Greco-Roman Era Ancient World View 500 BCE – 500 CE

1. Greco-Roman Era • Ancient World View • 500 BCE – 500 CE

2. 312 – Battle of Milvian Bridge • 313 – Edit of Milan • Barbarian invasions 4th to 6th centuries. • St. Augustine, early 5th century. • 455 – Rome sacked by Vandals. • 476 – Last Roman Emperor in the West. The Fall of Rome.

3. THE MIDDLE AGES Early Middle Ages, 500-1000 (Dark Ages) Late Middle Ages, 1000-1350

4. “Faced with the fact that there already existed in the greater Mediterranean culture a sophisticated philosophical tradition from the Greeks, the educated class of early Christians rapidly saw the need for integrating that tradition with their religious faith…. Yet this was considered no marriage of convenience, for the spiritually resonant Platonic philosophy not only harmonized with, it also elaborated and intellectually enhanced, the Christian conceptions derived from the revelations of the New Testament…. Thus as Christian culture matured during its first several centuries, its religious thought developed into a systematic theology, and although that theology was Judaeo-Christian in substance, its metaphysical structure was largely Platonic….It was Augustine’s formulation of Christian Platonism that was to permeate virtually all of medieval Christian thought in the West” Tarnas p.101-103.

5. “Safeguarding the faith was thus the first priority in any question of philosophical or religious dialogue: hence that dialogue was often curtailed altogether lest the devil of doubt or unorthodoxy gain a foothold in the vulnerable minds of the faithful. … And so it was that the pluralism of classical culture, with its multiplicity of philosophies, its diversity of polytheistic mythologies, and its plethora of mystery religions, gave way to an emphatically monolithic system – one God, one Church, one Truth.” Tarnas p. 118-119.

6. “All curiosity is at an end after Jesus, all research after the Gospel. Let us have Faith and wish for nothing more.” Tertullian, 3rd century convert and Church leader.

7. In the later Middle Ages, “Christianity’s earlier need to distinguish and strengthen itself by a more or less rigid exclusion of pagan culture lost some of its urgency….. Within the womb of the medieval Church, the world-denying philosophy forged by Augustine and based on Plato began giving way to a fundamentally different approach to existence, as the Scholastics in effect recapitulated the movement from Plato to Aristotle….That shift was sparked in the 12th and 13th centuries with the West’s rediscovery of a large corpus of Aristotle’s writings, preserved by the Moslems and Byzantines and now translated into Latin.” Tarnas p. 175-176

8. Anselm of Canterbury(1033 - 1109) “It seems to me a case of negligence if, after becoming firm in our faith, we do not strive to understand what we believe.”

9. “…it was the meticulous and energetic attempt to synthesize Aristotelian science with the indubitable tenets of Christian revelation that was bringing forth all the critical intelligence that would ultimately turn against both the ancient and the ecclesiastical authorities. In retrospect, Aquinas’ Summa had been one of the final steps of the medieval mind toward full intellectual independence.” Tarnas p. 201.

10. THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION 1350 - 1600

11. PRECURSORS OF THE RENAISSANCEHIGH MIDDLE AGES (~ 1000) • A measure of political security • Innovations in agriculture • Population increase particularly in cities • Increased literacy • Contacts with Islamic and Byzantine cultures and the recovery of classical texts • Founding of Universities in the West • Changes in the Church’s attitude toward secular learning

12. RENAISSANCE • A reaction against Aristotle and a revival of Platonism (in part because of his superior literary style). • Ancient culture was a source not just for scientific knowledge and rules for logical discourse, (as it was for the Scholastics) but for the deepening and enrichment of the human spirit. Page 209. • Forsaking the ideal of monastic poverty, Renaissance man embraced the enrichment of life afforded by personal wealth, and Humanist scholars and artists flourished in the new cultural climate subsidized by the Italian commercial and aristocratic elites. Page 228. • There was … an emphatic emergence of a new consciousness -- expansive, rebellious, energetic and creative, individualistic, ambitious and often unscrupulous, curious, self-confident, committed to this life and this world. Page 231.

13. REFORMATION FACTORS LEADING TO THE REFORMATION • The selling of indulgences. • The long-developing political secularism of the Church hierarchy. • The prevalence of both deep piety and poverty among the Church faithful, in contrast to an often irreligious but socially and economically privileged clergy. • The rise of nationalism. • An anti-Hellenic spirit that sought to purify Christianity and return it to its pristine biblical foundation.

14. Martin Luther(1483 - 1546 * Germany) • 1507 - near-death experience and vow to become a monk. • 1517 - nails Ninety-five Theses against indulgences to church door. • Bible is the only spiritual authority. • Priesthood of all believers. • Salvation by faith alone.

15. Luther desperately sought for a gracious God’s redemption in the face of so much evidence to the contrary, evidence both of God’s damning judgement and of Luther’s own sinfulness. He failed to find that grace in himself or in his own works, nor did he find it in the Church -- not in its sacraments, not in its ecclesiastical hierarchy, and assuredly not in its papal indulgences. It was, finally, the faith in God’s redeeming power as revealed through Christ in the Bible, and that alone, which rendered Luther’s experience of salvation, and upon that exclusive rock he built his new church of a reformed Christianity. Page 234.

16. Protestantism and the Scientific Revolution • At first glance, the spirit of Protestantism would seem to have very little to do with that of the New Science, since in matters religious Protestantism placed all the weight of its emphasis upon the irrational datum of faith, as against the imposing rational structures of medieval theology. In secular matters, however – and particularly in its relation toward nature – Protestantism fitted in very well with the New Science. By stripping away the wealth of images and symbols from medieval Christianity, Protestantism unveiled nature as a realm of objects hostile to the spirit and to be conquered by puritan zeal and industry. Thus, Protestantism, like science, helped carry forward that immense project of modern man; the de-spiritualization of nature. William Barrett, Irrational Man, p. 24.

17. THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION 1600 - 1700

18. SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION • Both the final expression of the Renaissance and its definitive contribution to the modern world view. • Acute metaphysical turmoil due to irresolvable religious conflicts produced a need for a clarifying and unifying vision. • Neoplatonic/Pythagorean conviction that nature is ultimately comprehensible in simple and harmonious mathematical terms.

19. Nicolaus Copernicus(1473-1543 * Poland) Reintroduced the heliocentric model • Simplified explanation of: retrograde motion, variable brightness of planets, Mercury and Venus always appearing near Sun Opposed because: • It contradicted the Bible • Geocentric universe had been incorporated into the very theology of Christianity (heaven, hell, the centrality of humanity)

20. Copernicus’ dissatisfaction with the Ptolemaic theory did not stem from a preconceived notion that the Sun, not the Earth was the center of the Universe. He felt that a satisfactory representation of the solar system should be coherent and physically plausible, not requiring a different construction for each phenomenon, as Ptolemy’s system did. To him, Ptolemy’s system was ugly and therefore could not represent the work of the Creator (neoplatonism).

21. Tycho Brahe(1546-1601 * Denmark) • Accumulated decades of very accurate data on the locations of celestial objects • Developed geocentric model based on observational evidence that the earth did not move • Hired Kepler in 1600 to mathematically analyze his data with the aim of proving his model correct

22. Johannes Kepler(1571-1630 * Germany) • Believed for aesthetic reasons in heliocentric model • Determined laws of planetary motion by trial and error, checking calculations against Brahe’s data • Like Copernicus, believed in the physical reality of the model

23. Galileo Galilei(1564-1642 * Italy) First to use telescope to study heavens • Mountains and craters on the moon • Rotation of the sun • Phases of Venus • Moons of Jupiter • Stars in the Milky Way Revealed heavens in their gross materiality 1633 - condemned by Inquisition

24. Isaac Newton(1642 - 1727 * England) • Copernican system destroyed Aristotle’s explanation of motion and offered nothing to take its place. • 1687 - Principia. Laws of motion and the law of gravity. • Established physical basis for Kepler’s laws as well as the trajectory motion of cannonballs. • Basis for later mechanistic-deterministic world view.

25. It was not accidental to Newton’s accomplishment that he had systematically employed a practical synthesis of Bacon’s inductive empiricism and Descartes’ deductive mathematical rationalism, thereby bring to fruition the scientific method first forged by Galileo.

26. Modern Worldview • Science emerged as the West’s new faith. 282 • Autonomous human reason had fully displaced traditional sources of knowledge about the universe and in turn had defined its own limits as those constituted by the boundaries and methods of empirical science. 284 • … no multiplicity of cognitive modes; rational and empirical faculties alone. 287 • The universe was impersonal not personal; nature’s laws were natural not supernatural. The physical world possessed no intrinsic deeper meaning. 288

27. The Christian sense of Original Sin, the Fall, and collective human guilt now receded in favor of an optimistic affirmation of human self-development and the eventual triumph of rationality and science over human ignorance, suffering and social evils. 290 • Elements of the modern world view are evident today just as elements of earlier views were evident in 18th and 19th century, but it is not today’s view. • Many feel reliance on reason characterizes modern worldview. However empirical evidence is much more important. • 18th and 19th century scientists were, in general, believers though many were Deists.

28. The Mechanistic-Deterministic Worldview Given the classical physicist’s world view, it is reasonable to believe that everything that happens in the universe is no more than a manifestation of the motion and interaction of the constituent atoms of matter. This motion is governed by perfectly deterministic laws; the mathematical physicist Laplace speculated that if one could only observe at some instant every atom in the universe and record its motion, both the future and the past would hold no secrets. Put another way, all of history was determined, down to the last detail, when the universe was set in motion. The rise and fall of empires, indeed, the heart break of every forgotten love affair, represent no more than the inevitable workings of the laws of physics; the universe marches on like a gigantic clockwork. Robert March, Physics for Poets.

29. Charles Darwin(1809 - 1882 * England) 1831 - 1836 Darwin served as naturalist aboard the H.M.S. Beagle. Beagle 1859 ‘Origin of the Species’ I have called this principle, by which each slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the term Natural Selection. From Origin of the Species.