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Reclaiming the Christian Roots of Modern Science
Ken YehACSI ConventionNovember 25, 2008
Our students will face great challenges as Christians working in the field of science.Our task is to equip them with both the critical thinking skills and knowledge tobuild a rational Christian thought framework, capable of handling the issuessurrounding the interchange between science and faith as faithful ambassadors of Christ.
I. Intro – The media portrayal of Christianity and Science
Three popular statements about the history of science and Christianity:
Medieval Christians believed that the Earth was flat, until Columbus provedthe Church wrong.
Galileo Galilei proved scientifically that the Earth revolved around the sun,thus confirming Copernicus’ theory of heliocentrism.
The Scientific Revolution was a triumph of reason over religion, as the earlyscientists applied science to undermine the authority of the Church. The general belief is that Christians have always been opposed to science, holdinginstead to “anti-scientific” views such as:
A flat Earth
Geocentrism
Supernatural Creation of the Universe The last one of course is
not
anti-scientific. But because of the perceivedassociation between Christians and the first two erroneous positions, whenChristians today try to present the scientific merits of a created universe, we aregiven the same credibility as if we were trying to make the case for a flat Earth or asolar system with the Earth at the center.
II. The Church and Science at War?
Concludes historian of science Colin Russell in his essay, “The Conflict Metaphor andits Social Origins,”
“The common belief that… the actual relations between religion and science over the last few centuries have been marked by deep and enduring hostility… is not only historically inaccurate, but actually a caricature so grotesque that what needsto be explained is how it could possibly have achieved any degree of respectability”
(quoted in John Lennox,
God’s Undertaker
, p. 26-27).
The Origins of the “Conflict Thesis”
Popularized by two influential textbooks (both of which are still being printed andsold today): John Draper, History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1875)Andrew White, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom(1896)
“Roman Christianity and Science are recognized by their respective adherents asbeing absolutely incompatible; they cannot exist together; one must yield to theother; mankind must make it’s choice – it cannot have both.”
(Draper, History…363)
“In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest of religion,no matter how conscientious such interference may have been, has resulted in thedirest evils both to religion and to science.”
(White) Their influence continues today…
“[B]ased on historical evidence, religious thinking *in science* [sic] only stunts thecreativity and logical thought processes of scientists.”
(E. Thomson, review of
AHistory of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom
on Amazon.com)
III. The Myth of the Flat Earth
The Flammarion Woodcut
The Flat Earth Myth in Textbooks
“[Columbus] felt he would eventually reach the Indies in the East. Many Europeansstill believed that the world was flat. Columbus, they thought, would fall off theearth.”
America Past and Present
(Scott Foresman, 1983), 98.“The European sailor of a thousand years ago also had many other strange beliefs.He turned to these beliefs because he had no other way to explain the dangers of the unknown sea. He believed . . . that a ship could sail out to sea just so far beforeit fell off the edge of the sea. . . . The people of Europe a thousand years ago knewlittle about the world.”
We the People
(Heath, 1982), 28-29.
Columbus’ Conflict with the Church
Andrew Dickson White,
A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology inChristendom
“The warfare of Columbus the world knows well: how the Bishop of Ceuta worstedhim in Portugal; how sundry wise men of Spain confronted him with the usualquotations from the Psalms, from St. Paul, and from St. Augustine; how, even afterhe was triumphant, and after his voyage had greatly strengthened the theory of theearth's sphericity, with which the theory of the antipodes was so closely connected,the Church by its highest authority solemnly stumbled and persisted in goingastray.” The source for White’s account was the book,
The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus
, written by Washington Irving, the author of other such historicallyaccurate accounts as
Rip Van Winkle
and
The Legend of Sleepy Hollow
.Reproductions of Irving’s book can be found here:http://hsci.ou.edu/exhibits/exhibit.php?exbgrp=-999&exbid=45&exbpg=20#figure2text The issue of contention was not whether the earth was flat or round, but over the
size of the earth
. Those who opposed Columbus believed that the circumferenceof the earth was too great for ships to sail around to the other side. There was notalk about “falling off the edge of the world.” Columbus had calculated that the
distance for his trip from the Canary Islands to Japan would be about 4,450 km,which is one-fifth the actual distance of 22,000 km. If not for the placement of theAmericas in between, Columbus and his crew would have surely perished, as hiscritics predicted. Columbus’ voyage—and later explorations by others—did notchange the perception of the shape of the earth, but merely added new landmasses to the Middle Age maps of the world.Besides that, it was Magellan (or rather, the remainder of his crew) who actuallycircumnavigated the world and proved empirically that the Earth was round.
Early Christian thinkers who wrote about the spherical Earth
Thomas Aquinas
(1225-1274) in his great systematic work
Summa Theologica
“Both an astronomer and a physical scientist may demonstrate the sameconclusion, for instance that the earth is spherical; the first, however, works in amathematical medium prescinding from material qualities, while for the second hismedium is the observation of material bodies through the senses."
The French Roman Catholic bishop
Nicole Oresme
(1323-1382) proposed severalplayful paradoxes dealing with a round and rotating earth, including one thatestablished the principle behind changing time zones and the international date linefor east-west travels.
Oresme’s teacher,
Jean Buridan
, discussed the rotation of the earth.All three of these Middle Age thinkers wrote as if the round earth was commonknowledge, not something that still needed to be established.
Observations affirming a spherical Earth
1.Shadow of the Earth during Lunar Eclipses
Thomas Aquinas: "In [lunar] eclipses the outline [of the earth] is always curved: and,since it is the interposition of the earth that makes the eclipse, the form of this linewill be caused by the form of the earth's surface, which is therefore spherical."
2.The Stars in the Sky Johannes de Sacrobosco
(1195-1256), an English monk, wrote an astronomicaltextbook that was used in universities for many centuries.
That the earth, too, is round is shown thus. The signs and stars do not riseand set the same for all men everywhere but rise and set sooner for those inthe east than for those in the west; and of this there is no other cause thanthe bulge of the earth. Moreover, celestial phenomena evidence that they rise sooner for Orientals than for westerners. For one and the same eclipse of the moon which appears to us in the first hour of the night appears toOrientals about the third hour of thenight, which proves that they had
1
Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologica,
vol. 1, trans. by Thomas Gilby (New York:McGraw-Hill Book Company, 1964), q.1, a.1.
2
Nicole Oresme,
Lu Livre du Ciel et du Monde
(1370), Bk. II, ch. 31, pp. 573-581.
3
Thomas Aquinas,
Exposition of Aristotle's Treatise On the Heavens
, 2 vols, trans. byLarcher, R. F., and Pierre H. Conway (Columbus, OH: College of St. Mary of the Springs,1964), Book II, lect. 28. 400-402.
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