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Niall refers us to
some letters in the Sydney Morning Herald. Unfortunately, the medium of a
letter only lends itself to a fast quip, and thus the risk of being as shallow
as the idea attacked. One morning I made my
regular pilgrimage to Maccas. Normally at Maccas I would feast upon not only a
bacon-and-egg McMuffin, but also the views of both right and left-wing
journalists in the free newspapers found there. However, on this occasion some
greedy couple had gathered all the available newspapers to themselves and I was
forced to stare blankly into space and contemplate the foundations of modern
existence. I think the crisis in
our thinking can be attributed to a Renaissance genius, and a Protestant one at
that! Johannes Kepler was a Lutheran theological student awaiting his final
exams and placement when the equivalent of ACOMP diverted him to a position
teaching mathematics in However, let me
digress. At the beginning of the second millennium, the Christian Church
affirmed the medieval notion of twin sources of revelation - the Book of
Scripture and the Book of Nature. As Peter Harrison puts it, “Albert the
Great (c.1200-1280), sounding rather like an eighteenth century British
empiricist, announced that all universal knowledge arises out of sense
experience. His famous prot�g�, Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274), agreed that
‘all our knowledge takes its rise from sensation,’ and that
‘it is the knowledge we have of creatures that enables us to refer to
God.’ “ The exploration of the
"Book of Nature" led to the development of empiricism - that theory
that through observations and data we can induce a theory and test it with
further observations and data. However, the
development of empiricism was hampered by a belief in a Golden Age of the past
and the knowledge of the "ancients". Consequently, many Renaissance
people, instead of throwing themselves into scientific activity, threw
themselves into ancient books. On the assumption that the ancients had already
done the observing, they approached empirical theory through a "literature
search" instead of doing the experiments themselves. This conviction about
the knowledge of the ancients is very evident in the writings of Nicholas
Copernicus. Copernicus wrote in his "Letter Against Werner" (1604) “…
It is fitting for us to follow the methods of the ancients strictly and to hold
fast to their observations which have been handed down to us like a Testament.
And to him who thinks that they are not to be entirely trusted in this respect,
the gates of our Science are certainly closed. He will lie before that gate and
spin the dreams of the deranged about the motions of the eighth sphere; and he
will get what he deserved for believing that he can lend support to his own
hallucinations by slandering the ancients.” Thus Copernicus gave
new life to heliocentrism, which was based on ancient Pythagorean mysticism.
His confidence in the ancients was supported by Galileo Galilei. Like many of
his era, Galilei believed in the supposed knowledge of the ancients and he
argued that people like Moses had "accommodated" their superior
knowledge to their ignorant audience. While people like Calvin also supported
the idea, the most extensive defence of it came from Galilei himself in his
"Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina concerning the Use of Biblical
Quotations in Matters of Science" (1615). The significant thing
for our topic (praying for rain) is that the ancients combined knowledge of the
world with mysticism - with beliefs about a connection between nature and divinity.
Thus astronomy was connected with mysticism and through that to the belief that
the planets must orbit in perfect circles with uniform motion and the divine
fire at its centre. At the same time as
this handicapped empiricism was stumbling along, a full-blooded empiricism
existed in another tradition of thought. Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa rejected
this slavish adherence to the ancients and their mysticism in his "Learned
Ignorance" (written 1440, published 1514). In the same tradition Regiomontanus
(1436-1476) contemptuously stated (1464): “…
I cannot get over my amazement at the mental inertia of our astronomers in
general who, like credulous women, believe what they read in books, tablets,
and the commentaries as if it were the divine unalterable truth; they believe
the authors and neglect the truth.” Elsewhere
Regiomontanus wrote: “It
is necessary to keep the stars doggedly before one’s eyes, and to rid
posterity from ancient tradition.” It was Johannes Kepler
who took up this challenge. He criticised Copernicus for interpreting the
ancients instead of nature. Kepler got hold of the meticulous observations of
Tycho Brahe and found that the theories of the ancients, supported by
Copernicus and Galileo, were mystical mumbo jumbo. Kepler's tenacity is
represented by the way in which he focused upon an error in the predicted
position of Mars according to the Copernican system - an error of a mere eight
minutes of arc. However, that small difference was the difference between an
astronomy based on mysticism and an astronomy based on physics. Kepler
systematically dismantled the Copernican view and replaced it with the then
revolutionary idea of gravitational force. It was thus Kepler who
removed the illusions about the traditional connections between nature and
divinity. Perhaps it is just as significant that this delineation was
accomplished, not by a Galileo in conflict with the Church, but by a man who
was a theologically trained and committed Protestant Christian. Indeed, those
were the days when astronomy was taught in theological seminary. It was Kepler
who later wrote to his old theological college astronomy teacher: “For
a long time I wanted to become a theologian … Now, however, behold, how
through my effort God is being celebrated in astronomy”. And it was
characteristic of the “theologian” Kepler that, having broken the
traditional connection between nature and divinity, he then turned to find a
new synthesis. Unfortunately for us, he died before accomplishing this, and we
are left not only to find the answer, but also to discern from it whether we
should pray for rain. - Greg |
- Re: Praying for rain and stuff (Long, but meaty) Greg Crawford
