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

[_Phillip]

Now I'm getting a little burned out on the subject ...

[_Tarski]

if by religion we mean anything that presupposes that the cosmos has meaning and purpose.

This isn't a reasonable definition of religion. For one thing, almost no one denies that there exists meaning in the cosmos. The activities of human beings are meaningful in context more or less by definition.
The question of how "meaning" is to be understood ontologically and whether or not there are contexts of meaning larger than that of human activity are philosophical questions that can exist and be addressed in various ways without necessarily consituting anything like what we normally mean by religion.


Consider a person who is not satisfied by the finite meaning that we all know exists in a human context. Suppose such a person keeps asking for a higher meaning. "What is it all for?" they ask.
No answer in terms of personal profit, pleasure, family, public good, human solidarity, advancement of knowledge, human pleasure or joy seems to be enough for such a person.

Now suppose such a person discovers Mormonism and in it finds the higher context of meaning they were seeking. Cannot the person eventually just draw a big mental circle around the whole plan of salvation and the endless procreation of spirits and suddenly wonder "what is it all for"?
Can't we jump frame on any context and render it meaningless?

[_Phillip]

if by religion we mean anything that presupposes that the cosmos has meaning and purpose.

This isn't a reasonable definition of religion. For one thing, almost no one denies that there exists meaning in the cosmos. The activities of human beings are meaningful in context more or less by definition.
The question of how "meaning" is to be understood ontologically and whether or not there are contexts of meaning larger than that of human activity are philosophical questions that can exist and be addressed in various ways without necessarily consituting anything like what we normally mean by religion.


Consider a person who is not satisfied by the finite meaning that we all know exists in a human context. Suppose such a person keeps asking for a higher meaning. "What is it all for?" they ask.
No answer in terms of personal profit, pleasure, family, public good, human solidarity, advancement of knowledge, human pleasure or joy seems to be enough for such a person.

Now suppose such a person discovers Mormonism and in it finds the higher context of meaning they were seeking. Cannot the person eventually just draw a big mental circle around the whole plan of salvation and the endless procreation of spirits and suddenly wonder "what is it all for"?
Can't we jump frame on any context and render it meaningless?

That's fair. I should have said meaning independent of human beings (which meaning exists for the theist but perhaps not (?) for the atheist). And to me, the religious impulse is essentially the need to find meaning in things.

Your last question is a good one that I need to think more about. Off the top of my head I would say that it again comes down to what provides the meaning to things. Is it us as individual sentient beings or does the meaning come from the same source that causes things to exist in the first place? I tend to see an important difference between those two, perhaps others don't.

[_Some Schmo]

That's fair. I should have said meaning independent of human beings (which meaning exists for the theist but perhaps not (?) for the atheist). And to me, the religious impulse is essentially the need to find meaning in things.

I like to find meaning in things (even though I'm a godless heathen), but I recognize some things likely have no meaning.

I suspect that the human desire for meaning in everything is (at least partly) a side effect of our evolved ability to think symbolically. What is language, for instance, if not a way to convey meaning?

Your last question is a good one that I need to think more about. Off the top of my head I would say that it again comes down to what provides the meaning to things. Is it us as individual sentient beings or does the meaning come from the same source that causes things to exist in the first place? I tend to see an important difference between those two, perhaps others don't.

My life is meaningful to me and my family, as is theirs. I don't find myself needing any more meaning than that.

[_Phillip]

I like to find meaning in things (even though I'm a godless heathen), but I recognize some things likely have no meaning.

I suspect that the human desire for meaning in everything is (at least partly) a side effect of our evolved ability to think symbolically. What is language, for instance, if not a way to convey meaning?

Even as a credulous believer I'm ok with some things having no inherent meaning. In fact, I'm hoping that evil in all its forms is essentially meaningless.

I would agree with the thinking symbolically thing. Of course as an unthinking theist I see meaning even in that ability.

[_Phillip]

My life is meaningful to me and my family, as is theirs. I don't find myself needing any more meaning than that.

More power to you. Far be it from me to discourage anyone from seeking meaning in their life.

I just wish I could convince my wife to find that meaning outside of the LDS church. if only I could get her to spend some quality time on Mormon Discussions!

[_marg]

Hi Phillip,


Besides Richard Carrier’s blog and article in a book, I have been reviewing 2 courses from The Teaching Company..to address this issue of Christianity’s impact on modern science. The courses are The High Middle Ages, by Prof. Philip Daileader and the other is Great Scientific Ideas That Changed the World by Prof. Steven L. Goldman. Everything I’ve read and listened to so far by all the above are consistent with one another.

You had written in one of your first posts to me that “My understanding of that history is that in the high Middle Ages the Catholic Church supported the creation of a European wide University system.”

In my opinion essentially the church tolerated what was taught in universities, that when they objected their objections were ignored... is a more accurate reflection…of what went on.

I’m going to quote the lecture I transcribed today, in which I only left out a few small portions. It addresses what scholasticism was and why it likely developed and replaced monasticism. According this lecture by Prof. Daileader and the other lecture by Prof Goldman (which I'll get to another day).. scholasticism and then universities was not the church’s doing or instigation. I elected to not abbreviate the lecture or put in my own words. I don’t expect you to respond to this post. I’m only laying out the information I’ve gathered to set the stage to explain why universities came into being and their relationship to the Catholic church. Tomorrow I’ll add another post along the same lines..before getting into eventually the issue of whether or not the church can be credited with being a cause in some way for modern science to have evolved.

The High Middle Ages

By: Prof. Philip Dail leader

Chapter 14
The Origins of Scholasticism

“Before there was scholastic learning in high medieval Europe there was monastic learning which took place in Europe's monasteries those isolated religious communities located deep in the countryside. Monastic education unlike scholastic education was essentially passive. It was meant to be essentially passive. Just as monks were forbidden to question the authority of their abbots so too they were not supposed to question the texts that they studied which tend to be either the Bible or the church father figures such as St. Augustine and their writings.

The rule of St. Benedict required monks to sit passively and listen during meal times, as material was read to them. And this procedure of having one individual get up and read a text to the silent monks sitting around the table is known in Latin as the Lexio. If a monk did not understand what was being read or had some question about what was being read that was too bad, the monk is not supposed to ask questions of the person who is performing the Lexio within the monastery. You are not supposed to question the text because well speaking would interfere with monastic silence and to question the text is to express one's own will. One of the goals of the rule of St. Benedict which governs the lives of the Benedictine monks is to obliterate the individual will as much as possible.”

snip for brevity >>>

“These monastic methods of studying and writing do not disappear during the high Middle Ages. They are practiced from beginning to end, but during the high Middle Ages they are joined by other techniques and attitudes towards the texts which gradually begin to supplant their monastic predecessors and attract the most famous minds of the day. During the late 11th and the early 12th century new scholastic methods of teaching and writing emerged and flourished. They emerged among urban teachers in Europe and this point is crucial, it is within the school rooms located within the reviving towns of medieval Europe that scholasticism is invented where it catches hold. This is no coincidence. Scholasticism reflected its urban milieu, and it also answered to the needs of urban life in a way that monasticism and monastic teaching simply couldn't. Towns were places where the ability to speak, to haggle, to argue was crucial to success in a way that was not the case in the countryside. This was the result of the commercial revolution and the increasing prominence of trade and commerce in medieval life.

The hallmark of scholasticism is the fact that it is based on argument. And that it is an argumentative rather than a meditative or associative technique. Scholastic authors love conflict. They actively search out for conflict which is something that a monastic scholar was desperate to try and avoid. The way that a Scholastic teacher in a late 11th century town or a 12th century town would proceed is as follows. You would consult those texts that were considered to be the most important religious and intellectual authorities. You would start with the Bible, but you would not limit yourself to the Bible. You would also consult the work of church fathers such as Augustine. You would consult the rulings of church councils, papal letters, maybe the work of pagan philosophers as well. You would go through these works looking for words that reminded you of the words that you would read, you went through these works looking for points of disagreement. You looked for issues and questions on which the Bible and church fathers and the writings of pagan philosophers simply disagreed or at least seemed to disagree. Once you had identified which sources came down on which side of an issue you would line them up pro and con, those who said yes it is permissible to lie sometimes against those that said no it is not permissible to lie ever. And you would juxtapose these seemingly contradictory passages from different parts of the Bible from different church councils lining them up one against the other. Once you have identified the pro and con texts you would then in a dialectical process smash the 2 sides together and try and resolve the apparent contradiction, the apparent discrepancy within biblical passages and church councils.

As for how one is supposed to resolve discrepancies within these revered texts well scholastics had 2 weapons in their arsenal. First philological analysis. Scholastics loved to split hairs over words, the meanings of words. And to show that there was in fact no contradiction here that the Bible agreed with the church councils, agreed with pagan philosophers, you would argue that well if you understood the sense in which a word was being used in each of these texts you'd realize that the discrepancy doesn't exist. They are simply using words in different ways. In addition to painstaking philological analysis scholastic authors also relied on purely logical analysis. They relied very heavily on the rules of formal logic to demonstrate that contradictions do not exist that they are simply in the eye of the beholder. The scholastic method of study based on the juxtaposition of texts that seem to be contradictory and then the resolution of the contradiction through philological and logical analysis could be found both in Scholastic writings and in a scholastic classroom.

In terms of their writings the earliest scholastics tended to work in the same genre as monks did. They often wrote Bible commentaries. But the monastic genres were too constricting for Scholastic authors and so during the course of the 12th and 13th centuries they developed entirely new literary and philosophical genres that were more appropriate to the scholastic method. One of the genres that emerges in the 12th century something known as the “questiones” .."questions" in English. Rather than confining themselves to commenting on a specific text scholastic philosophers and theologians began to organize their works around problems and issues such as should one believe in God for example or penance or the sacraments and would simply list all the questions that one might have about a specific topic. Then they would go search the texts for the opinions pro and con and attempt to resolve these apparent contradictions.

The genre of "questiones" gave scholastics much more freedom with which to work because they were not held to one text only. However there was a problem with "questiones". They tended to be somewhat scattershot. Different authors would come up with different questions to try and answer. So during the 13th century one sees the emergence of yet another new philosophical and theological genre. One which is always associated with scholastics. This genre is a genre of the summa. A summa is an attempt to give systematic exposition to the Christian faith. To take all the questions that one could ever possibly ask about articles of the Faith and then to answer these questions after you have organized them in some logical fashion, using the scholastic method. The 1st summa is written early in the 13th century but the most famous summa is produced rather later. That would be the summa theologiae of Thomas Aquinas who dies in 1274. More about him in our next lecture.

In the classroom, scholasticism took 2 forms. Since scholastic teachers had 2 rather distinct techniques for teaching their students. The 1st which is usually used in the morning in the Scholastic classroom was simply the old monastic Lectio. In the morning a Scholastic teacher would get up with a copy of a text say Aristotle’s physics or the Gospel of Matthew. The students would all have copies of the text as well. And the teacher known as Magister or master would get up and read through the text line by line and the students would read along as well. When the teacher came to a difficult word or phrase the teacher would try and explain what the word meant. But the scholastic Lexio was really not all that different from the monastic lexio. In the afternoon however things are rather different in the Scholastic classroom because in the afternoon it was time for the "disputatio" in Latin, or "disputation" in English. And the disputation was a very un-monastic sort of teaching. There were 2 different kinds of disputations that a Scholastic teacher might conduct. One was called the ordinary disputation and the other was called the quadlibetal (whatever)disputation.

In an ordinary disputation the question to be disputed was announced beforehand and the teacher was given some time to prepare for the exercise. But the quadlibetal or whatever disputation was more of a daredevil event in which a teacher would not announce the question ahead of time and would allow listeners to propose any question they wanted which the teacher would then attempt to wrestle with. Whether or not the question had been announced ahead of time or whether the teacher was simply going to entertain the questions from the audience any scholastic disputation, an issue would be raised such as 'is it permissible to lie?' and the teacher would stake out a position. This was known as the response or the "responsio". Someone would pose a question and the teacher would say "it is permissible to lie" and the teacher would then attempt to cite texts, authorities, passages from the Bible off the top of his head or passages from the church fathers that would support this position. The response was merely the beginning of the disputation though because then the students, the audience members, other teachers who just wandered in would attempt to rebut you. They would attempt to point to passages that gave the opposite answer and that perhaps you had never thought of, they would attempt to construct logical arguments that show that your own thinking was just hopelessly muddled. And you would answer as best you could. There was a tremendous amount of give and take and these disputations could sometimes turn into rowdy affairs. As the disputations progresses and more and more people attempt to knock you down while you try and stayed your ground, some poor student is given the thankless job of writing all of this down, taking copious notes.

That evening the professor has to take all this stuff home and work on it all night, reading the transcript of what has been said joining the disputation. And then the next day shows up in class and attempts to give a final answer to all of the objections that have been raised to your initial position. The verbal presentation of your final stand of the arguments that you had time to work out the night before is known as the determination in English or the determinatio.

It must be emphasized that scholasticism is a technique, it's a method. It is not a set of beliefs or set of ideas or doctrines. There's no such thing as a scholastic theory of the soul for example. Scholastic's disagreed among themselves often quite vehemently on specific points, but what unites all scholastics from Peter Abelard to Thomas Aquinas is the fact they have a common methodology, a common way of writing and studying. It should also be emphasized that scholasticism was not entirely different from monasticism. Even though contemporaries were struck by the novelty of the scholastic method in writing and teaching nonetheless with the benefit of hindsight we can identify certain areas in which the two shared a lot in common. Firstly scholastic authors like monastic authors agreed that all learning began with the study of ancient texts. How they write about these texts is different and often they value different texts differently but nonetheless if you wanted to answer questions a scholastic’s first instincts like a monk's 1st instincts was to go and read a very very old book that was written a long time ago.

The notion that observation of the natural world might be a better guide to reality than Aristotle is simply alien to the scholastic methods of thinking. Scholastic authors are not engaged in what we would call free inquiry today either. There is a monk by the name of Anselm of Bec (d. 1109), even though he's a monk he's actually sort of a transitional figure who points the way towards scholasticism. And Anselm of Bec defined the Scholastic mission as “faith seeking understanding”. This is a phrase that all scholastics would have accepted. One does not study and understand so that one might be led to faith no for scholastics it was the opposite. 1st one must believe in order that one can understand. Monastic authors and scholastic authors also shared another intellectual assumption. They assumed that the great thinkers of the past were superior to the thinkers of the present. Few people would believe that today. Nonetheless Scholastic authors also knew by using their powers of reasoning by using logical analysis to try and reconcile discrepancies within ancient texts they were advancing knowledge. One scholastic described himself and his fellow scholastics with a rather remarkable image. He describes them as dwarves sitting on the shoulders of giants. This image nicely encapsulates how scholastics thought about themselves. The dwarves are the scholastics, the Giants are the intellectual authorities of the past, writers of the Bible, pagan philosophers. Compared to the thinkers of the past these scholastics are very small indeed. That depending on the size of the dwarf thanks to the fact that you were resting on theirs shoulders you're able to build upon their work. You can actually see a little bit farther than those giants could. So scholastics did accept the notion that maybe they did know things that had escaped the authors of the text that they otherwise revered.

(Skipped discussion on scholastic, Peter Abelhard. For brevity used portion of notes instead)

From notes: “Bernard Clairvaus, who despised scholasticism, became one of Abelard’s staunchest enemies. Twice, Church councils condemned Abelard for heresy, one in 1121 and again in 1140.”

Back to lecture: He (Abelard) is forced to take back what he is written on the holy Trinity and and indeed to burn the books that he had written on the subject. It is quite remarkable that despite Abelard’s behavior and the scandal he causes, scholasticism goes strong despite all this. That by the time we get to the end of the high Middle Ages scholasticism has truly displaced monasticism as the main area of intellectual inquiry. And all the greatest scholars of the high Middle Ages after Abelard will be scholastics.

In conclusion, the major reason for the rise of scholasticism would appear to be the revival of urban life. Scholasticism based on arguing, haggling both reflected an answer to the needs of urban society. While it's difficult to appreciate today the excitement that scholasticism brought to individuals. The notion that one could use one's powers of analysis to reconcile contradictions could lead to a sense of liberation and also to controversy. And we will examine the great controversies surrounding scholasticism in the life of Thomas Aquinas in the next lecture.

[_marg]

Cont’d..with quotes from the lecture and notes given by course.

Phillip ..I’ll get into the two lectures from the 2 prof’s by teaching co. ..on First universities in high middle ages…in my next post. After that I will address various points you have brought up.


The High Middle Ages

By: Prof. Philip Daileader,
Lecture 15

Aquinas and the problem of Aristotle

- On the one hand the church tended to support scholasticism and scholastic education.

It did so because it saw in scholasticism yet another weapon in the fight against heresy. Scholasticism would sharpen the minds of students, train them in debate and the cut and thrust of intellectual exchange.

- But in general while ecclesiastical authorities support scholasticism none the less there was also a certain ambivalence about Scholastic method and some members of the church especially monks and abbots could be downright hostile towards scholasticism. The nature of scholasticism and the scholastic method left scholastics vulnerable to a number of serious accusations which were leveled by men as influential and important as Bernard of Clairvaux, the engine driving the Cistercian reform movement. During his lifetime Bernard would be one of its fiercest opponents of scholasticism.

- The claim that scholastics trusted too much in themselves, that they thought too highly of themselves and did not think highly enough of the Bible and the Church fathers was a very serious accusation. Just as serious though was the charge that scholastics relied much to heavily on non-Christian intellectual authorities. And indeed regarded certain non-Christian intellectual authorities as superior to Christian ones.

– By the time you get to the year 1000 I think that the attitude of European intellectuals, monks by this point, could be characterized as an attitude of wary utilitarianism. Monks are still willing to read pagan authors, but not because they see any inherent value in classical scholarship rather they are willing to read pagan authors because they can be useful. Monks wanted to keep their Latin skills up because they are copying texts, because they're trying to read the Bible in Latin, because of their chanting. And in order to keep their Latin skills very sharp it seemed useful to study those who are masters of Latin language. On the other hand monks were also deeply suspicious of these texts, did not want anyone to read too much of pagan authors. And they were always fearful of these texts to a certain extent because they might lead the unwary reader away from Christianity.

One ancient author for whom monks had very little use was Aristotle. Aristotle's dry and systematic approach to whatever subject he happened to be writing about did not appeal to monastic sensibilities. Monks preferred authors who wrote in a more flowery effusive style, much more like monastic writings. Very few of Aristotle's works have been translated into Latin before 1150 in part because there was virtually no demand for Aristotle up to that point.

–About the only Aristotelian works that have been translated into Latin were works that dealt with basic logic. The same qualities that made Aristotle unappealing to monks and monastic authors made Aristotle very appealing to scholastics. They appreciated his dry systematic approach. They appreciated the fact that he was the foremost ancient authority on logic, which they employed as much as possible. Due to the increase of Aristotle's writings that occurs with the rise of scholasticism between about 1150 and 1200 in the space of just 2 generations almost the entire body of Aristotle's other writings is translated into Latin. And throughout the 13th century new and improved translations of Aristotle's writings are continually produced. Scholastics frequently read Aristotle, cited Aristotle and admired Aristotle. And this alone would have been enough to invite suspicion on the part of more conservative theologians.

–To make matters even worse for scholastics, they didn't just rely on an ancient Greek pagan. In order to understand the often difficult thoughts of Aristotle they also relied on the works of the Muslim philosopher whom they called Averroes. Many of the translations of Aristotle's works that are made between 1150 and 1200 take place in Spain. They take place in Spain because Spain was divided between various Christian kingdoms in the North and Islamic south.

-Because of the strong Islamic presence in Spain copies of Aristotle's works were circulating there.

–Medieval scholastics did not mindlessly worship Aristotle nor did they mindlessly accept everything that Averroes said. Medieval scholastics often wrote works attacking this or that point by Averroes and sometimes would disagree with Aristotle as well. Nonetheless scholastics devoured Averroes’s commentaries and they admired Averroes.

–To rely on a Muslim to help you to understand the pagan’s work, well that was double jeopardy. You are simply compounding your intellectual shortcomings. To be fair to the critics they were not entirely mistaken when they claimed that this heavy reliance on Aristotle and on Averroes was going to pose certain problems. Because there were certain points on which Aristotle and or Averroes flatly contradicted Christianity. And no amount of scholastic hairsplitting or logical analysis was going to square this particular circle.

(skip Prof’s explanation on how Aristotle’s views differs to Christianity’s)

- Because of these contradictions, because of the fear that teaching Aristotle, studying Aristotle is going to lead people into beliefs that are contradictory to Christianity. During the course of the 13th century popes and sometimes local bishops attempt to repress the teaching of Aristotle at the main theological center of Europe, at Paris. However during the course of the 13th century these prohibitions became less sweeping and they rarely had any actual impact on what was being taught in Paris. The 1st prohibition against the teaching of Aristotle was issued by Pope in 1210. In that year the Pope forbade the teaching of some of Aristotle's books at the University of Paris. He wanted these texts expunged entirely from the curriculum. The response to this was virtually nonexistent, the books are still taught in Paris. The inability of popes and church officials to squelch the study of Aristotle is apparent in the shrinking scope of subsequent prohibitions. In 1231, another pope ordered that the books banned in 1210 should not be taught in Paris until passages that contradicted Christian belief were removed from those books, at which point they could be taught.

–The prohibition of 1231 was just as ineffective as the prohibition of 1210. Those teaching in Paris simply disregarded the fact, there was no attempt to actually expunge Aristotle's writings. And given the fact that the prohibition of entire books was such an abysmal failure the church limited itself subsequently to simply picking specific passages out of Aristotle's writings and condemning them.

–Specific passages are condemned in 1241 and again in 1270.

–The biggest most spectacular condemnation came in 1277, the Bishop of Paris condemned 219 articles taken from Aristotle,Averroes, and the writings of scholastics who relied on Aristotle, including a few from Thomas Aquinas.

–Some teachers did fall victim to these attempts at repression, the most famous of these is Siger of Brabant (d 1284). Critics accused him of teaching and again known as that one thing, such as the eternality of the world, may be true according to reason, while another thing, the creation of the world had to be excepted is true according to faith. The condemnation of 1277 forced Siger of Brabant out of the University of Paris. This condemnation however, was limited to specific articles, revealing the extent to which the attempts to stamp out the teaching of Aristotle failed.

(for brevity skip discussion on Thomas Aquinas.)

[Taken from notes]

Controversy swirled around scholasticism and high medieval Europe.

–By relying heavily on pagan philosophers such as Aristotle, and Muslim philosophers such as Averroes, scholastics opened themselves to the accusation that they preferred non-Christian authorities to Christian ones.

–By relying on their own logical analysis to resolve the apparent discrepancies among revered religious texts, scholastics open themselves to the charge that they esteemed themselves more highly then they esteemed the church fathers.

–The result was condemnation and attempts to suppress the teaching of Aristotle.

–Despite this hostility, such scholastics as Thomas Aquinas created monumental works that is still widely read today and Aquinas himself was credited with sainthood

[_marg]

cont'd quoting

Lecture 16

The First Universities
by Prof. Daileader

Lecture 16

(Quotes and quoting of notes from lecture)

- Before about 1200 all levels of education within medieval Europe from the lowest to the highest rather chaotic in terms of their organization. Out in the countryside you could have found monastic schools. And these might be internal or external schools. Internal schools operated physically within the monastery and they educated those who were going to become monks. Sometimes though monasteries also operated external schools for the children of those who happened to live in the vicinity of a monastery.

–In the towns of high medieval Europe you could find various levels of education. At the lowest level they were primary schools which taught the rudiments of reading and writing to young boys and sometimes to young girls as well. Above the primary schools there were grammar schools which gave you advanced training in languages and at the highest levels there was a bewildering assortment of different kinds of schools. Many of the schools would not be considered schools today because they consisted simply of one teacher.

–There were also cathedral schools within the towns of medieval Europe. Each bishop was supposed to operate the school for the benefit of those who lived in the town and in many cases bishops did operate these cathedral schools. The chaos of having many teachers independently operating their own schools as well as various cathedral schools throughout Europe was not advantageous to students, to those who taught, and not advantageous to religious authorities. Students were put at a disadvantage by the situation, because they were fragmented among different schools. And this left them in a vulnerable position vis-à-vis the towns in which they lived. The language of classroom instruction is Latin. And so students often traveled to foreign countries in order to study, especially northern France and Italy. If you knew Latin you could understand classroom exercises, the lectures and disputations just fine. However but was not very useful when it came to everyday life, to finding a room to rent to buying a meal for yourself to buying textbooks. And foreign students were often gouged mercilessly by the townspeople who took advantage of their inability to speak the local language. The fragmentation of higher education was also bad for teachers. Teachers too are often foreigners. The language you need to know in order to teach is Latin and so it is not unusual to find Germans or Spaniards or Italians in France teaching and operating their own schools. These foreign teachers too were just as disadvantaged too when it came to everyday life due to their inability to speak the local language. The teachers were also disadvantaged due to the fact that competition among teachers was fierce as long as each teacher had his own school. Peter Abelard and other teachers who were reputedly very good liked to open up schools as close to their rivals as possible in order to lure students out of other classrooms and into their own. The result was a dog eat dog situation.

–Ecclesiastical authorities, bishops, popes, these too did not like the fact that there were numerous small schools located within the towns of high medieval Europe because it made supervision very difficult. If all the teachers belong to a single institution it would be easy to check up on what it was they were teaching. But as long as the schools and teachers were scattered was very hard to see whether someone was actually teaching heretical doctrines within his classroom. The medieval university solved most of these problems.

–The 1st 2 universities are established around the year 1200. One is established in Paris and the other is established in the Italian city, Bologna. By about 1300 roughly 20 universities have been created in Europe. And they could be found in Spain France in England and especially in Italy. These medieval universities were very unlike modern universities in that there is no campus. There are no buildings that belong to the University. The university is not a physical space. It is simply a Corporation of individuals who banded together and it is more of an abstract concept than the modern university. Classes are held wherever you can find room. Teachers rent classroom space in churches, in apartment buildings sometimes in brothel too although that rarely worked out very well, students didn't always make it to class. And so that practice had to be abandoned rather early.

-Ecclesiastical authorities like universities they liked the notion of teachers all belonging to one institution because it facilitated the supervision of teaching.

–Teachers liked the universities because it limited competition for students. All the potential students in the town simply enrolled in the local university. All teachers work for one institution.

–Students liked the University because it gave them greater bargaining power vis-à-vis the towns in which they lived. And it did the same for teachers. And if you had to identify one factor that was primarily responsible for the creation of universities it would be the need for teachers and students to have greater bargaining power. If students and teachers were dissatisfied with any aspect of life in a town, if they felt that the rents were too high, that the food was too expensive, they would threaten to go on strike and if the mere threat of a strike did not succeed then they actually went on strike. When a medieval University went on strike which was not an infrequent occurrence to teachers and students all up and left town. Sometimes for years on end. They were able to do this because they owned no buildings, they have no institutional property with in the town, they simply had to pack their suitcases and go to a neighboring town. Leaving town was effective because it deprived the town all the revenue that students and teachers brought into the town. And indeed on several occasions in the 13th century, universities such as Paris were able to bring towns to their knees simply by moving to different towns and holding out for several years at a time. Although all universities are founded for more or less the same reasons nonetheless 2 different types of universities emerge in the high Middle Ages. And Paris and Bologna were rather different institutions in many respects. They were different in terms of their academic specialties that were different in terms of their structures. Paris was best known for theology. Bologna was best known for its law faculty especially at civil law and secular law courses. And the differences in structure often reflected these differences in academic specialization. The University of Paris was run by the teachers, whereas the University of Bologna was found by the students not by the faculty. In all medieval universities followed one of these 2 models. The reason for the difference structures was the manner in which teachers were paid. Theoretically no teacher was supposed to charge money for teaching. All teaching should be done for free. Teaching should be done for free because knowledge was God's gift to humanity, and for a human being to charge money for that which was actually God's was presumptuous. The teacher should rely solely on gifts freely given by students out of gratitude for the fact that you had shared God's knowledge with them. In practice this was a highly unsatisfactory system of remunerating teachers who had to show up in class and pray that someone gave them an apple so that you could eat during that day. In different sorts of arrangements have to be reached whereby teachers could feed themselves.

-In Paris because it is so strong in theology, and the theology faculty really dominates the University, most teachers are supported by the church. They are given salaries called benefices that they are able to live off. Because the teachers in Paris for the most part do not have to rely on student gifts but rather paid by the church, they are free of student control and they are able to run the University as they see fit. In Bologna with its strength in the law faculty, and especially in secular law and civil law teachers have to rely on student fees directly for their livelihood and since students are paying their salaries students get to run the University. Indeed modern teachers can only shudder with horror when they see the consequences for the poor faculty members at the University of Bologna. If you had been a master teacher teaching at the University of Bologna and he wanted to leave town for any reason going for the weekend you have to post a bond with the students guaranteeing that you were going to return to the University of Bologna and actually teaches classes. Teachers were fined for all sorts of infractions by the student body (I do hope they don't see this tape). If you fail to attract 5 students to your class on any given day you the teacher were marked as absent because you had failed to get a quorum and you will find for having been absent even though you were physically present. If you fail to keep pace with the syllabus or fell behind on your lecturing schedule that to was a fine they had pay. And if you are late for class well that's also fine. It could be rather lucrative to be a student at the University of Bologna. And the manner in which the master's salary was negotiated at Bologna also seems rather odd today. At the beginning of the academic semester during the 1st meeting of class semester would choose one student from class, someone who you trusted and that student was given the responsibility for negotiating your fee for that semester with the student body. You then had to exit the room and sit outside anxiously while the student on your behalf talked with the other students about how much you are actually worth. Now given the fact that the student negotiating your fee has to pay whatever fee is negotiated, the results were well not always that lucrative from the Masters point of view. And if you had a choice between an appointment at the University of Paris for the University of Bologna well that was a no-brainer. You wanted to go teach at Paris.

(lecture not finished..will post rest later)