Posted on 12/04/2003 11:18:40 AM PST by Mr. Silverback
To paraphrase the opening of a popular ESPN show, these four things everyone knows are true: Before Columbus’s first voyage, people thought the world was flat. When Copernicus wrote that the Earth revolved around the Sun, his conclusions came out of nowhere. The “scientific revolution” of the seventeenth century invented science as we know it. And the false beliefs and impediments to science are Christianity’s fault.
There’s just one problem: All four statements are false.
As Rodney Stark writes in his new book, For the Glory of God, “every educated person” of Columbus’s time, especially Christian clergy, “knew the earth was round.” More than 800 years before Columbus’s voyage, Bede, the church historian, taught this, as did Hildegard of Bingen and Thomas Aquinas. The title of the most popular medieval text on astronomy was Sphere, not exactly what you would call a book that said the earth was flat.
As for Copernicus’s sudden flash of insight, Stark quotes the eminent historian L. Bernard Cohen who called that idea “an invention of later historians.” Copernicus “was taught the essential fundamentals leading to his model by his Scholastic professors”—that is, Christian scholars.
That model was “developed gradually by a succession of . . . Scholastic scientists over the previous two centuries.” Building upon their work on orbital mechanics, Copernicus added the “implicit next step.”
Thus, the idea that science was invented in the seventeenth century, “when a weakened Christianity could no longer prevent it,” as it is said, is false. Long before the famed physicist Isaac Newton, clergy like John of Sacrobosco, the author of Sphere, were doing what can be only called science. The Scholastics—Christians—not the Enlightenment, invented modern science.
Three hundred years before Newton, a Scholastic cleric named Jean Buridan anticipated Newton’s First Law of Motion, that a body in motion will stay in motion unless otherwise impeded. It was Buridan, not an Enlightenment luminary, who first proposed that Earth turns on its axis.
In Stark’s words, “Christian theology was necessary for the rise of science.” Science only happened in areas whose worldview was shaped by Christianity, that is, Europe. Many civilizations had alchemy; only Europedeveloped chemistry. Likewise, astrology was practiced everywhere, but only in Europe did it become astronomy.
That’s because Christianity depicted God as a “rational, responsive, dependable, and omnipotent being” who created a universe with a “rational, lawful, stable” structure. These beliefs uniquely led to “faith in the possibility of science.”
So why the Columbus myth? Because, as Stark writes, “the claim of an inevitable and bitter warfare between religion and science has, for more than three centuries, been the primary polemical device used in the atheist attack of faith.” Opponents of Christianity have used bogus accounts like the ones I’ve mentioned not only to discredit Christianity, but also to position themselves as “liberators” of the human mind and spirit.
It’s up to us to set the record straight, and Stark’s book is a great place to start. I think it’s time to tell our neighbors that what everyone knows about Christianity and science is just plain wrong.
He he he.
E Rocc, Ol' Predictable. Salivatin' like a Pavlov's dog, at every chance to put down Christianity.
Bruno was burned for witchcraft, not for his cosmological ideas.He was burned for dissenting views on a number of subjects. "Witchcraft" was always easy to claim and difficult to disprove.
However, the mere fact that he was burned at the stake as late as 1600 proves the point made, that the Church of the time considered certain questions unaskable. The fact is we'd likely be 100 to 300 years ahead of where we are today if Torquemada et al had been the ones thrown upon the fires.
This does not mean that the Church did not have a positive influence on science at other points in history. But as was usually the case, when it attempted to enforce its views it became a repressive influence upon progress.
-Eric
from http://www.physics.gmu.edu/~jevans/astr103/CourseNotes/history_greekGeocentricHeliocentric.html
The heliocentric concept, which followed the geocentric one, did not originate with Copernicus. He became aware that in the third century B.C. the Greek natural philosopher Aristarchus had proposed the Sun as the center of planetary motion. In his treatise, On the Sizes and Distances of the Sun and Moon, Aristarchus estimated that the Sun is 20 or so times farther from the Earth than the Moon (the actual value is about 400), and since both have approximately the same angular size, the Sun must be 20 times larger than the Moon or, he reasoned, about 7 times the Earth's diameter (the actual value is almost 109 times). From these estimates he apparently thought it natural to put the largest and only self-luminous body in the Solar System, the Sun, at the center of the system. Additionally, Aristarchus attributed the daily movement of the heavens to the rotation of the Earth on its axis. Annual changes in the sky and the planet`s motions could be explained if they and the Earth then revolved about the Sun. Even prior to Aristarchus, the Greeks were aware that the Moon, and possibly the planets, "shine" by reflecting sunlight, a notion they probably came to by observing lunar eclipses. It is also possible that Aristarchus recognized that the stars were self-luminous and conceivably like the Sun only farther away, but this is speculation.BTW, Kopernick was a Canon, which was essentially an ecclesiastical sinecure. Kopernick's work amounts to little more than a coordinate conversion of Ptolemaic elements. It was really a matter of aesthetics more than physics. Without a physcial theory one explanation is as good as an other. Ptolemy gets the nod because his orbital elements were easier to use to make predictions about events observable on Earth. Kopernick's greatest contribution was that he inspired Kepler. Kepler fitted Tycho's observations of Mars to heliocentric eliptical orbits and thus revolutionized astronomy. Only almost no one noticed. His laws were difficult to apply in the days before computers and astronomers already knew how to apply Ptolemaic laws.
Validation is everything. Kepler and Kepler's Laws predicted transits of Venus (the shadow of Venus hitting the Earth, like an eclipse, but it only results in a tiny dot crossing the Sun) which occurred after his death. These events were not predicted by either Ptolemy's or Kopernick's models, so Kepler's ideas began to catch on.
I guess your right. I can see the top parts of the masts but the hull is below the horizon. -Tom
(you would have thought something as easy to observe as that would convince people.)
It did, but mostly it was people who had a sailing tradition, like the Greeks. Desert people, and others who were essentially landlocked, rarely had the opportunity to see ships slowly sail over the curve.
However, it was possible for everyone to observe the earth's shadow on the moon. But that would only give the impression that earth was disk-shaped, which is mentioned in the bible:
isaiahIt was the Greeks who not only knew the surface was curved, but who also reasoned that it was a sphere -- because only a sphere always casts a circular shadow. And of course, they also calculated the size of the earth.
40:22 It is he that sitteth upon the circle of the earth, and the inhabitants thereof are as grasshoppers; that stretcheth out the heavens as a curtain, and spreadeth them out as a tent to dwell in
but it was in fact an attempt to use magic to make gold out of trash: an abomination to both scientists and the religious.
We know that Isaac Newton was an abomination to small minded men who called themselves scientists.
We also know Isaac Newton was an abomination to small minded men who controlled
so-called christian religions based on the Error started at Nicea.
The Error of a Corporate religion controlled by some self identified elite,
who call themselves priests;but to those who read the Word of G-d, they
know that all followers of the Christ are a royal priesthood see 1 Peter 2:9
The question should be : Was Isaac Newton an abomination to G-d ?
a bondslave to the Christ
chuck
Not when the moon's on the horizon.
After the foundation of Rome? I took Latin a very long time ago...am I close?
No more "unproveable" than the statement: American High School graduates know what the First Amendment is." What's your point?
See my post #11
Threatened worldview my tuchis.
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