Stupid religious punditry

Have a nice cup of tea.

Scotch. I need scotch.

Funny, I just finished my take on that pathetic article.

Damn that was good! I love a good rant where a religious bigot comes off looking like the idiot they are.

I should get back to pointing out the stupidity of Scientology to a few fanatics.

Our neighbor, a microbiologist, says that when she was required to state religious preference at UCLA, she always said, "Druid."

...specifically the Milesian philosophers, made the grand conceptual move...

...by insisting on going the extra mile, presumably.

Bob

Mary Grabar graduated from the University of Georgia with a Ph.D. in English

Well, then...

"Science began when the Greeks, specifically the Milesian philosophers"

Not to forget the signicant contributions of the Babylonians, Chinese and Indians.

However Mr Wilkins I must make one negative comment; "Geocentrism (based on the Bible)"! Really!? I thought geocentism was a theory propagated by the Greeks, but what do I know I'm just a humble historian of astronomy.

Of course the two-sphere universe was a Greek invention. But I meant that by the 16thC, when heliocentrism was at issue, it was prevented from being accepted by Catholics for being opposed to the interpretation of the Bible at the time (by Bellarmine or Luther, it doesn't matter). I'm not saying Bellarmine, at least, was irrational about that - according to his lights, reason demanded that the Bible be taken as evidence that geocentrism was true. But the fact remains that religion failed to advance science in this matter, and materially attempted to retard it. Luther's views are well known. Science advanced because it rejected the intervention of religious authority in science.

At least the Greeks knew the Earth was a sphere.

And thus humanity advanced from one that believed that spirits lived in trees and rocks to one that believed that one Creator lives in trees and rocks. I can't count the times I've heard someone patronizingly refer to the quaint superstitions of primitive folk...and then go right ahead and speak of their own quaint superstitions as being reality-based.

I would take some comfort from the fact that people like this probably feel compelled to write this sort of drivel out of fear. It's a sign that the New Atheism is on the march and they feel threatened. (I know it's not really new but, hey, if calling a re-packaged British Labour Party "New Labour" worked for Tony Blair, why not?)

"Always look on the Bright si-ide of life.
Tee-tum, tee-tum, tee tumty-tumty-tum..."

Yes, the biggest difference between the New Atheism and the Old seems to be that now, people are buying the books.

Excellent smackdown of the bigoted letter, sir.

Even when the Greeks believed in gods and spirits, their theology was immensely more human and interesting than the abrahamic gods. Greek mythology was always more interesting than sunday school, at least for me.

Personally I'm a big fan of the Milesian trumpet players...

"I thought geocentism was a theory propagated by the Greeks, but what do I know I'm just a humble historian of astronomy." -- Thony C.

I wonder, should I mention the name Aristarchus of Samos? Of course, Xians kept what was convenient from Classical culture and destroyed the rest, but we do know enough about pre-Xian philosophy to know that Aristotle and Ptolemy were not solely representative of the spectrum of ideas which the Greeks entertained about astronomy.

I know that Wikipedia is sometimes suspect, but I've read some of the books cited in these articles, and the contents of both seem to dovetail nicely with what I remember, not having access to my library just now...

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geocentrism
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_geocentrism

A small matter, though, which in no way undermines Mr Wilkins' points.

"At least the Greeks knew the Earth was a sphere."

So too did the mediaeval christian scholars. The claim that these people believed that the world was flat, which is what I assume you are hinting at, is a myth created in the 19th century. All the relevant people from Boethius (480 - 524) up to Kepler (1571 - 1630) knew that the earth is a sphere. Jürgen Hamel's "Die Vorstellung von der Kugelgestalt der Erde im europäischen Mittelalter bis zum Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts - dargestellt nach den Quellen" is a source book containing all the known passages on the form of the earth in mediaeval literature.It's spheres all the way.

Mr Wilkins I very much enjoy visiting your web site and through you excellent writings I have learnt an incredible amount about the modern theory of evolution, a subject about which I am quite happy to admit I was quite ignorant. Not as ignorant as the average man on the street but still not as well informed as I would like to have been. Your clear succinct and very informative essays have at least removed some of my ignorance. I would now like to return the favour and bring you more up to date on the subject of the reception of the Copernican thesis in the 16th and 17th centuries as the view you appear to hold if I am reading your post correctly is far from correct. You write: "Of course the two-sphere universe was a Greek invention. But I meant that by the 16thC, when heliocentrism was at issue, it was prevented from being accepted by Catholics for being opposed to the interpretation of the Bible at the time (by Bellarmine or Luther, it doesn't matter)"

The argument concerning Luther's opposition to Copernicus is based on a single unsubstantiated oral quote that was first published long after his death. Even if this quote is true, and there is serious doubt concerning its authenticity, it comes from his so-called "Tischreden" i.e. Table Talk. It is well known that Luther enjoyed his food and wine and liked to display his formidable intellect in clever and witty after dinner conversation. I hardly think that a single very humorous quip uttered when he was in his cups counts as a serious attempt to prevent the acceptance of the heliocentric thesis. Philipp Melanchthon is however an entirely different matter. He designed and founded the Lutheran school and university system and so had a real influence on the acceptance or rejection of any thesis. In the first edition of his university textbook on Aristotelian physics he blasted Copernicus but interestingly in the second and subsequent editions he withdrew most of his criticism and actually praised Copernicus' mathematical achievements. What is however really interesting is the attitude of the Lutheran professors for mathematics and astronomy, all appointed by Melanchthon, towards the Copernican hypothesis. They all taught it, along side Ptolemaeic astronomy, as an interesting, unproven but probably useful mathematic hypothesis, which was in fact its correct scientific status at the time. Copernicus could not and did not provide any proofs for his thesis and so to accept it as science in the 16th or early 17th century was an act of faith and not an act of rational science. In fact as Robert Westman pointed out in a famous comment; between the publication of De Revolutionibus in Nürnberg in 1543 and 1600 there were only 10 Copernicans in the entire world!

At this time the mathematical sciences were almost entirely practical (as opposed to theoretical, our modern distinction between pure and applied is a product of the 19th century) and astronomy existed largely as an auxiliary science to the important disciplines of astrology, cartography, navigation and chronometry. An astronomical thesis was judged scientifically on its ability to deliver data for these disciplines. It was hoped that the Copernican thesis would deliver better predictions of planetary positions, eclipses etc. than the Ptolemaeic thesis unfortunately being based on the same defective star catalogues it didn't. In fact Thomas Harriot (1560 - 1621), English astronomer and one of those 10 Copernicans, complained that the eclipse tables based on Copernicus were even more inaccurate than those based on Ptolemaeus. The heliocentric thesis, in its Keplerian form, which is substantially different to the Copernicanan, was finally accepted (replacing the Tychonic system, the Ptolomaeic system having been fatally wounded by telescopic observation) in the period from about 1640 to 1660 because Kepler had produced reliable astronomical tables based on the new observational data of Tycho.

We can now look at Bellarmine. There is only one document in which Bellarmine explains his attitude to the Copernican thesis and that is a letter that he wrote in 1615. In this letter he addresses the Copernican thesis in three paragraphs. In the first paragraph he says that to assume the Copernican thesis as a working hypothesis is fine and even praiseworthy but to claim that it is true is incorrect and dangerous. In the second he does indeed say the holy scriptures do indeed demand the acceptance of a geocentric thesis. The third paragraph however is the most interesting, here he writes; "Third, I say that, if there were real proof that the Sun is in the centre of the universe, that the Earth is in the third sphere, and that the Sun does not go round the Earth but the Earth round the Sun, then we should have to proceed with great circumspection in explaining passages of Scripture which appear to teach the contrary, and we should rather have to say that we did not understand them than declare an opinion false which is proved to be true." Not exactly the words of an anti-science religious bigot! Catholic astronomers like their Lutheran counterparts continued to work with the heliocentric hypothesis and in fact in the 17th century Jesuit mathematicians and astronomers like Grienberger, Scheiner, Cysat, Riccioli, Grimaldi and Kircher and Jesuit educated mathematicians and astronomers like Mersenne, Gassendi, Descartes and Cassini made major contributions to the new astronomy.

Of course the first scientific proof of the earths movement round the sun was delivered by James Bradley's discovery of light aberration in 1725 and the proof of diurnal rotation came about twenty years later both long after Bellarmine's death. In summary heliocentrism was rejected in the beginning for scientific and not religious reasons. It was accepted long before it was actually scientifically proved because it was the most plausible explanation available after about one hundred years of astronomers using it as a working hypothesis along side other possible explanations.
About now at least one if not more readers will shout but what about Galileo he was persecuted for upholding the Copernican thesis and the Catholic Church also banned De Revolutionibus. I shall deal with the second point first. The Catholic Church never banned De Revolutionibus; in 1616 it was placed on the Index until revised! It was in fact revised by 1621 and a surprisingly small number of insignificant changes were prescribed for Catholics who wished to read or work with it. Galileo who was a good Catholic duly crossed out the relevant passages in his copy of the book, as did a small number of other readers in Italy. Outside of Italy nobody took a blind bit of notice.

In 1616 Galileo was carpeted by Bellarmine not for upholding Copernicus but because he told the theologians how to interpret the bible! Not a very intelligent thing to do in a country that was effectively a theocracy especially not for a mere mathematician. One can argue about the rights and wrongs of who is allowed to interpret the bible, in fact that is what the reformation and counter reformation were all about but in the social context in which Galileo lived it was a very stupid thing to do and he should have known better. However Bellarmine let him off with a slap on the wrist and told him to be a good boy in future. In 1631 Galileo got stomped on basically because he insulted the Pope which was even more stupid than telling the theologians how to interpret the bible. There is also a thesis from the Italian historian of science Pietro Redondi that Galileo was prosecuted on the charge of teaching the Copernican hypothesis as the truth in order to save him from being prosecuted for the heresy of atomism which if proven would have led to his execution. This can be read in Redondi's book "Galileo: Heretic." Since it was written further research has shown that Redondi's thesis is almost certainly correct.

Should anybody mistakenly think that I am some sort of religious apologist trying to revise history I can assure you that I am the atheist son of an atheist father and an agnostic mother who just happens to be a professional historian of the mathematical sciences in their social, political and economic contexts in the early modern period who gets pissed off at the fact that everybody still keeps quoting the myths about the scientific revolution that were created in the 19th century despite the best efforts of a large number of very good historians of science over the last sixty years to show them what really took place. I apologise for using up so much space and time but to deal with Mr Wilkins' two short but pregnant lines required at least this much and in fact a whole lot more.

Wow, Thony, nice post. Almost deserves a separate blog post on its own.

I knew all that, once upon a time (I tutored in history of astronomy for Keith Hutchison). And while all true, from memory, it doesn't detract from my point. Insofar as religion played any role in the acceptance of the heliocentric theory, it was to retard it. Melancthon, who I respect as a true intellectual, unlike Luther in his more bellicose periods (at other times he was more careful), accepted heliocentrism not because of the nature of Lutheran theology, but because he had to because of the scientific community.

Likewise Bellarmine's reaction to Copernicus (who pissed oof the Catholic Church by trying to teach them scriptural interpretation of passages in Joshua and elsewhere) was not motivated by the science, but by the possible conflict with Catholic theology. In neither case was their acquiescence due to their theology, but due to the scientific community's acceptance of heliocentrism.

I used to tweak my students by saying that in terms of the rational canons of the time, Bellarmine was right and Copernicus was wrong. But from the perspective of scientific work, the Church acted to retard rather than advance science. This is not always true, of course - there are many Catholics and Lutherans who do good science and are motivated by it, but never because their religion advances it, but because they are scientists.

"This is not always true, of course - there are many Catholics and Lutherans who do good science and are motivated by it, but never because their religion advances it, but because they are scientists."

In one sense you are of course right (and by the way thanks for the compliment, coming from someone who writes as lucidly and authoritatively as yourself it is a true compliment) however to play the devils advocate for a moment I will offer a sort of defence for the original idiotic quote from Mary Grabar that started this particular discussion.

I think what she is referring to, although I am fairly certain that she is not aware of it, is a theory held by many historians of science concerning the origins of the so-called scientific revolution. I say so called because I personally believe that a process that evolved along a very tortuous and twisted series of paths over a period of at least three hundred years can hardly be called a revolution.

It is said that one of the major contributing factors, which led to the scientific revolution was a group of three interconnected beliefs held by Christian (not monotheistic) scientists. These are 1) that god created the world (universe) as a coherent, logical ordered whole, 2) that humans are capable of discovering, understanding and exposing this logical order (the laws of the universe) and 3) it is the holy duty of Christian scientists to do so. For example this thesis is one of three reasons that Joseph Needham gave as the explanation as to why the scientific revolution took place in Europe and not China, which at the start of the Renaissance was technically and scientifically more advanced than Europe. I think this thesis is correct and is in fact a valid argument for the Christian religion having advanced science. However as I wrote at the beginning this is only considered to be "one" of the major contributing factors. Needham identifies two others and I personally am convinced that there several more major and a host of minor factors each of which played an important role in the evolution of a new way of viewing the natural world between 1400 and 1700 therefore even with this interpretation Mary Garbar's claim is at best a exaggeration and at worst just plain stupid.

P.S. I could not associate anything with Keith Hutchison's name and so I googled it. I realised from his bibliography that I had read several of his papers! Talk about embarrassing! All those drugs in my misbegotten youth did more damage than I thought or maybe I'm just getting old.

Heh, the last time I was called lucid, I was teaching people how to use PhotoShop. A long time ago... my kids might call me lucid if they thought it meant senile.

I personally think that very little of the Christian ethos had much to do with the development of science. To the contrary, I think it had more to do with nominalist thought (based on Porphyry and Plotinus via Boethius), and the revivial of neo-Platonic thought in the Renaissance. The Scholastic tradition had soemthing to do with it, of course, through the revival of Aristotle's astronomical and natural history works by Michael Scot's translations into Latin, and before that through the Arab high culture of the 12th century.

Natural theology was a reaction to science rather than a motive cause for it, and in every case I have personally examined, religious doctrine was a brake on science rather than a motive force. Always, and in each case, this was an attempt to maintain Christian tradition and doctrine in the face of scientific advances, over a 400 year period, ending more or less in the 1830s. The sole exception may be in the case of geology, where a linear notion of history was derived from Christian eschatology, but even that is fairly mediate. Attempts to introduce empiricism from Roger Bacon through to Albertus Magnus were wound back by later theology. Observation was not frowned upon, but any kind of explanatory speculation, theory building, most certainly was.

In my view, the main reason why science arose in Europe rather than in the Caliphate or China was that there were competing principalities that could offer sanctuary and make offers to unorthodox researchers, and because the printing press made it possible to publish results, and make it widely known, so that later researchers could more easily build on prior work. That said, economics also has to play a part (I give some credence to the rise of capitalism as an enabler to technological, and hence methodological, progress, like in optics.

I would only add, John, to the importance of the printing press, the very important discovery of how to make lots and lots of paper--cheaply.

:)

Although you are probably right that the conviction in mediaeval Christian thought that the world is a logical unity has its roots in neo-Platonism however it is still "Christian thought" at the beginning of the 15th century, no mater where it came from. In fact mediaeval Christian thought probably has more to do with neo-Platonism and Stoicism than with anything taught by Isu ben Isep (if he ever really existed).

On the scientific revolution I agree with all that you say but with some quibbles. The importance of printing is absolutely central but don't forget that moving type had already been invented twice before. Once in China in the tenth century and again in Korea in the 13th century, also as J Farrell so correctly points out printing only becomes economically viable with the availability of cheap paper, which was invented in China in the 2nd century and came to Europe via the Caliphate.

I personally think that the most important role of early capitalism in both the scientific revolution and the reformation was the creation of the educated middle classes who I think played a if not the significant role in both of these historical events. The technological needs of the emerging capitalist society in the 15th and 16th centuries certainly powered the rise of practical mathematics in this period and in my opinion played the leading role in the beginnings of the mathematisation of nature that is said to be the core of the scientific revolution.

I forgot to mention that I will be holding two thirty minute popular public lectures on the subject of Renaissance scientific publishing in the courtyard of the Nuremberg City Library on Saturday 16th of June,as part of the celebrations of the 500th anniversary of the death of Martin Behaim. They are:
"Regiomontanus the World's First Scientific Printer Publisher"
and
"Johannes Petrejus Renaissance Scientific Publisher"

If you're in the area you're more than welcome to come listen!

Thony, your lectures sound fascinating! Any chance they will be recorded for the Web?

Mr Wilkins is being as simplistic and dogmatic as the lady he criticizes. Here's part of a 1998 newspaper interview with Spain's leading philosopher, Gustavo Bueno, an atheist and a materialist. He has far more lucid and profound views of the so-called conflict between religion and science:
INTERVIEWER�What then is the essential issue?
GUSTAVO BUENO�The relationship between science and religion. It is highly interesting to look at the evolution of the conflict from the days of [John William]Draper�s book �History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science�. Draper was an American Protestant Chemist, in Spain his book was distributed by the krausists with financial help, some say, from Bismarck. Father C�mara says the book is part of Bismarck�s Kultur Kampf, since it was contemporary with the First Vatican Council. It�s science face to face with faith. There�s a conflict about the Bible, about data from the Bible and from science; science launches an attack, the Church retreats momentarily... but then the Church begins to digest the new stuff without problems, this becomes obvious in arguments about Darwinism: Father Arriaga, a Jesuit from Logro�o [Spain], admitted that the earth in the Book of Genesis could represent animals. And Friar Ceferino, in �La Biblia y la ciencia�, said that the moment evolution became more than a hypothesis, when it became a well-established theory, it would be incorporated into the Christian dogma. A remarkably advanced position�we�re talking about late 19th century. In other words, the Church does not have to accept tentative scientific hypotheses. If we look back at the Galileo affair, neither the Pope nor Belarminus really opposed Galileo, and Galileo never stopped being a Christian. It just wasn�t a case of, as Ortega believed, Galileo renouncing physics. Not in the least. The Pope�s advisors were the best astronomers of the day. And Galileo could not prove the Copernican thesis. That came later, with Kepler. The Church, no doubt, would have preferred the geocentric model to be true; but not so much as to maintain it once it was proved wrong, since because of its own nature the Church could not go against science. The Catholic Church played the role of the critique of pure reason, the role of forcing people to use reason, and is now recovering that traditional role. Modern science was born in a Catholic milieu. Catholicism was never an obstacle to science, that�s just false. The theory of categorial lock [my translation of his philosophical theory of science] shows this . The Greeks regarded the laws of nature as eternal and their science described them. But in Christianity, since the world is seen as the work of God, the mission of science is to understand the divine operations. It�s an operationalist vision of science . This is key, it�s essential. We regard sciences as basically categorial while philosophy is not, it cuts across categories instead. For this reason science does not affect religious doctrine, unless it is a religious doctrine which contains pseudoscientific assertions, such as �the universe was created in six [24 hour] days.� But this can always be reinterpreted as an allegory and the problem is solved. Such allegorical interpretations date back to Augustine, John Chrysostom, Origen, they�ve always been there and they were no problem. The Church has always been capable of assimilating these things.
�How does the conflict between science and religion change then?
�It underwent a transformation in this century [20th century]. The sciences have diversified, they have recognized their limits. Scientists are now aware that their sciences are limited. And many scientists, as always, are believers. In Spain the believer-scientist model is becoming more frequent. This encyclical acknowledges the distinction between science and philosophy.
�But� what about science?
�Many of the great ideas of modern physics, key ideas, can be traced back to Catholic dogmas. For instance, Maxwell�s electromagnetic ether has the same characteristics as the glorious [spiritual, resurrected] body. Or the dissociation of body and matter that physicists employ so carelessly and that drives them to speak of immaterial waves when they talk about quantum void. How can they be immaterial! What they mean is that they are non-corporeal. Such distinctions are rooted in Scholasticism. You see, I told the Head of the Regional Department of Culture two years ago in Gij�n. She presided over our annual philosophy week and she came with the Regional Director, Ord��ez, who is a philosophy professor. Someone was wondering what would become of philosophy after the PP (Conservative Party) took office and I told them that, if they (the Conservatives) were Catholic, philosophers should be happy: the Church must necessarily favor philosophy. (LA NUEVA ESPA�A, OCT. 19, 1998)