Then again, this book outlines what the NYT tries to invent as "news"
Posted on 01/01/2006 3:44:46 PM PST by neverdem
The conventional view, embraced by most of his fellow cultural determinists, is that during the Renaissance and Reformation, Europeans shook off the authority of the Catholic Church. When a secular world was created alongside the sacred one, when intellectual freedom replaced obedience to authority, capitalism and scientific advances were the result.
That theory, Stark says, doesn't fit the facts. In reality, capitalism developed in the Middle Ages, and the important innovations were made by people in the belly of the faith. Religion didn't stifle economic and scientific ideas -- it nurtured them.
Stark is building upon the recent research that has reversed earlier prejudices about the so-called Dark Ages. As late as 1983, the esteemed historian Daniel Boorstin could write a chapter on the Middle Ages entitled "The Prison of Christian Dogma."
But the more we learn, the more we realize that most of the progress we link to the Renaissance or later years actually happened during the Middle Ages. Roughly a hundred years before Copernicus, Jean Buridan (circa 1300-1358) wrote that the Earth is an orb rotating on an axis. Buridan, a rector of the University of Paris, was succeeded by Nicole d'Oresme (1323-1382), who explained why the rotation of the Earth doesn't produce wind.
Other medieval Scholastics made the same sort of discoveries in economics and technology. Five hundred years before Adam Smith, St. Albertus Magnus explained the price mechanism as what "goods are worth according to the estimate of the market at the time of sale."
Catholic monasteries emerged as capitalist enterprises, serving not...
--snip--
Ideas and culture drive civilizations. The Catholic Church nurtured one of the most impressive economic takeoffs in human history. Today, as Catholicism spreads in Africa and China, it's important to understand the beliefs that encourage people to work hard and grow rich.
(Excerpt) Read more at baylor.edu ...
Wow!
I can't believe that the NYT has something nice to say about the Catholic Church!
Someone pinch me!
Hmmmm........
They want to get it out of the way early, so they have the entire rest of the year free to bash the Church.
Some people discover what others have always known.
gee, I could have told them that by just observing bingo, raffles and PTO fundraisers..hahahahahaha
This accords with my own considerable research in this area.
Lynn Thorndike has published several useful books on the development of science and technology in the middle ages.
Alfred North Whitehead has published several books showing the connection between scientific advancement and Christianity.
Weber argued that the "work ethic" is primarily Protestant, but if you go back further in history you will find that there was already a work ethic in the middle ages. Piers Plowman, for instance, among other things praises the value of labor.
I would cite one of my own books on this subject, but I prefer to keep my private identity separate from my freepername.
Protestantism played a role in the rise of science, trade, and industry, but so earlier did Catholicism. The historical record is clear.
Then again, this book outlines what the NYT tries to invent as "news"
Sho nuff.
Well, let's not let the facts get in the way of a good theory.
Interesting, but most of the Christian countries that are wealthy are overwhelmingly Protestant. Most Catholic countries - and all Catholic countries outside of Europe - are poorer than their Protestant neighbors.
Someone should tell this to the USCCB next time they try to claim that Catholic dogma requires one to support DNC-style socialism.
Thank you!
And Amen.
 |
~Holy Capitalism, BatMan! |
I think it's a matter of emphasis in the (mostly) gradual transition from medievalsm to the world of capitalism. Yes, Whitehead touched on this in "Adventures of Ideas". But the really classic work on the subject is "Religion and the Rise of Capitalism" by R.H.Tawney. As has been suggested there is certainly some pre-modern capitalism in medieval society but this doesn't gainsay the fact that the Renaissance and Reformation gave it a radical new emphasis that permanently altered Western civilization. I'll just cite one small example. The medieval church rejected the charging of interest as the sin of usury. It was Calvinism that first gave it an imprimatur. I think there's a danger in assuming that because there are fragments of the old in the new that the new isn't new. This would be tantamount to saying that because an ancient Greek named Erathosthenes knew that the earth was spherical and even calculated its circumference that what Galileo did wasn't new. Even Karl Marx recognized that the historical emergence of capitalim was progressive (yes, he said that!) and largely the result of Renaissance humanism and the Reformation. The fact is that historically quantity and the emergence of new emphases irrevocably change quality - and create new historical eras. Whitehead in that book said it took over two millenia before the Platonic doctrine of the immortality of the soul ended slavery in the West. History always carries the past within it but there are unique and radical developments as its dialectic hobbles along.
Some of each. Pope Augustine certainly was in favor of stifling independent thinking. And don't forget even as late as the 1500s Pope Urban VIII put Galileo under house arrest for standing up for Copernicus' (and Buridan's?) "heretical" ideas. Then again, Thomas Aquinas re-popularized Aristotle. All you can say is that the Church allowed diversity of thought ... sporadically and eventually, perhaps even reluctantly.
Catholic 'Dogma' has never required anything of the sort. That idea is the OPINION of the Catholic Bishops, largely pushed by the liberals who planted themselves on the staff of the NCCB. Unfortunately, too many Catholics accept the pronouncements of the NCCB as dogma, because they have no notion that they can question what the Bishops say.
If I'm not mistaken, the Pope didn't 'arrest' Galileo, he was protecting him from the ire of his fellow scholars who didn't accept what Galileo taught. I believe the the Pope DID accept it.
Oh, I don't dispute the fact that things took off around the sixteenth century or thereabouts. But it was built on a foundation created by Christianity during the middle ages.
One important point was free will. Christianity, with a few exceptions, promotes the idea of free will, enabled by grace. That leads people to assume that the have initiative, and choices, and can effect change.
Another important point is the idea that the universe is rational. That is found among the Greeks, but became more or less instatiated with the idea of Christ as the Logos (John 1:1). It has been pointed out that although the Greeks invented philosophy, the only place where you find philosophy seriously practiced for thousands of years is among Christians. When Christianity ebbed from the universities, philosophy ceased to be much more than a game played by specialists.
The middle ages made a number of important technical advances, including stirrups, the horse collar (which enables deep plowing and opens up extensive new lands for agriculture, and the water mill. Until the invention of the steam engine, all technological industry was water powered. That began in the middle ages, and is one reason why slavery ceased to be practiced in Europe.
Then there's the great universities. All of them were founded by Catholics, although many were later Protestantized or secularized. But the later institutions drew on the earlier.
Or there's printing. Sure, it is usually considered a Renaissance invention. But it started in a monastery.
And there's gunpowder. That is a late medieval, early Renaissance invention, too.
Usury laws slowed the development of banking, but the great banking enterprises started in the middle ages nonetheless. As did trade on a massive scale.
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