Science Was Born of Christianity

by Stacy Trasancos

  Bacon can also be praised for his emphasis on the basic unity, interconnectedness, and interdependence of all branches of learning, a concept critical to the success of the early universities.[332] His views did not conflict with the Church so far as he held, along with the Church Fathers, that the Creator was distinct from creation, and therefore, all knowledge formed ultimately a single body of truth.[333] Even as he considered the Greek scientific corpus, he also rightly warned that final and secondary causes were distinctions not to be confused.[334] He argued that man can only have partial knowledge of the universe, and he has been considered a visionary about machines that could speed across land, fly in the skies, or make far away objects appear close.[335] Even though the Chinese had already done so, he is credited with the invention of gun powder, the only real experimental success of the “one whom some called the Father of experimental science.”[336]

  Bacon was, as already said, not the first medieval man to advocate experimentation, and he is not a lone herald of this aspect of modern science. Rather, he reveals the merits and defects of the movement of his time.[337] It was not possible to consider experimental science separate from magic in those days, and the exploration of this history is the main topic of the life’s work of the American historian of medieval science and alchemy, Lynn Thorndike, who was also an expert on Roger Bacon’s life and works.[338] Some of the experiments Bacon described were fantastic, such as his elixirs that were said to prolong life, and even though the affects were natural, they seemed magical and, therefore made Christians skeptical.[339] Bacon urged that experimentation is necessary:

  First one should be credulous until experience follows second and reason comes third . . . At first one should believe those who have made experiments or who have faithful testimony from others who have done so, nor should one reject the truth because he is ignorant of it and because he has no argument for it.[340]

  Bacon’s writing about “magic” should be understood in such a context; experimentation did not always have an explanation, even though his discussion of experimental science amounted to little more than an acknowledgement that experience should serve as a criterion of truth.[341] Before there was knowledge of the limits of chemical compounds, people conducting experiments were seeking certain properties, even if they did not realize that those properties did not exist.

  There was also a superstitious component in Bacon’s writing. He saw a real connection between experiment and magic, most often cited in his views regarding alchemy and astrology. He believed occult science could make gold better than nature and that astrology could predict the future, as did the Arabs and Greeks, although he also regarded magic as demonic.[342] Still in other passages he suggests that magic is not worthless, and he granted that the books of magicians “may contain some truth.”[343] According to Thorndike, Bacon goes about as far as Albertus Magnus in “credulous acceptance of superstition, but [he] will not admit, as Albert does, that such things are magic or very closely related to it.”[344]

  Bacon also held that “celestial bodies are the causes of generation and corruption of all inferior things,” consistent with Aristotle’s view of the heavens as regulated by angelic intelligences. This view led Bacon to also accept the astrological arts and medicine including the influence of the stars on a person’s health and conduct. He believed that the stars inclined men to bad acts or to good conduct, and while he also held that the individual could resist the influence of the stars, the power of the constellations prevailed in the masses of men. This is essentially the view the Greeks held of the Great Year and the Muslims held of astrology (horoscopy), that cycles in history can be predicted by the heavens.[345] Not surprisingly, the Opus majus, Bacon’s most important work, contains a section on the application of astrology to Church government, which was not well-received by the Church.[346]

  Sifting through Bacon’s assertions may create the impression that they were a continuation of the “Christian attitude of patristic literature to a certain extent.”[347] As Thorndike noted, Bacon was a clergyman writing for other clergymen to “promote the welfare of the Church and of Christianity.”[348] Hailed as a Father of science, there is no denying that his mindset was formed by Christian faith. His views were true to the age, but also remarkable in that they demonstrate how Christian faith was purifying the Greek scientific corpus, transitioning it toward a viable birth of science and out of the errors that kept it stillborn in previous cultures.

  Siger of Brabant

  The situation could appear to worsen with the thought of Siger of Brabant (1240–1280’s), a “radical Aristotelian” who was a contemporary of Magnus and Aquinas. While Magnus and Aquinas sought to harmonize reason and faith (i.e. philosophy and theology), there were others who heeded not the authority of the Church and began to teach philosophical doctrines in contradiction to Christian theology, as the Muslim followers of Averroes did in their approach to the independent autonomies of philosophy and theology.[349]

  Siger of Brabant was the best known leader of such a radical faction. He sought to establish the autonomy of philosophy from theology. In doing so, he taught, loyal to Aristotle, that the world emanates from the First Cause and that the philosopher, speaking as a philosopher, had no alternative but to accept the eternity of the world because that is what, in his view, reason dictates. On the other hand, he made it clear that he personally accepted the doctrine of the creation of the world that his faith demanded.[350] In his work De aeternitate mundi (On the Eternity of the World), he claimed:

  Since the Prime Mover and Agent is always actual, not something potential before being actual, it follows that it would always move and act, and produces any given [things] without a mediating motion. Furthermore, on the basis of the fact that [the Prime Mover] is always moving and acting, it follows that no species of being (species entis) proceeds to act but that it previously had preceded [it], such that with respect to the same species the [things] that existed return circularly—and laws, opinions, religions, and other [things], so that the lesser [things] cycle in virtue of the cycling of the higher [things], although the memory of the cycling of these [things] does not persist, on account of their antiquity.

  However, we say these things while reciting the view of the Philosopher, not asserting them as though they were true.[351]

  Whether he was trying to placate the Church authorities or sincerely wanted to separate the truth of reason from the truth of faith is a matter of dispute, but the dangerous implications of this divisive approach came to the attention of Aquinas and others who gave a public denunciation of such views, specifically in Aquinas’ short treatise, De aeternitate mundi contra murmurantes (On the Eternity of the World: Against the Mutterers). Not a polemicist by nature, Aquinas made it clear that the world is not a self-subsisting being, but that its existence is owed to a Creator, and there had to be a beginning and end to the universe in time.[352] As Jaki put it, “about the message of the Christian dogma on creation there could be no misgiving.”

  For the believer this could have presented an almost insuperable temptation to espouse certain considerations, suggesting the finiteness of the world in time, as being conclusive. But the most learned among the faithful took consistently the position that no reason but revelation alone could settle a matter that truly needed settling.[353]

  Étienne Tempier

  St. Thomas Aquinas died in 1274, amid the hesitation and confusion about the Aristotelian texts from the Muslim world, but his defense of the interdependence of faith and reason was, of course, not in vain because later it became the accepted and established synthesis of Catholic and Aristotelian thought. Aquinas’ defense was also given during a time leading up to a dramatic event three years later. In 1277, Étienne Tempier, the Bishop of Paris, issued a list of 219 condemned propositions relating to the Aristotelian texts that were irreconcilable to the Catholic worldview. These propositions were not binding on Catholics, but served as a guide for the scholars at the University of Paris. The
firm judgment largely dealt with the eternity of the world and creation.

  The propositions are often referenced by historians of science and summarized, as Jaki did in Science and Creation. However, it is instructive to review them as they are (in translation) so that they may be considered on their own merit. Below is a list of some of the propositions, specifically the ones that Jaki mentioned in his summary, condemned at the University of Paris by Tempier:[354]

  Proposition 27 asserted that God can make as many worlds as He wills. “That the first cause cannot make more than one world.”

  Proposition 31 rejected that the heavens are divine. “That there are three principles for celestial things: the subject of eternal motion, the soul of the celestial body, and the first mover, [which moves things] insofar as [it is] desired. This is an error with respect to the first two.”

  Proposition 32 rejected that the world is an organism. “That the eternal principles are two, namely, the body of the heaven and its soul.”

  Proposition 66 said that rectilinear motion is possible for planets and stars. “That God could not move the heaven in a straight line, the reason being that He would then leave a vacuum.”

  Proposition 73 essentially condemned pantheism. “That the heavenly bodies are moved by an intrinsic principle which is the soul, and that they are moved by a soul and an appetitive power, like an animal. For just as an animal is moved by desiring, so also is the heaven.”

  Proposition 75 also condemned the animistic view of the universe as if the heavens are made of organs. “That the celestial soul is an intelligence, and the celestial spheres are not instruments of intelligences but rather [their] organs, as the ear and the eye are the organs of a sensitive power.”

  Proposition 83 safeguarded the doctrine of creation. “That the world, although it was made from nothing, was not newly-made, and although it passed from nonbeing to being, the nonbeing did not precede in duration but only in nature.”

  Proposition 84 condemned the error that the world is eternal. “That the world is eternal because that which has a nature by which it is able to exist for the whole future has a nature by which it was able to exist in the whole past.”

  Proposition 85 also guarded against an eternal worldview. “That the world is eternal as regards all the species contained in it, and that time, motion, matter, agent, and receiver are eternal, because the world comes from the infinite power of God and it is impossible that there be something new in the effect without there being something new in the cause.”

  Proposition 86 protected the reality of time and eternity. “That eternity and time have no existence in reality but only in the mind.”

  Proposition 87 guarded the absolute beginning and end of time. “That nothing is eternal from the standpoint of its end that is not eternal from the standpoint of its beginning.”

  Proposition 88 rejected that time is infinite. “That time is infinite at both ends. For even though it is impossible for an infinitude [of things] to have been traversed, some one of which had to be traversed, nevertheless it is not impossible for an infinitude [of things] to have been traversed, none of which had to be traversed.”

  Proposition 89 declared that it is possible to refute arguments of Aristotle if his arguments for an eternal universe contradict revelation. “That it is impossible to refute the arguments of the Philosopher [Aristotle] concerning the eternity of the world unless we say that the will of the first being embraces incompatibles.”

  Proposition 90, carefully noted a distinction between Creator and creation. “That the universe cannot stop, because the first agent has [the ability] to transmute in succession eternally, now into this form, now into that one. And likewise, matter is naturally apt to be transmuted.”

  Proposition 91 asserted the beginning of the universe. “That there has already been an infinite number of revolutions of the heaven, which it is impossible for the created intellect but not for the first cause to comprehend.”

  Proposition 92 condemned the doctrine of the Great Year. “That with all the heavenly bodies coming back to the same point after a period of thirty-six thousand years, the same effects as now exist will reappear.”

  Proposition 105 rejected determinism based on the stars, particularly that the arrangement of the stars affects an individual from the moment of birth. “That when a man is generated as to his body, and consequently as to [his] soul, which follows the body, there is a disposition in the man [coming] from the order of superior and inferior causes, [and] inclining [him] to such and such actions or events. [This is] an error unless it is meant [to apply only] in the case of natural events and [for an inclination] by way of disposition.”

  Proposition 107 rejected that celestial bodies are the primary source of all matter. “That God was unable to have made prime matter except by means of a celestial body.”

  Historians are still studying the writings of contemporaries of this time to ascertain the extent of the drama involved, but these condemnations speak for themselves. They represent a distinct struggle between philosophy and theology, reflective of the tension of the time. For the Church Fathers as well as the medieval scholastics, this view demonstrates that philosophy was a “handmaiden” of theology because faith was above reason, but not unreasonable.

  As the Aristotelian texts, unchallenged by Greek or Muslim scholars, were accepted into Christendom, it could only have followed that theologians and philosophers of that time would seek to reconcile the contradictions. It is worth noting that even St. Thomas expressed that the rejection of the eternity of the world was a matter of faith in divine revelation and not a matter of (what would later be called) scientific demonstration or reason:

  The articles of faith cannot be proved demonstratively, because faith is of things “that appear not” (Hebrews 11:1). But that God is the Creator of the world: hence that the world began, is an article of faith; for we say, “I believe in one God,” etc. And again, Gregory says (Hom. i in Ezech.), that Moses prophesied of the past, saying, “In the beginning God created heaven and earth”: in which words the newness of the world is stated. Therefore the newness of the world is known only by revelation; and therefore it cannot be proved demonstratively.

  By faith alone do we hold, and by no demonstration can it be proved, that the world did not always exist, as was said above of the mystery of the Trinity (32, 1). [355]

  Historians have and will continue to look upon this period of time in various ways. The condemnations of the University of Paris could be interpreted, as some historians have done, as antagonistic to the autonomy of philosophy, a symbol of an “intellectual crisis” in the University and culture of the late thirteenth century, and that interpretation is partially correct.[356] There was an intellectual struggle between the proposed truths of Aristotelian philosophy and the divine truths of revelation. While Muslim scholars encouraged this separate autonomy, Christian scholars could not, and that refusal to separate the truths of faith from the truths of reason is of utmost significance in understanding what led to the birth of science in Christian Europe because it is a distinction that isolates that religious culture from all others.

  This significance is lost on historians who do not consider the theological history of science. Among the leading authorities of the history of science in the Middle Ages, Edward Grant (b. 1926) acknowledged that there was an “atmosphere of fear and hostility toward Greek science and philosophy” when Christianity “manifested its earliest concern about the physical world.”[357] He wrote that the Church Fathers and Christian authors of late antiquity “grudgingly came to tolerate [pagan enterprises] as handmaidens to theology.”[358] The charges of “intellectual crisis” and “grudging” toleration of pagan opinions seem to suggest that Christian scholars were acting imprudently, but they were not. They were approaching scholarship the same way as their predecessors did. For instance, the Greek apologists of early Christianity, such as Clement of Alexandria and Gregory of Nyssa, welcomed contributions from Greek thoug
ht.

  However, Pierre Duhem (1861–1916), a French physicist, had a different opinion, an opinion which was probably the catalyst for the ongoing deeper studies into the Condemnations of 1277. In the early twentieth century, Duhem conducted pioneering research on the origins of classical physics, uncovering medieval texts by Christian scholars that were before not included in the historical accounts of the Middle Ages. He is credited by Jaki as “single-handedly” inspiring a “vigorous interest in medieval science.”[359] Duhem’s research countered and corrected the long-held belief that the Church stifled scientific progress, particularly in the Middle Ages (pejoratively called the “Dark Ages”). The most important historical corrections provided by Duhem’s original sources were the anticipations by Christian theologians of the concepts of inertia and momentum, the search for both qualitative and quantitative analysis of physical processes, and the realization of the importance of experimental investigation to understand nature.[360]