Over at Butterflies and Wheels, there is a review and discussion of Thomas Dixon’s book Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction. The book, published by Oxford University Press, won the Dingle Prize from the British Society for the History of Science last year. As far as I am aware, neither OUP nor BSHS are funded by the Templeton Foundation.
The review is a bit of a rant, as you’d expect. But the discussion involves Thomas Dixon himself and is worth skimming through.
Discuss this post at the Quodlibeta Forum
Tuesday, January 11, 2011
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
11 comments:
Thomas Dixon left a comment on the post too, making it even more interesting.
Thanks for the link to this debate, although I would hardly call the original review a'rant'. It is measured and raises a number of good issues. As a result , Dixon has also replied in a civilized way. What a pity more of these debates aren't like this. It does remain the case that 'science and religion ' debates seem to be largely the preserve of the 'religious' and you seldom find scientists contributing as scientists.
Eric MacDonald (the reviewer) is a former Anglican priest and has just started a new blog on assisted dying which might be of interest.
http://choiceindying.com/
I think the most interesting point to come out of the B&W discussions was regarding the impact of the ‘Index of Forbidden Books’ – that is the Galileo affair was not an isolated incident but was part of a more prolonged attack by the church on the new learning. For example parts of the works of Galileo, Descartes, Bacon and Boyle were placed on the Index and opposed by the Jesuits.
The first point is that religious works were the primary target of the index so it doesn’t appear to fit into the science vs religion narrative; perhaps a religion vs religion narrative since protestants used natural philosophical ideas in their polemics – e.g the mechanical philosophy against the doctrine of trans-substantiation. The most direct attacks were against astrology and alchemy. Secondly it never appears to have been consistently enforced – commerce in magical texts for example flourished in Italy despite Papal Opposition and their placement on the index. Scientific and philosophical works were imported privately. Thirdly Jesuit science flourished in Catholic Europe. It’s important not to exaggerate but perhaps it could be argued that they adhered to the Tychronic model for as long as they did due to the prohibition (teaching it as a hypothesis rather than a true model) and that the index made the intellectual climate more difficult.
Forgive my ignorance but what is 'tychronic'?
I was led to believe that there were many hundreds of books on the Index and that this was a time when subject boundaries were still not defined. Were the censors really sophisticated enough to be able to distinguish between science, alchemy, astrology and religion? Has anyone done any work on this as it would make a fascinating subject?
On the subject of Catholicism and Early Modern Science the best essay I found was that by William B Ashworth Jr in ‘God and Nature’ ‘Lindberg (ed) (though subsequent research has tended to take a kinder view of Jesuit science than his). In previous discussions I felt the idea that there were no defined subjects was rather over-egged (there was such a thing as Natural Philosophy) however it is true that the boundaries were fuzzy and natural philosophical ideas could overlap into theology or be seen as ‘magic’. The fact is the Church didn’t take a lot of interest in the content of contemporary science and most work passed through the censors. However there are some very important exceptions.
Ashworth argues the Churches aim following the establishment of the index was to protect the faith from magic and astrology. Magic smacked of Calvinist predestination and suggested supernatural magic (which was said to involve trafficking with demons). Astrology risked denying the essential Catholic dogma of free will. Alchemy (and therefore Chemistry) later became associated with Protestantism and would become an exclusively Protestant affair having been denounced by the church as magic and diabolical. The prohibition against Galileo is familiar to all (Copernicus could be read providing it was understood hypothetically). Descartes’s matter theory conflicted with the doctrine of trans-substantiation. He was skilfully able to reconcile the two in his lifetime but after his death Honre Fabri was able to get his works on the index. It continued to win support among Catholics but those who adhered to it were undoubtedly under pressure.
Ashworth argues for a dampening of the spirit of inquiry in Italy – i.e not that science ceased but that it became non speculative. The Jesuits continued to practice science on a wide scale, were able investigators and made many important discoveries and inventions. Despite this historians are divided over their contribution to the wider scientific enterprise – it has been suggested they were too eclectic and willing to adopt fictionalisation. I’m not sure if more detailed research has impacted this view.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tychonic_system
It’s the geocentric model of the Solar System developed by Tycho Brahe in the late 16th century. Basically it preserves the traditional arrangement with the earth in the center of the cosmos but adds the mathematical harmonies of the Copernican system (the planets revolve around the sun which revolves around the earth). It was adopted by the new generation of Jesuit astronomers after the Galileo affair – The Copernican system was discussed by treated as a hypothesis.
Thank you for all this. It was the 'r' in Tychronic that threw me off the path!
Ah apologies for my atrocious spelling - so according to me it's the Tychronic system by Typo Brahe
We will be having typhoons next!
It is hard to see how the Index did not have a major intellectual impact in that Protestant readers had access to an enormous amount of material that Catholics were not, officially, at least, allowed to read.I still wonder on how they decided who to put in and who to keep out. I wonder whether anyone recorded the discussions.I still have a problem over whether anyone could know what science was or was not at that period- or are we just iomposing modern views of science retrospectively.
Post a Comment