Christianity: A Cause of Modern Science?
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چکیده
When we think of Christianity's role in the rise of science, what do we think of? How it hindered it, such as the conflict between Galileo (1564-1642) and the Inquisition in the seventeenth century? Or, perhaps, do we think of Thomas Huxley debating evolution with Bishop Wilberforce in the nineteenth century? What we need to do now is take a deep breath, and take a step out of today's overwhelmingly secularized intellectual climate, and consider this: Modern science arose among avowedly Christian clerics, theologians, monks, and professors of medieval and renaissance Catholic universities and monasteries. Normally, the Middle Ages are regarded as having a world view very opposed to that of science by atheists and agnostics similar to the manner Leonard Peikoff, the literary and philosophical heir of novelist Ayn Rand, expressed himself: "For centuries, nature had been regarded as a realm of miracles manipulated by a personal deity, a realm whose significance lay the clues it offered to the purposes of its author." Yet, if science gradually arose during the medieval and Renaissance periods, but Christianity and science are seen as totally incompatible, how did this occur? After all, neither Galileo nor Copernicus (1473-1543), who maintained the sun was at the center of the solar system, not the earth, were skeptics or unbelievers, unlike such medieval predecessors as the Islamic poet and astronomer Omar Khayyam (1048?-1122) or Frederick II (1194-1250), Holy Roman Emperor? The remarkable truth is that the world view of Christianity was absolutely necessary for the rise of modern science, as shown by the Duhem-Jaki and (only secondarily) Merton theses.
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