Scientus

The development of the scientific tradition from its germ in ancient Greece through to its final fruit in Christian Europe is one of most amazing of human achievements. More amazing is where this long process came to fruit; Europe. By almost any analysis, Europe was the wrong place for a scientific tradition to develop.

The problems with Europe as a birthplace for science existed well before the Middle Ages, in Roman times. Ribs of mountains criss-cross the continent and a treacherous channel separates Britain from the continent. Mountain ranges such as the Alps provided a barrier to sharing knowledge, since at that time knowledge was commonly distributed on foot. There was another barrier to communication that was more imposing than the tallest of the Alps. Europe was home to dozens of languages and hundreds of dialects. There were other problems. A sparse population and poor farming productivity made supporting an academic class an issue. The damp climate helped contribute to the spread of disease. At any time, epidemics could bring intellectual progress to a halt by decimating the intellectual communities (as it had in 1349).

But there was hope. Rome was still the dominant power in Europe up to about 400 C.E. Rome was the rightful inheritor to the great intellectual legacy of Greece. Rome's power also meant that there was some hope for a common language of learning, Latin, to counteract the effect of the many different languages and hundreds of dialects.

The faint hope provided by Rome died rather quickly. By about 500 C.E. Europe was controlled by Germanic and Uralic tribes. Rome had fallen. The new rulers did not even have a written language. Being illiterate, they had little respect for the type of learning that would contribute to a scientific method. This was the century of the Visigoths, Vandals, and Attila the Hun. A completely new set of languages from the steppes of Eurasia was added to the already rich mix of languages. By 500 C.E. we had a Europe with many natural and cultural impediments to scientific development that was now controlled by powers that had neither the tradition or inclination to support western-style intellectual progress.

Today these huge hurdles on the way to science are largely ignored. Instead many think that there was only one hurdle to the development of a scientific tradition in Europe;the Catholic Church. This thesis, known as the "Conflict Thesis", has dominated both popular and academic thought for much of the last 200 years. The thesis has always produced more questions than it answered. With all the other challenges that Europe presented, shouldn't having the dominant cultural force on the other side prevented the birth of science in Europe, not just slow it down? Conflict Theorists never even had to ask this question, since the other factors were completely ignored. Conflict Theory didn't have to answer many other questions. Like many theories, once widely accepted, they are rarely questioned. This eBook puts the Conflict Theory under the microscope and attempts to ask the questions that are missed.

The "Conflict Thesis" is all about the history of science. But it is neither good history, nor good science. The "Conflict Thesis", a product of the nineteenth century, is supported, even today, using the relics of nineteenth century historical thought. During the nineteenth century many historians followed the "Great Man Theory" of history. Thomas Carlyle, the originator of the theory, summarized it best;"The history of the world is but the biography of great men". But this approach is naive. Later historians decided that their profession should not ignore important changes that can occur because of sociological, technological and other factors. Often the discussion of Conflict Theorists loops back to one 'great man', Galileo. But Galileo is not 'science', and he was not 'science' even in his own time.

If the history underlying the "Conflict Thesis" is suspect, the science behind it is more so. Today science involves dozens of disciplines and thousands of sub-disciplines. It has become so important that a new discipline has been born, scientometrics. This is the scientific study of science using advanced statistical and visualization techniques. Scientometrics shows that the discipline that Conflict Theorists consider so important to history, Astronomy and Astrophysics, has very minimal effects on any of the other disciplines. Initial scientometric studies of earlier science shows that even the Conflict Theorists' 'great man' was not as important as they would have hoped. Studies of scientific references from literature in 1758 show that Galileo was not the 'science' of his day, but one of several important scientists. The citation cloud below represents the 22 most referenced scientists listed in a collection of major scientific reference works from 1758 (see Wroblewski-1.3 Meg PDF). Scientists in the cloud from Galileo's day include Gassendi and Riccioli ,both priests, and Descartes but not Galileo. Schott, Lana-Terzi, Nollet and Deschales were also priests but were not contemporary with Galileo.

Science Citation cloud from 1758

Conflict Theory doesn't even consider the relative importance of disciplines. They also do not develop on the importance of the historical examples they choose (perhaps because it is difficult to assign much importance to their examples). They don't even require that the scientists in their examples be important to any science. One example commonly cited is that of Giordano Bruno. But neither Giordano Bruno nor his theories were regarded highly by his contemporary scientists or later scientists. His intelligence was recognized but unfortunately his erratic behavior and attachment to the occult reduced the value of his work. He was important to some later philosophers, and of course to proponents of Conflict Thesis. If one were to study the Conflict Thesis and its supporting examples, one would see a complete disconnect from the actual practice of science through the ages.

The problems with the choices of historical examples are compounded with the way they are discussed. The lynchpin of the Conflict Theory has always been the trial of Galileo. The real importance of this event to the future history of science has never been established but it is still considered important to the discussion of the church and science. Even in supposedly 'reputable' treatments of the event by the PBS and BBC, drama is always chosen at the cost of science. This means that Galileo was arguing for a model that was an obvious improvement on the existing theories. Statistical comparisons of the Copernican Model with the Ptolemaic model show that it did not predict stellar positions any better than the Ptolemaic. The drama has Galileo fighting for the new Copernican model against stodgy defenders of an ancient Greek system. Galileo was defending his model against people arguing for a Tychonic model, developed 40 years after Copernicus died and based on the best available observations to date. The drama has Galileo presenting a conclusive proof of a sun-centered system. A sun-centered systems requires that a phenomenon known as stellar parallax be observed; it wasn't during Galileo's lifetime or for almost two centuries after his death (see Copernicism and Stellar Parallax) . The drama has Galileo choosing the best available explanation for planetary motion based only on logic. There may have been pride involved too. His contemporary, Kepler, had come up with a competing system that used elliptical orbits instead of circular ones. Galileo largely ignored the German's work feeling that all secrets of the sky were his to discover (see Galileo's Battle for the Heavens).

A proper treatment of the history of church and science would require thousands of pages. This eBook does not attempt this. Over the last 200 years there have been many attempts, most commonly approaching the subject on the basis of the Conflict Thesis. This eBook is a treatment of the Conflict Thesis. This might be possible. It is 200 years of history instead of 2000. It also had much fewer players. It might also be as interesting. While the Conflict Thesis is not without some credible facts, it also has elements of censorship, distortion of the facts, purposeful propagation of myths, and a curiously unscientific way of building an argument. Few know that Conflict Theorists were able to censor one of the most important historians of the early twentieth century because he found some glaring contradictions to their theory (see Duhem and the DaVinci Code). Historical events were cherry-picked based on how well they supported the thesis. It didn't seem to matter whether the events were really important to subsequent history of the world or science. And the hundreds of critically important scientific developments by church members were either ignored or strained attempts were made to deny any credit to the church which either trained or funded these scientists. We live in a world of volts, amperes and ohms. All of these units are namesakes for scientists with very deep connections with the Jesuits. But these scientists and others, just as important to our modern lifestyle, are rarely mentioned. Church actions that were critical to the development of a modern science are also ignored. The invention of the modern university structure, so important to modern science, and the use of Latin in the middle ages to compensate for low levels of literacy are never discussed.

There are more modern examples too. One touchpoint in the modern debate on religion and science is modern evolutionary theory. Many mistakenly call this Darwinisn. Darwinism was rejected as a viable theory by about 1900. It was not rejected because of sermons from fundamentalist preachers or Catholic priests. It was rejected by biologists. There were several problems with Darwin's original theory that biologists simply could not overlook. One was that there was no adequate explanation for how beneficial traits would be transferred from generation to generation. Darwinism was eventually rehabilated by incorporating work done at the Augustinian monastery in Brno, Moravia during the 1860's. This revision of Darwin's work is called Neo-Darwinism. Special credit in the rehabilitation of Darwin's theory goes to one of these monks, Gregor Mendel. But he can't garner all the credit. Most commentators on this important work ignore the obvious; it was never Gregor Mendel's decision to study heredity or pea plants. Augustinian monasteries are not run like democracies. The final decision was that of the abbot of the monastery. The abbot not only allowed Gregor the massive amount of time to complete his work, but dedicated plots within the monastery to his research and arranged for a greenhouse to be built to support his work.

To avoid some of the problems inherent in the Conflict Theory, an attempt will be made to pay attention to the relative importance of events and scientists, to relate these events to how science is actually conducted and not the 'textbook' definition of science, and to use statistics where possible.

scientus.org

Search

Scientus