Science is a crucial part of modern religiosity. By science, man proposes to conquer the world; by science, man proposes to achieve at least longevity and perhaps immortality; by science man claims to have dismissed the illusion of God. So our understanding of science is important, to be interrogated and set on a firm foundation. That in mind, I’d like to considering an article by current NIH director, J. Bhattacharya, published by Hillsdale College (Imprimis, Vol 55, #5), particularly one statement: “At the root of the scientific revolution was the idea that there was not and should never be a scientific authority.”

This ain’t quite correct.

Sidetracks: Good and Bad

Before we deal with this main point, I’d like to compliment the article on one point and condemn it on the other.

First, in compliment, this article is a public official laying out his policy and its reasoning for the public to evaluate and understand. When you’re really on the popular side, or you can make yourself look that way, this policy is smart. More importantly, it provides greater measure of connection between governor and governed, allowing the governed to understand their government better and thus to affect and respond more effectively.

(It’s this concern which leads me to approve of politicians having public, personally-handled X accounts or other social media engagement. As much as they can be and are often handled, curated, and deceitful, they have a tendency to reveal the numbskulls, the liars, and the idiots for what they are, in the public view, the same way social media helps break the illusion that actors, etc, aren’t usually total idiots.)

Second, in condemnation, the policy which the article supports are big-government policies. Government funding for the sciences has had many admirable results, sure, but that doesn’t mean it’s right. A more effective policy of scientific advancement would be hands-off, combining deregulation with strong patent and copyright protections. God never gave government the job of doing science (except, plausibly, where it is integral to military concerns, and then only to a limited extent).

Why Science Didn’t Advance

Getting back to our main point….

In the medieval era, several factors conspired to prevent the burst of scientific innovation which starts in the 1500-1600s and continued on into the 1900s, which is now petering out (to all appearance). 

First, the medieval era had a lot of groundwork to do. Between societal difficulties and numerous invasions, Western society in the late Roman empire leading into the medieval era had to work hard just to stay afloat. Nobody has much time for science when he’s struggling to eat or worrying about the Huns next door. As the medieval era continued, they stabilized their society, establishing a more-than-subsistence level of economy that allowed for other developments, though the threat of Islam was still looming, being particularly deadly in the old Eastern Roman Empire, in Byzantium. Further, essentially the whole land continued to have only so much surplus to spend on the potentially useless but certainly expensive, while relative social immobility, maintained by relational structures, also intervened to partition resources away from many minds that might have used them for science.

Second, while the medieval era did not see the sort of scientific explosion that the post-Reformation era saw, it did see innovation. Given my interests, I can see this most evidently in the development of armor and fortification technology, but a look at 1400s European life, compared to 800s European life, sees many developments in scientific and social technology.

Third, the medieval mindset was often bent towards the eternal and the very long term in a way which preferred specific types of innovation. When you set out on a three century project to build a cathedral, you start preferring scientific innovation focused on how to build a cathedral, with a strong bias against the overly risky, the revolutionary, or the ugly. Technology’s development-application cycle could be short, but the development-popularization cycle (particularly in light of point #4) could be long, while the types of technologies produced would have a focus on certain arts (those patronized by the wealthy, including the church), rather than on industry.

Fourth, guilds could work to spread innovation, but they could also stifle it, whether through preferring the old, safe, reliable way (not bad in itself) or through enmity towards competition or through preventing potential innovators from really coming to grip with the field, from getting the necessary resources (one wonders if the university system does something similar nowadays). 

Fifth, over time the medieval world developed a culture of reliance on a central interpreter. Now, the idea that the church was an active foe to innovation is ahistorical, and while the medieval world did respect the ancients, they didn’t usually regard them as indisputable. But the Roman Catholic church (and the Eastern Orthodox church) taught a theology of reliance upon their institutional interpretation. Such an attitude of ‘trust the expert’ discourages scientific advance (as Battacharya partially recognizes), as the individual is taught that his own work of investigation is not so much doomed as worthless. Men will often press forward through doom; they will rarely sacrifice their lives for something worthless.

What Changed?

The coming of the Renaissance to Italy and southern Europe was a complex thing, but its scientific curiosity was spawned by a new ethic and worldview (by a revival in an old spirit (Ecc. 1:9)). The Renaissance was an era where the layman and the church alike began to generally disdain God’s authority and desire autonomy; science developed in this soil not as an investigation per se but as a means of power and control. Man sought to know the world in order to change the world, to develop technologies. It was this spirit, indeed, which caused the blooming of the occult, the hermetics and the alchemists.

So here we find the denial of a scientific authority to which Battacharya attributes the scientific revolution. But, if we remember history, we find that the sudden uprush of science comes not from southern Europe, where men sought autonomy and developed culture, but from northern Europe, from Germany and England and the Protestant realms. Italy made great paintings, but Kepler calculated the planet’s orbits, and England made the railroad. Why?

The Protestant Reformation, at its core, was a fundamentally different effort than the Renaissance, though with certain aesthetic and circumstantial similarities. Notably, whereas the Renaissance was beloved of the state, adopted by popes and kings without question, except when it started questioning their power, their autonomy, the Reformation was only spottily accepted by the state and the rulers, with its strength as a rule rising from below, from the common folk and the middle class.

How did the Reformation produce cultures so scientifically vibrant?

First, the Reformation carried on certain beliefs of the medieval era which the Renaissance began to doubt. The Reformation saw a world that was real and set, objective, outside of man’s determination, more than an illusion, more than a narrative. Science was therefore not designing a structure to fit the world into but finding the structure of the world. It added to this an increased recognition and incorporation of the usability of this objective reality to have real effects. Science was not merely a pursuit of arcane knowledge but a way to take dominion, to properly steward God’s gift. It had a place and a real value in a Christian worldview.

Second, the Reformation believed that man could find truth. Whereas the Catholic church had fostered an environment that doubted the validity of finding truth outside of the institutions of society, the Reformation said that men could understand Scripture for themselves. If man could understand God’s word for himself, though, by God’s aid, then he could rely on that same aid to make his efforts in understanding the world actually fruitful. Thus, while the Renaissance, unmooring from the institution in favor of the self, found a world where man might well simply be making the truth up for effect, as a method of power, the Reformation unmoored man to steer by God’s light, to rely on God, and to use the means that God gave him, having faith that by God’s means and God’s grace real truth could be both discovered and applied.

Third, the Reformation developed the religious place of science. The medieval world placed religion at the center, properly, calling theology ‘the queen of the sciences,’ which she indeed is. But their concept of religion was bound to the institution and the ritual thereof, much closer bound than God allows. Religion outside the church institution was a lesser thing, directed always back towards the institution, and God was honored by the institution. Daily life and non-ecclesiastical labor was valuable to God as a supplement to the church. (Like the rest of the Papacy’s perversions, this attitude developed over time in the church and is not as intense in some eras as in others.)

Now, religion (worldview) gives meaning and value to parts of life. A religion with false priorities distorts the priorities of the culture which it forms (is a distortion in those priorities). Our own modern era’s religion is a mix of statism, hedonism, emotionalism, and rationalism, all premised on an instinctive materialism (with its accompanying mysticism), and we see this in our priorities. For the medieval era, science was meaningful as a support for the institutions, particularly the church, sometimes the state; its function to support the family and life outside the institution of religion were relatively unimportant.

The Reformation, starting particularly with Luther, placed a major emphasis on vocation. Whereas the highest calling the Catholicism was to retreat from the world into the holy church, to be a monk or a cleric, the highest calling in the Reformation was to steward what God called you to steward. Be an innkeeper, a lawyer, a miner, a businessman, a farmer, a housewife, an explorer, but do them all for the glory of God (Col. 3:23). Suddenly, science as an instrument and science as a pursuit were both endorsed as holy callings. The results? A scientific revolution.

For Next Time

Next time, we look at how this scientific revolution is dying, and why.