Posted on 12/21/2008 6:19:03 AM PST by GonzoII
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It is all very well to point out that important scientists, like Louis Pasteur, have been Catholic. More revealing is how many priests have distinguished themselves in the sciences. It turns out, for instance, that the first person to measure the rate of acceleration of a freely falling body was Fr. Giambattista Riccioli. The man who has been called the father of Egyptology was Fr. Athanasius Kircher (also called "master of a hundred arts" for the breadth of his knowledge). Fr. Roger Boscovich, who has been described as "the greatest genius that Yugoslavia ever produced," has often been called the father of modern atomic theory.
In the sciences it was the Jesuits in particular who distinguished themselves; some 35 craters on the moon, in fact, are named after Jesuit scientists and mathematicians.
By the eighteenth century, the Jesuits
had contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter’s surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn’s rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon effected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics — all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents [Jonathan Wright, The Jesuits, 2004, p. 189].
Seismology, the study of earthquakes, has been so dominated by Jesuits that it has become known as "the Jesuit science." It was a Jesuit, Fr. J.B. Macelwane, who wrote Introduction to Theoretical Seismology, the first seismology textbook in America, in 1936. To this day, the American Geophysical Union, which Fr. Macelwane once headed, gives an annual medal named after this brilliant priest to a promising young geophysicist.
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How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization |
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Contents
A Light in the Darkness How the Monks Saved Civilization The Church and the University The Church and Science The Origins of International Law The Church and Economics How Catholic Charity Changed the World The Church and Western Law The Church and Western Morality |
The Galileo case is often cited as evidence of Catholic hostility toward science, and How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization accordingly takes a closer look at the Galileo matter. For now, just one little-known fact: Catholic cathedrals in Bologna, Florence, Paris, and Rome were constructed to function as solar observatories. No more precise instruments for observing the sun’s apparent motion could be found anywhere in the world. When Johannes Kepler posited that planetary orbits were elliptical rather than circular, Catholic astronomer Giovanni Cassini verified Kepler’s position through observations he made in the Basilica of San Petronio in the heart of the Papal States. Cassini, incidentally, was a student of Fr. Riccioli and Fr. Francesco Grimaldi, the great astronomer who also discovered the diffraction of light, and even gave the phenomenon its name.
I’ve tried to fill the book with little-known facts like these.
To say that the Church played a positive role in the development of science has now become absolutely mainstream, even if this new consensus has not yet managed to trickle down to the general public. In fact, Stanley Jaki, over the course of an extraordinary scholarly career, has developed a compelling argument that in fact it was important aspects of the Christian worldview that accounted for why it was in the West that science enjoyed the success it did as a self-sustaining enterprise. Non-Christian cultures did not possess the same philosophical tools, and in fact were burdened by conceptual frameworks that hindered the development of science. Jaki extends this thesis to seven great cultures: Arabic, Babylonian, Chinese, Egyptian, Greek, Hindu, and Maya. In these cultures, Jaki explains, science suffered a "stillbirth." My book gives ample attention to Jaki’s work.
Economic thought is another area in which more and more scholars have begun to acknowledge the previously overlooked role of Catholic thinkers. Joseph Schumpeter, one of the great economists of the twentieth century, paid tribute to the overlooked contributions of the late Scholastics — mainly sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Spanish theologians — in his magisterial History of Economic Analysis (1954). "[I]t is they," he wrote, "who come nearer than does any other group to having been the ‘founders’ of scientific economics." In devoting scholarly attention to this unfortunately neglected chapter in the history of economic thought, Schumpeter would be joined by other accomplished scholars over the course of the twentieth century, including Professors Raymond de Roover, Marjorie Grice-Hutchinson, and Alejandro Chafuen.
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...it is no surprise that the Church should have done so much to foster the nascent university system, since the Church, according to historian Lowrie Daly, "was the only institution in Europe that showed consistent interest in the preservation and cultivation of knowledge." |
The popes and other churchmen ranked the universities among the great jewels of Christian civilization. It was typical to hear the University of Paris described as the "new Athens" — a designation that calls to mind the ambitions of the great Alcuin from the Carolingian period of several centuries earlier, who sought through his own educational efforts to establish a new Athens in the kingdom of the Franks. Pope Innocent IV (1243–54) described the universities as "rivers of science which water and make fertile the soil of the universal Church," and Pope Alexander IV (1254–61) called them "lanterns shining in the house of God." And the popes deserved no small share of the credit for the growth and success of the university system. "Thanks to the repeated intervention of the papacy," writes historian Henri Daniel-Rops, "higher education was enabled to extend its boundaries; the Church, in fact, was the matrix that produced the university, the nest whence it took flight."
As a matter of fact, among the most important medieval contributions to modern science was the essentially free inquiry of the university system, where scholars could debate and discuss propositions, and in which the utility of human reason was taken for granted. Contrary to the grossly inaccurate picture of the Middle Ages that passes for common knowledge today, medieval intellectual life made indispensable contributions to Western civilization. In The Beginnings of Western Science (1992), David Lindberg writes:
[I]t must be emphatically stated that within this educational system the medieval master had a great deal of freedom. The stereotype of the Middle Ages pictures the professor as spineless and subservient, a slavish follower of Aristotle and the Church fathers (exactly how one could be a slavish follower of both, the stereotype does not explain), fearful of departing one iota from the demands of authority. There were broad theological limits, of course, but within those limits the medieval master had remarkable freedom of thought and expression; there was almost no doctrine, philosophical or theological, that was not submitted to minute scrutiny and criticism by scholars in the medieval university.
"[S]cholars of the later Middle Ages," concludes Lindberg, "created a broad intellectual tradition, in the absence of which subsequent progress in natural philosophy would have been inconceivable."
Historian of science Edward Grant concurs with this judgment:
What made it possible for Western civilization to develop science and the social sciences in a way that no other civilization had ever done before? The answer, I am convinced, lies in a pervasive and deep-seated spirit of inquiry that was a natural consequence of the emphasis on reason that began in the Middle Ages. With the exception of revealed truths, reason was enthroned in medieval universities as the ultimate arbiter for most intellectual arguments and controversies. It was quite natural for scholars immersed in a university environment to employ reason to probe into subject areas that had not been explored before, as well as to discuss possibilities that had not previously been seriously entertained.
The creation of the university, the commitment to reason and rational argument, and the overall spirit of inquiry that characterized medieval intellectual life amounted to "a gift from the Latin Middle Ages to the modern world…though it is a gift that may never be acknowledged. Perhaps it will always retain the status it has had for the past four centuries as the best-kept secret of Western civilization."
Here, then, are just a few of the topics to be found in How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. I’ve been asked quite a few times in recent weeks what my next project will be. For now, it’ll be getting some rest.
"How the Monks Saved Civilization", chapter three from
How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, is available online here.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
Thomas E. Woods, Jr. "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization." LewRockwell.com (May 2, 2005).
Reprinted by permission of Thomas E. Woods, Jr.
THE AUTHOR
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Copyright © 2005 LewRockwell.com
“It is a shame that adherents of a “group” psychology give praise and glory to an institution”
—
The Church is not an institution; it is the body of Christ.
Col:1:24:
24 Who now rejoice in my sufferings for you and fill up those things that are wanting of the sufferings of Christ, in my flesh, for his body, which is the church: (DRV)
So don't attack its primary builder because of some post-reformation ecclesiological nonsense.
Well, it is true that the Catholic Church is not a building. It is the Body of Christ himself, as the Holy Scripture clearly teaches.
So don't attack its primary builder because of some post-reformation ecclesiological nonsense.
Whose "attacking"? I'm just stating some common sense understanding of what is being done by adherents of many "churches" today - of whom you seem to be one.
BTW, what I said about the "ekklesia" (Greek spelling) is what is taught in the Scriptures you say you believe in. I realize you believe in a "developing" religion with "developing doctrines". However, I don't. I take what the Scriptures say about the "church" before I even consider what individuals try to push on everyone else.
Well, it is true that the Catholic Church is not a building. It is the Body of Christ himself, as the Holy Scripture clearly teaches.
*****
I’m curious annalex...what are you being taught about end-times? HOW much do you know to watch for? We were told to watch. WHAT are you watching for?
It is logically impossible to reject an author's claim without reviewing his argument. Have you read his book? If you are a champion of West civ, then at least honor the reason of the Greeks. You can easily get the book at a library. (If your local library does not have it, they will probably have an inter-library loan service.) Or buy it from Amazon or your favorite bookstore.
what do I know?
That is a very good question. That is essentially the question Socrates kept asking. So keep asking it. You may eventually get the answer.
What are you basing that opinion on? Certainly not history. During the barbarian invasions of the Roman Empire, that empire collapsed in the west. It was the Christian monasteries that remained oases of learning during those turbulent centuries. As the barbarians were destroying the marks of civilization all around, the monks behind their walls were preserved the learning of the ancients. It was from the monks that the barbarians later received the learning that the monks had preserved.
Galileo would have disagreed with you..
You are jumping all over the place. First you are talking about the early Middle Ages. That would be roughly 400 to 1000 AD. And now you are talking about Galileo who lived in the 17th century, at least 600 years later.
If you want to make a consist argument about some point, please do. But I will not play a specious game of jack rabbit--hippity hop, hippity hop.
Bravo!
No the point was that I was making the Church was anti science during that period..
During what period?
>>Well, I think I would put it like this; as the saying goes, first things first, the Catholic Church is historically the first Christian religion
Only in Catholic history books...<<
No, in all history books. The only books that claim otherwise are propaganda(such as Trail of Blood), and have been discredited by most historians(even those unsympathetic to the Roman Catholic Church).
Sounds good, doesn't it...However, your apostolic line has been broken numerous times, even from the get-go from Peter...Names were later inserted into the line to make it look like an unbroken line...
The doctrine is found as early as the Epistle to the Corinthians (c. 96), traditionally attributed to Pope Clement I...
There you go again...You don't have the letter...It's your church's 'tradition' that such a letter ever existed...
It is expressly affirmed in Roman Catholicism. It is identified with the succession of bishops in office and interpreted as the source of the bishops’ authority and leadership role. The most specific instance of these claims is that the pope is the successor of St. Peter, who was chosen by Jesus as head of his church (see Matt. 16:16–18).
I can just imagine the look on a Catholic's face when he for the first time read the scriptures in his own language...No doubt he said about his church, 'this is not the church of the scriptures'...
The Reformers are the true catholics...
Ha...All books that have been anti-Catholic have been 'dis-credited'...So what else is new???
Twisting the Knife
How Galileo Brought His Troubles with the Church on Himself
Thanks for confirming yet again that you are an idiot.
Read the following and learn something rather than regurgitate the pap you've so willingly swallowed.
Twisting the Knife
How Galileo Brought His Troubles with the Church on Himself
You feel better now???
Must be the weekend moderator is a Catholic...
>>...All books that have been anti-Catholic have been ‘dis-credited’...So what else is new??? <<
One thing that isn’t new is anti-Catholic bigotry. It’s too bad. On the cultural issues of our time, Catholics, Evangelicals and other people of faith have so much in common. As Christopher Dawson said, “The final battle of our age will not be between Catholics and Protestants, but between those who believe in God and those who do not”. We should work together, not tear each other down.
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