who forumlated the study of genetics through the study of flower traits.
And why would Monks be interested in things like that? Because to study the Word of God, one must study His Creation, and to learn about what God has created is to learn about the Mind of God.
No monk would presume to say that they would learn EVERYTHING, but they understood that God created His World for His Reason, and to ignore it or not attempt to understand how He has ordered it is to be disrespectful of God.
Western civilization was fostered and preserved by monasteries, and those monasteries were the pioneers of scientific study.
If you are talking specifically of the Catholic Church, you are, of course, correct.
The Church's view that some questions should not even be asked was a stifling force on advancement.Then why did Copernicus (a Catholic priest) wait until the year of his death to publish his heliocentric theory?The Church has never held such a view.
-Eric
And I kind of wonder whether it's not just religious nature but human nature to retard scientific progress. For example, PETA would like nothing better than for all vivisectoinist medial research to stop. A local town---a very liberal and secular one---recently voted on a measure to the remove the flouride from their water: 20% of the residents voted for it. My milk cartons brag that the milk they contain came from cows that were not treated with the rBST hormone---while disclaiming in a footnote that no chemical differences in milk have ever been detected as a result of the hormone's usage.
So yes the church has used its power to suppress advancement in the past. Now we have many more organizations wielding power in similar ways.
From the article linked in post #26 above:
Copernicus had delayed the publication of his book for years because he feared, not the censure of the Church, but the mockery of academics. It was the hide-bound Aristotelians in the schools who offered the fiercest resistance to the new science.
Two bishops were the ones who finally persuaded him to publish. Hardly common for someone supposedly being silenced by the Church.
Incidentally, thanks to Varda for finding that article. I recall reading it some time ago, but could never remember the source or find it again.
Exactly.
uummmm NO! If that were the case then why did they later burn Giordano Bruno at the stake for espousing the Copernican theory?
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