Medieval Scholastics Still Rule in Modern ScienceMedieval Scholastics of the 13th century don’t come up too often in contemporary science classes. At the time no explanation was given why only theology and the various sciences composed all of human knowledge. After much later research I realized the diagram on the board was the illustration of all medieval scholastic university knowledge, being the works of St. Thomas Aquinas, half his Summas on theology, the other half his mistranslation of the Books of Aristotle as “sciences” describing how God’s creation of the world worked. What my chemistry professor had shared with us was the medieval scholastic model of the University which remained his fundamental understanding of academic reality. I am sure he wasn't consciously aware of the history of Aquinas and the medieval scholastics curriculum. He just had absorbed it from his experience. Why is Modern science today still enthralled to the medieval scholastics?Look first at the work of the three major medieval scholastics of the 13th century. Aquinas, as my chemistry professor noted, had laid out the science curriculum of the medieval scholastic university, with theology as the chief science.Aquinas’ chief rival among medieval Scholastics was Roger Bacon. Bacon actually read Aristotle in the original Greek. He also carried out his own research trying to develop the first internal combustion piston engine. He didn’t have good machinists to work with, so instead of a piston he used a lead ball with a tube crimped close at one end. His fuel was his discovery now called gun powder and his engine was actually the first gun. His imagination envisioned bringing many technologies known to the ancients and moving forward into engine-propelled ships, submarines, airplane, and autos. It would be World War I before his inventions and visions would become real technology. This 13th century vision became the basis for 20th century claims they were the future and had transcended the bounds of traditional human understanding .Actually of course, they had only set loose brutal destruction and the seeds to global warming and total world war. Bacon remained a medieval scholastic not a modern scientist. He considered the true reason for Euclid beginning The Elements with the construction of an equilateral triangle was the Divine Revelation of the Christian notion of the Trinity. He just didn't come out and say it since he wasn't a Christian. This thinking follows from the William of Ockham’s 11th rule of logical inference. This third great 13th century medieval scholastic, best known by his Latin name and his principle of parsimony (Occam's razor) He used clear headed logic to attack speculative wool gathering based only in foregone conclusions and not hard evidence. After the basic ten principles of Aristotle's logic, Ockham added two more, which he notes were only appropriate in special circumstances. The 11th: “Necessity follows from anything, e.g., You are a white man; therefore God is Triune.” (another term for the Christian doctrine of the Trinity of the Jewish God as father, historical Jesus as son, and the ongoing living spirit of the Divine seen through history as Holy Ghost or Spirit). Personally, my favorite of these special Ockhamite rules of inference is the tenth: “From impossibility follows whatever: e.g. You are an ass, therefore you are God.” Willy didn’t really intend New Age Sanskrit “Atman equals Brahman” his belief was far more limited and technical. It had only to do with Aristotle’s categories. In modern science, since Laplace and the other generals under Napoleon joined their Emperor in integrating their military prowess to the intellectual claims, Occam's razor became a magical formula saying whatever equation has the least and simplest terms must be the True explanation. This is particularly important in Laplace saying that since he had improved on Newton's equations to explain observed celestial mechanics, including the precession of the equinoxes, he had eliminated the need for God. After all, if you can write an accurate equation for astronomical observation isn't that the same as having created the heavenly bodies and set them in their orbits? This view of Occam ’s razor encourages the use of single letter algebra terms to form all of physics theory. The less explanation the more truth became the motto of modern physics. Newton’s F=ma is perfect this way although it is actually a definition of two new concepts force (F) and mass (m) that exist only by virtue of this law. The simple answer why modern science today still is enthralled to the medieval scholastics is that their work was better than anything else available until well into the second half of the 20th century. The secret why it took over half a millennium to realize the potential of the medieval scholasticsThe problem was that after the 13th century climax of the medieval scholastics came the 14th century Black Death.This trauma affected all of Europe for the rest of that millennium just ended. Few writers even mention the trauma this caused. British historians use their stiff upper lip to say that population records indicate urban areas returned to pre-Plague numbers within fifty or one hundred years. The eminent historian Huizinga (The Waning of the Middle Ages) doesn't list the Black Death or Plague at all his index. He notes how artists change radically their pictures. Piles of rotting corpses became common in many artists work. Not a mention that after the initial three years of the Black Death that killed half the population, Plague came back again and again after that. Oh, yes, and piles of rotting corpses in the street became a common sight. One historian, enamored with technology spoke of how the technological achievement of Europe justified their ruling the world. He notes eye glasses as a great European advance allowing scholars to work even when they were old and didn't see so well. Not noticed by his ilk was the detail that scholars traditionally preferred to think about things, so they would have clerks read to them the manuscripts they were studying. This allowed the scholar to think deeply about what was being read, rather than focus upon the page and its text. The lack of available young people that could read led to the need for scholars of all ages to read for themselves. This less studious atmosphere went with the general spirit of the time post-Plague when deep thought wasn't encouraged anyway. Now there was a need for the magnifying lenses Roger Bacon worked on in the 13th century. Were eye glasses truly a great leap forward by Western scholars? No, they were an accommodation to the problems caused by the lack of living clerks who could read and a throwback to work done earlier but only found useful now. No one has put together a complete synthesis of knowledge since the medieval scholastics of the 13th century. Few have managed to understand the broad sweep of intellectual understanding available to all who were interested in the ancient world. The pale shadow of knowledge and intellectual ferment of the Museum of Alexandria even made it to the 13th medieval scholastics. In the interim religious prejudice of the Muslim and Christian rulers destroyed what they couldn't understand or appreciate. Both were silly exercises and ignorant expressions of the sad intellectual state of affairs in Europe after the peace of that continent was ravaged by epidemics and gunfire. They twisted Aristotle's words to make their ridiculous new bits of mathematical equations fill the firmament, so their puny intellectual efforts would seem bigger and better than they were. Think you can return to the simpler view of Genesis..check it out. What makes sense now?
Now is a great time to dump modern science blinders and return with eyes wide open to the simple principles of the Ancient World. These are the principles shared by all indigenous peoples, even though they each live only in their local area. Most are becoming extinct, destroyed by the same brutal destruction that brings us global warming and predatory capitalism. |
