We have all heard the myth of Galileo and the Church, that even after being disciplined and renouncing the Copernican theory of the Earth going around the Sun, he muttered under his breath "It still moves." It's a myth, created primarily to discredit the Roman Catholic Church during the late 1800's when anti-Catholic fervor swept across America. The real story is far more interesting, with Galileo's ego causing him to propound clearly preposterous theories (tides are not caused by the moon but by rotational motion of the Earth) and clash with the Jesuits who got even by laying traps for him. The story is about ego, politics, scientific theories, and religion all wrapped up together, which is to say, it is a far more interesting story than the fictional Da Vinci Code. John Hedley Brooke's, "Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives" is another history.

Nevertheless,  the perception that religion has hindered the progress of science lingers like a bad aftertaste in our Modernist century. Recent conversations with Vatican scientists all begin with strong protestations that no censureship ever occurs. Yet priest Tielhard de Chardin is not exactly accepted by the Catholic hierarchy, and numerous other examples could be given. Is it true then, as Pierre Duhem argues, that the Medieval precursors to Enlightenment science did not begin until, inadvertently, the Condemnation of Paris in 1270 & 1277 permitted breathing space between religion and science? That is, Duhem's thesis was that when the Bishop of Paris listed some 200 or so statements of Aristotle which could not be affirmed--being a pagan philosopher after all--the academic community responded by debating these topics with hypotheticals. And this freed up investigation from the tyranny of final causes.

Here's how it works. Suppose the Pope has said that a proper interpretation of Genesis 1 reveals that the Earth must be flat, and you are a Vatican astronomer with a theory that the Earth is round and rotating. You cannot pursue that line of study publically, you can't publish anything on it, and in fact, you won't get any funding for it either. So you could do the work and hope that whoever is curator of your estate after your death doesn't burn the manuscript, or you could get discouraged and work on something else. But once everyone in the field is permitted to speak in hypotheticals, why then it is possible to start publishing again, as long as you assured everyone "it was just a theory".  (Yes, you should note the similarity.)

While such an approach permitted much erudite discussion of hypotheticals, what did it say about reality? Here's a quote from George Sim Johnston's admirable post:

The almost universal belief that the purpose of science was not to give a final account of reality, but merely to “save appearances,” accounts for how lightly the Church hierarchy initially received Copernicus's theory. Astronomy and mathematics were regarded as the play things of virtuosi. They were accounted as having neither philosophical nor theological relevance. There was genuine puzzlement among Churchmen that they had to get involved in a quarrel over planetary orbits. It was all one to them how the “appearances” were “saved.” And, in fact, Copernicus, a good Catholic, published his book at the urging of two eminent prelates and dedicated it to Pope Paul III, who received it cordially.

That Copernicus believed the heliocentric theory to be a true description of reality went largely unnoticed. This was partly because he still made reassuring use of Ptolemy's cycles and epicycles; he also borrowed from Aristotle the notion that the planets must move in circles because that is the only perfect form of motion. There was, moreover, the famous preface by Osiander, a Protestant who oversaw the printing of the first edition. Osiander knew that Luther and Melanchthon violently opposed any suggestion that the earth revolves around the sun. So he wrote an unsigned preface, which everyone took to be Copernicus's, presenting the theory as a mere mathematical devise for charting the movements of the planets in a simpler manner than the burdensome Ptolemaic system, one that was not meant to be a definitive description of the heavens.

Subtly, perhaps without anyone realizing when it happened, the inductive form of argument became as important as the deductive. Rather than using Aristotle's Platonism to argue that circular orbits were "more perfect" and therefore appropriate for the planets (a deductive argument), the actual data were consulted. And once this shift occurred, science found itself on the same plane as theology--discussing the Real. But this level plane kept on tilting throughout the Enlightenment until theology was denied any authority over reality at all. By 1800, William Paley was using scientific evidence to argue for the existence of God, in exactly the reverse situation. With an apparently naive irony, Immanuel Kant had to escape into hypotheticals once again to save his atheistic religion from science,  denying the inductive approach to reality.

The retreat into Idealism and Kant's Wall of Separation between science and faith, between Phenomena and Noumena was remarkably successful in rescuing scientific materialism from the ravages of a "saving experience", but pockets of faith remained on the science side of the Wall until the publication of Darwin's Origin of the Species in 1851. After this important battle, all resistance crumbled, and the Kantians could focus their energies on their movable Wall, their bulldozer blade of secularism. By the late 1800's, the Wall had claimed Physics (Boltzmann), Chemistry (Galton), Biology (Darwin), Mathematics (Russell), Psychology (Freud), and was galloping through Theology (Schleiermacher, Ritschl, von Harnack). The Fundamentalist movement should be seen as a doomed attempt, like 700 Thespians, to hold the Christian ghetto against the Panzers of progress. All hope appeared lost.

When mysteriously, and nearly unnoticed, black holes appeared in Kant's secular hegemony.  Remember, Epicurus' exorcism of the gods in 500BC began with the claim that all there is, all reality is nothing but atoms bouncing through space. And in the 20th century, Einstein destroyed Newtonian space, and Bohr destroyed atoms. Attempts to bridge over these holes only led to collapse and bigger holes. Einstein's spacetime birthed a beginning, "The Big Bang", and Bohr's Quantum Mechanics developed a Mind. The entire structure of the Reality revealed by inductive science veered more and more off the Materialist track begun by Epicurus in the 5th century BC, and drew ever closer to the Reality described by Augustine in the 5th century AD.  Kant's Wall had been breached by the one thing that could, science itself. Today there is confusion and anxiety over the definition of science, the meaning of quantum mechanics, the contingency of the Big Bang, the sterility of string theory, to name a few. Nothing has replaced the Newtonian paradigm so beloved of Kant. Debates swirl around these topics. Can 21st century science continue to discuss Reality solely by inductive means? Can Truth be found without deductive (theological) argumentation? Is there purpose in nature?

We have made the argument before that purpose is essential. Today let us look at the transition from a deductive, theology-based Reality to an inductive, science-based Reality. What were the conditions that changed in the Medieval period? Was it really a silly condemnation in 1270 that turned on the lights? Or was it something else?

First, we should honestly admit that inductive truth is rather flaky, as David Hume argues so clearly in his defense of atheism. It was Hume, after all, that awakened Kant from his dogmatic slumbers. In order to believe our senses, in order to believe our observations, we have to have confidence in the tools--our eyes and ears and brains and hands. This trust is not inherent, but requires great training. For example, the schizophrenic that keeps hearing voices will loose faith in what his ears hear. If some 10% of the population is schizophrenic, will any of us trust our ears, should a voice boom out from a cloud "This is my beloved Son. Listen to him!"?  Only when schizophrenia drops below a certain threshold, only when syphilis-damaged brains are not predominant among scientists, only when our faculties are generally in good repair, will we learn, as a culture, to trust them. It was not a Condemnation that awakened Medieval empirical natures, but cultural health. Michael Polyani discusses this in his book Personal Knowledge, which we can generalize to a whole community, a culture. So when public infection had dropped below some important threshold, when lifespan had increased above some important threshold, when literacy and commerce had brought a critical mass of mind together, then and then only could science blossom. And that health, that community, that longetivity was a consequence of Christianity.

Suddenly, people discovered the power in observation, the power in debate, the power in community. No longer did the whole field of biology rest on a single genius like Aristotle, repeating his insights and his mistakes with equal fervor. Rather the community found a way to multiply the effectiveness of their brain cells, to have a common mind brighter than Aristotle. The community found a greater authority than Aristotle in the "world out there", an authority that never changed, an authority that was receptive to inquiries, that answered a well-posed question, an authority available to all that ask. (Contrast this view of Nature to Gnosticism or Animism, and you will quickly see why it was a very unique view.) All this was a result of Christianity.

And so empiricism spread. Medieval guilds formed to treasure this hard-won knowledge, to extend this collective intelligence of like-minded people, to communicate across feudal territories, across language barriers, this fraternity of  specialized technicians. Economics speaks all languages, and holds no favorites. It was natural then, that Science should be the umbrella under which all guilds could unite, under which even Theology could find refuge. And this also was the outcome of Christianity.

We see in this history that Science grew not from the fertile minds of the theologians at the universities, but from the soil of trade, of guild, of community, of trust, of health, of life itself. We have misunderstood history if we separate the mind and the body, the intellect and the brain, wisdom and health. Both are needed, both encourage the other, both are a product of Christianity.

So where do we get the idea that the intellectual history traces a far different trajectory than the economic or military history of Europe? From Gnosticism. And where did Kant get the idea that he was saving science from religion, or actually, his atheism from observation, by separating the two forever? From Gnosticism. And why did the ACLU and Judge Jones (who copied their brief verbatim) get the idea that Intelligent Design was religious and therefore bad for science education? From Gnosticism. And where did Thomas Jefferson get his Enlightenment Deism that God ceased to intervene in the world once it was made? From Gnosticism.

Nor should we pick on secularists alone. Where did the Bishop of Rome get the opinion that Church interpretations of Scripture, that Church theology triumphed over observation, over Aristotle? From Gnosticism. Where do Young Earth Creationists get the idea that their interpretation of scripture is more reliable than science? From Gnosticism. Where did Tielhard get his view that the end of history is the Omega Point? From Gnosticism.

For when we separate final causes from material causes, we separate what God has joined together, and we cannot avoid the tyranny of opposites. When issues are black and white, when outcomes are dual, when we are bipolar, we are either manic or depressed but rarely sane. This truth came home to me while sitting in the faculty section of Wheaton College's chapel during "Sex Education Week".  (Yeah, in Ivy League schools I'd be hiding out in my office during that week, but this was a Christian college, once known as a "fundamentalist" school.) The speaker was talking about dating, and the question he is always asked is "how far can I go"? He pantomimed standing on a see-saw, and the difficulty of balancing on it in the storms of passion. "Too far to the right, whoa! Too far to the left, whoops! What do I do?" Then the said, "we need a third point to lean on." A stool of three legs is always stable. Anglicans all remember the mythical "three-legged stool" of Hooker's theology. We need something outside ourselves that provides that stability. Three legs aren't redundant, they are essential.

The answer to Gnosticism is always the Trinity. We have to bring back together science and theology. We have to unite induction and deduction. We have to recognize the philosophical foundations of observation, and the empirical proofs of theology. And the fixed point that holds these polarities in balance, the third leg of the stool is revelation. Only Christianity has all three legs of the stool. Only Christianity makes it mandatory, essential, dogma. Only Christianity has the Son praying to the Father for the gift of the Spirit, all three Persons of the Godhead in constant communication with each other, none subservient, none accessories. That is why Science must be seen as essential to Theology, not separate in Karl Barth's transcendant truth, but essential. That is why Logic is essential to Theology (though I don't have to argue that one.) That is why Logic is essential to Science, and why Observation is essential to Mathematics. (Yes, even in Math we discover theorems, we do not invent them.)

This was the heritage we inherited from the Medieval period. This was the secret to the Enlightenment and the rise of the West. This is what Islam doesn't have. This is why China was never able to develop science. This is what Materialism denies. We have been coasting for 200 years on the momentum of the 13th century, we have been spending the capital our ancestors stored up. As we come into this 3rd millennium, as we enter the 21st century, the tank is going dry, our momentum is lost and the hill climbs up steep before us. Can we once again found a monastic order that retrieves that essential community of science? Can we unite behind the banner of Christianity and defeat the Islamic threat to the West? These are the questions history asks us.