I can’t say I agree with their geography, but I’ll run with this. Despite my disagreements with the way the globe is shaped, I agree with the general thrust.
Overall, a good thesis. I would have used the subjunctive case more, Christianity can be compatible with science and science does find its origins in a cultural milieu that Christianity made possible.
We’ll rock these one-by-one.
Honestly, I’m not sure I grok this one. Seems pretty weak to me, but others are welcome to correct my stance on this issue.
This feels like a re-statement of #1. I would have no problem synthesizing the two into the following formulation: “Since the universe was created by a conscious entity, and humans were created in the image (complete with some of the faculties thereof) of said entity, it follows that the universe is inherently knowable.” It seems to me that this is what they are trying to establish.
See above.
I’m unconvinced on this point. Fallibilism exists in a variety of non-Christian traditions. I’m not sayin’ it hurt, but I wouldn’t describe it as a distinguishing element.
So, I really think these “four” points are really one concise point. A good point, granted, but just one.
They had their own nation, one which was moderately successful by the standards of the time. Furthermore, no one is going to suggest that a modern notion of science ought to have begun in sometime before the common era.
Can’t say I grok this point either. Help? I mean, given the huge influence that Averroes had on the Christian tradition, dismissing his followers seems rather like shooting one’s self in the foot. As for Judaism tending towards pantheism, I’d need to see something to back up that claim before I bought it. Granted, most Jews I’m on familiar terms with are exceedingly secular (n=large), but the believing Jews I’ve met (n=2, anecdotal, I know) I wouldn’t describe as “pantheists”.
OK . . . let’s see how this goes . . .
Personally, I think ancient China could give ancient Greece a run for it’s money, but let’s leave cultural bias aside for the moment . . .
I can agree with this. I’ve cited Wang Fuzhi before and his belief in the “irregularity” of the world that rendered any sort of scientific enterprise meaningless. You see this in the modern era in the form of post-modernism (something to guard against) so I can broadly agree with this statement.
I’m not so sure that an elimination of final causes, and the blurring of the rest is terribly important for science. Nor do I think definitions as to how things came to be are terribly important.
While I disagree that this follows from the above, I do think this holds true for the European mindset.
I already agreed with the general thrust of this above.
Ironic, since modern science requires a rejection of final causes, or at least final causes being equated with the other three (particularly the efficient, but it is easy to see how they are all related).
While I agree with the conclusion reached, I’m still not sure that the foundation they are establishing follows.
An empty assertion that, ironically, appeals to the sort of Final Cause that he just suggested the rejection of pioneered the birth of science. Which way is it?
Yeah, there have gotta be numbers after statements like those to let me check up on them. Especially since they fly in the face of Judaism as orthodox individuals in that tradition practice it. Cites at the end of a document are vague and impede this sort of investigation, which is suspect.
Again, given their staunch rejection of teleology, I’m not sure how to interpret this section. I’ve always understood Christianity’s ability to provide a birthplace for science partially because of its teleology! This seems to be what he is saying here, but again, why go to such lengths to reject it earlier? I also don’t buy that pantheism is the necessary outcome of every other tradition, since there are a lot of non-pantheistic traditions out there.
Overall, I have a very hard time with this essay. I fail to see how it doesn’t horribly contradict itself. It’s a pity, since I agree with what the author set out to prove, but the manner in which he did so leaves much to be desired.
It’s questionable that he didn’t mention the lengths to which christianity went to thwart the advance of science. Whatever the conclusions, they should be mentioned at the very least in order to distance himself from them, because they are obvious and widespread. While he mentions Gallileo, he seems to want to claim that it was Christianity that spurned him on, while it was also Christianity that locked him up for what he found.
Personally, I think his best point it this: “The rise of science needed the broad and persistent sharing by the whole population, that is, the entire culture, of a very specific body of doctrines relating the universe to a universal and absolute intelligibility embodied in the tenet about a personal God, the Creator of all.” I think, though, that the implication is more damning than it is made out to be. A widespread belief that the universe is knowable, as well as enough of the fundamental questions dogmatically excluded from discourse, encouraged an in depth exploration into the here-and-now. But the negative possible interpretation is that Christianity needed to be at least somewhat unsatisfying in order to really drive the exploration. A philosophy that answers enough of life’s questions leaves its believers complacent, while one that is inherently lacking encourages a populace brought up on it to ask more questions of everything else, to need something else. Perhaps it was the poor philosophy of Christianity that really got science off the ground.
I feel that there is no question that the Scientific Method grew out of Philosophical thought. I think it sort of went in fits and starts though. I have connected a trail through a few books that I read. I read a biography of Siddharta Gautama(Buddha by Karen Armstrong) a recognized expert in the field. Anyway in Gautama’s time the woods were full of roaming mendicant monks who were seeking enlightenment. Gautama left his pregnant wife to join these dudes to seek enlightenment. Then one day he was sitting under this tree, and he figured out enlightenment and got followers and formed almost like a monestery. He founded Buddhism and these guys got all philosophy-like explaining this enlightenment thing. So by whatever means, the author suggested that the Philosophy type thinking spread to ancient Greece and the middle East and influenced the religions that sprang up ion these areas. I’ll just guess that the thought spread eastward as well and influenced the development of Confucianism and Daoism and what-not…not really sure if the autor said that or not. Anyway, the story goes on with another book I read called " How the Irish Saved Civilization by Thomas Cahill". Philosophical thought was big in Rome, but after Aleric, most romans became hobos and nobody paid attention to philosophy and the barbarians wiped their arses with all of the classical works of Aristotle and his gang. So philosophy was as dead as a doornail in the west, and roman Christianity was bad off too…as rome went so went christianity into decline in face of the heathen barbarians. But the Barbarians didn’t get everywhere. Most importantly, barbarians were far and few between in Christian Ireland (although Norse were burning crops and soiling quilts in the area). Irish monks sent missionaries into Europe to bring back Christianity and even converted the barbarians. But more importantly, the Irish monks copied Iberian Arab copies of Greek Philosophical works that had been lost to the West. The story was picked up from here in a third book called “Aristotle’s Children: How Christians, Muslims, and Jews Rediscovered Ancient Wisdom and Illuminated the Dark Ages s by Richard E. Rubenstein.” This book gives the story of how the philosophical thought was preserved by the Arab culture that overran the roman Christian culture in North Africa, and how the knowledge was transsorted to Iberia by the Moors. ANyway, from there the blabbermouth Irish spread Philosophy around Europe and universities sprang up to study Philosophy, and the Scientific method grew out of the structured thought of philosophy and science grew out of the method. If you want the history of it all from the beginning, I would recommend these 3 books. They sort of made me feel that I had the whole story.
The original post makes frequent mention of the “incarnation”, meaning God became a man, trinity, etc. This belief made no contribution to science.
Isaac Newton was a Unitarian, meaning monotheist in the true sense of the word, rejecting the God is a trinity, etc. And not secular humanist either.
Newton is considered the greatest scientist that has ever lived. And he wrote a lot of stuff on the bible. A book he wrote is titled “Observations Upon the Prophecies of Daniel and the Apocalypse of St. John”.
Also, a lot of his biblical writings are reprinted in “Judaism in the Theology of Sir Isaac Newton” by Matt Goldfish.
Also, other reprints are found in “Sir Isaac Newton Theological Manuscripts” edited by H. McLachlan.
I’m not so sure it didn’t make a contribution. If god can become man (incarnation), and if god is like a man (in his image and all that) then it follows that the world such a god made would be intelligible to man. If Cthulu-god made the world, being fundamentally unlike man, we wouldn’t expect an intelligible creation. Likewise, if the world is uncreated and we are a limited part of it, how could we hope to understand it (which is more along the lines of most non-Christian beliefs)?
As for Newton, remember, he thought that he was the messiah, so I think it would be fairly easy to argue that incarnation (albeit a decidedly heterodox version of it) played a role in his thought.
I don’t know, Xunz. I found the whole essay to be a bit myoptic. I think it ignores our basic curiosity and the fact that we refuse to stop asking questions. Moreover, there is no overview that much of the development he claims as distinctly Christian occurred as mankind was still in the cultural revolution from hunter-gatherer to city dweller. While personages and social movements advanced or retarded the state of human inquiry, and goeographical location often controlled the level of sophisticated inquiry, the essay seems to “cherry pick” in it’s attempt to validate the claims it makes.
I’m not suggesting that christianity wasn’t a part of the formation of disciplined scientific inquiry, but I question the notion that it was the lynch pin that made science possible. The cultural changes of moving from the fields to the city had far greater impact than any particular movement such as christianity, and science along with its methodology would have been created out of necessity in order to address the greater social complexity.
As Carleas pointed out, christianity did as much to bury scientific inquiry as it did to support it. The essay would have been better if it only claimed christianity as a contributor rather than the convoluted and not particularly well supported notion that science is the child of christianity.
All the best musicians have a belief in something greater,and its the belief itself which creates works of wonder obviously.No belief in God=No first bluesmen=no John coltrane or miles Davis=No James Brown=No bob marley=and so no evolution of soul/Funk/Hip hop/ragga/drum and bass=less good times for us
Belief in God gives us a better quality of life for sure
Definately,its amazing the weapons the chinese had way before anyone else,like a crossbow repeater that fired several bolts in a minute,this was basically the first machine gun,It had a cratridge fitted to the underneath of the bow full of bolts,you just released one bolt then pulled it back with a lever fitted with several smaller mechanisms to make the pulling back even easier instead of a big struggle,and you were ready to fire another within 5 seconds,brilliant,imagine how devastating that would have been to other european armies who hadnt even invented the crossbow by this time. The chinese even had gunpowder,rocket launchers and everything,as if having developed a rocket launcher wasnt enough,they designed the head of the rocket to look like a dragon,and the fuse inside this flying dragon was timed so that just as it was about to hit enemy troops,it would open its mouth and release 5 or 6 propelled thick shaft arrows with exploding tips,amazing eh
While I won’t (too lazy) try to cite all the possible variables, Europe was simply building on earlier southern cultures. It is much as areas that have been undeveloped for decades and have no roads or running water, but they have cell phones. The legacy of the Meditteranean basin cultures gave Europe a base to build upon. Granted, christianity was a part of this, but the leap into what could be considered ‘modern’ scientific inquiry had many progenitors, not just christianity by itself.
I think elsewhere would have happened sooner or later, Europe just happened to be first.
See, I disagree with the Mediterranean base-thing, and here is why: The Greeks didn’t have anything unique to their philosophy that would have given Europe a leg-up over its competition. Both China and India had philosophies at least as developed as the Greek and in many of the same ways. Furthermore, both China and India had more urbanized, developed cultures (we can throw the ME in here too for much of history). So why then, does a culturally backwards area like Europe develop something like science? I don’t think it is the Greek legacy, because that legacy had cognates in other areas. Furthermore, that legacy was shared with several other areas (both in the ME and much of central Asia through Alexander). I don’t think that holds.
As for developing in other areas, I really think that is unsubstantiated. Again, why would you suppose that areas whose civilizations were by all accounts greater than the European ones hadn’t developed it by then? As a corollary, check out Wang Fuzhi’s reaction to science when it was introduced to China by the Jesuits. While he identified as a Confucian, his take on science is a perfectly Daoist one (he admits as much) and is also one that you would expect given the basic tenants of Chinese cosmology. The native philosophies (including those of Greece) are inhibitory to science, not because of a top-down structure like the Christian Church occasionally employed, but because those questions simply can’t be correctly asked in the context of their cosmology.
I agree that science would have taken a great deal longer to develop in old cultures, particularly within the chinese cosmology. Europe was perfect because it DIDN’T have these old cultures to contend with That was my cell phone reference. Much like third world countries today, that don’t have to scrap old technology to have new, Europe was basically a clean slate that could draw from older cultures and synthesize new ideas and concepts without first having to rid itself of the old. Of course, I could be wrong, but it is at least as plausible as Christianity birthing a child it spent centuries trying to kill…
I like “Man and Nature in the Philosophical Thought of Wang Fu-Chih” by Allison Harley Black.
Tent,
That’s just it. The Church didn’t start trying to kill science until after science and the Church started butting heads. It gave birth to the proverbial Frankenstein’s Monster and found out it couldn’t control where it was going, so it tried to shut it down. But for a long time, studying the Lord’s creation in order to understand the Lord himself was a major motivation and given Christian epistemology, this also seemed like it would be a productive line of thought.
After all, cell phones might be taking off in the third world, but the technology for them is all from the developed world, so I’m not sure your analogy holds. If the #1 hotbed for cell-phone tech was the third world, I’d buy it.
I agree that any form of monotheism allows concepts to be explored that would be anathema in other cosmologies. And perhaps you’re right, the church nurtured a monster it couldn’t control. But I still maintain that science would have evolved with or without Christianity.
On to the why Europe issue. This time I’ll take the longer, but scenic route. At the end of WWII, Japan’s industrial capacity was zero. They had to start all over. One of the things they did was to build Ships that were literally complete saw mills that were technologically state of the art. They sat off the twelve mile limit in these ships, bought logs from our western states, processed those logs into lumber and sold the lumber back to us cheaper than our hundred year old mills could compete. It took us about 30 years to divest of the old technology and replace it with the new in order to compete. The exact same thing happened with the steel industry.
The point is, Europe didn’t have the entrenched culture of Asia and the ME that would encumber new concepts and thinking. Europe could cherry pick the best of earlier thinking and use it as the starting point and not have to struggle against traditional ways of thinking.
Europe was the logical geographical area for science to emerge. Connected to, but not vested in the old cultures. …Ever play leap frog?..
Xunzian
That claim has no foundation. It is false. Newton never claimed to be the messiah. Where did you get that from? I have read many of his theological writings, and never saw any such thing. Care to back it up? Or, did you just make a mistake?
Sorry, a pinch of hyperbole. I should have said that he was a heretical thinker who thought he had been specifically anointed by God to bring about a true understanding of Christianity, while rejecting Trinitarianism and thereby bringing Christ down to a level equal to himself.
Modern science arose as a result of thought trends that were prevalent in Christianity. But the trends once they were pursued resulted in conflict with the dogmatic theolgy from which they had sprung. Christian fundamentalism starts with an objectivist world view upon which it imposed a strict literal Biblically based interpretation of the Bible. Christian fundamentalism “saves” it’s believer from the hard questions imposed by science on tradtional Chrisitan faith about which there is no longer any appreciable consensus throughout Christendom.
The legacy of the Meditteranean basin cultures gave Europe a base to build upon. Granted, christianity was a part of this, but the leap into what could be considered ‘modern’ scientific inquiry had many progenitors, not just christianity by itself.