Sunday, May 26, 2019

Knowledge of History Update

I was reminded today that the reputation that the Medieval Church interfered with the development of science comes largely from the Enlightenment writers - and has continued since.  Voltaire, D'Alembert, Draper, (Thomas) Huxley - they insisted on their narrative of the Renaissance replacing the Age of Faith.  Except they didn't actually know much history of the Middle Ages.  As we noted before, just because they were closer in time and space than we are does not mean they had good knowledge of the period. It took a hundred years or more, but the physicist and historian of science Pierre Duhem discovered piles of manuscripts that had been circulated among monasteries and universities in the Middle Ages.  I don't want to pretend advanced knowledge here. I had not heard of him until now, though I had known that he and others had begun the recovery before 1900. Lewis makes mention of them when asserting his claim that there is no break between the Middle Ages and Renaissance.

That brings up the next difficulty.  I have seen dates as far back as 1275 for "first beginnings of the Renaissance." There is also a separate "Renaissance of the 12th C," itself the 3rd of the medieval renaissances.*500-1500AD are a common set of boundaries for the Middle Ages. If one wants ot argue for 1400 I won't quibble.  But the clear Italian Renaissance does not start until well into the 15th C, and the scientific achievements trumpeted as examples of freedom from the church largely began in the 17th C. This seems an excessive flexibility of centuries, with a bit too much science coming in before it's supposed to, and then taking its sweet time later when it is supposed to be taking off, if we are counting by churchiness years.  It is in fact simply cherry-picking data, yet the myth continues.

It's got a great central story to hang its argument on, of Galileo muttering "and yet it moves."  Unfortunately, that doesn't capture what happened in that specific incident very well. Heliocentrism had already been speculated on in publication, allowed by the Church. The arrogant Galileo ran up against an even more arrogant and controlling pope, insisting on publishing in his own way and his own time.

Admittedly, Voltaire and the others didn't much know that. But that's my point.

3 comments:

David Foster said...

It should be noted that medieval monasteries contributed very significantly to the development of technology, especially waterpower and its applications.

Some have argued that Henry VIII's closure of the monasteries in England delayed the Industrial Revolution by a century of more.

RichardJohnson said...

I was reminded today that the reputation that the Medieval Church interfered with the development of science comes largely from the Enlightenment writers - and has continued since. Voltaire
Roger Bacon (1220-1292),Franciscan friar noted for advancements in the scientific method.
Nicolaus Copernicus (1473-1543), canon and nephew of a Bishop, who spent much of his career as assistant to his uncle the Bishop. Heliocentric universe.

I need to learn more about the Galileo-church conflict.

RichardJohnson said...

Some have argued that Henry VIII's closure of the monasteries in England delayed the Industrial Revolution by a century of more.
Apparently England's- and later Great Britain's- Industrial and Scientific Revolution was not religion-neutral.The geneticist C>D> Darlington, in The Evolution of Man and Society, points out that the scientific and religious advances in Great Britain from 1600-1900 came almost exclusively from religious Dissenters. Isaac Newton had to dissimulate his religious views to be able to be associated with Oxford.