Lectures - History/Philosophy Science

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Browsing Lectures - History/Philosophy Science by Subject "Christianity"

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    God and the Medieval Cosmos
    (1999-07-29) Grant, Edward; Edward Grant
    Scholastic natural philosophers sought to understand the physical world at a time when controlled experiments, systematic observations, and the application of mathematics to physical phenomena, were rare occurrences. They had to rely on two powerful tools of analysis available to them. The first was REASON, which they usually applied in a largely a priori manner, based on a minimum of observation and empirical data. They applied reason most effectively in circumstances of their own devising, that is in the realm of the hypothetical, which enabled them to make use of the second great tool: THE HUMAN IMAGINATION, used in ways that I have already described. The conditions they imagined were possible, but only by virtue of God's absolute power, provided that God's action did not imply a logical contradiction. It was by such means that medieval natural philosophers got beyond Aristotle's limited world and came to consider momentous problems about space, vacuum, and other worlds. Many of the non-scholastics of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries grappled with the same problems, and profited from the earlier discussions. They were, however, in no mood to acknowledge indebtedness to the defenders of Aristotle and the status quo. After all, they were bringing a new world order into being, a Copernican-Newtonian heliocentric world that would completely replace the Aristotelian scholastic geocentric model that had reigned for more than four centuries. They saw no need to be gracious in triumph. Indeed, they had only contempt for their medieval predecessors, whose opinions they mocked and scorned at every opportunity. The image of medieval scholastic cosmology and science will forever be the hostile one Galileo constructed. Nevertheless, the significant process of "getting beyond Aristotle" had already begun in the Middle Ages, though it would come to spectacular fruition only in the seventeenth century. In retrospect, then, it seems appropriate to accord a small measure of credit to those much-maligned scholastics, and thereby modestly begin to redress a long-standing injustice inflicted upon the Middle Ages by the victors in the science wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
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    Journey Through the Spheres: The Cosmos in the Middle Ages
    (1997-03-14) Grant, Edward; Edward Grant
    Questions or issues discussed in the paper include: WHAT IS COSMOLOGY? Descriptions of the structure and operation of the cosmos as it is understood by scholars in any society or civilization. THE ORIGINS OF COSMOLOGY IN THE EUROPEAN MIDDLE AGES BETWEEN 1200 AND 1500 WHO WERE THE COSMOLOGISTS IN THE MIDDLE AGES? THE LITERATURE OF COSMOLOGY THE MACROSTRUCTURE OF THE MEDIEVAL COSMOS COSMOLOGICAL QUESTIONS, PROBLEMS AND RESPONSES IN THE MIDDLE AGES
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    Natural Philosophy and Theology in the Late Middle Ages: A Surprising Relationship?
    (1999-07-28) Grant, Edward; Edward Grant
    During the Middle Ages, the relations between science and religion are much more appropriately represented by the relations between natural philosophy and theology. Although there were recognizable sciences in the Middle Ages astronomy, optics, and statics, for example which had some relationship with theology, it was natural philosophy that had the most significant connection. In order to grasp the relationship between natural philosophy and theology, it is advisable to treat each discipline independently in two phases. Thus I shall first consider natural philosophy from two aspects: the first will be about the nature of the discipline itself, followed by the second aspect which will determine the extent to which natural philosophy was affected by theology. Theology will be treated similarly. I shall first convey a sense of theology as a discipline, and then describe how it was affected by natural philosophy and, to a lesser extent, logic, that is, how theology was affected by the two most important, widely studied, secular disciplines in the Middle Ages.
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    Science and Religion in the Middle Ages
    (1990-12-08) Grant, Edward; Edward Grant
    In contrast to a paper I did a few years ago on "Science and Theology in the Middle Ages," which focused solely on the Latin Middle Ages and almost exclusively on the period from 1200 to 1500, I shall expand my vistas considerably today and place the relations between Christianity and science in a broad societal context ranging from the beginnings of Christianity to the end of the Middle Ages. Although my topic is primarily on the relations between science and religion in Western Europe, I shall also briefly describe the same interrelationships in Islam, with the hope of better understanding Christian developments.