Another factor one has to consider about the Enlightenment was that it coincided with cultural connections between Europe and other (arguably more advanced) cultures. In particular the Chinese (who had already discovered many things we now consider scientific). To argue that the developing notions of science were uniquely due to Christianity is to blot out a massive part of the story.
It’s a truly bizarre argument that it was Christianity rather than the Enlightenment which led to the scientific method. Even more bizarre when we consider how far Enlightenment thinking developed as a reaction to rigid religious thinking.
Today even most philosophers of science dismiss the claim that there exists a powerful, general, scientific method, the discovery of which explains the Scientific Revolution and the success of modern science. Quite the contrary: effective scientific methods are themselves the product of painstaking work at the frontier—scientific results methodized—and are hence typically laden with the technical content of the specialty in question. There is no content-neutral, thereby general and timeless method that magically explains how those results were achieved
Certain groups appear to be allowed to present their information as fact (science is guilty of this). We cannot know for sure what is was really like in the Jurassic or Triassic periods. That doesn’t stop what we know being presented as fact. What is said is not prefaced by phrases like this is what we understand it to be like or the evidence suggests that they are right. We only have a small amount of knowledge that is presented are everything. Other groups don’t have that luxury so sound less authoritative.
I can see what you are getting at but don't quite see it that way.
One could argue that the Papal Magisterium had 'that luxury' and much more besides until comparatively recently.
I don't think scientists and palaeontologists are presenting us with what they consider to be cast-iron and incontrovertible 'facts' about conditions in the Triassic or Jurassic (or any other geological epoch) but presenting what they believe to be the best approximation given the available evidence.
Those presentations may be modified over time as new studies take place and new evidence comes to light.
Even in my lifetime depictions of dinosaurs and other prehistoric creatures have changed as more studies are carried out. Those depictions were very different again back in the 19th century when serious paleontology was in its infancy.
In 50 or 100 years time there might very well be different approaches and understandingsvof the Triassic and Jurassic than those we have now.
You appear to be complaining that contemporary science has some kind of 'privileged' platform. That may very well be the case. But what would you put in its place?
I would have similar to the phrases I used. The evidence suggests this, we can deuce that.
I presume you mean 'deduce'.
But isn't this what contemporary science does already?
I don't recall seeing any presentations of conditions in the Triassic or Jurassic periods that don't implicitly or explicitly state that they are deductions based on available evidence or current understandings based on interpretations of fossil records etc.
I really don't recognise your caricature of contemporary paleontology or geology here.
Also the idea(l)s of what the scientific method should even be were not properly formulated and understood until the twentieth century.
Much of what is know to be science today came from imperfect scientific methods in the 15-17th centuries.
Which is pretty amazing when you think about it. The experimentation was often crude, the results were often not properly presented and so on and yet often the correct answers were forthcoming. Even when there were pervasive wrong explanations, this didn’t mean that scientific progress was completely bogged down with hokum.
At no point have I denied that. In fact, I said the exact opposite. I said that day and night and seasons have be known for millennia. That's literally what I said.
However, that does not equate to people having an overall lived experience of the world being predictable.
To me, part of the explanation for it being this way round is that without modern science or a certain worldview, the world does not seem very consistent at all. Indeed most of us, if the car won't start will try a few more times before calling for recovery. In the hope of applying the same input to a situation and getting a different output.
The idea that the world was not predictable to people who built nilometers seems wrong on the face of it. Or that people who lived prior to the Enlightement had no concept of causality. Your argument seems to be that people living in the pre-modern era never noticed patterns or predictable behavior by the universe, except when they did. As a thesis this is irrefutable, but also fairly pointless.
Now, as with science, history is built on evidence. There is lots of evidence that supports the theory that the Judeo-Christian worldview gave birth to modern science for philosophical reasons. The theory may be wrong, of course but it's a widely held one.
500 years? I don’t think so. Islamic astronomers were already making strides which assumed that the universe was consistent and capable of being understood.
3000 years, maybe true.
A number, chosen fairly randomly. However the Islamic astronomers were drawing on the same monotheistic philosophy - essentially an expectation that the universe should make sense.
One of the reasons I despise terms like "Judeo-Christian worldview" is the way it's nebulous to the point of meaninglessness. For example, Islam is apparently part of the "Judeo-Christian worldview" (except when it isn't).
One of the reasons I despise terms like "Judeo-Christian worldview" is the way it's nebulous to the point of meaninglessness. For example, Islam is apparently part of the "Judeo-Christian worldview" (except when it isn't).
There's also a strange historical particularity about it; for whatever reason this component of the 'worldview' lies dormant for c 1500 years and then gives birth to the "Scientific Revolution".
One of the reasons I despise terms like "Judeo-Christian worldview" is the way it's nebulous to the point of meaninglessness. For example, Islam is apparently part of the "Judeo-Christian worldview" (except when it isn't).
There's also a strange historical particularity about it; for whatever reason this component of the 'worldview' lies dormant for c 1400 years and then gives birth to the "Scientific Revolution".
More like 2400 if the "Judeo" part of "Judeo-Christian worldview" means anything. Which is another reason I despise the term. It's typically used to imply a religious inclusiveness that isn't often adhered to by the term's users.
It’s a truly bizarre argument that it was Christianity rather than the Enlightenment which led to the scientific method. Even more bizarre when we consider how far Enlightenment thinking developed as a reaction to rigid religious thinking.
No, this is actually correct. I'm drawing on my own education in Renaissance English to agree here (rhetoric, primarily, though it meant a hefty dose of history as well).
You would need to go look up the monastic movement, the fall of the Roman empire, how ancient learning was preserved, and so forth and so on. But yes, there's a nice straight line leading right to modern science. The bit where the church got into conflict with it was an aberration.
You would need to go look up the monastic movement, the fall of the Roman empire, how ancient learning was preserved, and so forth and so on. But yes, there's a nice straight line leading right to modern science. The bit where the church got into conflict with it was an aberration.
This is, of course, exactly the opposite of @alienfromzog's theory. According to him paganism is counter-scientific, so ancient (pagan) learning would contribute nothing to the formulation of science.
No, seriously, I doubt you're going to ever tease apart the question of which came first, a belief that the world behaves uniformly, or monotheism (that IS what y'all are arguing about, isn't it?). I suspect things set in a little at a time, so you get different levels of "the world behaves uniformly and with repetition" in different cultures. I mean, it's easy to observe sunrise and sunset, but a helluva lot harder to follow tectonic plates and the phenomena arising from them enough to see that there are patterns... And every culture, and every individual within a culture, would have been differently placed for observing uniformity (or lack thereof).
No, seriously, I doubt you're going to ever tease apart the question of which came first, a belief that the world behaves uniformly, or monotheism (that IS what y'all are arguing about, isn't it?). I suspect things set in a little at a time, so you get different levels of "the world behaves uniformly and with repetition" in different cultures. I mean, it's easy to observe sunrise and sunset, but a helluva lot harder to follow tectonic plates and the phenomena arising from them enough to see that there are patterns... And every culture, and every individual within a culture, would have been differently placed for observing uniformity (or lack thereof).
Not so much uniformly as consistently. @alienfromzog seems to find it incomprehensible that anyone prior to the modern era observed any kind of consistency in the universe. My position is that just about everything about human society (agriculture, building techniques, metallurgy, animal domestication, object permanence, etc. etc. etc.) is based on at least some level of the universe being consistent.
No, seriously, I doubt you're going to ever tease apart the question of which came first, a belief that the world behaves uniformly, or monotheism (that IS what y'all are arguing about, isn't it?). I suspect things set in a little at a time, so you get different levels of "the world behaves uniformly and with repetition" in different cultures. I mean, it's easy to observe sunrise and sunset, but a helluva lot harder to follow tectonic plates and the phenomena arising from them enough to see that there are patterns... And every culture, and every individual within a culture, would have been differently placed for observing uniformity (or lack thereof).
I really don’t see how Christianity had any straight-line influence onto the development of ideas about tectonic plates. Which wasn’t properly formulated until the mid twentieth century.
@alienfromzog seems to find it incomprehensible that anyone prior to the modern era observed any kind of consistency in the universe.
Except he has specifically acknowledged and identified consistencies that have been observed for millennia, so he clearly does find it comprehensible that “anyone prior to the modern era observed any kind of consistency in the universe.” You seem to be reframing what he has said in a way that’s inconsistent with what he has actually said.
No @Crœsos you are reading too much into what I am saying. Moreover, it's not like I'm advancing a radical new theory. More than once, I have either alluded to or clearly stated the caveats to what I was saying.
There's a very good argument to be made about being overly simplistic and clearly this is not the whole story.
FWIW, the standard narrative about the dormancy is that Westerm civilisations lost access to Greek philosophy with the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and the big spark of the scientific revolution was their rediscovery. Note the key role of Greek philosophy in this narrative of the birth of modern science.
It's a fascinating story of which I know some but not enough. However, to bring it back to the subject of this thread, the point about truth and facts and worldviews is at the heart of this.
Science is historically fascinating partly because of its flaws. We aim for pure objectivity but it's a very human endeavour and thus very messy. Many great leaps forward were initially ridiculed. Prion theory 40 years ago is a good example in Medicine. The concept of peer review as the gold-standand makes sense, but take it from me, as someone who does it,* and is on the receiving end, it's a very oblique process. However, what we end up with, works and so we move forward.
As I said way back, science has no facts but most practitioners believe in an objective reality that science is trying to understand. Christianity also depends on a belief that objective facts exist. Jesus literally made a divine claim to being the ultimate reality - "I am the Way, the Truth..."
Undoubtedly, many in the church have been guilty of claiming their view is factual when it is in fact opinion only but in all areas, it is hard for humans to achieve objectivity. I firmly believe in absolute facts. I do not claim to know what they are.
Anyway the key points here are
1. What is formally termed the modernist** world-view is common to orthodox Christianity and the philosophy of science. We have discussed the history that partly explains this commonality
2. The relevance of evidence in evaluating any factual claim is important here. Science makes factual claims whilst not having actual facts.
AFZ
*I literally have two papers on my desk to review for a couple of journals right now.
**one could argue about the term but I am using the specific and correct term.
It’s a truly bizarre argument that it was Christianity rather than the Enlightenment which led to the scientific method. Even more bizarre when we consider how far Enlightenment thinking developed as a reaction to rigid religious thinking.
No, this is actually correct. I'm drawing on my own education in Renaissance English to agree here (rhetoric, primarily, though it meant a hefty dose of history as well).
You would need to go look up the monastic movement, the fall of the Roman empire, how ancient learning was preserved, and so forth and so on. But yes, there's a nice straight line leading right to modern science. The bit where the church got into conflict with it was an aberration.
But what we're really talking about here is a somewhat continuous (yes, interrupted by civil upheaval, war, plague and all the rest of it) development of thought. I don't see that whether that thought occurred against a monotheistic or polytheistic background is critical.
For sure, the Romans had a very transactional relationship with their gods (you make the appropriate sacrifices to the right gods, and then you get good weather and an adequate harvest), but early middle ages Christians were equally full of superstitions about crop yields.
We only have one European history, and it is a fact that monotheistic Christianity swept across Europe in the middle of it. The fact that there is plenty of scholarship and learning supported by the Church, and by Church institutions, doesn't mean that there wouldn't have been scholarship and learning if we were looking for the mediaeval temple of Athena to support it in some polytheistic counterfactual history.
Geertz classed Greek philosophy, Abrahamic monotheism, Indian religions, and Chinese philosophy together as rationalised frameworks of thought: that is, belief systems that with large internal variations generally sought to bring as many diverse phenomena under one explanatory scheme.
Without a belief that local regularities are signs of a systematic regularity that underlies apparent irregularity you're not going to develop any systematic science.
A way long time ago, I took a course on Adlerian Psychology. He argued we use our belief systems to interpret and interact with the chaotic world. Some beliefs were good in that we receive benefits from them, but other beliefs were mistaken in that we experience negative consequences.
Cognitive Psychology builds on that principle.
I have not been keeping up with the discoveries of the Webb Telescope like I would want, but I am getting the impression its findings are challenging many of the astronomical belief systems.
In scientific theory, a belief system works until a simpler explanation comes along.
No, seriously, I doubt you're going to ever tease apart the question of which came first, a belief that the world behaves uniformly, or monotheism (that IS what y'all are arguing about, isn't it?). I suspect things set in a little at a time, so you get different levels of "the world behaves uniformly and with repetition" in different cultures. I mean, it's easy to observe sunrise and sunset, but a helluva lot harder to follow tectonic plates and the phenomena arising from them enough to see that there are patterns... And every culture, and every individual within a culture, would have been differently placed for observing uniformity (or lack thereof).
I really don’t see how Christianity had any straight-line influence onto the development of ideas about tectonic plates. Which wasn’t properly formulated until the mid twentieth century.
Wasn't what I said. I was giving examples of things where the uniform behavior of the world can be observed--but in one case, you can get a good feel for it within a week, and in the other case, you'd need literal ages.
It’s a truly bizarre argument that it was Christianity rather than the Enlightenment which led to the scientific method. Even more bizarre when we consider how far Enlightenment thinking developed as a reaction to rigid religious thinking.
No, this is actually correct. I'm drawing on my own education in Renaissance English to agree here (rhetoric, primarily, though it meant a hefty dose of history as well).
You would need to go look up the monastic movement, the fall of the Roman empire, how ancient learning was preserved, and so forth and so on. But yes, there's a nice straight line leading right to modern science. The bit where the church got into conflict with it was an aberration.
But what we're really talking about here is a somewhat continuous (yes, interrupted by civil upheaval, war, plague and all the rest of it) development of thought. I don't see that whether that thought occurred against a monotheistic or polytheistic background is critical.
For sure, the Romans had a very transactional relationship with their gods (you make the appropriate sacrifices to the right gods, and then you get good weather and an adequate harvest), but early middle ages Christians were equally full of superstitions about crop yields.
We only have one European history, and it is a fact that monotheistic Christianity swept across Europe in the middle of it. The fact that there is plenty of scholarship and learning supported by the Church, and by Church institutions, doesn't mean that there wouldn't have been scholarship and learning if we were looking for the mediaeval temple of Athena to support it in some polytheistic counterfactual history.
First of all, you might want to take a look at how much weight that word "continuous" is doing in your phrase about development of thought. Falls of civilizations, wars, famines, upheavals in religion and social structure--these have a very real and strong impact on the way people think, and on how long (and in what ways) thought develops.
I'm not really fussed about transactional sacrifices, rituals, etc. There have always been people who relate to their god(s) like that, and probably always will be.
But I'll note this about polytheism--by definitions it's a religious/supernatural schema that involves multiple, possibly (probably!) conflicting sources of input to the natural world. Monotheism does not. With monotheism, "the buck stops here"--on the one God's desk, so to speak. If you are looking for a final explanation for anything, from a sick cow to OT genocide, you will ultimately end up there--and the fact that there is a single person behind that desk forces you to look for consistency in a way that you don't when you can say, "Oh, Athena and Poseidon had it in for each other" and stop there.
The only exception I can think of would be if you had a monotheism that postulated a capricious, illogical single God--and I don't know of any such system.
NOTE: I am NOT saying that everybody under a monotheist system is absolutely going to look for those consistencies; I am also not saying that people under a polytheist system will not look for consistencies. I'm simply saying that one encourages that sort of thing much more than the other. Because you can't very well stop short if your "one God" is at all self-coherent.
No, seriously, I doubt you're going to ever tease apart the question of which came first, a belief that the world behaves uniformly, or monotheism (that IS what y'all are arguing about, isn't it?). I suspect things set in a little at a time, so you get different levels of "the world behaves uniformly and with repetition" in different cultures. I mean, it's easy to observe sunrise and sunset, but a helluva lot harder to follow tectonic plates and the phenomena arising from them enough to see that there are patterns... And every culture, and every individual within a culture, would have been differently placed for observing uniformity (or lack thereof).
I really don’t see how Christianity had any straight-line influence onto the development of ideas about tectonic plates. Which wasn’t properly formulated until the mid twentieth century.
Wasn't what I said. I was giving examples of things where the uniform behavior of the world can be observed--but in one case, you can get a good feel for it within a week, and in the other case, you'd need literal ages.
Tectonic plates were not postulated after observations for ages, though. Nobody looked at the rocks for a couple of hundred years and said “ah-ha, tectonic plates!”
That’s not at all how scientific progress in geology happened.
Also, of course, most of western society had been labouring under the misapprehension that creation occurred in 4004 BC until around the late 18th century when the first systematic evidence was found that geology was really old, and even then it took some while for it to be accepted.
Ironically in terms of this conversation, it was the Hindus who were at the time insisting that things were much older than a few thousand years.
All the ways that Christianity prevented the expansion of knowledge in Western countries, all the countless superstitions, that’s all swept under the carpet in favour of the assertion that somehow monotheism is better than polytheism. Even as other posters above are postulating that it took 1500+ years for the countries most influenced by Christianity to get back to the level of knowledge used by the Romans, a clearly polytheistic society.
Progress was held back in various ways including ways that directly came from monotheism. It was clearly a hindrance.
I know well enough what a belief is: roughly, a proposition someone accepts as true. I don't know what a fact is. The dictionary definition is unhelpful. "Presented as having objective reality"? Presented by whom? To whom? Does it have to actually have objective reality, or merely be presented as such? Does anybody have the authority to say which propositions are facts?
I have an academic background but I'm not a specialist intellectual historian. With that caveat, a book that seems authoritative to me is David Wotton's The Invention of Science.
Wootton argues, mostly against people who believe science is socially constructed, that there was indeed a scientific revolution between Columbus and Isaac Newton.
He thinks that what triggered the start of it was the discovery that all solutions to a old-standing problem in Aristotelian phusis (why doesn't the sea cover the earth) had to be wrong (since none of them allowed for there being places with dry land directly opposite each other on the globe).
As for monotheism holding things back, the persecution of Galileo is an isolated incident that came too late to make a difference.
Wootton notes that the thesis that monotheism was a prerequisite for the scientific revolution exists, and is held by respectable scholars; but he doesn't hold it himself and it isn't part of his story to address it.
All the ways that Christianity prevented the expansion of knowledge in Western countries, all the countless superstitions, that’s all swept under the carpet in favour of the assertion that somehow monotheism is better than polytheism. Even as other posters above are postulating that it took 1500+ years for the countries most influenced by Christianity to get back to the level of knowledge used by the Romans, a clearly polytheistic society.
Progress was held back in various ways including ways that directly came from monotheism. It was clearly a hindrance.
So you are ignoring evidence and argument that doesn't fit with your view.
Fair enough but this thread just got a little Meta.
Wootton notes that the thesis that monotheism was a prerequisite for the scientific revolution exists, and is held by respectable scholars; but he doesn't hold it himself and it isn't part of his story to address it.
Prerequisite? Who knows? We cannot know the counterfactual but the history of monotheism re-discovering ancient Greek texts and the scientific revolution occurring is what happened. As a consequence the intellectual concepts of truth and facts are common to a philosophy that underpins both.
What evidence am I ignoring? I’m disputing an interpretation of history that doesn’t take account of all the available information. Even if it did, it is still possible to interpret historical events in different ways.
You are simply offering a collection of historical events and insisting that your “facts” are the only way to understand them. Which is fairly clearly influenced by your religious views.
We cannot know the counterfactual but the history of monotheism re-discovering ancient Greek texts and the scientific revolution occurring is what happened. As a consequence the intellectual concepts of truth and facts are common to a philosophy that underpins both.
The first histories were written by people educated in traditions founded by the humanists who based their claims to authority on their mastery of the rediscovered texts.
But modern historians think the authority of the rediscovered texts was a hindrance. Anticipations of Galileo by writers like Grosseteste were disregarded because deemed part of the old scholastic learning. The Universities had already started to move beyond Aristotle - in part because the Bishop of Paris had forbidden anyone to treat him as an unquestionable authority. The humanists, who relied mostly on patronage, on the other hand had to talk up the authority of the texts in which they were expert. The humanists had better access to money and to the first printing presses - they got to set the agenda for later historians.
What evidence am I ignoring? I’m disputing an interpretation of history that doesn’t take account of all the available information. Even if it did, it is still possible to interpret historical events in different ways.
You are simply offering a collection of historical events and insisting that your “facts” are the only way to understand them. Which is fairly clearly influenced by your religious views.
I have insisted nothing except when you have misrepresent what I have said.
Why does the idea that Western Christianity is part of the story of the birth of modern science bother you? This is not a radical idea, it's a common view of historians of science. Nor does it deny the fact that the church and Christians have been anti-science in many times and places. Both things can be true.
I began this part of the discussion by noting the commonality of (this form of) monotheistic philosophy and the philosophy of science in a belief in the existence of truth and facts. Of course that's a generalisation. Not all monotheists think the same. Not all scientists think the same. But how else can we have this discussion? I have consistently acknowledged the caveats to the points I was making.
The history tells you a lot about the concepts of truth and facts and beliefs. It tells you nothing at all about the value or truth of Christian beliefs. The point - which I did not particularly expect to spark this whole conversation at all but hey, it's fun - was to contrast with other worldviews that exist that do not believe is objective facts.
Another interesting aside for me is that as a trained scientist, I have never been taught anything about the philosophy of science. Nor do I think that any of the scientists I know have had any formal teaching in this area. One sort of absorbs it along the way. It was mentioned early in this discussion how science is built of Mathematics but that Maths has no empirical basis itself. The fact that maths can describe our universe is a fascinating question to me but that's one that has never led me to any factual conclusions.
The point here is not whether Christianity is true or not. Whether I believe that or not is irrelevant. The point is about the whole concept of Truth. Here the history can be quite instructive which is why I mentioned it. As has been noted the definition of 'fact' can be quite problematic.
I like this phrase I used before although I fear it may be slightly obtuse: Science has no facts but it makes factual claims.
I believe vaccines work and are the most important medical invention. I believe thst due to a huge wealth of evidence and logical, coherent theories about our immune system. Obviously there are many people who disagree with me on that point. Hence it is a factual claim, we cannot both be right. The weight of evidence that supports the theory is huge and has not been refuted. Of course, if the data contradicted the theory, I would need to change my belief.
Because it’s an assertion. Ignoring the influence of others such as the Chinese.
Why is it so hard for you to accept that what you are saying is not fact but assertion?
It's an historical theory.*
At no point have I ignored other influences.
But you're still missing the point, I think. It's not about whether Christianity is true or not, nor whether science leads to truth. It's about a common agreement on the notion of objective fact.
AFZ
*I haven't studied history since my GCSE, three decades ago** but my mental model is the same as I have for science; observation leads to a theory which creates hypotheses that are then supported or refuted by evidence. I don't know if my friends trained in history despair of me...
**technically this makes the time I was studying history, now history...
Because it’s an assertion. Ignoring the influence of others such as the Chinese.
The Chinese did certainly make at least some progress in what we now call science. I'm not aware that any of that progress had any influence on Western science. Paper, yes. Indian mathematics, yes. Chinese natural philosophy - not that I know of and I'm reasonably sure I would have. By the time the Jesuits set up in China in the late sixteenth century and seventeenth century, they were able to use Western understanding of natural philosophy as a sign that they should be taken seriously.
I'm open to correction - what specific examples of Chinese influence are there and what is the evidence for it? Who in Western Europe read which Chinese texts?
Why is it so hard for you to accept that what you are saying is not fact but assertion?
Because he's done a lot of reading around the subject? Also, you're making flat unqualified assertions about the history of Western science - ie all progress was lost after the fall of Rome - that most modern scholarship around the subject would consider badly outdated and the product of Protestant and anticlerical polemic.
Why does the idea that Western Christianity is part of the story of the birth of modern science bother you? This is not a radical idea, it's a common view of historians of science.
The key word here is "part". The question is really one of how big a part Western Christianity played in the development of modern science. I can't see how anyone could claim it played no part, equally I can't see how it can be claimed that Western Christianity was entirely responsible (ie: that without Western Christianity modern science wouldn't have developed). But, there's a lot of scope between those extremes to discuss just how important Western Christianity was. Personally, I think that the monastic traditions developed a scholastic environment that persisted even after the dissolution of monasteries were vital (which was a wider movement in Europe than just Henry VIII), including the founding of the first universities, and likewise a tradition of medicine and hospitals (which have always been centres of learning as well as treatment of the ill - and a lot of the early scientific advances were in the fields of medicine). Of course, there were analogous scholastic movements in Islamic nations and China - if the scientific method hadn't developed in Europe then it would probably have developed in one of those regions. But, there were definitely other factors - not least growing wealth that gave rise to a large number of wealthy individuals with time to pursue studies of nature, coupled with literacy so that they could record what they observed and share that with others.
Another interesting aside for me is that as a trained scientist, I have never been taught anything about the philosophy of science. Nor do I think that any of the scientists I know have had any formal teaching in this area.
I'd concur with that. I'm a trained scientist but a self-taught amateur philosopher of science, which I admit is partly a result of 40+ years of interest in how science interacts with my faith. We get some formal training in the scientific method, how to design experiments and analyse data, sometimes at an early stage in our career (like the first lab sessions in my physics degree) but also within courses on research integrity (which in my university are mandatory for all research staff, including post grad students). But, the philosophy behind the scientific method is rarely taught or even talked about.
In fact, the denial that Christianity helped shape some aspects of science has been an interest among atheists for ages. I remember reading people like Richard Carrier, but I am out of the loop now.
I know well enough what a belief is: roughly, a proposition someone accepts as true. I don't know what a fact is. The dictionary definition is unhelpful. "Presented as having objective reality"? Presented by whom? To whom? Does it have to actually have objective reality, or merely be presented as such? Does anybody have the authority to say which propositions are facts?
In philosophy, which is not ordinary language, a fact is the part of the world that corresponds to a true proposition and makes the proposition true. I personally doubt that's a fruitful way of looking at the world.
The basic problem for epistemology is that we need to distinguish between how things really are independent of how we believe they are, and how we believe they are; and we have no way of talking about how they really are independent of how we believe they are except by going through how we believe they are. A lot of ordinary language in this area is ambiguous between the thing in the world independent of our knowledge that it is the case, on the one hand and on the other hand, our knowledge that it is the case.
"Facts" can mean the things that are out there in the world, or the things we know are out there. (Likewise, "History" can mean the events that happened or the subject that studies those events.)
If Sherlock Holmes says, it's a mistake to theorise before we have all the facts he means the actual clues out there in the world, but he lists the facts using language.
Even as other posters above are postulating that it took 1500+ years for the countries most influenced by Christianity to get back to the level of knowledge used by the Romans, a clearly polytheistic society.
Progress was held back in various ways including ways that directly came from monotheism. It was clearly a hindrance.
What knowledge did the Romans have that the countries most influenced by Christianity didn't have?
Now, the Roman empire fragmented in the West, with a concomitant reduction in the size of the economy, and few of the new rulers had the necessary resources, either financial or manpower, to organise large building projects. So in the West there was a loss of practical knowledge of how to build large structures. That said, once Western societies were able to organise the manpower, they went back to building large structures: Lincoln Cathedral was the first structure to be built taller than the Great Pyramid in Egypt. In the Eastern Empire, the expertise was not lost. The civil engineering of Constantinople matches anything that had been built in the Western Empire.
Because it’s an assertion. Ignoring the influence of others such as the Chinese.
The Chinese did certainly make at least some progress in what we now call science. I'm not aware that any of that progress had any influence on Western science. Paper, yes. Indian mathematics, yes. Chinese natural philosophy - not that I know of and I'm reasonably sure I would have. By the time the Jesuits set up in China in the late sixteenth century and seventeenth century, they were able to use Western understanding of natural philosophy as a sign that they should be taken seriously.
I'm open to correction - what specific examples of Chinese influence are there and what is the evidence for it? Who in Western Europe read which Chinese texts?
Why is it so hard for you to accept that what you are saying is not fact but assertion?
Because he's done a lot of reading around the subject? Also, you're making flat unqualified assertions about the history of Western science - ie all progress was lost after the fall of Rome - that most modern scholarship around the subject would consider badly outdated and the product of Protestant and anticlerical polemic.
Amazing, ok yeah. He’s right because he’s read around the subject.
As it happens I agree largely with @Alan Cresswell , the issue is about the extent to which influences were important and a personal assessment of the importance of factors. Like all history.
I just don’t accept the narrative that says monotheism was necessary for the development of modern science. The reasons being that many influences converged to aid the development of science include many from polytheistic sources.
Also I dispute the idea that there even was a thing called science in the Newton era. Science as a philosophical concept has been developing for centuries, even Newton himself (with his mix of great insights and absolute humbug) would hardly been seen as following the scientific method as eventually established in the twentieth century.
Why does the idea that Western Christianity is part of the story of the birth of modern science bother you? This is not a radical idea, it's a common view of historians of science.
The key word here is "part". The question is really one of how big a part Western Christianity played in the development of modern science. I can't see how anyone could claim it played no part, equally I can't see how it can be claimed that Western Christianity was entirely responsible (ie: that without Western Christianity modern science wouldn't have developed).
It seems that the difference turns on whether 'Western Christianity' (or the 'Judeo Christian worldview' or 'monotheism') was a necessary cause of the 'Scientific Revolution' or the 'Enlightenment', and specifically there are gaps and ambiguities between:
"There's a very strong argument that the Judeo-Christian world view gave birth to the scientific method."
and
"the idea that Western Christianity is part of the story of the birth of modern science"
Why does the idea that Western Christianity is part of the story of the birth of modern science bother you? This is not a radical idea, it's a common view of historians of science.
The key word here is "part". The question is really one of how big a part Western Christianity played in the development of modern science. I can't see how anyone could claim it played no part, equally I can't see how it can be claimed that Western Christianity was entirely responsible (ie: that without Western Christianity modern science wouldn't have developed).
It seems that the difference turns on whether 'Western Christianity' (or the 'Judeo Christian worldview' or 'monotheism') was a necessary cause of the 'Scientific Revolution' or the 'Enlightenment', and specifically there are gaps and ambiguities between:
"There's a very strong argument that the Judeo-Christian world view gave birth to the scientific method."
and
"the idea that Western Christianity is part of the story of the birth of modern science"
I am probably guilty of hearing the caveats I make more loudly than someone reading what I say.
Gaps and ambiguities between those two statements - well, yes, I see what you mean but 'a very strong argument' is not asserting as fact - it's an evidential statement.
However, I was not making an argument that Christianity is true or that Monothesism is correct. Hence I did not consider these ambiguities at all. I was focused on the way that philosophically, a certain view of truth and facts is common to both. Which remains my point.
The counterfactual of what would have happened if the Scientific Method (Whatever we mean by that) hadn't developed in that time and place is an interesting hypothetical and if we were arguing about some sort of theory of European supremacy or other nonsense, it would be hyper-relevant. However, the truth is that monotheistic thinking was an important step on this journey. I do think the notion that this philosophy was a critical step in the beginnings of science as we now understand is accurate. As I have intimated, it is widely held. How science may have sprung up in other contexts is an interesting idea but in one sense it's not relevant as that's not the world we live in. The fact is that the scientific revolution was born in institutions and individuals who to a very large extent subscribed to this particular worldview. I never made the argument that monotheism was necessary for the development of science. I simply made the argument that it happened that way, because it did.
In fact, the denial that Christianity helped shape some aspects of science has been an interest among atheists for ages. I remember reading people like Richard Carrier, but I am out of the loop now.
Yeah, I have come across this from certain atheist thinkers. To me, it's an example of putting belief above evidence which is usually what they claim people of faith are always doing.
I know well enough what a belief is: roughly, a proposition someone accepts as true. I don't know what a fact is. The dictionary definition is unhelpful. "Presented as having objective reality"? Presented by whom? To whom? Does it have to actually have objective reality, or merely be presented as such? Does anybody have the authority to say which propositions are facts?
In philosophy, which is not ordinary language, a fact is the part of the world that corresponds to a true proposition and makes the proposition true. I personally doubt that's a fruitful way of looking at the world.
The basic problem for epistemology is that we need to distinguish between how things really are independent of how we believe they are, and how we believe they are; and we have no way of talking about how they really are independent of how we believe they are except by going through how we believe they are. A lot of ordinary language in this area is ambiguous between the thing in the world independent of our knowledge that it is the case, on the one hand and on the other hand, our knowledge that it is the case.
"Facts" can mean the things that are out there in the world, or the things we know are out there. (Likewise, "History" can mean the events that happened or the subject that studies those events.)
If Sherlock Holmes says, it's a mistake to theorise before we have all the facts he means the actual clues out there in the world, but he lists the facts using language.
This is a big part of what I am reaching for. I believe in objective facts, I also accept that I may well be very wrong about them. Not every worldview holds that there is such a thing as objective facts.
Science is all about testable propositions. Christian belief is a faith that certain untestable propositions are true. Both belong in that paradigm that there is such a thing as objective reality.
As I said way back, science has no facts but most practitioners believe in an objective reality that science is trying to understand. Christianity also depends on a belief that objective facts exist. Jesus literally made a divine claim to being the ultimate reality - "I am the Way, the Truth..."
What do you mean facts?
Bing ChatGPT 4
A fact is:
Something that really exists or has occurred.
A true piece of information.
A statement that can be proven by logical argument from certain axioms and definitions in mathematics. (which works as a metaphor for science I feel)
A repeatable careful observation or measurement (by experimentation or other means), also called empirical evidence in science.
wiki
A fact is a true datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means.
Science (what we empirically know) contains none of those?
'most practitioners (of science) believe in an objective reality'. This niggles too. Until we get to QM, the ultimate objective reality, which demonstrates that there is no such thing as absolute, definite reality (apart from that); the axiom on which all else is proven in empirical physics, chemistry, biology, and beyond (psychology, sociology); everything emerging above QM, after wave function collapse, is proven, observable, measurable objective reality surely? Known. Up until we get to the other extreme from QM of the relativity of simultaneity. Where again the objective reality is that there is no absolute reality that is not paradoxical.
The stream is moving on, but, how are these two sentences connected?
Christianity also depends on a belief that objective facts exist. Jesus literally made a divine claim to being the ultimate reality - "I am the Way, the Truth..."
Jesus' claim is believed to be an objective fact? How do we go from belief to (objective) fact? To coherent justified true belief? Rather than an axiom for believers only?
Because it’s an assertion. Ignoring the influence of others such as the Chinese.
The Chinese did certainly make at least some progress in what we now call science. I'm not aware that any of that progress had any influence on Western science. Paper, yes. Indian mathematics, yes. Chinese natural philosophy - not that I know of and I'm reasonably sure I would have. By the time the Jesuits set up in China in the late sixteenth century and seventeenth century, they were able to use Western understanding of natural philosophy as a sign that they should be taken seriously.
I'm open to correction - what specific examples of Chinese influence are there and what is the evidence for it? Who in Western Europe read which Chinese texts?
You appear to have started an answer to these questions and not finished it?
Why is it so hard for you to accept that what you are saying is not fact but assertion?
Because he's done a lot of reading around the subject? Also, you're making flat unqualified assertions about the history of Western science - ie all progress was lost after the fall of Rome - that most modern scholarship around the subject would consider badly outdated and the product of Protestant and anticlerical polemic.
Amazing, ok yeah. He’s right because he’s read around the subject.
That's not a fact. That's just a piece of sarcasm.
The question I was responding to was whether it was just an assertion. It's a well-considered and evidenced assertion. It's not uncontroversial but it's not a crank theory either.
I just don’t accept the narrative that says monotheism was necessary for the development of modern science. The reasons being that many influences converged to aid the development of science include many from polytheistic sources.
You're telling us that you just don't accept the narrative that it was necessary, but your reasons tell us merely that it wasn't sufficient.
And then of course what you just don't accept is just an assertion.
Also I dispute the idea that there even was a thing called science in the Newton era. Science as a philosophical concept has been developing for centuries, even Newton himself (with his mix of great insights and absolute humbug) would hardly been seen as following the scientific method as eventually established in the twentieth century.
You're right in so far as the word 'science' wasn't given its current meaning until Whewell did so in the nineteenth century. That doesn't mean we can't look back at the activities of previous centuries and say that they are the forerunners of what we think of as science have a sufficient family resemblance to be included under the umbrella.
Even in the twentieth century there isn't a single scientific method the presence or absence of which suffices to make something science, unless you state it in sufficiently vague generalities as to cover a lot more ground than just the twentieth century or run with an institutional definition, which seems besides the point.
I notice that my memory is beginning to stir, anyway, one of the influential books in an earlier debate on religion and science was Edward Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages. He talks about Christian influences, as many historians were doing. Grant also criticizes the notion of the dark ages, that is, medieval barbarism. So some historians were overturning the idea that Christianity was hostile to science.
Also the blog "History for Atheists" by Tim O'Neill is a useful source of material critical of those atheists (and others), who big up the dark ages idea..
Gaps and ambiguities between those two statements - well, yes, I see what you mean but 'a very strong argument' is not asserting as fact - it's an evidential statement.
Is it? What is the evidence you are asserting when you make that claim? Because from another point of view all you've extended is a sequence of events with a narrative fallacy around them
However, I was not making an argument that Christianity is true or that Monothesism is correct.
Understood, but you seem to be (sometimes) making the argument that monotheism (or a 'Judeo Christian' worldview - which includes Islamic thought, except when it doesn't) is either absolutely necessary to develop some form of scientific method, or at least develop it given the state of 'Western' culture (or is it just "an important step on this journey" that isn't necessary?).
The counterfactual of what would have happened if the Scientific Method (Whatever we mean by that) hadn't developed in that time and place is an interesting hypothetical and if we were arguing about some sort of theory of European supremacy or other nonsense, it would be hyper-relevant.
Both are relevant because all we have is a very limited sequence of histories and there's a history of these arguments being grounded in European supremacy and/or being observations about differential development wrapped up as theories.
Why does the idea that Western Christianity is part of the story of the birth of modern science bother you? This is not a radical idea, it's a common view of historians of science.
The key word here is "part". The question is really one of how big a part Western Christianity played in the development of modern science.
That's a question, but not the one I thought was being proposed. I had understood the proposition to be that there was something about Western Christianity that encouraged / accelerated the development of modern science that wouldn't have happened if we didn't have monotheism.
To argue that, it's not sufficient to point out the positive influences that Christian institutions have had on the development of scientific thought: you need to make the case that these things (or similar things) wouldn't have happened in an alternate counterfactual history where Christianity in particular, or monotheistic faiths in general, did not widely spread in the West.
It may well be the case that science (by some name) would have made progress regardless of religion because there has been pressure for better technology (medicine, metallurgy, textiles, navigational tools, etc) . Technology and science have progressed together hand in hand.
Comments
https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/scientific-revolutions
There is no accepted idea of a “scientific revolution”, the concept of the scientific method developed throughout the period of the Enlightenment.
I presume you mean 'deduce'.
But isn't this what contemporary science does already?
I don't recall seeing any presentations of conditions in the Triassic or Jurassic periods that don't implicitly or explicitly state that they are deductions based on available evidence or current understandings based on interpretations of fossil records etc.
I really don't recognise your caricature of contemporary paleontology or geology here.
Much of what is know to be science today came from imperfect scientific methods in the 15-17th centuries.
Which is pretty amazing when you think about it. The experimentation was often crude, the results were often not properly presented and so on and yet often the correct answers were forthcoming. Even when there were pervasive wrong explanations, this didn’t mean that scientific progress was completely bogged down with hokum.
The idea that the world was not predictable to people who built nilometers seems wrong on the face of it. Or that people who lived prior to the Enlightement had no concept of causality. Your argument seems to be that people living in the pre-modern era never noticed patterns or predictable behavior by the universe, except when they did. As a thesis this is irrefutable, but also fairly pointless.
One of the reasons I despise terms like "Judeo-Christian worldview" is the way it's nebulous to the point of meaninglessness. For example, Islam is apparently part of the "Judeo-Christian worldview" (except when it isn't).
There's also a strange historical particularity about it; for whatever reason this component of the 'worldview' lies dormant for c 1500 years and then gives birth to the "Scientific Revolution".
More like 2400 if the "Judeo" part of "Judeo-Christian worldview" means anything. Which is another reason I despise the term. It's typically used to imply a religious inclusiveness that isn't often adhered to by the term's users.
No, this is actually correct. I'm drawing on my own education in Renaissance English to agree here (rhetoric, primarily, though it meant a hefty dose of history as well).
You would need to go look up the monastic movement, the fall of the Roman empire, how ancient learning was preserved, and so forth and so on. But yes, there's a nice straight line leading right to modern science. The bit where the church got into conflict with it was an aberration.
This is, of course, exactly the opposite of @alienfromzog's theory. According to him paganism is counter-scientific, so ancient (pagan) learning would contribute nothing to the formulation of science.
No, seriously, I doubt you're going to ever tease apart the question of which came first, a belief that the world behaves uniformly, or monotheism (that IS what y'all are arguing about, isn't it?). I suspect things set in a little at a time, so you get different levels of "the world behaves uniformly and with repetition" in different cultures. I mean, it's easy to observe sunrise and sunset, but a helluva lot harder to follow tectonic plates and the phenomena arising from them enough to see that there are patterns... And every culture, and every individual within a culture, would have been differently placed for observing uniformity (or lack thereof).
Not so much uniformly as consistently. @alienfromzog seems to find it incomprehensible that anyone prior to the modern era observed any kind of consistency in the universe. My position is that just about everything about human society (agriculture, building techniques, metallurgy, animal domestication, object permanence, etc. etc. etc.) is based on at least some level of the universe being consistent.
I really don’t see how Christianity had any straight-line influence onto the development of ideas about tectonic plates. Which wasn’t properly formulated until the mid twentieth century.
There's a very good argument to be made about being overly simplistic and clearly this is not the whole story.
FWIW, the standard narrative about the dormancy is that Westerm civilisations lost access to Greek philosophy with the fall of the Roman Empire in the West and the big spark of the scientific revolution was their rediscovery. Note the key role of Greek philosophy in this narrative of the birth of modern science.
It's a fascinating story of which I know some but not enough. However, to bring it back to the subject of this thread, the point about truth and facts and worldviews is at the heart of this.
Science is historically fascinating partly because of its flaws. We aim for pure objectivity but it's a very human endeavour and thus very messy. Many great leaps forward were initially ridiculed. Prion theory 40 years ago is a good example in Medicine. The concept of peer review as the gold-standand makes sense, but take it from me, as someone who does it,* and is on the receiving end, it's a very oblique process. However, what we end up with, works and so we move forward.
As I said way back, science has no facts but most practitioners believe in an objective reality that science is trying to understand. Christianity also depends on a belief that objective facts exist. Jesus literally made a divine claim to being the ultimate reality - "I am the Way, the Truth..."
Undoubtedly, many in the church have been guilty of claiming their view is factual when it is in fact opinion only but in all areas, it is hard for humans to achieve objectivity. I firmly believe in absolute facts. I do not claim to know what they are.
Anyway the key points here are
1. What is formally termed the modernist** world-view is common to orthodox Christianity and the philosophy of science. We have discussed the history that partly explains this commonality
2. The relevance of evidence in evaluating any factual claim is important here. Science makes factual claims whilst not having actual facts.
AFZ
*I literally have two papers on my desk to review for a couple of journals right now.
**one could argue about the term but I am using the specific and correct term.
But what we're really talking about here is a somewhat continuous (yes, interrupted by civil upheaval, war, plague and all the rest of it) development of thought. I don't see that whether that thought occurred against a monotheistic or polytheistic background is critical.
For sure, the Romans had a very transactional relationship with their gods (you make the appropriate sacrifices to the right gods, and then you get good weather and an adequate harvest), but early middle ages Christians were equally full of superstitions about crop yields.
We only have one European history, and it is a fact that monotheistic Christianity swept across Europe in the middle of it. The fact that there is plenty of scholarship and learning supported by the Church, and by Church institutions, doesn't mean that there wouldn't have been scholarship and learning if we were looking for the mediaeval temple of Athena to support it in some polytheistic counterfactual history.
Without a belief that local regularities are signs of a systematic regularity that underlies apparent irregularity you're not going to develop any systematic science.
Cognitive Psychology builds on that principle.
I have not been keeping up with the discoveries of the Webb Telescope like I would want, but I am getting the impression its findings are challenging many of the astronomical belief systems.
In scientific theory, a belief system works until a simpler explanation comes along.
Wasn't what I said. I was giving examples of things where the uniform behavior of the world can be observed--but in one case, you can get a good feel for it within a week, and in the other case, you'd need literal ages.
First of all, you might want to take a look at how much weight that word "continuous" is doing in your phrase about development of thought. Falls of civilizations, wars, famines, upheavals in religion and social structure--these have a very real and strong impact on the way people think, and on how long (and in what ways) thought develops.
I'm not really fussed about transactional sacrifices, rituals, etc. There have always been people who relate to their god(s) like that, and probably always will be.
But I'll note this about polytheism--by definitions it's a religious/supernatural schema that involves multiple, possibly (probably!) conflicting sources of input to the natural world. Monotheism does not. With monotheism, "the buck stops here"--on the one God's desk, so to speak. If you are looking for a final explanation for anything, from a sick cow to OT genocide, you will ultimately end up there--and the fact that there is a single person behind that desk forces you to look for consistency in a way that you don't when you can say, "Oh, Athena and Poseidon had it in for each other" and stop there.
The only exception I can think of would be if you had a monotheism that postulated a capricious, illogical single God--and I don't know of any such system.
NOTE: I am NOT saying that everybody under a monotheist system is absolutely going to look for those consistencies; I am also not saying that people under a polytheist system will not look for consistencies. I'm simply saying that one encourages that sort of thing much more than the other. Because you can't very well stop short if your "one God" is at all self-coherent.
Tectonic plates were not postulated after observations for ages, though. Nobody looked at the rocks for a couple of hundred years and said “ah-ha, tectonic plates!”
That’s not at all how scientific progress in geology happened.
Also, of course, most of western society had been labouring under the misapprehension that creation occurred in 4004 BC until around the late 18th century when the first systematic evidence was found that geology was really old, and even then it took some while for it to be accepted.
Ironically in terms of this conversation, it was the Hindus who were at the time insisting that things were much older than a few thousand years.
I am engaging with what you’ve written, but it’s daft.
Progress was held back in various ways including ways that directly came from monotheism. It was clearly a hindrance.
Wootton argues, mostly against people who believe science is socially constructed, that there was indeed a scientific revolution between Columbus and Isaac Newton.
He thinks that what triggered the start of it was the discovery that all solutions to a old-standing problem in Aristotelian phusis (why doesn't the sea cover the earth) had to be wrong (since none of them allowed for there being places with dry land directly opposite each other on the globe).
As for monotheism holding things back, the persecution of Galileo is an isolated incident that came too late to make a difference.
Wootton notes that the thesis that monotheism was a prerequisite for the scientific revolution exists, and is held by respectable scholars; but he doesn't hold it himself and it isn't part of his story to address it.
So you are ignoring evidence and argument that doesn't fit with your view.
Fair enough but this thread just got a little Meta.
Prerequisite? Who knows? We cannot know the counterfactual but the history of monotheism re-discovering ancient Greek texts and the scientific revolution occurring is what happened. As a consequence the intellectual concepts of truth and facts are common to a philosophy that underpins both.
AFZ
You are simply offering a collection of historical events and insisting that your “facts” are the only way to understand them. Which is fairly clearly influenced by your religious views.
But modern historians think the authority of the rediscovered texts was a hindrance. Anticipations of Galileo by writers like Grosseteste were disregarded because deemed part of the old scholastic learning. The Universities had already started to move beyond Aristotle - in part because the Bishop of Paris had forbidden anyone to treat him as an unquestionable authority. The humanists, who relied mostly on patronage, on the other hand had to talk up the authority of the texts in which they were expert. The humanists had better access to money and to the first printing presses - they got to set the agenda for later historians.
I have insisted nothing except when you have misrepresent what I have said.
Why does the idea that Western Christianity is part of the story of the birth of modern science bother you? This is not a radical idea, it's a common view of historians of science. Nor does it deny the fact that the church and Christians have been anti-science in many times and places. Both things can be true.
I began this part of the discussion by noting the commonality of (this form of) monotheistic philosophy and the philosophy of science in a belief in the existence of truth and facts. Of course that's a generalisation. Not all monotheists think the same. Not all scientists think the same. But how else can we have this discussion? I have consistently acknowledged the caveats to the points I was making.
The history tells you a lot about the concepts of truth and facts and beliefs. It tells you nothing at all about the value or truth of Christian beliefs. The point - which I did not particularly expect to spark this whole conversation at all but hey, it's fun - was to contrast with other worldviews that exist that do not believe is objective facts.
Another interesting aside for me is that as a trained scientist, I have never been taught anything about the philosophy of science. Nor do I think that any of the scientists I know have had any formal teaching in this area. One sort of absorbs it along the way. It was mentioned early in this discussion how science is built of Mathematics but that Maths has no empirical basis itself. The fact that maths can describe our universe is a fascinating question to me but that's one that has never led me to any factual conclusions.
The point here is not whether Christianity is true or not. Whether I believe that or not is irrelevant. The point is about the whole concept of Truth. Here the history can be quite instructive which is why I mentioned it. As has been noted the definition of 'fact' can be quite problematic.
I like this phrase I used before although I fear it may be slightly obtuse: Science has no facts but it makes factual claims.
I believe vaccines work and are the most important medical invention. I believe thst due to a huge wealth of evidence and logical, coherent theories about our immune system. Obviously there are many people who disagree with me on that point. Hence it is a factual claim, we cannot both be right. The weight of evidence that supports the theory is huge and has not been refuted. Of course, if the data contradicted the theory, I would need to change my belief.
AFZ
I have deepened my understanding of the history of science and thought already in this thread.
Why is it so hard for you to accept that what you are saying is not fact but assertion?
It's an historical theory.*
At no point have I ignored other influences.
But you're still missing the point, I think. It's not about whether Christianity is true or not, nor whether science leads to truth. It's about a common agreement on the notion of objective fact.
AFZ
*I haven't studied history since my GCSE, three decades ago** but my mental model is the same as I have for science; observation leads to a theory which creates hypotheses that are then supported or refuted by evidence. I don't know if my friends trained in history despair of me...
**technically this makes the time I was studying history, now history...
I'm open to correction - what specific examples of Chinese influence are there and what is the evidence for it? Who in Western Europe read which Chinese texts?
Because he's done a lot of reading around the subject? Also, you're making flat unqualified assertions about the history of Western science - ie all progress was lost after the fall of Rome - that most modern scholarship around the subject would consider badly outdated and the product of Protestant and anticlerical polemic.
I'd concur with that. I'm a trained scientist but a self-taught amateur philosopher of science, which I admit is partly a result of 40+ years of interest in how science interacts with my faith. We get some formal training in the scientific method, how to design experiments and analyse data, sometimes at an early stage in our career (like the first lab sessions in my physics degree) but also within courses on research integrity (which in my university are mandatory for all research staff, including post grad students). But, the philosophy behind the scientific method is rarely taught or even talked about.
The basic problem for epistemology is that we need to distinguish between how things really are independent of how we believe they are, and how we believe they are; and we have no way of talking about how they really are independent of how we believe they are except by going through how we believe they are. A lot of ordinary language in this area is ambiguous between the thing in the world independent of our knowledge that it is the case, on the one hand and on the other hand, our knowledge that it is the case.
"Facts" can mean the things that are out there in the world, or the things we know are out there. (Likewise, "History" can mean the events that happened or the subject that studies those events.)
If Sherlock Holmes says, it's a mistake to theorise before we have all the facts he means the actual clues out there in the world, but he lists the facts using language.
Now, the Roman empire fragmented in the West, with a concomitant reduction in the size of the economy, and few of the new rulers had the necessary resources, either financial or manpower, to organise large building projects. So in the West there was a loss of practical knowledge of how to build large structures. That said, once Western societies were able to organise the manpower, they went back to building large structures: Lincoln Cathedral was the first structure to be built taller than the Great Pyramid in Egypt. In the Eastern Empire, the expertise was not lost. The civil engineering of Constantinople matches anything that had been built in the Western Empire.
Amazing, ok yeah. He’s right because he’s read around the subject.
As it happens I agree largely with @Alan Cresswell , the issue is about the extent to which influences were important and a personal assessment of the importance of factors. Like all history.
I just don’t accept the narrative that says monotheism was necessary for the development of modern science. The reasons being that many influences converged to aid the development of science include many from polytheistic sources.
Also I dispute the idea that there even was a thing called science in the Newton era. Science as a philosophical concept has been developing for centuries, even Newton himself (with his mix of great insights and absolute humbug) would hardly been seen as following the scientific method as eventually established in the twentieth century.
It seems that the difference turns on whether 'Western Christianity' (or the 'Judeo Christian worldview' or 'monotheism') was a necessary cause of the 'Scientific Revolution' or the 'Enlightenment', and specifically there are gaps and ambiguities between:
"There's a very strong argument that the Judeo-Christian world view gave birth to the scientific method."
and
"the idea that Western Christianity is part of the story of the birth of modern science"
I am probably guilty of hearing the caveats I make more loudly than someone reading what I say.
Gaps and ambiguities between those two statements - well, yes, I see what you mean but 'a very strong argument' is not asserting as fact - it's an evidential statement.
However, I was not making an argument that Christianity is true or that Monothesism is correct. Hence I did not consider these ambiguities at all. I was focused on the way that philosophically, a certain view of truth and facts is common to both. Which remains my point.
The counterfactual of what would have happened if the Scientific Method (Whatever we mean by that) hadn't developed in that time and place is an interesting hypothetical and if we were arguing about some sort of theory of European supremacy or other nonsense, it would be hyper-relevant. However, the truth is that monotheistic thinking was an important step on this journey. I do think the notion that this philosophy was a critical step in the beginnings of science as we now understand is accurate. As I have intimated, it is widely held. How science may have sprung up in other contexts is an interesting idea but in one sense it's not relevant as that's not the world we live in. The fact is that the scientific revolution was born in institutions and individuals who to a very large extent subscribed to this particular worldview. I never made the argument that monotheism was necessary for the development of science. I simply made the argument that it happened that way, because it did.
Yeah, I have come across this from certain atheist thinkers. To me, it's an example of putting belief above evidence which is usually what they claim people of faith are always doing.
This is a big part of what I am reaching for. I believe in objective facts, I also accept that I may well be very wrong about them. Not every worldview holds that there is such a thing as objective facts.
Science is all about testable propositions. Christian belief is a faith that certain untestable propositions are true. Both belong in that paradigm that there is such a thing as objective reality.
AFZ
What do you mean facts?
Bing ChatGPT 4
A fact is:
Something that really exists or has occurred.
A true piece of information.
A statement that can be proven by logical argument from certain axioms and definitions in mathematics. (which works as a metaphor for science I feel)
A repeatable careful observation or measurement (by experimentation or other means), also called empirical evidence in science.
wiki
A fact is a true datum about one or more aspects of a circumstance. Standard reference works are often used to check facts. Scientific facts are verified by repeatable careful observation or measurement by experiments or other means.
Science (what we empirically know) contains none of those?
'most practitioners (of science) believe in an objective reality'. This niggles too. Until we get to QM, the ultimate objective reality, which demonstrates that there is no such thing as absolute, definite reality (apart from that); the axiom on which all else is proven in empirical physics, chemistry, biology, and beyond (psychology, sociology); everything emerging above QM, after wave function collapse, is proven, observable, measurable objective reality surely? Known. Up until we get to the other extreme from QM of the relativity of simultaneity. Where again the objective reality is that there is no absolute reality that is not paradoxical.
The stream is moving on, but, how are these two sentences connected?
Jesus' claim is believed to be an objective fact? How do we go from belief to (objective) fact? To coherent justified true belief? Rather than an axiom for believers only?
The question I was responding to was whether it was just an assertion. It's a well-considered and evidenced assertion. It's not uncontroversial but it's not a crank theory either.
You're telling us that you just don't accept the narrative that it was necessary, but your reasons tell us merely that it wasn't sufficient.
And then of course what you just don't accept is just an assertion.
You're right in so far as the word 'science' wasn't given its current meaning until Whewell did so in the nineteenth century. That doesn't mean we can't look back at the activities of previous centuries and say that they are the forerunners of what we think of as science have a sufficient family resemblance to be included under the umbrella.
Even in the twentieth century there isn't a single scientific method the presence or absence of which suffices to make something science, unless you state it in sufficiently vague generalities as to cover a lot more ground than just the twentieth century or run with an institutional definition, which seems besides the point.
Is it? What is the evidence you are asserting when you make that claim? Because from another point of view all you've extended is a sequence of events with a narrative fallacy around them
Understood, but you seem to be (sometimes) making the argument that monotheism (or a 'Judeo Christian' worldview - which includes Islamic thought, except when it doesn't) is either absolutely necessary to develop some form of scientific method, or at least develop it given the state of 'Western' culture (or is it just "an important step on this journey" that isn't necessary?).
Both are relevant because all we have is a very limited sequence of histories and there's a history of these arguments being grounded in European supremacy and/or being observations about differential development wrapped up as theories.
That's a question, but not the one I thought was being proposed. I had understood the proposition to be that there was something about Western Christianity that encouraged / accelerated the development of modern science that wouldn't have happened if we didn't have monotheism.
To argue that, it's not sufficient to point out the positive influences that Christian institutions have had on the development of scientific thought: you need to make the case that these things (or similar things) wouldn't have happened in an alternate counterfactual history where Christianity in particular, or monotheistic faiths in general, did not widely spread in the West.