Religions, Science, and Society

[Richard Barrett]

not least the work of Bede; not just the historical and hagiographical writing by which he is most remembered today, but the mathematical and astronomical research that (AFAIK) isn't available in a modern English translation.

I'm not an authority on Bede by any means, but I would have thought his astronomical stuff would come under the heading of "interpretation of holy books" rather than scientific method - his calculation of the age of the earth, for example, was based on a close reading of the Hebrew Bible. I agree with you though that the church didn't turn against Copernicus's findings until their implications began to become clear (ie. that they were other than a simpler way of making calendrical calculations). Maybe it's relevant to add that Martin Luther was very unhappy about Copernicus from the start.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

I'm not an authority on Bede by any means, but I would have thought his astronomical stuff would come under the heading of "interpretation of holy books" rather than scientific method - his calculation of the age of the earth, for example, was based on a close reading of the Hebrew Bible. I agree with you though that the church didn't turn against Copernicus's findings until their implications began to become clear (ie. that they were other than a simpler way of making calendrical calculations).

Not just this - he made original observations about the Moon and its influence on the tides (I don't have the material - and I'd need a translation! - but there is a permanent exhibition at Bede's World in Jarrow, where I first came across this info.)

Oh! Here:

http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/north-east-news/world-famous-astronomers-celebrate-venerable-bede-4487815

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

... and here:

http://www.medievalists.net/2012/03/early-medieval-science-the-evidence-of-bede/

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

Maybe it's relevant to add that Martin Luther was very unhappy about Copernicus from the start.

- some highly offensive comments about the man and his work, IIRC.

[Richard Barrett]

Oh! Here:

http://www.thejournal.co.uk/news/nor...e-bede-4487815

Very interesting indeed, thanks. Clearly he was more than a pretty venerable face! But again, his observations were oriented towards making more accurate calculations for the church calendar. In connection with the present discussion I was also put in mind of Giordano Bruno, who at his trial for heresy claimed that he did accept the teachings of the church, while still cleaving to his idea that there were many worlds apart from the Earth in the universe, and for this he was burned at the stake. Of course Bruno was not really a scientist; his sin was to reject the idea that the church was the final authority on all matters pertaining to the nature of reality and the cosmos.

[Beef Oven!]

Very interesting indeed, thanks. Clearly he was more than a pretty venerable face! But again, his observations were oriented towards making more accurate calculations for the church calendar. In connection with the present discussion I was also put in mind of Giordano Bruno, who at his trial for heresy claimed that he did accept the teachings of the church, while still cleaving to his idea that there were many worlds apart from the Earth in the universe, and for this he was burned at the stake. Of course Bruno was not really a scientist; his sin was to reject the idea that the church was the final authority on all matters pertaining to the nature of reality and the cosmos.

His sin was he didn't anticipate and adapt the wisdom of Pascal!

[Richard Tarleton]

I'm not an authority on Bede by any means, but I would have thought his astronomical stuff would come under the heading of "interpretation of holy books" rather than scientific method - his calculation of the age of the earth, for example, was based on a close reading of the Hebrew Bible.

Premodern traditions of knowledge such as Islam, Christianity, Buddhism and Confucianism asserted that everything that is important to know about the universe was already known. The great gods, or the one almighty God, or the wise people of the past possessed all-encompassing wisdom, which they revealed to us in scriptures and oral traditions. Ordinary mortals gained knowledge by delving into these ancient texts and traditions and understanding them properly. It was inconceivable that the Bible, the Qur'an or the Vedas were missing out on a crucial secret of the universe - a secret that might yet be discovered by flesh-and-blood creatures.

- Yuval Noah Harari, Sapiens.

[Richard Tarleton]

Clearly he was more than a pretty venerable face! But again, his observations were oriented towards making more accurate calculations for the church calendar.

Indeed. I had to read Bede in Latin for Prelims, memories of it are now dim but the dating of Easter was a key part of the power struggle between the Celtic and Roman traditions in the early church, which came to a head at the Synod of Whitby in 664. Disinterested astronomical research it wasn't. The exam included passages in Latin, so you couldn't just rely on having read the Penguin Classics edn. . But, once one got the hang of it, medieval Latin was rather easier to read than classical as it had had a lot of the corners knocked off.

[vinteuil]

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... there used to be an argument that the intrinsic paradoxes of Christian faith (the nature of the substance of the Trinity (where do you stand on homoousios and homoiousios?); freewill vs predestination ( are you a supralapsarian or an infralapsarian?); theodicy, the reconciling an omniscient omnipotent benevolent deity with the existence of suffering; the totally divine and at the same time totally human nature of Christ; the Real Presence, etc) set in train the intellectual struggles of people such as St Augustine, Albertus Magnus, Aquinas, Abelard, the mediaeval schoolmen, the foundation of universities, renaissance thinkers such as Marsilio Ficino and Pico della Mirandola - which created the intellectual tools and foundations which made subsequent European scientific and philosophical enquiries so fruitful. It was precisely the 'impossibilities' of the faith with which they had to grapple which provided the groundwork for the modern world.




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[Richard Tarleton]

Erm...insofar as these presuppose [?] creation by God, neither - nor a sublapsarian

Empirical scientific research, which did not presuppose, or which questioned, the existence of God, would have got you into serious trouble at any stage.

Wasn't it all, basically, endless arguments about existing, earlier, texts?

Interesting book published last year by Catherine Nixey, The Darkening Age, covers the obscurantism of the early church, and the lengths it went to to suppress unfavourable criticism and knowledge. The Greek Celsus's vitriolic attack on Christianity, circa 170, was suppressed so successfully that it can only be reconstructed from the counter-arguments of Origen, who quoted from Celsus at considerabe length.... The same happened to another Greek, Porphiry, whose works were vigorously suppressed by Emperor Constantine, and a century later by Theodosius II and Valentinian III.

As ferney says above,

When we talk about Religions (capital "R" as distinct from individual beliefs), we're talking about people and how they have traditionally created power structures to preserve and promote vested interests and personal prestige.

[vinteuil]

Wasn't it all, basically, endless arguments about existing, earlier, texts?

... the key thing is that it was 'endless arguments'. Not, actually, about 'earlier texts' - more about concepts that were the logical consequences of their readings of such texts, and concepts that were rapidly seen to be self-contradicting or in contradiction with other accepted concepts. It was the intellectual tussles over these that honed the thinking, providing the eventual intellectual foundations for the renaissance and the enlightenment. You wouldn't get Bayle had it not been for the previous centuries of 'endless arguments'.


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[Richard Tarleton]

... the key thing is that it was 'endless arguments'. Not, actually, about 'earlier texts' - more about concepts that were the logical consequences of their readings of such texts, and concepts that were rapidly seen to be self-contradicting or in contradiction with other accepted concepts. It was the intellectual tussles over these that honed the thinking, providing the eventual intellectual foundations for the renaissance and the enlightenment. You wouldn't get Bayle had it not been for the previous centuries of 'endless arguments'.


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But....if I've understood correctly, it's not till the 19thC that we finally get to a stage where God is surplus to requirements - Schopenhauer, "Any attempt to explain the known in terms of the unknown [God] seemed to [Schopenhauer] an inversion of intelligible procedure, and any attempt to explain the knowable in terms of the unknowable a flight into Cloud-Cuckooland....both procedures must involve the making of statements about what is unknown and unknowable....." (Magee, The Philosophy of Schopenhauer"). And Wittgenstein, "What we cannot speak about we must remain silent about".

Or are we at cross-purposes?

I'd forgotten about Bayle, who had to do a lot of fleeing, religious persecution being what it was...

[vinteuil]

Or are we at cross-purposes?
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... perhaps.

I think what we understand by 'a university', for example, is a direct result of medieval intellectual tussles about points of theological difficulties which we may now find absurd. We have left behind their concerns, but in some ways we are the beneficiaries of their intellectual struggles.

None of which, of course, contradicts your and others' points about the repressive and persecuting nature of the church at most stages of history.

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[Richard Tarleton]

... perhaps.

I think what we understand by 'a university', for example, is a direct result of medieval intellectual tussles about points of theological difficulties which we may now find absurd. We have left behind their concerns, but in some ways we are the beneficiaries of their intellectual struggles.

None of which, of course, contradicts your and others' points about the repressive and persecuting nature of the church at most stages of history.

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Thanks, I'm with you .

I remember, trying to work things out aged about 15, asking my religious studies (aka Divinity ) master at school, if perhaps God perhaps was just responsible for the initial creation but then left things to take their course, and us to get on with it. He replied, briefly, that I was talking like an 18thC deist. Speaks volumes about the sort of school I went to I suppose. Never forgotten that.

[vinteuil]

Thanks, I'm with you .

I remember, trying to work things out aged about 15, asking my religious studies (aka Divinity ) master at school, if perhaps God perhaps was just responsible for the initial creation but then left things to take their course, and us to get on with it. He replied, briefly, that I was talking like an 18thC deist. Speaks volumes about the sort of school I went to I suppose. Never forgotten that.

... there are worse intellectual positions for a fifteen year old to have than that of an eighteenth century deist. I think I was an atheist at fifteen - of course I hope that I was an eighteenth century atheist...


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