}When we look back on things like the Spanish Inquisition and insane shit like
}the Nazi "scientists", there may indeed be some advances"caused" by such
}evil, but one doesnt deduce that science depends on destructive, illusionary
}mass hysteria.
Not now, no; I was arguing that science might have been caused by
Catholic thinking. The Church is not a monolith; Aquinas, Bacon and the
Inquisition can be aspects of the same thing.
On Jan 2, 12:03pm, Max More wrote:
} >Wrath? What wrath? After medieval times many thinkers started viewing
} >natural philosophy as due homage to God, by studying His greatest work,
} >Creation. I think Francis Bacon had this view; Thomas Paine (after
}
} Don't give credit for that to Christianity! That was the Greek influence,
} specifically Neoplatonism. Christianity absorbed that but didn't creat it.
} If Christianity hadn't been around, we don't know what outlook might have
} arisen instead. Possibly something which, overall, would have encourage
} science and reason more strongly (rather than killing it for a millennium).
Fair point, I think. Yet unless you give X-nity most of the credit for
the Roman fall, Greek influence in Europe was probably in sharp decline
anyway, waiting in Alexandria and the later Islamic empire for a
resurgence. As you say, it's unclear what a pagan and Churchless Europe
would have accomplished. I note that the Church did at least maintain a
literate class and a common educated language, although that's tangential
at best to my original argument about motivations to science.
Hmm. It's be amusing to convince myself that the Church had no net
effect.
Merry part,
-xx- Damien R. Sullivan X-) <*> http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~phoenix
Paranoia is what the lazy call wisdom.