History of Science and Religion

[Mattsterpiece]

Basically, the question has to do with the thesis that religion (particularly Christianity) had halted the progress of science ever since its transition from natural philosophy to modern science. This thesis has been put forward since the 19th centry, by such figures as William Draper, Carl Sagan, Betrand Russel, anf many figures of the nonbelieving community today.

This usually leads us to the myth that the Middle Ages were a time of scientific stagnation. But there were vital steps being made that were absolutely crucial to the rise of modern science. It is my understanding that several medieval figures contributed a great deal to the major advances made by Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, and even Newton.

So.....

1. What do our TWebbers make of this proposed historical conflict between science and religion?

2. What is your take on the Church's authority during the Middle Ages and how do you think it affected the progress of science from that point forward?

3. How might we look at the relationship between science and religion today in light of the colorful discourse we know they shared in the past?

[Andius]

Being deeply involved in Social Sciences, I actually delight in the fact that Economics was born within an ecclesiastical setting:

http://mises.org/books/salamanca_grice-hutchinson.pdf

That it was the Late Scholastics in Spanish that were the first to study the phenomenon of money and value and create the first theories of value that kickstarted Economics as an academic discipline, is a fascinating fact. To think that both Social and Natural scientific disciplines were born in the same era is an odd coincidence for me. And given how it was their Christian creed that drove them to these studies (since they were highly opposed to the many practices of the Leonese-Castillian Monarchs), it's interesting to see how their pursuit of justice went hand in hand with their pursuit of truth.

[smaneck]

Basically, the question has to do with the thesis that religion (particularly Christianity) had halted the progress of science ever since its transition from natural philosophy to modern science.

There is at least some truth to that but modern science might not have emerged in the first place were it not for scholastics (and therefore theologians) like William of Occam. In opposition to Thomas Aquinas, William of Occam insisted that the method by which we know things depends on nature of the object to be understood. The nature of God, human morality, and the metaphysical world could be known only by means of revelation
whereas the physical world could best be understood by inductive reasoning
which involved experience and experimentation. No room was left in this
paradigm for most of Greek philosophy, which relied on abstract ideals and
depreciated the concrete, but room was created for the emergence of what
would later become the modern scientific method. This would not happen until
the sixteenth and seventh century provided the economic means for a
scientific revolution, but the theoretical basis for one was laid out two
centuries earlier.

Older ideas of the great synthesis between Greek
philosophy and Christian revelation persisted, however.. Galileo was
persecuted more because his theories contradicted the medieval synthesis of
philosophy and theology rather than the Bible. However, by this time,
Biblical support was given to that synthesis. For instance, in the Old
Testament the world was depicted as flat, having pillars which held up the
heavens which the church happily ignored or interpreted metaphorically. But there were also references to the sun moving across the sky and these were used in the Early Modern Period, even by Protestants like Luther, to support the Ptolemaic system of the universe. In regards to the Bible Galileo took the following position:
"I think in the first place that it is very pious to say and prudent to
affirm that the holy Bible can never speak untruth-whenever its true meaning
is understood. But I believe nobody will deny that it is often very
abstruse, and may say things which are quite different from what its bare
words signify. Hence in expounding the Bible if one were always to confine
oneself to the unadorned grammatical meaning, one might; fall into error. .
. .
This being granted, I think that in discussions of physical problems we
ought to begin not from the authority of scriptural passages but from sense
experiences and necessary demonstrations; for the holy Bible and the
phenomena of nature proceed alike from the divine Word the former as the
dictate of the Holy Ghost and the latter as the observant executrix of God's
commands. It is necessary for the Bible, in order to be accommodated to the
understanding of every man, to speak many things which appear to differ from
the absolute truth so far as the bare meaning of the words is concerned. But
Nature, on the other hand, is inexorable and immutable; she never
transgresses the laws imposed upon her, or cares a whit whether her abstruse
reasons and methods of operation are understandable to men."

Galileo's distinction between scientific and spiritual knowledge is not
unlike William of Occam, though he approaches it from the opposite angle. William of Occam wanted to get philosophy out of religion, whereas Galileo wanted to get religion out of science.
The Church by this time, however, was fully committed to the synthesis
arrived at centuries early by Thomas Aquinas. It accused Galileo of
interpreting scripture in way contrary not only to the early church fathers
but to modern scholastics. They held that had he articulated his theory
only as a hypothesis it would have been acceptable but insisting on his own
opinion in this matter was dangerous.
The distinction, which William of Occam drew between what we might today
call the realm of science and realm of religion, was challenged in the
opposite direction during the Enlightenment. The Enlightenment represented
an attempt to apply the scientific method to all areas of human life
including those, which Occam had relegated to religion, such as the nature
of God and human morality. It saw no function for revelation whatsoever,
since all knowledge could be deduced through the study of natural law. This is pretty much the position taken by the people you mention like William Draper, Carl Sagan, Betrand Russel (although Enlightenment thinkers were mostly deists, not atheists.) I would argue that this position is unscientific and that we need to go back to the methodologies of Occam and Galileo.

And by the way, if my post was not a excruciating bore, I wrote a larger, more global piece on the relationship between science and religion which you can find here:

http://www.mail-archive.com/bahai-st.../msg04870.html

So shoot me, I'm a historian.

[rogue06]

Basically, the question has to do with the thesis that religion (particularly Christianity) had halted the progress of science ever since its transition from natural philosophy to modern science. This thesis has been put forward since the 19th centry, by such figures as William Draper, Carl Sagan, Betrand Russel, anf many figures of the nonbelieving community today.

This usually leads us to the myth that the Middle Ages were a time of scientific stagnation. But there were vital steps being made that were absolutely crucial to the rise of modern science. It is my understanding that several medieval figures contributed a great deal to the major advances made by Galileo, Kepler, Copernicus, and even Newton.

So.....

1. What do our TWebbers make of this proposed historical conflict between science and religion?

2. What is your take on the Church's authority during the Middle Ages and how do you think it affected the progress of science from that point forward?

3. How might we look at the relationship between science and religion today in light of the colorful discourse we know they shared in the past?

IMHO the conflict has been greatly exaggerated thanks in great part to the influence of folks like Andrew Dickson White and his "History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom"

[Mattsterpiece]

I'd be more than happy to give that a read.