The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science

In 1500 China's science and technology was way ahead of Europe. By 1800 Europe was way ahead of China. What happened? Why?The change happened in the second decade of the 16th century, All Saints Eve to be exact, in the year 1517. Luther never realized the full impact of what he did. By starting the Reformation, he set in motion not only the religious movement of Protestantism, but the Reformation had secondary effects spread out throughout society. What this book emphasizes is how that change influenced how natural scientists viewed nature. Many of the early scientists openly cited Luther as their inspiration to study nature instead of relying on previous experts.This is not a short book, it covers quite a swath of material including examples, documenting the first tentative steps in the development of the scientific method to where it was fully operational, and how that development was guided by the Reformation with its return to the Bible as the sole authoritative source of theological teachings and how those theological teachings were applied to the study of nature.The first tentative step was when Luther was teaching Psalms. He handed his students texts that had only the Hebrew text of the Psalms, with wide margins where students could write their own notes. Previous to this, students were introduced to the writings of “experts” which were to guide students how to interpret the text. But with the absence of those “experts”, the students were directed to the text itself and needed to understand what the text itself says. Furthermore, by emphasizing the primacy of the source, along with that came the recognition that the “experts” could be wrong.That theological view, that the source itself needs to be consulted was taken over by scientists. Previously, as in the case of theological students who were directed to the “experts”, so studies in science were directed to their “experts”, namely Aristotle, Ptolemy, and lesser ones. But with the emphasis that the source itself should be studied, for theology the source was the Bible, for nature the source is nature itself, with the recognition that the “experts” could be wrong.While Luther himself was so caught up with the theological issues that he didn’t recognize the scientific implications of his theology, already while he was still alive, some of his associates recognized those scientific implications. For example, two of his associates collaborated with, and pushed the publication of Copernicus’ book establishing that the sun is the center of the solar system.One aspect that Peter Harrison didn’t really cover was that a return to the Bible as the sole source of knowledge concerning theology, was also the adoption of the Biblical way of thinking. Biblical thinking is historical-functional, while the renaissance neo-Aristotelian Roman Catholic theology was ahistorical-formal. The same is true of the neo-Platonism of medieval theology. Just as Luther made a clean break with a total rejection of medieval neo-Platonism, and Renaissance neo-Aristotelianism, so early scientists saw the rejection of Aristotle as the ultimate source of scientific authority as their kicking their pope out of science.An example of thinking functionally instead of formally is Isaac Newton. Geometry had been around for millennia to give a mathematical description of form. But Newton wanted to give a mathematical description of function, of action, so he developed calculus.A further expansion contrasting the way of thinking derived from the Bible which philosophers call “Hebrew Thought”, and that descended from the Greek philosophers through the medieval and Renaissance Roman Catholic theology which philosophers call “Greek Thought”, is found in Hebrew Thought Compared with Greek which I tried to make easier to understand in my four star review of that book.The return to the Bible as the sole authority in theology had effects that spread out in many fields, including art, music, law, economics, etc. But the focus of this book is how Biblical teachings as brought out by the Reformation, served as the incubator for modern, empirical science. One question I have, as our societies become increasingly secular and reject the Bible, can modern, empirical science survive? Are there not signs that it cannot survive apart from its source?Luther never knew what he started.(edited and expanded this 31st day of October, 2017, the 500th anniversary of the start of the Reformation.)

In this book Harrison develops the historical parallels between ways the Bible was read and interpreted and views of physical reality. I think the main thesis is summed up in this quote from the introduction: "It is commonly supposed that when in the early modern period individuals began to look at the world in a different way, they could no longer believe what they read in the Bible. In this book I shall suggest that the reverse is the case: that when in the sixteenth century people began to read the Bible in a different way, they found themselves forced to jettison traditional conceptions of the world." This change in thinking about the Bible and the world was central to the emergence of modern science.The book opens with the tradition that emerged out of the early church, most importantly from Origin and Augustine, in which each physical object was believed to symbolize hidden theological or moral truth. In this way the physical reality of objects came to be overshadowed by their spiritual significance. Truth and meaning were not to be sought in the objects themselves, how they work, or cause and effect, but in the spiritual realities that they symbolized. For example, in the early church and through the Middle Ages it was widely reported that the pelican possessed all kinds of fabulous traits that paralleled the work of Christ. But as Augustine wrote, what was important in these accounts was not their factual accuracy, but their spiritual significance. As a matter of fact, many of the early church writers were antagonistic toward curiosity about natural phenomena, since they held that natural knowledge was inferior to supernatural knowledge.Similarly, in this tradition the interpretation of the Bible was dominated by expounding the allegorical sense, which came to be the most important of the multiple senses that each text of the Bible possessed. The allegorical method of interpretation is concerned not with the literal meaning of the text, but with its spiritual and symbolic meaning, and it dominated the church from the time of Origin until the Protestant Reformation. Thus both words and things acted as symbols to spiritual realities rather than as significant in themselves.Around the 12th century, the emergence of interest in the unity of experience meant that objects were interesting not only as symbols of spiritual realities, but also in their relations to one another. However, the renewed interest in nature at first resulted in a renewed study of the ancient authorities such as Aristotle, rather than the first-hand investigation of nature itself. As Harrison puts it, "while it is true to say that nature was discovered in the twelfth century, up until the end of the sixteenth century it was a nature which for the most part was interpreted according to written authorities." This renewed interest in the ancient authorities eventually led in the Renaissance to the recognition of the importance of the original texts.The dedication to original texts was of course also central to the Reformation. Thus in one of Luther's early classes, he provided for his students a copy of the Psalter which had empty margins, free for the students' own notes, which would usually have been filled with the notes of the church fathers. For the Reformation, the text itself, rather than the opinions of the church fathers, was to be the final authority in questions of interpretation. At the same time, people began to turn to the empirical world itself as the final authority in questions about physical reality. Additionally, the reformers were also dedicated to a single, determinate meaning of each text of Scripture, grounded in the intention of the author, which led to the rejection of the allegorical method of interpretation. Since this method in hermeneutics was derived from the symbolic view of the world, its rejection also entailed that only words, rather than physical objects, have meaning. Furthermore, Calvin's emphasis on the will of God rather than the reason of God led to a conception of natural law by which laws could only be discovered by experimentation. The idea of two reformations, one in religion, and one in natural philosophy, was well recognized and acknowledged by many of the important figures of that time. Kepler, for instance, called himself "the Luther of astrology."The final chapters of the book deal extensively with specific details of how the new approach to the Bible affected interpretations of nature. An important idea was belief in the creation and flood accounts in Genesis as literal rather than allegorical, and therefore having empirical consequences which could be investigated. These final chapters slow down quite a bit, but there is still some interesting material. This book is thorough and scholarly, with almost 40 of its 312 pages devoted to an extensive bibliography and index. It is not aimed at a popular audience, though it should be accessible to anyone interested in the field. I found it enjoyable to read, and I believe it is an important contribution to the investigation of the relationship between science and Christianity.