Analog SFF, July-August 2007

by Dell Magazine Authors

  To be sure, Bernard of Clairvaux famously opposed Peter Abelard over the application of reason to matters of faith, but his was a minority position and was not a condemnation of reason itself. By the eleventh and twelfth centuries, logic and rationality had become “permanent and characteristic features” of the Latin West. Grant writes that this “wide-spread, conscious reliance on reason and reasoned argument seems to have had no counterpart in any other civilization about which we have any knowledge."

  Adelard of Bath [Quaestiones naturales] summed matters up in this rejoinder to his nephew: “[T]he natural order does not exist confusedly and without rational arrangement, and human reason should be listened to concerning those things it treats of. But when it completely fails, then the matter should be referred to God. Therefore, since we have not yet completely lost the use of our minds, let us return to reason."

  Reply to Objection 1. That faith is opposed to reason is a modern dogma accepted on faith. The medievals thought differently. Augustine had written [Contra Faustum manichaeum], “In the Gospel we do not read that the Lord said: ‘I send you the Holy Spirit so that He might teach you all about the course of the sun and the moon.’ The Lord wanted to make Christians, not astronomers. You learn at school all the useful things you need to know about nature.” Centuries later, William of Conches wrote [Gloss on Boethius] that the authors of Scripture “are silent on matters of natural philosophy, not because these matters are against the faith, but because they have little to do with strengthening it, which is what these authors were concerned with."

  Reply to Objection 2. Modern impressions of the Middle Ages stem from the uncritical acceptance of distortions in the works of Luther, Galileo, Voltaire, and others. But Cantor writes that “[t]he image of the Middle Ages ... at any given period in early modern Europe tells us more about the ... intellectual commitments of the men of the period than it does about the medieval world itself.” The myth of “a superstitious and credulous Europe giving way to a cool, rationalistic, scientific Europe” is a caricature. Remember, a millenarian panic occurred over Y2K, but not over AD 1000.

  * * * *

  Article 2. Whether medieval philosophers were free to inquire into nature.

  Objection 1. It would seem otherwise because Draper writes, “the Roman ecclesiastical system, like the Byzantine, had been irrevocably committed to an opposition to intellectual development. It crushed the mind."

  Objection 2. Furthermore, in 1231, a papal commission was ordered to purge of error the works of Aristotle. And in 1277, the bishop of Paris condemned 219 Aristotelian propositions, many concerned with natural philosophy.

  Objection 3. Also the Church taught the earth was flat, forbade human dissection, etc.

  Objection 4. And what about Galileo?

  On the contrary, Gregory IX [Parens scientiarum] wrote to the University of Paris that, excepting theology and canon law, “we grant to you the right of making constitutions and ordinances regulating the manner and time of lectures and disputations ... who are to lecture and at what hours and on what they are to lecture...” [emphasis added]

  I answer that only in the Latin West did Science find an independent, self-governing “home base” free of nearly all hindrances; namely, the Universities. Some of these developed from the earlier cathedral schools (Paris, Bologna), others from informal gatherings of scholars (Oxford, Cambridge). They possessed licensed faculties, standard courses, lectures, examinations and degrees, undergraduate and graduate studies, even the robes and funny hats we wear today. Their workings are described in Grant, Kibre/Siraisi, and Lindberg.

  The late Berkeley chancellor Clark Kerr once said that about eighty-five medieval institutions “still exist today in recognizable forms, with similar functions and with unbroken histories.” These include “the Catholic church, the Parliaments of the Isle of Man, of Iceland, and of Great Britain, several Swiss cantons, and seventy universities. Kings that rule, feudal lords with vassals, and guilds with monopolies are all gone. These seventy universities, however, are still in the same locations with some of the same buildings, with professors and students doing much the same things, and with governance carried on in much the same ways.” They persevered through plague and war. It was one of Europe's finest achievements.

  The use of reason was uniquely widespread in medieval Europe because the undergraduate curriculum consisted almost entirely of logic, reason, and natural philosophy. Arts and humanities were not taught. As today, most students settled into non-academic lives. Never before or since has such a significant portion of a population been educated so systematically in purely analytical disciplines.

  Since the graduate schools of theology, law, and medicine required the undergraduate degree to matriculate, nearly every medieval theologian had first been trained in natural philosophy. This had important consequences for the acceptance of science by the medieval church. “Despite the 13th century controversies,” writes Grant, “medieval theologians did not oppose Aristotelian natural philosophy per se. Even people like Bonaventure recognized its utility, and theologians in general were among its staunchest supporters.” Indeed, many churchmen (Aquinas, Grosseteste, etc.) themselves pursued natural philosophy. Significantly, they did not cite dogma to demonstrate their conclusions, holding that an appeal to faith was not a philosophical proof.

  Natural philosophers “pursued knowledge about the universe in a remarkably secular and rationalistic manner,” writes Grant, “with little intervention from the Church and its theologians..."

  Reply to Objection 1. Draper's polemic is not taken seriously by historians. Thirty-three of eighty-one medieval universities had papal charters, and another twenty had both papal and imperial charters. Chartering nearly two-thirds of all universities and allowing them to determine their own lecture contents seems an odd way of crushing the mind. Parens scientiarum has been called by some “the Magna Carta of the Universities."

  Reply to Objection 2. The 1231 papal commission never filed a report and the expurgation was never carried out. The 1277 ban applied only to the University of Paris and was in place for only a short time. Aristotelian works were never banned at Oxford or elsewhere, save briefly at Toulouse. The ban represents an overreaction to a faculty dispute, not a general attitude toward natural philosophy.

  Some of the condemned propositions—[(section)154] “That philosophers are the only wise people in the world,"—speak for themselves. So does the so-called “double truth” that a proposition may be true in philosophy, but false in religion. The Church insisted that truth was singular, and if theology and philosophy disagreed, one or the other (or both) was not yet properly understood.

  Many of the condemned propositions fall into a few repeated themes:

  [(section)98] that the World is eternal,

  [(section)49] that there cannot be a vacuum,

  [(section)34] that there cannot be multiple Worlds,

  [(section)140] that there cannot be attributes without substance (no “white” without a “white thing")

  Theologians argued that the universe did have a beginning (and would have an end). Also, since God could do anything short of a logical contradiction, anything that was not contradictory was at least possible and could not be eliminated a priori. In particular, God could have created a vacuum, and as many Worlds as He pleased. Thus, the World is contingent, not necessary, and natural laws must be learned through experience.

  That attributes can exist without substance is the basis of the Eucharist—hence, the bishop's objection—but it is also the basis of empty Newtonian space, which possesses the attributes of dimension without the substance of an extended body. (How can there be “length” without an “elongated thing"?)

  The Condemnation marked the only major irruption of medieval theologians into natural philosophy, and had a paradoxical consequence. The Byzantines, Muslims, and Latins had encountered in Aristotle a fully articulated schema of mesmerizing scope and complexity. The Condemnation broke the spell. The Sta
gerite might not have gotten everything right. If he was wrong in theology, might he also be wrong in philosophy?

  Albertus Magus devoted a chapter of his Summa theologica to the errors of Aristotle: “Whoever believes that Aristotle was a god, must also believe that he never erred. But if one believes that Aristotle was a man, then doubtless he was liable to error just as we are.” The notion grew, writes Wallace, that “Aristotle's views had to be examined critically, corrected, reformulated, and sometimes rejected entirely, not only when they conflicted with theology, but also with the manifest data of experience."

  No great spurt of non-Aristotelian thinking—dare we say “null-A"?—followed immediately after 1277, but philosophers gradually began to reason, secundum imaginationem, regarding the possibility of void space and motion through it, of multiple worlds, and so on.

  By empirical observation, sublunar spaces are “stuffed” with earth, water, air, or fire. So Aristotle reasoned that the heavens were stuffed with an aether. Motion is the ratio of force to resistance; a void lacks resistance; therefore, motion in a void would be instantaneous—an impossibility. QED. “Empty space” (hence, Newtonian mechanics) is impossible to an Aristotelian.

  But Walter of Burleigh reasoned from Eucharistic doctrine that empty space was possible. Bradwardine dismantled Aristotle's model of motion using compound fractions and a new idea: “instantaneous motion.” Buridan found the aether unnecessary and concluded that motion in a void was finite and would continue indefinitely unless opposed. Albert of Saxony determined that bodies of different weights would fall at the same speed in a vacuum. By the late 14th century, scholars had significantly altered natural philosophy.

  Gimpel states that the Condemnation had a stifling effect on thought; other historians, that it had no effect; but Pierre Duhem famously called 1277 “the birth-year of Science” (making 2007 Science's 730th birthday!) Hyperbole, yes, but with a grain of truth.

  Reply to Objection 3. All ancient societies forbade human dissection, save Egypt (where the Romans outlawed it). Yet, its introduction in the West at the end of the 13th century went unopposed by Church authorities. De sepolturis (1299) did not prohibit anatomical dissection, but the practice of boiling the flesh from Crusaders’ bodies to ship the bones home cheaply. Attendance at dissections was required of medical students at Padua and elsewhere, and the first textbook based on dissections was Mondino de'Luzzi's Anatomia (1316), shortly after the bull that supposedly forbade such things. The Pope's physician, Guy de Chaulliac, could hardly have written Chirurgia magna, a widely translated manual for dissections, if the practice were forbidden by his boss.

  Every medieval reference to the earth, including those in popular sermons, calls it a sphere (e.g. Aquinas, Summa theologica I.1, Reply Obj.2). The flat earth myth is a modern myth.

  Reply to Objection 4. Galileo is the poster child precisely because he is exceptional. But he did not live in the Middle Ages and is outside the scope of these Questions. No medieval philosopher was ever prosecuted for a conclusion in natural philosophy.

  * * * *

  Article 3. Whether the Middle Ages saw technological advances.

  Objection 1. It would seem otherwise because Manchester writes that “no startling new idea or significant invention” (other than the windmill and watermill) was introduced in the entire Middle Ages.

  Objection 2. Furthermore, European technological advances often originated elsewhere.

  On the contrary, White says that “[t]he chief glory of the later Middle Ages was ... the building for the first time in history of a complex civilization which rested not on the backs of sweating slaves and coolies but primarily on non-human power.” And that “the four centuries following Leonardo ... were less technologically engaged in discovering basic principles than in elaborating and refining those established during the four centuries before Leonardo."

  I answer that technological progress supplied philosophers with new phenomena to ponder and accustomed society to the idea of progress. Already by the early Middle Ages innovation was conceived as an obligation from God. Hugh of St. Victor [Didascalion] wrote, “man's reasoning shines forth much more brilliantly by inventing these very things than ever it would have had man naturally possessed them.” A tipping point was reached in the 12th century mechanical revolution. A new term appeared: ingeniator (engineer)—earliest citation: 1170, at Durham: Ricardus ingeniator, vir artifiosus.

  The Latins invented deliberate technological innovation through research: They began to envision novelties and attempted systematically to achieve them. Some efforts were successful—the mechanical clock—other, less so—perpetual motion machines. But the idea of innovation became embedded in Western thought.

  Robert the Englishman noted this deliberateness in 1271, when he wrote that clockmakers were “trying to invent an escapement which will move exactly as the equinoctial circle does; but they can't quite manage the job. If they could, they would have a really accurate time-piece.” By the mid-14th century, Europeans were raising intricate clocks in their public squares. By the 15th century, they had invented spring-driven portable clocks. By the end of the era, pendant clocks dangled on lanyards from the necks of the wealthy.

  Ingeniators were not ashamed of manual labor. Great clockmakers like Henry Bate and Giovanni de'Dondi boasted of building their clocks “manu complevi propria.” After all, their very religion was founded by carpenters, fishermen, and tent-makers, so they could not regard working men with the same contempt as had the ancients. Indeed, labor was accorded dignity. (A drawing by Herrad von Landsberg in her Hortus deliciarum shows Christ himself assisting a husband-wife plough-team.) In the towns, workingmen and their guilds enjoyed political power and the right to bear arms. This attitude proved invaluable when it came time for laboratory experiments.

  Reply to Objection 1. In no particular order: camshafts, verge-and-foliot escapements, mechanical clocks, eye glasses, wheeled plows, hydraulic hammers, toothed wheels, transmission shafts, steam blowers, blast furnaces, treadles, spinning wheels, trebuchets and mangonels, crossbows, flying buttresses, stained glass, elliptical arches, cranks, overhead springs, coiled springs, horse collars, gunpowder and pots de fer, the mizzen mast, the compass rose, portolans, stern rudders, anaerobic curing of fatty fish ("pickled herring"), double entry bookkeeping, screw-jacks, screw presses, printing presses...

  For information on medieval technology, see White, Gimpel, and Gies/Gies.

  Reply to Objection 2. Europeans were no more inventive than others. Some of the above inventions originated elsewhere—the spinning wheel in Syria—or were independently invented elsewhere. What was new in the Latin West was not inventiveness per se, but its social context. “The failure of Greece and Rome to increase productivity through innovation,” writes Stock, “is as notorious as the inability of historians from Gibbon to the present to account for it.” Only in Europe were inventions deliberately pursued and extensively exploited as labor-saving devices—perhaps owing to the disappearance there of slavery.

  The Latins didn't worry whether inventions were “permitted.” While Ottoman muftis fretted over whether public clocks were halal or haram before banning them in 1560, the Europeans built them everywhere. “No European community,” says White, “felt able to hold up its head unless in its midst the planets wheeled in cycles and epicycles, while angels trumpeted, cocks crew, and apostles, kings, and prophets marched and countermarched at the booming of the hours."

  These great public clocks were not built for pious deception, like the automata in Hellenistic temples, nor, as in Byzantium and China, to enhance awe of the emperor; but—again quoting White—"were presented frankly as mechanical marvels, and the public delighted in them as such."

  This delight in marvels prefigures the modern idea of “scientific progress."

  * * * *

  Question III.

  The medieval advancement of science.

  Article 1. Whether medieval natural philosophers saw the world as a ki
nd of machine and therefore sought natural explanations.

  Objection 1. It would seem otherwise, because one cannot discover natural laws if “God did it” explains everything.

  Objection 2. Furthermore, the medievals explained actions by the object's internal nature. Glass breaks because it has a “brittle nature.” But this nature can be learned only through the object's actions, and circular explanations are not explanations.

  Objection 3. Furthermore, the medievals believed that the natural world is purposeful, and objects move to their natural ends. But purpose lies in the future and natural causes must precede their effects.

  On the contrary, Oresme [De causa mirabilium] writes, “I propose here ... to show the causes of some effects which seem to be miracles and to show that the effects occur naturally ... There is no reason to take recourse to the heavens, the last refuge of the weak, or demons, or to our glorious God, as if he would produce these effects directly...” And Bishop Oresme was no slacker in theology.

  I answer that the term machina mundi, “the machine of the world,” was already common by the 12th century. And Oresme [Livre du ciel et du monde] used the clock metaphor three hundred years before the Scientific Revolution: “The situation [God creating the heavens and establishing their regular motions] is much like that of a man making a clock and letting it run and continue its own motion by itself ... so that all the wheels move as harmoniously as possible."

  Belief in secondary causation had, in Grant's words, “transformed Nature from a capricious and willful universe into an orderly, lawful whole accessible to the human intellect.” God is the author of natural laws, the thinking went, but the laws themselves could be understood in natural terms.

  Nicholas of Autrecourt argued that knowledge based on experience was uncertain because tomorrow we might have a contrary experience; but Jean Buridan responded that truth was attainable from experience “provided a common course of nature obtains.” Conclusions could be accepted because “they have been observed true in many instances and false in none,” and bizarre exceptions could be treated as exactly that.