The Biblical Basis of Modern Science

THE BIBLICAL BASIS OF MODERN SCIENCE

"Natural Philosophy Reformed by Divine Light"

(Copyright by Emerson Thomas McMullen; based on a talk given at

the Annual Meeting of the Georgia Academy of Science, 2001)

The big questions are "who are we, where did we come from, and how shall we live?" The answers to these questions create worldviews that guide our lives. Different answers generate different worldviews, and much of what underlies history is the conflict of these worldviews. The picture at the right illustrates the the "Where did we come from?" question.

One example of worldview conflict comes from Henrick Ibsen (1828-1906). He wrote a huge drama in ten acts, Emperor and Galilean (1873) based on the clash of pagan and Christian worldviews in the Roman Empire. Ibsen's story centers around the life of Julian the Apostate (c. 331-363). Initially Julian fought for Rome against Germanic tribes, and appeared to be a Christian but was not, as were many around him. When he became emperor in 361, Julian then enacted increasingly severe policies against Christianity. He appointed pagans to high positions, expelled Christians from the army, and prohibited them from teaching. He burned churches in some cities and installed the Roman god, Bacchus, in other churches. He banished Bishops and tortured one horribly. After a reign of twenty months, Julian died of a wound received in battle, and his policies died with him.

The Roman Empire, too, went the way of Julian, but the society that emerged in its place was an amalgam of Christianity, Greco-Roman influences, and Germanic traditions. In time, Universities emerged from church schools in the Latin West. This happened at the same time as the Greco-Roman influence increased, particularly in the form of commentaries on the thinking of Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) At first, scholars in the Latin West absorbed the new philosophical information, but then disputes arose over its implications for Christianity. The immediate question involved Christian faith versus pagan thought, another worldview clash. One side of this debate is illustrated in a picture from the Middle Ages. In it, Aristotle, the height of human reasoning, willingly submits to the sensuous Phyllis, a well-known beauty from Greek legend. It is based on a thirteenth-century sermon arguing that reason, including Aristotle's, unaided by revelation, is suspect. Nevertheless, portions of Aristotle's thinking remained in the University.

The first step in the introduction of a new idea is the rejection of the old one, in this case, Aristotelianism.⁽¹⁾ Although the momentum of the Aristotelian tradition carried it into the seventeenth century,⁽²⁾ it had been discredited in the minds of many thinkers by that time. One reason was the Reformers' attack on portions of Aristotle's thought, especially his Ethics, which Martin Luther proclaimed was "the worst enemy of grace." Luther called for the elimination of Aristotelian philosophy from the arts curriculum. Daniel Hofman (1538-1621), a philosophy and then theology teacher at the newly-founded University of Helmstedt, repeated Luther's call. He gained a few followers, but was dismissed from the university in 1601 after a public apology to the other philosophers. Nevertheless, his followers and a few former students kept up the pressure. Some of these were Johann Angelius Werdenhagen, Wenceslaus Schilling, and Andreas Cramer. There were other individuals as well, whom I will discuss shortly. In addition, the Fifth Lateran Council (1512-1517) ordered that philosophers show support for the immortality of the soul.

Other reasons for Aristotelian decline were challenges from older philosophies revived during the Renaissance recovery of ancient texts. These included Pythagorean, Platonic, Stoic, Epicurean, and Hermetic thought.⁽³⁾ (But these pagan ideas would have to be Christianized too, in the minds of the Reformers.) Similarly, there were challenges from new philosophies: Paracelsus promoted three principles to replace Aristotle's elements, Francis Bacon proposed an inductive approach to natural philosophy, and William Gilbert developed a new philosophy based on magnetism (which Kepler used to explain planetary attraction to the sun). ⁽⁴⁾ Archimedes' works, important for the mechanical philosophy, were revived and developed.⁽⁵⁾ The skeptical crisis growing out of the Reformation challenged contemporary thought concerning the basis of truth, while the publication of the classical skeptical literature fueled this crisis. ⁽⁶⁾ The astronomical revolution was not just Copernicus and Kepler making the earth a planet, and thereby destroying Aristotle's physics; it also included Tycho Brahe's measurements of the new star of 1572 and the comet of 1577, which showed that Aristotelian cosmology was wrong.⁽⁷⁾ The time was ripe for a new philosophy of nature.

Those who were calling for a Christianized "Mosaic" philosophy/science can be divided into two camps. One group favored an allegorical approach to the Bible, the other a literal approach.

The problem with the allegorical approach is that there is less agreement - interpretations vary greatly according to each individual's imagination. The literalist view has less latitude for differences due to imagination, and therefore has more basic agreement among individuals. Some of the persons in the literalist camp are listed in Table I.

Cardinal Pierre de Berulle (1575-1629), a leading figure of the French Counter-Reformation, encouraged Rene' Descartes (1596-1650) to use his great intellectual gifts to develop a new natural philosophy. Descartes offered to do just that⁽⁸⁾ and eventually did so. Although we can argue how much he falls into the strict literalist camp, Descartes believed that God had made man's body from Earth (Treatise on Man), which follows the pattern of Chapter Two of The Book of Genesis. In his Principles of Philosophy (1644), Descartes' Principle of Human Knowledge #25 is "We must believe everything which God has revealed, even though it may be beyond our grasp" and #76 starts "Divine authority must be put before our own perception; . . .." Later in his Principles, Descartes applies #25 and #76: he writes that God created the sun, earth and moon at the beginning, and that God created Adam and Eve fully grown, as He did the plants. ⁽⁹⁾ It appears that he also subscribed to a reformed view of salvation. In a letter, he wrote that for an infidel to reach heaven, "it is necessary to believe in Jesus Christ and other revealed matters, and that depends upon grace."⁽¹⁰⁾

The biblical worldview also influenced others in the Scientific Revolution. William Harvey (1578-1657) discovered the circulation of the blood in part by asking why God put so manyvalves in the veins and none in the arteries.⁽¹¹⁾ In lecturing on the heart and pericardium, he referred to the Apostle John's account of Christ's crucifixion. In writing on parturition, Harvey mentioned the pregnancy of Mary, Jesus' mother; but he does not say "Jesus." Instead, he intoned "our Savior Christ, of men most perfect."⁽¹²⁾ In making a scientific point about the beginning of life, Harvey quoted from Leviticus 17:11 and 14.⁽¹³⁾

Johannes Kepler (1571-1630), noted for his discovery of three planetary laws, decided that God had patterned the Universe after the Holy Trinity. He thought our central Sun is an image of God the Father; the outer reaches of the stars, an image of God the Son; and the intervening space, an image of God the Holy Spirit.⁽¹⁴⁾ As he lay dying, Kepler said his hope of salvation lay "only and alone on the services of Jesus Christ."⁽¹⁵⁾

Robert Boyle (1627-1691) was a strong Bible-believing Christian. He is sometimes called the Father of Chemistry, and Boyle's Law is named after him. He argued for Christianity and biblical concepts in science his whole life. Considering the eye optically, he thought that there was no way it could have happened by chance - God had to have designed it.⁽¹⁶⁾ He thought the same thing for the human body.⁽¹⁷⁾ Therefore chance, he wrote, is "but a creature of man's intellect."⁽¹⁸⁾ In other words, Boyle is saying "chance" is a social construct, having no relationship with reality.

At the beginning of his famous Starry Messenger, which reports his telescopic discoveries, Galileo Galilei (1564-1642) refers to devising his telescope "after being illuminated by divine grace."⁽¹⁹⁾ In his Dialogue on the Great World System, Galileo referred to God as a purposeful "Divine Architect" of the creation.⁽²⁰⁾

Influenced by Chapter One of Genesis, Isaac Newton (1642-1727) wrote near the end of his Opticks, that "God in the beginning formed matter into solid, massy, hard, impenetrable, movable particles." Then God set them in order. There is no way, Newton said, "to pretend that it [the Universe] might arise out of a chaos by the mere laws of Nature." As for the solar system, he declared that "while comets move in very eccentric orbs in all manner of positions, blind fate could never make all the planets move one and the same way." Newton concluded that "such a wonderful uniformity in the planetary system must be allowed the effect of choice." God, by His will, is more able to move these bodies than we move ours.⁽²¹⁾ Additionally, Newton believed that God controls the force of gravity, while Jesus Christ controls the non-mechanical and vegetative operations of nature.⁽²²⁾

At the end of the seventeenth century, researchers described geologic processes and developed new ideas about fossils in the context of Noah's Flood. They used the biblical Deluge as a guiding idea for theorizing about the Earth's history. Two examples are The Sacred Theory of the Earth by the Rev. Thomas Burnet (1635-1715) and Essay Toward a Natural History of the Earth by John Woodward (1665-1728). Many more examples could be given, but these make the point: science and biblical Christianity were deeply interwoven. Scientists need a framework in which they interpret their brute facts. Newton and others used the Bible and the Creator described in it to provide that framework. With this worldview they also had the answers to the big questions about where they came from, who they were, and how they should live.

Table 1

SOME OF THOSE WHO ADVOCATED CONSTRUCTING A NEW NATURAL

PHILOSOPHY (SCIENCE) USING A LITERALIST APPROACH TO THE BIBLE

Johann Heinrich Alsted offered a "biblical encyclopedia" of sacred philosophy, law, and medicine from the Old and New Testaments, Triumphus biblicus (1625). One section is the "Physica Mosis, Jobi et Davidis." He composed it while teaching.

Conrad Aslacus (Kort Aslaksson) (1564-1624) wrote Physica et ethica mosaica (1613). (The physics part covers the first two chapters of Genesis.) Composed while teaching. He had studied with Tycho Brahe, but favored Copernicanism.

Otto Casmann (1562-1601) advocated a sacred ethics and economics in Ethica et oeconomica theosophica (1602). Composed while teaching.

Johann Amos Comenius (1592-1670) wrote Natural Philosophy Reformed by Divine Light (1633/1651), composed while teaching. John Boyer, a follower, continued the call for a reformed physics.

Lambert Daneau (1530-1595) was a Calvinist theologian and minister. He wrote Physica christiana (Geneva: 1576/1580) and The Wonderful Workmanship of the World (1578).

Francisco Valles (1524-1592) was physician to Philip II of Spain. Valles wrote Of the Things Which Are Written about Physics in the Holy Scriptures (1587).

Levinus Lemnius (1505-1568), a physician wrote On the Secret Marvels of Nature.

Thomas Lydiat (1572-1646) wrote Praeleclectio astronomica. . . (London: 1605). In it, he attacks Aristotle and the Christians who are "excessively addicted" to him.

References

1. 1.The weaknesses of Aristotelianism as it relates to Descartes are discussed by Heather Elaine Blair, Anti-Aristotelianism, the soul and the mechanical philosophy in Descartes and Hobbs, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 1995, and by Margaret J. Osler,Divine Will and the Mechanical Philosophy, Gassendi and Descartes on Contingency and Necessity in the Created World (Cambridge University Press, 1994). William Harvey followed a `reject-replace' methodology; see Emerson Thomas McMullen, "Anatomy of a physiological discovery: William Harvey and the circulation of the blood," Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 88:491-8 (1995).

2. 2.For one discussion of this, see Edward Grant, "Ways to Interpret the Terms `Aristotelian' and `Aristotelianism' in Medieval and Renaissance Natural Philosophy," History of Science 25:335-58 (1987).

3. 3.Anthony Grafton, "The Availability of Ancient Works," The Cambridge History of Renaissance Philosophy, ed. C.B. Schmitt, Q. Skinner, E. Kessler (Cambridge University Press, 1988) pp. 767-791. In 1614 the Greek scholar Isaac Casaubon dated the Hermetic literature as a product of the Roman Imperial era. This greatly undercut its influence since the strength of Renaissance Hermeticism had been its supposed ancient Egyptian authorship.

4. 4.Johannes Kepler, New Astronomy, trans. W.H. Donahue (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) pp. 550ff.

5. 5.Hugh Kearney, Science and Change, 1500-1700 (New York: McGraw-Hill Book Co., 1971) pp. 46-47.

6. 6.The classic work on this crisis is Richard H. Popkin, The History of Skepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, revised ed. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1979).

7. 7.Victor E. Thoren, The Lord of Uraniborg (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990).

8. 8.Rene' Descartes, Oeuvres, ed. Charles Adam and Paul Tannery (Paris: Vrin, 1996), Vol. 5, pp. 168-169.

9. The Philosophical Writings of Descartes, trans. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff, and Dugald Murdoch (London: Cambridge University Press, 1985), Vol.1, pp.201, 221, and 256.

10. 10.Rene' Descartes, letter to Mersenne, March, 1642, Philosophical Letters, trans. and ed. by A. Kenny (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1970) p. 132.

11. 11.Emerson Thomas McMullen, "Anatomy of a physiological discovery: William Harvey and the circulation of the blood," Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine, 88:491-498 (1995).

12. 12.William Harvey, The Works of William Harvey, ed. by R. Willis (London: 1847) p. 529.

13. 13.Ibid, p. 376.

14. 14.Johannes Kepler, "Harmonies of the World," Great Books of the Western World, Vol. 16 (Chicago: 1952) pp. 853-854.

15. 15.Max Casper, Kepler, trans and ed. by D. Hellman (New York: Abelard-Shuman, 1959) p. 358.

16. 16.Robert Boyle, A Disquisition about the Final causes of Natural Things (London, 1688) p. 17.

17. 17.Ibid, pp. 46-7.

18. 18.Ibid, p. 71.

19. 19.Galileo Galilei, Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, trans. by S. Drake (New York: 1957) p. 28.

20. 20.Galileo, Dialogue on the Great World System, ed. G. de Santillona (Chicago, 1953) p. 35.

21. Isaac Newton, Opticks (New York: Dover Publications, 1952).

22. 22.See Betty Jo Tetter Dobbs, "Newton's Alchemy and His Theory of Matter," Isis 73:511-528 (1982).