Why I don't recommend Dawkins?????

[_marg]

Ok,

I'll post up the notes, and if some areas don't seem to make sense I'll transcribe from the lecture. Next week sounds good.

[_marg]

Phillip,

I found a site on the net with the notes from the entire lecture. Chapter 7 is @ p 63 of 462. http://fliiby.com/file/36731/rr8e7dqd4h.html

If you could take a look at that and let me know what you think, ie. do you want me to elaborate in any particular section? ..does it make sense to you? etc

I'll pull out what I consider key points from

Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World (chap7)
Professor Steven L. Goldman

"- There had been schools of one kind and another in Europe, some of them advanced, at least since the 5th century B.C.E.


- The Catholic Church maintained a hierarchical school system throughout the so-called Dark Age.
- There was a need for priests, of course, but also for civil servants, clerks, and administrators for the Church and the secular government, as well as for doctors and lawyers
-In the 12th century, there was an enormous increase in the student populations at the cathedral schools of Paris and Bologna especially, leading to the creation of the first universities there.
-The university idea spread rapidly, especially in western and southern Europe, but with dozens of universities created by 1400, from Oxford and Cambridge in England to Krakow in Poland.


- The invention of the university, like the invention of writing, emerges as a major scientific idea from the reverse engineering of modern science.
- The pursuit of secular knowledge in the philosophy and medical faculties became an essential condition for the emergence of modern science in the 17th century and for the maturation of modern science into a driver of social change in the 19th and 20th centuries.

-The key to appreciating the university as a social-intellectual innovation is the value attributed to secular knowledge for its own sake.
-The Church immediately recognized the potential threat of the universities to religious teachings and values but tolerated them nonetheless.
-The collateral growth of secular governments claiming independence from the Church was closely tied to the university movement.

-The secular dimension of the university was not at all a rebellion against religion or the religious establishment.
-The primary assertion was the legitimacy of the pursuit of secular knowledge for its own sake(not for the sake of salvation) and the autonomy of that pursuit

-The university thus emerges as a secular social phenomenon in the 12th century, an institution sheltering the study of secular knowledge within a faith-based community and loyal to its religious teachings and values.
-The university must be understood as a response to a social demand for such an institution, not as creating that demand.
-Once created, however, and as an institution dedicated to the text-based study of knowledge which texts were to be studied? Overwhelmingly, the texts came from ancient Greek and Roman writers on mathematics , philosophy, astronomy, medicine, and law.
-Beginning in the 12th century, contemporary thinkers, such as Abelard, were generating important new texts.

-The university assimilated the Platonic-Aristotelian definition of knowledge for all the subject areas studied under the rubric of “philosophy,” including nature."

Let me know when you've finished reading Carrier's blog.

[_Phillip]

Phillip,

I found a site on the net with the notes from the entire lecture. Chapter 7 is @ p 63 of 462. http://fliiby.com/file/36731/rr8e7dqd4h.html

If you could take a look at that and let me know what you think, ie. do you want me to elaborate in any particular section? ..does it make sense to you? etc

I'll pull out what I consider key points from

Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World (chap7)
Professor Steven L. Goldman

"- There had been schools of one kind and another in Europe, some of them advanced, at least since the 5th century B.C.E.


- The Catholic Church maintained a hierarchical school system throughout the so-called Dark Age.
- There was a need for priests, of course, but also for civil servants, clerks, and administrators for the Church and the secular government, as well as for doctors and lawyers
-In the 12th century, there was an enormous increase in the student populations at the cathedral schools of Paris and Bologna especially, leading to the creation of the first universities there.
-The university idea spread rapidly, especially in western and southern Europe, but with dozens of universities created by 1400, from Oxford and Cambridge in England to Krakow in Poland.


- The invention of the university, like the invention of writing, emerges as a major scientific idea from the reverse engineering of modern science.
- The pursuit of secular knowledge in the philosophy and medical faculties became an essential condition for the emergence of modern science in the 17th century and for the maturation of modern science into a driver of social change in the 19th and 20th centuries.

-The key to appreciating the university as a social-intellectual innovation is the value attributed to secular knowledge for its own sake.
-The Church immediately recognized the potential threat of the universities to religious teachings and values but tolerated them nonetheless.
-The collateral growth of secular governments claiming independence from the Church was closely tied to the university movement.

-The secular dimension of the university was not at all a rebellion against religion or the religious establishment.
-The primary assertion was the legitimacy of the pursuit of secular knowledge for its own sake(not for the sake of salvation) and the autonomy of that pursuit

-The university thus emerges as a secular social phenomenon in the 12th century, an institution sheltering the study of secular knowledge within a faith-based community and loyal to its religious teachings and values.
-The university must be understood as a response to a social demand for such an institution, not as creating that demand.
-Once created, however, and as an institution dedicated to the text-based study of knowledge which texts were to be studied? Overwhelmingly, the texts came from ancient Greek and Roman writers on mathematics , philosophy, astronomy, medicine, and law.
-Beginning in the 12th century, contemporary thinkers, such as Abelard, were generating important new texts.

-The university assimilated the Platonic-Aristotelian definition of knowledge for all the subject areas studied under the rubric of “philosophy,” including nature."

Let me know when you've finished reading Carrier's blog.

Marg,

I would agree with the outline given above. It agrees quite closely with my understanding of the history of that period. Again, the claim I was trying to make wasn't that the Christian culture of Western Europe put scientific progress above all other considerations but rather that it provided general support for learning and education that laid the foundations for our modern world. Without that support our modern scientific world would not have emerged when and where it did (that's not to say Christianity is somehow essential for science, the ancient Greeks did fine without it, and perhaps another non-Western society would have eventually went through a scientific revolution if the West had not.) The creation of the university system with its standardization, international scope, and committment to reason was central to that. There were conflicts between Christianity/the church and the growing independence of secular of course, that cannot be denied and to a certain extent was healthy in that it forced scholars to question the authority of ancient philosophers like Aristotle. But to me the caricature that is sometimes put forward of Christianity fighthing tooth and nail against every advance in human knowledge and being committed to blind faith over reason is historically inaccurate.

I think the expectations that one brings to the study of the history influences how we interpret that history. To quote again from Lindberg on the early Christian church:

"If we compare the early church with a modern research university or the National Science Foundation, the church will prove to have failed abysmally as a supporter of science and natural philosophy. But such a comparison is obviously unfair. If instead we compare the support given to the study of nature by the early church with the support offered available from any other contemporary social institution, it will become apparent that the church was the major patron of scientific learning. Its patronage may have been limited and selective, but limited and selective is a far cry from opposition."

[_Phillip]

To me any study of the relationship between Christianity and science has to deal with three broad historical facts. The first one confronts Christian apologists with potential difficulties, the second and third need to be addressed by those determined to view Christianity in a wholly negative light. What one chooses to emphazise or downplay in that history obviously will color the narrative with a particular bias. That's why I tend to be suspicious of any overly simplistic narrative.

1) The centuries immediately following the acheivement of dominance by Christianity in Western Europe coincided with a signficant decline in secular learning and with a general degradation in the culture pf classical antiquity (say from 400AD-1000AD)

2) During the latter Middle Ages (1000AD-1500AD) a robust and active intellectual culture was created in Western Europe and institutionalized in its new universities. This culture was at least partially supported and encouraged by the Christian church, although there were occasional tensions.

3) Modern science, with its methods, controls, and committment to combine theory with empirical observation, emerged fully only in the context of a Christian culture primarily under the hands of Christian believers.

I promise I'll get to that blog one of these days!

[_marg]

Thanks Phillip,

I'll wait until late this week (Wed/Thurs) to respond to you, perhaps that will give you time to read/skim Carrier's blog.

[_Phillip]

Here are some of my thoughts on Carrier’s blog, I’ll post them as I have time:

1) “However, in all this the one claim that cannot be sustained is that Christianity "encouraged" science. Had that been the case, then there would not have been almost a thousand years (from roughly 300 to 1250 AD) of absolutely zero significant advances in science (excepting a very few and relatively minor contributions by Hindus and Muslims), in contrast with the previous thousand years (from roughly 400 BC to 300 AD), which witnessed incredible advances in the sciences in continuous succession every century, culminating in theorists whose ideas and findings came tantalizingly close to the scientific revolution in the 2nd century AD (namely, but not only, Galen and Ptolemy). You can't propose a cause that failed to have an effect despite being constantly in place for a thousand years, especially when in its absence science had made far more progress. Science picked up again in the 1200's precisely where the ancients had left off, by rediscovering their findings, methods, and epistemic values and continuing the process they had begun.”

I think this is where a main disagreement with him is. One can quibble about the specific dates used, for example 400AD would be more appropriate than 300AD since Christianity was made legal by Constantine in the early 4th century but only became the state religion at the end of the 4th century under Theodosius, or with the arbitrary 1250AD date. More importantly to me is the assertion that from the period from 400BC to 300AD witnessed continuous advances in scientific knowledge. As I argued in an earlier post, the process of original substantive progress was already slowing down in the Roman era and certainly by 300AD. Before the rise to power of Christianity, Greek science was already showing signs of losing its creative force, both for economic and cultural reasons. Claiming that Galen and Ptolemy were forerunners of an ancient scientific revolution is particularly ironic since it was precisely the repudiation of their theories that gave rise to modern progress in medicine and astronomy. The scientific revolution of the early modern period was not a return to Hellenistic science, but was essentially a rejection of much of that science. The heliocentric model of Copernicus wasn’t directed towards the Church, it was directed against Ptolemy. Galileo’s physics was not an extension of ancient Aristotelian physics but a wholesale repudiation of that physics. It was exactly the deadweight of Greek thinkers like Ptolemy and Galen that needed to be thrown off.

I also think that Carrier is taking advantage of the historical fact that the rise of Christianity coincided with the decline of classical Mediterranean civilization. The collapse of the Roman Empire in the West was not caused by Christianity. It was the result of barbarian pressures, falling population, and economic decay. Under those circumstances support for learning would diminish as well, irrespective of religious sensibilities. The fact that the decline in learning was less in the Eastern Empire where there was also less disruptions and that learning picked up when the situation eventually stabilized in the West, to me supports the idea that Christianity was not the culprit. The Church with its institutions provided continuity through a chaotic and volatile period in the Western history. Without that Church there arguably would have been even more knowledge lost, not less.

[_Phillip]

2) “In effect, using a whole arsenal of tactics, early (and especially early medieval) Christianity bitch-slapped all thinking that could have any tendency to support and inspire an embrace and pursuit of scientific values.”

Not the most scholarly language. I’m sure Carrier provides selected quotations from early Christian thinkers to support his claims while ignoring all the comments made by those thinkers in support of philosophy and the acquisition of knowledge. Many of the most prominent of the so called ‘Early Church Fathers’ were trained in the best of Greek philosophy and used that knowledge in the defense and development of the Christian faith. The Greek intellectual heritage was their heritage too. And the pursuit of philosophy actually led some of them, like Justin and Augustine, into the Christian faith.

At the same time, Christians of course did not believe that scientific values (whatever they are) were the highest good and the most important thing in our human existence. I myself wouldn’t want to live in a society that put the pursuit of scientific knowledge above all other considerations. Like Plato and other pagan philosophers, Christian thinkers believed that the pursuit of the Good (which they identified with the Christian God) was the greatest of human endeavors, not the mere accumulation of facts. Natural philosophy was part of that pursuit, a ‘handmaiden’ to it as they say, but not the whole thing. And this really was not that different from the attitude of many pagan intellectuals as well. Science was a means to an end, not the end itself. And there didn’t exist in pagan antiquity some broad consensus on the importance of empirical science, along with its technological applications. To the contrary most of the emphasis tended to be on ethics, metaphysical speculation, etc. with empirical science only receiving sporadic and limited support.

[_Phillip]

3) “It has also been noted that "sure there have been conflicts, but many (if not most) of the great scientists of history have also been religious," like Newton and Galileo. Indeed. Most of the greatest scientists in antiquity were also religious. Galen and Ptolemy were pagans, even creationists. All that proves is that people can manipulate their religions to be compatible with a scientific mindset--often by compartmentalizing”

I glad he recognizes that ancient Greek philosophers were not typically atheists but religious in their own way, just like their Christian counterpoints. And what he glosses over here is how the fundamental Christian belief in a rational Creator God gave scientists like Galileo and Newton confidence that there was actually a rational order out there in the world to discover. Their discovery of the laws of nature confirmed in their minds the existence of a Lawgiver. Christianity from its beginning, by appropriating to itself the Greek idea of the logos, was committed to the rationality of the created cosmos. Specific beliefs could conflict with science, like geocentrism or the age of the earth, but at a more basic level the theistic worldview of Christianity was entirely compatible with the scientific worldview of an ordered lawful universe (miracles being exceptions rather than the rule).

[_Phillip]

4) “Yet for all that, what I am asserting here is not that Christianity alone is responsible for the Dark Ages. I find Christianity to be a symptom, not a cause, of the fall of the Roman Empire and the ideals it founded or fought over (see my discussion The Rise of World Christianity). What I am saying, however, is that Christianity didn't do any good. It neither corrected what had gone wrong nor reintroduced any striving for the dreams and aspirations of earlier Greek and Roman idealists, but to the contrary, Christianity embraced a partial and sometimes full retreat from them. Hence Christianity did not kill science. But it made no effort to rescue and revive its ideals, and instead let them drown, with little sign of regret, and in some cases even to praises of its demise. Thus, Christianity was bad for science. It put a stop to scientific progress for a thousand years, and even after that it made science's recovery difficult, painful, and slow.

I am also not saying Christianity "necessarily and uniformly" stomps out science, only that we cannot claim Christianity "encouraged" science during its first thousand years, even if some significant Christian factions did later or now do.”


I think Carrier is being fair here and recognizing the complexities of the history. Kudos for that.

[_Phillip]

5) “religion, whether Neoplatonic or Christian or Spaghettimonsterish, is bad for science and always will be, so long as it has any power to undermine or impede freethought, and insofar as it will (and it will) always generate antiscientific enclaves whom we will forever have to battle just to maintain the status of scientific knowledge and values. This is how it was. This is how it is. And until religion is gone, this is how it will always be.”

Well, what can I say? I disagree of course, if by religion we mean anything that presupposes that the cosmos has meaning and purpose. I’m not sure why that mindset is less conducive to trying to understand the workings of the universe than is the mindset that at the end of the day there is ultimately no reason for anything, that it is all meaningless contingency. Maybe religion sometimes create obstacles for science, but historically religion has also provided motivation for doing science since for some believers the 'mind of God' is revealed in nature.