Some pushback on medieval science

[eckadimmock]

At least you're attracting a better class of detractor these days, James!

[James Hannam]

To be fair, you have to be pretty shameless with book promotion. You usually get someone else (your publisher) to do it for you, but as Promotheus, by Carrier's own account, sound ghastly, the authors probably have to do it themselves.

And yes, Eastshore4, there is an element of historians trying to find the best fit for the facts. Oddly enough, scientists tend to work in a similar way but rather more explicitly.

Best wishes

James

[jonkon]

In today's academic environment, I can see why the title, God's Philosophers, alone would be considered "dangerous." The negative reviews, as described, can only be from people not familiar with or indifferent to the source documents. Having read the book, I am in full agreement with its conclusions and any factual errors can be dismissed as nitpicking. My only criticism of the work is that its supporting arguments are weak, a fact that can be attributed to the practical need of getting the manuscript past the publisher's PC police.

[James Hannam]

Hi Jonkon,

Thanks for your message. Would you be willing to expand a little on the weakness of the supporting arguments (including which ones are weakest)? My US publisher is Regnary who are unlikely to be swayed by concerns of political correctness. Thus these problems could possibly be dealt with.

Best wishes

James

[humphreyclarke]

Apr 11, 2010 9:51:16 GMT James Hannam said:

To be fair, you have to be pretty shameless with book promotion.

Describing your own chapter of the book as a 'tour de force' is pretty darn shameless.

richardcarrier.blogspot.com/2010/04/christian-delusion.html

It's perhaps second only to Nietzsche writing Ecce Homo with chapters like Why I Am So Wise", "Why I Am So Clever", "Why I Write Such Good Books" and "Why I Am a Destiny".

[James Hannam]

Apr 12, 2010 15:19:21 GMT humphreyclarke said:

It's perhaps second only to Nietzsche writing Ecce Homo with chapters like Why I Am So Wise", "Why I Am So Clever", "Why I Write Such Good Books" and "Why I Am a Destiny".

Plainly I missed a trick when I failed to study Nietzsche's tips for self promotion.

But yes, Carrier did lay it on a bit thick. I've ordered the book anyway and will be writing something on the science chapter.

Best wishes

James

[jonkon]

Hi James,

Your conclusion on p. 340 that “the starting point for all natural philosophy in the Middle Ages was that nature had been created by God” is somewhat undermined by your discussion of Merton’s thesis on pp. 227-229, which indicates that theology had little impact on science. This weakness is common to nearly all histories of science – a failure to distinguish among the various issues regarding the role of mathematics in the structure of scientific theories and among the various issues in Christian theology and Biblical interpretation.

Merton’s analysis and Stark’s refinement, besides oversimplifying the situation (While Vieta was a nominal Catholic, his work on algebra was commissioned by the widow of a martyred Huguenot leader.), does not indicate whether an investigator’s scientific work was in spite of rather than because of his Christianity. Merton’s original work, however, draws a valuable distinction between Anglicanism and Puritanism, which also explains the Royal Society’s self-acknowledged failure. In the opening year of the eighteenth century, the Council of the Royal Society regretfully placed it on record that,

"The discouraging neglect of the great, the impetuous contradiction of the ignorant, and the reproaches of the unreasonable, had unhappily thwarted them in their design to perpetuate a succession of useful inventions."

Following the death of Cromwell, the Puritan theologians of the Royal Society couldn’t distance themselves fast enough from “enthusiasts” and their own previous religious beliefs. The founder of the Royal Society and brother-in-law of Cromwell, Rev. John Wilkins, thus became an Anglican. Newton’s failure to account for God’s provisional grace in his mechanics therefore ceased to be an issue, neglecting the fact that a universe that God cannot control is one that man cannot control either.

Your assertion (p. 229) that “the theological arguments between Protestantism and Catholicism had no bearing on mathematics” can be explained by the teaching of Euclid’s Elements without Proclus’ commentary to provide the cultural and philosophical context of geometry. Instead geometry is trivialized as a vague, masochistic exercise in mental discipline. Students are not exposed to why geometric constructions are limited to a compass and straight edge and why it was so important to describe the motion of planets through a superposition of circles. This does not mean, however, that those theological differences would have no impact on their views of the role of mathematics in the study of nature as you concluded on p. 341 - “The power of many medieval theories was derived from the way that they combined mathematics with natural philosophy.” A distinction, based upon the relative influence of Aristotle’s and Plato’s philosophy respectively, can be drawn between Thomistic science, where mathematics is a formalized description of our observations, and Augustinian science, where mathematics expresses an underlying reality behind our observations. Augustinians (Fransciscans, Lutherans, Hugenots, & Puritans) thus readily embraced heliocentrism in response to Thomists’ (Dominicans, Jesuits, & Anglicans) endorsement of geocentrism. Luther’s and Calvin’s rejection of heliocentrism cannot be regarded as valid counterexamples because both were all in favor of the concept of “priesthood of the believer” until people actually started to disagree with them.

In particular, your discussion on Biblical interpretation on p. 226 mentions literalism and the allegorical method of Alexandria, but omits the historical-grammatical method of Antioch. Because this method requires preservation of the historical and cultural context for proper understanding of Scripture, adherents of this method were actively involved in the preservation of Greek texts in mathematical philosophy. Following the Council of Brigands, which established veneration of the Virgin Mary as official church doctrine, followers of Nestor were forced to flee from Antioch to Persia, where they were instrumental in translating Greek scientific works into Arabic. Spanish Jews, who translated Arabic works into Latin, adopted the historical-grammatical method of hermeneutics to resolve the dilemma of keeping the authority of Scripture with the cessation of temple sacrifices. To resolve the inherent contradictions between the Biblical and philosophical texts, they also applied the same investigative techniques used in Biblical interpretation to the study of nature as well, leading to modern experimental science. This is seen in the scientific work of Robert Grosseteste and Roger Bacon, who emphasized the importance of the original language in understanding a text, and in Galileo, who published his scientific works in the vernacular to promote science as a reliable method for the laity to understand the Bible on their own.

Regards,

Jon

[himself]

The Jesuits were teaching Copernicanism at the Roman College before Galileo messed things up. Even though the system still used 20-odd epicycles, it was a computational improvement over Ptolemy's hundred-plus epicycles. They did not regard mere computational convenience as proof, however; and demanded empirical evidence before they would accept heliocentrism as fact. Galileo never produced such evidence; nor was it produced until the 1790s and early 1800s.

The Jesuits had been early champions of Galileo, but he needlessly insulted them over the Year of the Comets; so they sat on their hands when he got in trouble over the Letter to the Grand Duchess. [Irony: Grassi had made meticulous observations of the comets; Galileo had not. Grassi correctly identified comets as coming from the far reaches; Galileo insisted they were emanations of the Earth's own atmosphere. IOW, the Jebbies were right, and he was wrong.]

The Ptolemaics never regarded their epicycles as physically real, but only a computational necessity. Astronomy was a specialized branch of mathematics, not a branch of the physics. As long as it accurately predicted sunrises and eclipses and the like, it did not have to be physical fact. The real Copernican revolution was the shift of astronomy from the math department to the physics department.

[peterdamian]

I haven't bought 'Gods Philosophers' yet. I looked at the reviews on Amazon and my main impression was surprise about the number of people who were ignorant of the most basic facts about the high and late Middle Ages. For example, a lot of people still equate it with the 'Dark Ages', a view which scholars dropped hundreds of years ago.

My impression of the contents (based on the reviews, and based on material by Hannam on this site) is that the material is controversial nor ground-breaking but presents material generally accepted by medievalists to a popular audience. In which case, judging from the astonishing reviews, it's a Good Thing.

Understanding the relationship between the medieval world view and the sort of empirical modern science that began in the seventeenth century is much more difficult however. Generally the sort of 'science' (scientia) taught and studied in the medieval universities was much closer to what we now think of as philosophy. The complaint of the seventeenth-century against 'scholasticism' was largely against the sort of armchair theorising and system-building form first principles that the scholastics indulged in, and this was largely justified. I base this upon a reasonably extensive reading of and immersion in 13th century texts, most of them never translated from the original Latin.

I would be interested to see what Carrier's view is.

[perplexedseeker]

I think that was the point, it's presented as a popularisation of uncontroversial research, not as a revolutionary new analysis. However, a lot of people seem to have taken it as being very controversial, presumably because they were brought up on 19-th century style positivist accounts of human development.

James does have his own thesis, that the scientific revolution was brought about by a unique fusion of Greek rationalism and the previous scholasticism, but I do not think that this argument is developed much in the book.

As for Carrier, judging from his previous polemics about this, he seems to think that the Renaissance started in 1200, and that nothing of any worth happened between the 5th century and the Renaissance. I can't imagine how anyone could come to that conclusion unless they deliberately set out to choose a date that cut off all the achievements of the high and late middle ages.

[humphreyclarke]

Apr 21, 2010 10:35:32 GMT peterdamian said:

I would be interested to see what Carrier's view is.

Well you should have a look at Carrier's latest book. His chapter on Medieval and Ancient Science has had glowing reviews describing it as 'a tour de force'. Shame they are all written by him.

[himself]

Francis Bacon said that the ancient Greeks and the medievals [and the Arabs, insofar as he noticed them] were like little boys: able to talk, but unable to impregnate women. The woman in question was Nature, and the purpose of Science was to bind her in chains and put her to work for mankind. He lays this out in <i>The Masculine Birth of Time.</i> Small wonder some regard the whole program as patriarchal. This was when Science was, in a sense, subordinated to Engineering. The Objective of Science was no longer to gain Knowledge about the world, but to exploit the world for profit and benefit. The value of Science lay in what you could do with it.

The danger of this Goal-oriented sort of Baconian science was that the desirability of the goal might shade the scientific research. When improving racial hygiene was the Goal, scientists discovered that Darwinian theory implied the need for eugenics programs and marriage-as-breeding programs. When the goal was Saving the Planet, they discovered how to adjust raw temperature data and "hide the decline." Sagan was sufficiently anti-nuclear that he "discovered" nuclear winter -- which led to dire predictions regarding the oil well fires during the liberation of Kuwait, predictions that never came to pass.

[humphreyclarke]

This comment thread on Carrier's post was quite funny (have just come back to it)

www.blogger.com/comment.g?blogID=36959219&postID=4158509799244343552&isPopup=true

John Loftus appears, as does Earl Doherty; as well as some crazed guy known as DM who appears to be the theist doppelgänger of prolific atheist Stephen Carr (who also shows up). All the usual suspects. This comment was just nutty!

with the atheists:

they start begging when they start dying...

they PAY THE PRICE FOR ATTACKING THE SUPERNATURAL -

with their LIVES...

CRYSTAL NIGHT TONIGHT!

Atheists,

but you have NO ANSWER TO DEATH... therefore you FAIL...

THE DEATH TRAP

abcnews.go.com/Nightline/FaceOff/
********

THE REAL QUESTION:

DOES ATHEISM HAVE A FUTURE?

AND THE ANSWER - NO!

visit:

www.clubconspiracy.com/forum/f30/does-ath-ism-have-future-no-11202.html#post66570

Shermer - Harris - Myers - Dawkins - Randi VS. NOSTRADAMUS - EINSTEIN - MARKUZE

you're ANNIHILATED!
Atheists,

Repent and turn to God.


Er.....'NOSTRADAMUS - EINSTEIN - MARKUZE' ?!?!?!?

Anyway, good to see the debate is as productive as ever.

[merkavah12]

What...the....hell?

Wow. That sounds like a poe to me.

[unkleE]

Apr 28, 2010 11:58:17 GMT humphreyclarke said:

John Loftus appears, as does Earl Doherty; as well as some crazed guy known as DM who appears to be the theist doppelgänger of prolific atheist Stephen Carr (who also shows up). All the usual suspects.

Humphrey, this comment made me laugh, but also provoked some wry reflection.

I laughed because your description "theist doppelgänger of prolific atheist Stephen Carr" simply said it all - I knew exactly what you meant.

But also the interesting thoughts that:

• 19 years ago, our eldest son, then in his last year of studying computer science at Sydney University, showed us on his PC (the only one in the house) and his 300 baud modem, if I remember correctly, how he could connect to this thing he called the internet, control a toy train running on a layout in a university in Germany and run an English Premier League football tipping competition with friends he had made from all over the world. I was quite amazed and kept asking him who owned the cables and the routers and things, it was all so new.
  
  
• Now, I in Sydney Australia can discuss with you in eastern UK or eastern USA, wherever you happen to be now, and not even be able to detect which continent you are in.
  
  
• Not only that, but somebody named Steven Carr, who is equally as much a nobody as you and I can, be known by both of us and many more besides, and have achieved more than Andy Warhol's 15 minutes of fame worldwide!
  

Truly this is progress, and what civilisation is all about!!