Science and Christianity (Part 3)

The scientific method and science emerged out of the European Renaissance beginning in the late 15th Century. Several factors gave rise to science, not the least of which was the infusion of ancient Greek culture into European society. (See yesterday's post) Most European scholars who ventured into science firmly believed in the God of Christianity. In fact, they thought they could learn about God's character by studying how God had ordered the universe. Many early scientists were clergy.

The watershed event was a scientific revolution set in motion in the 16th Century by Nicholas Copernicus and brought to full flower by Giordano Bruno and Galileo Galilei. The Church, thoroughly invested in an earth-centered model, believed these revolutionary thinkers to be a direct threat to the authority of the Church. Bruno was burned at the stake for his contributions. Inquisitions were used to halt the sweeping changes underway but to no avail.

As science became more refined and its ability to make sense of the physical world rapidly grew, scientific thinking expanded into studying human behavior. Christian institutions had shown themselves to be resistant to new understandings and were perceived to be reactionary and archaic by many leading age scholars of the day. Thomas Hobbes, Rene Descartes, and John Locke became the first Enlightenment thinkers.

The Enlightenment set the stage for Romanticism (19th Century) and Modernism (20th Century). I will not try to trace all the various threads of the movements going forward. I do want to highlight some of the values that emerged that have largely prevailed from the 18th Century on:

• The universe is rational and can be understood using reason alone.

• Truth can be understood through empirical observation, reason, and systematic doubt.

• Human experience is the foundation of human understanding of truth.

• Just as the natural world can be understood, manipulated, and engineered, so can human life, both social and individual.

• Human history is a history of progress.

• Religious doctrines and authority have no place in understanding the physical and human worlds.

One of the profound impacts was the acceleration in the rate of change. Unmoored from traditional authority, new and competing ideas vied for dominance. How ideas rose and fell in dominance within science is instructive for seeing how ideas rise and fall throughout the culture.

(PS: The circumstances of Rene Descartes's death are not widely known. It seems he was dining with a friend. When his host asked if he would like more coffee, he responded, "Oh, I think not." PUFF. He disappeared.)

[Index]

Comments

[will spotts]

Three of these (with modification) seem to make the transition to post-modern working beliefs (not necessarily the philosophy, but the general culture).

Progess (not just human history but everything), the ability to engineer human life, both social and individual, and the perception of the individual (or group) is the foundation of reality.

[Michael Kruse]

Thanks for these observations, Will.

Progress - I think the modern age (20th Century) was about hyper-progress. Tear-down everything and build it newer, bigger, and better. The post-modern take has been to go forward but retain that which is good from the past. The post-modern picture has also been that with each leap in "progress" there is usually a new set of problems brought as well. Progress isn't bad but it isn't all it was cracked up to be.

Engineer human life - I think a distinction here is that the post-modern picture is that each tribe should be ablr to organize their own community where Modernism became about homogenizing the whole society into one be super engineered culture.

Perception - Has moved from being located in the individual to the tribe which you suggest.