Buridan’s impetus theory did not occur to all of those scholars before him who read Aristotle’s Physics and De cælo, scholars who actually had the same interest as Buridan in explaining the motion of objects. There were, of course, medieval Christian scholars who did not arrive at Buridan’s conclusions either, which is why it is better not to say that Buridan himself gave birth to modern science, but the mentality that arose from the Christian tenets. That is not to diminish Buridan’s genius, but to admit that there were also Jewish, Muslim, and other scholars as capable as Buridan. They, however, operated under a radically different worldview. Arguably, they never would have arrived at Buridan’s conclusions about the beginning of motion because they fundamentally held beliefs that were incompatible with such a view of the cosmos.
One may wonder how the Jewish or Muslim monotheism is any different from the Christian monotheism. The Jewish and Arab scholars held a monotheistic belief that God created everything in the beginning, just as Christian scholars did. Why were they unable to break from Aristotle’s pantheistic doctrine of motion based on the doctrine of eternal cycles and returns, then? This question is valid and one that Jaki addressed.
The short answer is that there was too great a separation of philosophy from theology. This idea of eternal cycles had, as Jaki put it, a “stranglehold” on ancient cosmology.[379] Even though the Greeks viewed the universe as having a beginning, it was not an absolute beginning like the absolute beginning in time in the Bible. According to Aristotle and the ancient Greeks, the universe emanated from the First Cause which was eternal, not unlike the Christian theology of Creator and creation. The meaning of “emanate” is important here. In translation, the Latin word is ē, meaning “out from,” and mānāre, meaning “to flow.” To say the universe emanated from the First Cause or God is to say it flows out, which is vastly different than saying the universe was created.
In this emanation, there was a cycle with a beginning, but not an absolute beginning. The beginning was only the mark of a new cycle, a cycle that repeats eternally. For the Greeks, a cycle was called the Great Year and lasted, they thought, 36,000 years. For the other major religions, such as those of the Chinese and Babylonians, the cycle time was different. The monotheism of the Jews and the Muslims perhaps too easily accommodated by this concept of emanation, but Christian monotheism could not at all because of the Incarnation and the Holy Trinity. This difference requires an explanation and emphasis.
First, the distinction between a Creator and creation is most important. It is the distinction between the act of Creation out of nothing and natural change, the processes that occur in already created things. Creation out of nothing is not a process with a beginning, middle, and end. It is a simple reality of all existence completely dependent on God.[380] This distinction was not, however, invented by Buridan; it was clarified in the writing of Aquinas, who was canonized by the Church in 1322 when Buridan was a young man.[381] This distinction between the act of Creation ex nihilo and causation and the process of change can be found in other theological sources, including Tertullian (156–230) and St. Augustine (354–430) in the early Church. It was also prevalent in the Old Testament, where it was first mentioned. This distinction is also not found in the writings of Jewish and Arabic medieval scholars since they were less ready to see that an eternal universe contradicted Scripture.
Second, this distinction between the Creator and creation is owed to the unique Christian monotheism, which is a Trinitarian and Incarnational monotheism unlike any other. There is a major difference in Christian monotheism and Jewish or Muslim monotheism, and to grasp the significance of Buridan’s breakthrough in the history of science, the Trinitarian and Incarnational aspect of Christianity must also be understood. The revelation of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ taught the reality of the Trinitarian nature of God and the divinity of Christ. God is one God in three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son, who became man. Therefore, Christ is also the Creator. Christ is also called the Word and the Logos, Rationality Itself, which explains why there is order and predictability in physical laws created by this personal and merciful God.
The Jewish and Muslim faiths do not acknowledge Christ or the hand of God in salvation history. Without the dogma of the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation, there is not much to save monotheism from the errors of pantheism with an eternal and cycling universe emanating from a First Cause because the contradiction with revelation is not as clear. There is a certain scientific significance in the beginning of St. John’s gospel:
At the beginning of time the Word already was; and God had the Word abiding with him, and the Word was God. He abode, at the beginning of time, with God. It was through him that all things came into being, and without him came nothing that has come to be. In him there was life, and that life was the light of men. And the light shines in darkness, a darkness which was not able to master it.[382]
John also referred to Christ as the “Word made flesh” and the “Father’s only-begotten Son full of grace and truth.”[383] John writes, “And the Word was made flesh, and came to dwell among us; and we had sight of his glory, glory such as belongs to the Father’s only-begotten Son, full of grace and truth.” (Et Verbum caro factum est, et habitavit in nobis: et vidimus gloriam ejus, gloriam quasi unigeniti a Patre plenum gratiæ et veritatis.) John used the Greek words μονογενοῦς παρὰ, translated as monogenes, the “only begotten” Son of the Father, and in Latin as unigeniti.
Jaki developed this concept in several of his essays. In ancient Greece the word monogenes referred to the eternally emanating cosmos, unigenitus, also universum or universe.[384] To Plato, for instance, the monogenes was the Unknown God, the cosmos itself. Plotinus, six hundred years after Plato, still referred to the monogenes as the Unknown God. When John called Christ by the same words, it marked a radically different view of God: the Unknown God was named the Christian God, a Trinitarian and Incarnational God. The god of the pantheists in ancient Greece is drastically different from the God of the Gospels. If this theological point is missed by historians, the rationality of the Greeks will not appear all that different from the rationality of the Christians, but to miss that point is to miss the mindset, the worldview, the radically different psychology of Christianity.
This theological point is connected with Jaki’s description of “science” and “religion” as entities separated by God Himself, as discussed at the end of the chapter on the definition of “science.” Since science deals with quantities and measurement of objects in motion and religion deals with the ultimate purpose of mankind, Jaki also noted that Jesus indirectly warned that science should be kept in its secondary place. When Jesus taught his followers to “Seek first the Kingdom of God and all else will be given to you,” he was telling them that His Kingdom is supernatural, not natural, just as he told Pilate, “My Kingdom is not of this world.”[385] Though not usually used as such, those words from Our Lord offer excellent advice to scientists.
The fruits of Christ’s divinity certainly have been relevant for this world, including the scientific aspect of history, but the main lesson of that divinity is that it points to a world beyond this world, beyond the cosmos, beyond the universe. Why is that lesson important when considering science or the history of science? The lesson is important because it is a reminder that the questions religion can answer are far more important questions to humanity than the questions science can answer. If one is in agreement, then, with the late Fr. Stanley Jaki, it can be asserted with demonstrated confidence that for natural sciences to be born, supernatural revelation was needed. “There had to come a birth, the birth of the only begotten Son of the Father as a man, to allow science to have its first viable birth.”[386]
Chapter 4 - Critics
Chapter 4 - Critics
In the telling of things, debates still oscillate about the meaning of the word “science,” which was cla
rified before. Chances are, when someone is first offered the definition of science as “exact science, the quantitative study of the quantitative aspects of objects in motion” there will be a reaction somewhat accusative of naiveté. As exalted as science has become, that definition seems inadequate. Chances are, when that same someone is asked for a better definition of science, the response will be to offer a longer definition of science that says the same thing. For example, someone could offer the Merriam-Webster definition, “knowledge about or study of the natural world based on facts learned through experiments and observation.”
Of course the defender of Jaki’s definition will need to be able to explain why those two definitions are the same. Here is why: The natural world is not the supernatural world. Therefore, the “natural world” is limited to physical things, i.e. objects. To “study” and “learn facts” about objects through “experimentation and observation,” one must make measurements of the objects’ motion. Since nothing observable or subject to experiment exists in a state of absolute immobility, the only knowledge that can be gained from science, per the definition given, is “exact science, the quantitative study of the quantitative aspects of objects in motion.” If the interlocutor insists that science is more than that, a discussion of the immaterial realm necessarily must ensue, which leaves the arena of science and enters the one of reasoned discourse. If this defense is practiced enough, the wisdom of its conciseness becomes clear. Science is limited.
Stephen Barr, theoretical physicist and cosmologist, wrote in an article about Jaki’s death that Jaki was known to quote with approval Duhem’s statement that “in order to speak of questions where science and Catholic theology touch one another, one must have done ten or fifteen years of study in the pure sciences.”[387] This ambiguity about the definitions of science and theology seems to be the point of deviation for Jaki’s critics who were not scientists or theologians in addition to being historians. It seems that to effectively delve into the “searching questions” that Jaki explores in the history of science, questions that are tied to the history of theology, being a historian is secondary or tertiary to being a scientist and a theologian. Certainly that is debatable, but of course, that is the order of Jaki’s scholarly training, so even if someone disagrees that a historian of science is benefitted by first being a scientist and a theologian, it is enough to at least grasp that for Jaki, this was the case.
At any rate, there are still livelier debates that swing to and fro about the genesis, beginning, origin, and foundations of modern science, which the longest chapter of this book sought to crystallize by searching with Jaki back through history. As evidenced by the volumes still being printed about history of science, there is a significant lack of appreciation for the literal impossibility of defining a “beginning,” a “genesis,” an “origin,” or the “foundation” of science if the concept of science is not defined at the outset. Jaki understood the need to clarify both, and where other historians tried to pinpoint beginnings amid ambiguity, Jaki clarified the definition of science so he could search through history and explain the birth of science. It is one thing to study the history and make note of how scientific thinking evolved over time in different cultures. It is quite another to ask why and how breakthroughs in understanding were made. Both approaches are beneficial, but they have different purposes.
Jaki used the term “birth” of science intentionally because he argued that the “Savior of Science” is the Savior of Mankind; therefore, a “Saving Birth” was needed for modern science to be born because it oriented the way Christians view the world and nature. Of course science is a human endeavor, but since man is made in the image of God with intellect and free will, science without faith in revealed religion will not have the light of grace to guide it.
A “birth” also implies more than just a moment in time. Births do not happen as a single instant devoid of any other occurrences. Gestation occurs over a long period of time, and survival to birth is not a guarantee. For such survival, the womb must be protective and nurturing. For science, that gestation and nurturing came from the biblical worldview. Whatever is “born” also remains dependent following the emergence from the womb for at least the length of time the gestation lasted, followed by a slow weaning to independence but never a full division in the relationship. The ideas in this paragraph are not explicitly expressed by Jaki, but the “birth” of science is a theological concept that could be expanded to demonstrate why the Holy Mother Church must play a role in guiding scientific endeavors for the future of mankind.
The work of Pierre Duhem in the early twentieth century brought to light the role the Church had in the birth of modern science. More and more historians agree that not only did modern science have a beginning, it had a beginning in the Christian West and not accidentally, but because the Christian psychology was conducive to a naturalistic, realistic view of the universe. Jaki was an esteemed and awarded historian of science, physicist, and theologian, sought after for talks and publications, but the reactions to his rather stark claims have been mixed. Jaki was the first to consider systematically the “stillbirths” of science in all major ancient cultures. He was also unique, during his time, in emphasizing the theological aspect of the history of science and in demonstrating that the birth of modern science was not an accident of Christianity, but a conscious conclusion.
In his book (mentioned in the introduction), Creation and Scientific Creativity: A Study in the Thought of S. L. Jaki, first published in 1991 and updated in a second reprint in 2009, the year of Jaki’s death, Paul Haffner responded to Jaki’s critics in a full chapter. The first part of the chapter deals with the particular historical argument. Although Jaki’s detailed research on the stillbirths of science exceeded the extent of the research by Alfred North Whitehead, they both agree on the contribution of medieval scholasticism to the unique birth of science in Europe.
In Science and Creation, Jaki quoted Whitehead in a long passage where Whitehead, who considered himself agnostic but turned to religion later in life although he never joined any specific institution, acknowledged the climate of thought as the most crucial ingredient for the eventual breakthrough of modern science.[388]
I do not think, however, that I have even yet brought out the greatest contribution of medievalism to the formation of the scientific movement. I mean the inexpugnable belief that every detailed occurrence can be correlated with its antecedents in a perfectly definite manner, exemplifying general principles. Without this belief the incredible labours of scientists would be without hope. It is this instinctive conviction, vividly poised before the imagination, which is the motive power of research: that there is a secret, a secret which can be unveiled. How has this conviction been so vividly implanted on the European mind?
When we compare this tone of thought in Europe with the attitude of other civilisations when left to themselves, there seems but one source for its origin. It must come from the medieval insistence on the rationality of God, conceived as with the personal energy of Jehovah and with the rationality of a Greek philosopher. Every detail was supervised and ordered: the search into nature could only result in the vindication of the faith in rationality. Remember that I am not talking of the explicit beliefs of a few individuals. What I mean is the impress on the European mind arising from the unquestioned faith of centuries. By this I mean the instinctive tone of thought and not a mere creed of words.
In Asia, the conceptions of God were of a being who was either too arbitrary or too impersonal for such ideas to have much effect on instinctive habits of mind. Any definite occurrence might be due to the fiat of an irrational despot, or might issue from some impersonal, inscrutable origin of things. There was not the same confidence as in the intelligible rationality of a personal being. I am not arguing that the European trust in the scrutability of nature was logically justified even by its own theology. My only point is to understand how it arose. My explanation is that the faith in the possibility to science,
generated antecedently to the development of modern scientific theory, is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.[389]
Whitehead called it an “unconscious derivative,” but Jaki, as said, argued that it was quite conscious. It does seem more reasonable to assume that the medieval Christian scholars were consciously aware of their faith than to assume they did not realize it guided them. Perhaps they did not realize how much it guided them, though.
Haffner also noted, as Jaki did, that there has been an “almost systematic oversight of Duhem and of the Middle Ages in books written during the last two or three decades by Protestant scholars on the rise of science and Christianity.”[390] From M. B. Foster in the 1930’s to Langdon Gilkey in the 1950’s and 1960’s to Reijer Hooykaas, Donald MacKay, and Eugene Klaaren in the 1970’s to G. B. Deason in the 1980’s, one would “look in vain” for an appreciation of either Duhem’s or Jaki’s research.[391] One exception is in the work of Herbert Butterfield. In his 1957 book, The Origins of Modern Science, he praised the work of Duhem for bringing out the importance of the fourteenth-century teaching on the subject of impetus, and even began his book with a chapter about it.[392]
In 1992, David C. Lindberg, who described himself as a “liberal Protestant,” also mentioned Duhem rather extensively in a discussion about the Condemnations of 1277 in his book The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A. D. 1450. [393] In his consideration of the Condemnations of 1277 and Duhem’s interpretation of them, he wrote:
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