THE ROOTS OF OUR MODERN SCIENTIFIC WORLD
Posted on July 1, 2010 with 0 comments
“In the beginning was the word . . . .” The term used for word in the ancient Greek version of the Bible was logos. Logos means more than word, in Greek it can be translated as “thought” or “rationality”. Early Christians believed God created the Universe and that it operated according to divine laws of order and rationality. Since man is “created in His image” there is a spark of divine reason in humankind. As Alfred North Whitehead observed in his book Science and the Modern World, “Faith in the possibility of science . . . is an unconscious derivative from medieval theology.”
The medieval monastery was a place to retrieve, collect, and preserve classical knowledge. Much of this knowledge had been destroyed by the barbarian destruction of the Roman Empire and Europe. But from these Monasteries came schools of various kinds until by the twelfth century Universities began to be established. All early Universities were associated with the Church. However, they soon became independently governed. The curriculum of early Universities were religious but also became quickly secular to accommodate economic and technical demands of the day.
It was at Oxford University that inductive and experimental methods be used to advance knowledge. Francis bacon, the “founder of the scientific method” and a devout man who wrote theological papers as well as scientific, argued that man had a divine responsibility to use his reason to establish dominion over creation. The first medical research institutions and the first astronomical observatories were all built by the Church.
It is commonly taught that science was invented in the 1700’s. But as you can see from above it was off to a flourishing start several centuries before that. Two schools of theological thought were operating between the twelfth and seventeenth century. One maintained that experimentation was the way to learn Gods design and mind. The other held that scholastic debate using the rules of deductive reasoning was the way to discover God’s will. But note that both schools of thought were seeking to understand God, not deny Him. And both have contributed to our modern concepts of science.
The following is a list of scientists who were not only Christians, but who publicly announced that their scientific enterprise was to reveal the true nature of God and his plan for the Universe. Many were clergymen.
Copernicus
Kepler
Galileo
Brahe
Descartes
Boyle
Newton
Leibniz
Gassendi
Pascal
Mersenne
Cuvier
Harvey
Dalton
Faraday
Herschel
Joule
Lyell
Lavoisier
Priestley
Kelvin
Ohm
Ampere
Steno
Pasteur
Maxwell
Planck
Mendel
Lemaitre
Several scientists in the last twenty years have become militant atheists and attacked all religion in vicious terms. According to them religion is the cause of all wars, death, famine, and ugliness in the world. They have had much success in popularizing these ideas. These men display both their ignorance of their own field and lack of rationality in their attacks, mostly made in the name of selling books and making money. That is so much easier than doing true scientific experiments and applying careful and rigid rationality.
The medieval monastery was a place to retrieve, collect, and preserve classical knowledge. Much of this knowledge had been destroyed by the barbarian destruction of the Roman Empire and Europe. But from these Monasteries came schools of various kinds until by the twelfth century Universities began to be established. All early Universities were associated with the Church. However, they soon became independently governed. The curriculum of early Universities were religious but also became quickly secular to accommodate economic and technical demands of the day.
It was at Oxford University that inductive and experimental methods be used to advance knowledge. Francis bacon, the “founder of the scientific method” and a devout man who wrote theological papers as well as scientific, argued that man had a divine responsibility to use his reason to establish dominion over creation. The first medical research institutions and the first astronomical observatories were all built by the Church.
It is commonly taught that science was invented in the 1700’s. But as you can see from above it was off to a flourishing start several centuries before that. Two schools of theological thought were operating between the twelfth and seventeenth century. One maintained that experimentation was the way to learn Gods design and mind. The other held that scholastic debate using the rules of deductive reasoning was the way to discover God’s will. But note that both schools of thought were seeking to understand God, not deny Him. And both have contributed to our modern concepts of science.
The following is a list of scientists who were not only Christians, but who publicly announced that their scientific enterprise was to reveal the true nature of God and his plan for the Universe. Many were clergymen.
Copernicus
Kepler
Galileo
Brahe
Descartes
Boyle
Newton
Leibniz
Gassendi
Pascal
Mersenne
Cuvier
Harvey
Dalton
Faraday
Herschel
Joule
Lyell
Lavoisier
Priestley
Kelvin
Ohm
Ampere
Steno
Pasteur
Maxwell
Planck
Mendel
Lemaitre
Several scientists in the last twenty years have become militant atheists and attacked all religion in vicious terms. According to them religion is the cause of all wars, death, famine, and ugliness in the world. They have had much success in popularizing these ideas. These men display both their ignorance of their own field and lack of rationality in their attacks, mostly made in the name of selling books and making money. That is so much easier than doing true scientific experiments and applying careful and rigid rationality.