Summary Statements - 7 of X - Operational Science, I Barbour quotes on Medieval worldview
Operational Science began in the 1600's with the development and acceptance of a significantly “new” way of viewing the motion of the sun and the planets (Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, Newton). Many aspects of the reigning view had been borrowed from the Greeks. The reigning view assumed that all the planets and the sun (except the earth) moved in perfect circles. It also assumed that the planets were perfect spheres. It was a geocentric view of the cosmos, with man at the center of the universe, which was consistent with the apparent reading of the Bible. This view was eventually replaced with a heliocentric view where the planets revolve around the sun in elipses. (I Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, p. 22)
Extended quote from I Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, p. 22-23, concerning the Medieval Worldview:
“If God was the supreme member of the hierarchy of being in medieval thought, man was the center of the created order. Nature was subordinate to man. The functions of creatures below him in the scale were explained mainly by their role in human purposes, for the world was designed to subserve man's interests. Nature was primarily the stage setting for the drama of God and man. World history was understood to follow the divine plan, whose epochs can be symbolized by five words: Creation, Covenant, Christ, Church, Consummation. The cosmic drama centers in God's redemptive act for the salvation of sinful man: the incarnation of Christ and his atoning death. Man's goal is union with God, making use of the means of grace God has appointed. Man is a union of mortal body and immortal soul. He is a free and rational being, whose duty and fulfillment lie in conforming at once to reason and to God's will. Everything else is to be scrutinized for its significance in man's pilgrimage and its purpose in the divine scheme leading ultimately up to God. Man, in this view, differs radically from all other creatures.
This was the total plan, the coherent pattern into which all things fitted and from which they derived their significance. It was a unified hierarchical order in which each thing played its part, striving to achieve its essential purpose. All nature served man, and man served God. Science, cosmology, history, and theology all expressed the same pattern of meaning. This, in briefest outline, was the medieval world-view, which in its main features was not greatly altered by the Reformation, but which was to be drastically transformed by the impact of modern science.”
Extended quote, I Barbour, Issues in Science and Religion, p. 32-33, concerning the post-Medieval-> Enlightenment, modern scientific worldview:
“Until the time of Galileo there were no strong reasons for accepting the Copernican (heliocentric) theory, and there were persuasive arguments against it.... Although the full elaboration of a heliocentric system awaited the formulation of Newton's laws, Galileo found further evidence in its support. In 1610, using the newly invented telescope, he observed the mountains on the moon-clear indication that the moon is an irregular object [contrary to Aristotle] and not a perfect celestial sphere. Jupiter's moons [apparently] showed that the earth was not the center of all motions, and the observed phases of Venus fitted perfectly with the Copernican scheme. But anyone accepting the new astronomy had to reorient his thought drastically in many areas. The older cosmology set the eternal celestial realm in opposition to the terrestrial scene of change and decay; the graded “hierarchy of being” approached perfection as it approached the divine. The new cosmology obliterated this distinction between the corruptible and the incorruptible; it applied uniform natural categories to the whole universe. The identity of purpose and place was destroyed, and the total framework of significance was placed in jeopardy.
In particular, man was demoted from the center of the universe to a spinning, peripheral planet. Man's uniqueness and the idea of God's particular concern for him seemed in danger. Speculation about life on other planets is not a new phenomenon of the space age; the issue was raised by Galileo's opponents, and the implications of a “plurality of worlds” were extensively discussed during the ensuing century.... The new cosmology was resisted, then, not only because it challenged the authority of Aristotle and Scripture, but because it threatened the whole Aristotilian scheme of purpose and meaning in which man's spatial location was correlated with his status in the cosmic hierarchy....
Galileo's metaphysics left man a stranger in the universe of particles-in-motion which was increasingly taken to be the real world.... The mechanical view of nature Galileo had outlined was developed more fully during the second half of the seventeenth century by Newton and his followers.”
Questions to be answered:
What is Operational Science?
What was the Medieval worldview?
How was the Medieval worldview replaced by the modern scientific worldview?
Other questions ….
