VORKOSIGAN
I say that science is now limited because the roots of science
was actually founded in Christian theology. See Stanley Jaki's, The Savior
of Science (review here:
http://www.columbia.edu/cu/augustine/a/science_origin.html )
and The Soul of Science: Christian Faith and Natural Philosophy by Nancy
R. Pearcey and Charles Thaxton (Charles Colson outlines some of the main
thoughts here:
http://www.ldolphin.org/colson.html ).
Jaki is wrong. He is the end product of a trend that began in the 60s to
recover the roots of science from what many had seen as an unfair
suppression of Christian influence on it. While this is a laudable goal, to
argue that science has roots in Christian theology is going much too far.
Jaki and likeminded thinkers generally ignore the major counterfactual
to their case: Orthodox Christianity. For it is manifestly true that
Eastern Christianity failed to develop anything resembling western science.
The history of Chinese science also throws light on why science developed
in the West, and not elsewhere.
I will start off by noting first that science is composed of several
things. First, an idea that the world was accessible through empirical
exploration. Second, that the world can be modeled using mathematical
frameworks. Third, that the world must be explored by interacting with, not
by contemplating the interactions of non-scientist third parties. Fourth,
that scientists may not invoke the supernatural in explanations. Fifth, and
most importantly, it is a social space and a set of values, where people
who are full-time knowledge producers ("scientists") perform activities
governed by shared values. The major contribution of the West was not any
of the first four, but the last. Other sciences had parts, but none created
a social space and filled it with people who were doing the first four
things.
Western science arose principally for the following reasons:
1) through interaction with other societies, 15-16th century westerners
began to appreciate how backward they were compared to the Chinese,
Indians, Arabs and Africans. This was a huge spur to exploration and new
knowledge. By constrast, the Chinese were well aware of their state of
advancement, and had correspondingly less incentive to push for new
knowledge. They would in fact remain ahead of the West in most areas until
after 1800, and in a couple until the 1930s.
2) through interaction with other societies, many new inventions entered
the West in the period from 1250-1600. These included lenses, paper,
gunpowder, printing presses, stern-post rudders, and compasses.
Additionally, new ideas entered from China and Arabia that stimulated
Renaissance thinkers. Galileo, Harvey, and many other leading lights were
trained at universities heavily networked into the new knowledge -- Harvey
reproduced Arab ideas about circulation that were Chinese in origin, while
Copernicus had an Arab text on a sun-centered solar-system sitting on his
shelf. Arab science is being rediscovered even as I write, and its
influence on the West will get only more profound as new discoveries are
being made.
3) Unlike China, the merchant class developed considerable social
standing and clout. It demanded reliable knowledge about the world --
better maps, better chronometers, better ships, better ways to manage
money. Almost every great thinker of the age thought about money.
Copernicus wrote on currency issues, and Newton ran the Mint. Math
textbooks frequently were oriented around double-entry bookkeeping, an
invention of profound effect on the West. Rising capitalism stimulated new
ways of looking at the world. The attempt to figure longitude at sea
(another area of interest to the polymathic Newton) stimulated much work in
math and instrumentation.
4) The discovery of the New World. This was a major shock to the
Medieval mind. A whole new continent, unmentioned in the Bible, with new
people, animals and foods. This never happened to the Chinese, who always
knew more about Europe than Europe knew about China.
5) the fusion of artisanal techniques with scientific curiosity. In
China, the makers of things kept their trade secrets a secret, so many
ancient techniques were lost. Artisans did not write things down, and had
no experimental tradition, and did not normally interact with the Chinese
literati who wrote so much history. By contrast, in the west, scientists
got their hands dirty. Galileo built his own telescopes. Chemist ran their
own stills. Agricola dug in the dirt himself. Strato
6) the machine, especially the clock. The machine was the model that
westerners used to understand nature. The whole idea of natural law came
along as science puffed along, it was not present at the creation, so to
speak. Theology never entered into it. Kepler noted that his goal was to
reconstruct the universe as a machine. Renaissance thinkers made two
advances no other culture made. One was to use the machine to understand
nature. The second, even more fundamental, was to use math to model machine
behavior, and by extension, eventually to model natural behavior. In China,
by contrast, math never had any social standing, and was not in the
imperial exam system. Although the Chinese used math to solve natural
problems, they never really developed a conscious idea of modeling with it.
And Orthodox Christianity never really went through a proto-industrial
phase like Europe did in the late medieval period. Machinery was much used,
and much less understood. As late as the 19th ! century the Tsars curbed science because it conflicted with Christianity. In fairness, the clock seems to have been a development of
artisans working at Church demand. And there was a rich artisanal
tradition in late medieval monasteries, like the order of monks that went
around building bridges.
7) The fractured political nature of the west. A key. The quarreling
states of the west were so many laboratories for testing political, social
and scientific ideas. An exiled scientist could find honor in another city.
The constant warfare stimulated advances in metallurgy and physics, to name
only two fields. In China, one state controlled, so one bad decision was
replicated across a continent, as when the voyages of Cheng Ho were stopped
and the fleet left to rot. Orthodoxy also remained in the grip of either
large empires, or tiny, impoverished feudal fiefdoms with low capital
resources, isolated from events in Europe.
8) Alchemy. Christianity was "opposed" by the secret authority of
alchemy, which many early scientists studied. This was a training ground
for heterodox ideas, empirical thinking, and hands-on experience of the
world.
9) the printing press. Movable type-printing, a transmission from China,
was a major impetus. Copernicus' book was printed with extra large margins
that enabled thinkers across Europe to own a copy, make notes, and
distribute them to one another for viewing in a sort of primitive email
system. Many European princes operated printing presses. Tycho owned his
own press for distributing information.
10) The attitude of the ruling classes. In China and Orthodoxy the
ruling classes were little interested in development as such. But in the
west many princes were highly educated and operated courts where learned
men could debate and investigate. Many European princes conducted their own
scientific and technical explorations.
11) new modes of representation. New forms of art grew up that
emphasized mathematical instruments and models in depicting the world.
12) The negative stimulus of Christianity. This one is left out of many
Christian-oriented books. It was the political, social, and philosophical
failure of theistic explanation to account for things like
gunpowder, and the New World, that prodded many Renaissance thinkers to
search for new solutions. The whole idea of Progress is an inherent
critique of the Christian worldview. Agricola, in his
De Re Metallica
of ~1550, the earliest example of the new view I am aware of, simply
dismisses both the Bible and Alchemy as explanatory strategies, a huge
intellectual step. I think it is crucial to note that the early scientists,
who developed methodological naturalism, were all theists.
Note how the factors interlock and drive each other. No New World, no
supply of Spanish silver, no nascent capitalism. no poverty, no drive for
exploration, no new world. No transmissions from China, no idea of
progress, no machines to model, no science. These things did not happen in
the Orthodox world -- although it was abundantly supplied with
Christianity. Nor did they occur in Christian areas elsewhere, such as
Spain, Ethiopia, or in Christian areas under Islamic domination (all of
them fell behind western Europe and Northern Europe). Clearly the rise of
science in the west is the result of a series of historical accidents that
had little or nothing to do with Christian beliefs, though certainly with
Christian behavior (like preserving and transmitting certain ancient texts,
and stimulating artisanal traditions).
were Christians and one of the greatest scientists ever, Sir Isaac
Newton, considered his writings of scientific nature to be of much less
importance than his voluminous writings on the scripture.
Yes, and how wrong he was, for nobody today remembers him for the
million and a half words he wrote on Bible history.
I have read that a Professor Richard Popkin was quoted in an Israeli
newspaper (Al Hamishar, July 26,1985) as revealing that a London professor
told him, !'Newton!&s writings on the Bible should be burnt because
they are harmful to science.!(
Popkin is a major Newton Scholar and it is highly unlikely he said
something like this. It is more than likely this is a misquote.
of life has ALL the earmarks of intelligent design.
Yes. For example, in a universe intended for life, 99% of it is
uninhabitable vaccum. Why, just the other day I built my family a house. My
wife and two kids and I live in a three-inch corner in the loft, and the
rest of it is useless to us. A brilliant design, wouldn't you agree?
The skeptic, if he is to be honest about his own belief system, MUST
be able to demonstrate the possibility of the naturalistic self-formation
of life from non-living chemicals or else he is merely exhibiting that very
quality he ridicules the theists for - faith!
Why is "life" the problem? How do you know life isn't the by-product of
processes intended to create really cool lightning storms in the atmosphere
of Jupiter? Your insistence that we must explain "life" is arbitrary and
subjective.
In any case, the skeptic does not need to demonstrate any origin for
life. The idea of god(s) remains absurd whatever the gaps in our current
level of knowledge.
Do you honestly think confidence in science is the same as blind faith
in a deity?
The "atheism of the gaps" is actually less rational than the "God of
the gaps" because the skeptic claims that the natural universe is ALL that
exists (there are no supernatural beings) yet the skeptic cannot (as yet)
produce ANY real evidence demonstrating that natural processes are even
theoretically capable of producing even the most rudimentary form of life.
Hmmmm....what about the last twenty-five years
of research on self-replicating molecules.
In any case, relying on gaps in scientific knowledge is dangerous. As
history teaches, the web of scientific information is always growing.....
Science can only assess the degree of probability of an event.
Dead, flat, wrong. Which model of science are you using?
The probability of the organization of basic elements into a
functional symbiotic self-replicating, self-repairing bio-chemical MACHINE
is beyond the capacity of those elements to perform on its own (based on
what we actually know). In order to achieve the properties we see inherent
in life, the molecules must somehow overcome increasingly more difficult
levels of complexity. Each "higher" stage is therefore less probable than
the preceding one.
This does not even begin to get at the issues involved. Selection
processes are certainly capable of overcoming the alleged problems you've
laid out here, as experience with them in several industries has shown.
Vorkosigan
