I'm talking about Chapter XXII of vol VIII, The Close of the Middle Ages, of the Cambridge Medieval History, 1st ed, 1934, pp 660-687, and also the chapter's bibliography, pp 970-981.
Almost everyone, almost all of the time whenever they write or speak, is more concerned with pursuing an agenda than in searching for and communicating the objective truth about something.
Some innocent people will be horrified by that assertion, and wonder how I became so cynical that I could believe, incorrectly, that almost everyone behaves that way all the time. And some cynical people will smile, ask me how old I am and how long it took me to arrive at such a basic fact of human life, except that it's not quite a fact, because I inaccurately said "almost."
To those innocent people I can only apologize for horrifying them. (They'll say, "I don't behave that way!" and I know that they don't believe that they do.) To those cynical people I present, as Exhibit A, this marvelous chapter in the CMH by the late Prof Thorndike.
Christians, with conviction or without, innocently or cynically, generally twist Medieval history into a more pleasing form, and atheists generally do the opposite, and New Atheists are particularly bad offenders in this regard, tending to be of the opinion that it's not necessary for them to actually study Medieval history (or any other field of history) before distorting it to fit their official position that religion (which to them is pretty much synonymous with Christianity) poisons everything and that Christians are stupid and destructive and atheists are bright and wonderful beacons of true morality.
But even actual historians come with agendas other than the reporting of history. In the field of Medieval history, I'm not giving away a secret here, the tendency toward Catholic apologetics is particularly widespread. (In some cases the tendency is very strong. For example, in Chapter II, "John Hus," of this same vol VIII of the CMH, Professor Kamil Krofta himself seems like a Medieval monk, although a Hussite one rather than a Catholic.) The reader of works about Medieval history generally comes to expect that he or she will have to adjust for apologetic bias most of the time, insofar as he or she is not also an apologist who reads such things primarily in order to have his or her bias confirmed. The tendency for atheist Medieval historians to overcompensate for the prevailing apologetic atmosphere of their field has of course been exaggerated by the apologists ever since their earliest denunciations of Gibbon, and vice versa, back and forth and on and on. It's all very imperfect and human, and very much the same as in every other field of human endeavor.
But every now and then there is someone whose agenda is actually to write and speak as accurately as possible, and let whose ox be gored which will. Such as Thordike's chapter here: sentence after sentence crammed with actual facts, including both the sorts of details unflattering to the political and intellectual leaders of Medieval Europe which are routinely left out by the apologists and the flattering ones neglected by the atheists. I mean it as a high compliment when I say that it's impossible to guess from this chapter what Thorndike's own religious beliefs or symapthies might have been. Almost always in writing about Medieval, Catholic Europe, some of the author's beliefs or sympathies lay themselves quite bare. Here, whatever Thorndike's beliefs and sympathies may have been, they haven't interfered with his relating the facts: these leading figures in the theology and philosophy and science of the Middle Ages in Catholic Europe said and did and wrote this and this and this about magic, witchcraft, astrology and alchemy, and the authorities allowed or praised expressions of these points of view and punished those. The bibliography for this 28-page chapter is huge: 12 pages, in type much smaller than the chapter's type. There might actually be more words in the bibliography than in the chapter itself. Yet another reason to believe than Thorndike is relating what went on rather than embellishing or spinning it. But of course, if you don't trust Thorndike -- he's given you quite a lot of sources which you can check.
My readers may be beginning to grow impatient with me, saying that I haven't actually described this supposedly wonderful Chapter XXII, nor given any examples of its supposedly wonderful content. And they're right, I haven't, or almost haven't. But that's okay, because when I feel this way about a piece of writing, all that I have to say about it boils down to 2 words: read this!
Showing posts with label lynn thorndike. Show all posts
Showing posts with label lynn thorndike. Show all posts
Saturday, March 12, 2016
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Medieval Learning
Nancy Marie Brown has written a book about Pope Sylvester II.
"In the popular mind today," Brown writes, "the Dark Ages are wrongly considered a time of superstition and hysteria, when the Christian church suppressed all scientific investigation.
"Just the opposite is true."
No. The opposite of the Church suppressing ALL scientific inquiry would be the Church suppressing NO scientific inquiry. The Church most certainly did suppress some inquiry, and most certainly did foment some hysteria and superstition -- even if one doesn't put Christianity under the category of superstition. I do, but for the sake of argument I'll accept Brown's definition -- and on the other hand it supported and encouraged some scientific work. So many people, on one side or another, seem to want to make black-and-white statements about this or that historical period, in order to score this or that political point -- one reader of HuffPo, for example, responded to Brown's article with the flat statement "the Pope was never a scientist" -- as opposed to really trying to find out what happened, which in my humble opinion is difficult enough under the best of circumstanced with no preconceived notions clouding one's view. (Well... SOME preconceived notions will probably always cloud the view to some extent.)
Brown writes:
"Gerbert devised an abacus, or counting board, that mimics the algorithms we use today for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. It has been called the first computer."
(Called the first computer by whom?) I was worried that someone might think that Brown had said that Gerbert invented THE abacus, as opposed to AN abacus -- the first known abacus was made in Sumeria somewhere around 2500 BC -- but luckily that doesn't seem to have happened so far.
"In a chronology of computer history, Gerbert's abacus is one of only four innovations mentioned between 3000 B.C. and the invention of the slide rule in 1622."
That just makes me think: Wow, that's a pretty weak chronology. Where did you get it -- from a placemat in a diner on the Interstate somewhere?
Gerbert of Aurillac, who became Sylvester II in the last 4 years of his life, really was a very interesting man, and Brown lists off some of the high points from his resume, but she betrays the spirit of careful scientific inquiry exemplified by Gerbert, by Sylvester, with absurd statements like "A thousand years ago [...] our modern tension between faith and science did not exist."
As a corrective to such sweeping statements, I would like to recommend once again, as I did in another blog post recently, Lynn Thorndike's superb Chapter XXII: "Magic, Witchcraft, Astrology, and Alchemy," in The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. VIII: The Close of the Middle Ages. In the bibliography to this chapter ones sees that Thorndike consulted an extraordinary number of primary documents. Thorndike tries neither to exalt medieval thinkers nor to condemn them but to show them and their situation as they were: surprisingly advanced in some ways to modern eyes, and surprisingly limited, primitive and superstitious in others.
"In the popular mind today," Brown writes, "the Dark Ages are wrongly considered a time of superstition and hysteria, when the Christian church suppressed all scientific investigation.
"Just the opposite is true."
No. The opposite of the Church suppressing ALL scientific inquiry would be the Church suppressing NO scientific inquiry. The Church most certainly did suppress some inquiry, and most certainly did foment some hysteria and superstition -- even if one doesn't put Christianity under the category of superstition. I do, but for the sake of argument I'll accept Brown's definition -- and on the other hand it supported and encouraged some scientific work. So many people, on one side or another, seem to want to make black-and-white statements about this or that historical period, in order to score this or that political point -- one reader of HuffPo, for example, responded to Brown's article with the flat statement "the Pope was never a scientist" -- as opposed to really trying to find out what happened, which in my humble opinion is difficult enough under the best of circumstanced with no preconceived notions clouding one's view. (Well... SOME preconceived notions will probably always cloud the view to some extent.)
Brown writes:
"Gerbert devised an abacus, or counting board, that mimics the algorithms we use today for adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing. It has been called the first computer."
(Called the first computer by whom?) I was worried that someone might think that Brown had said that Gerbert invented THE abacus, as opposed to AN abacus -- the first known abacus was made in Sumeria somewhere around 2500 BC -- but luckily that doesn't seem to have happened so far.
"In a chronology of computer history, Gerbert's abacus is one of only four innovations mentioned between 3000 B.C. and the invention of the slide rule in 1622."
That just makes me think: Wow, that's a pretty weak chronology. Where did you get it -- from a placemat in a diner on the Interstate somewhere?
Gerbert of Aurillac, who became Sylvester II in the last 4 years of his life, really was a very interesting man, and Brown lists off some of the high points from his resume, but she betrays the spirit of careful scientific inquiry exemplified by Gerbert, by Sylvester, with absurd statements like "A thousand years ago [...] our modern tension between faith and science did not exist."
As a corrective to such sweeping statements, I would like to recommend once again, as I did in another blog post recently, Lynn Thorndike's superb Chapter XXII: "Magic, Witchcraft, Astrology, and Alchemy," in The Cambridge Medieval History, Vol. VIII: The Close of the Middle Ages. In the bibliography to this chapter ones sees that Thorndike consulted an extraordinary number of primary documents. Thorndike tries neither to exalt medieval thinkers nor to condemn them but to show them and their situation as they were: surprisingly advanced in some ways to modern eyes, and surprisingly limited, primitive and superstitious in others.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Doublethink
In his latest go at squaring the circle, reconciling religion and science, on Huffington Post, Clay Farris Naff insists that God is real -- because so many people say that He is.
"In reconceptualizing faith," Naff assures us, "you can liberate God from the ancient traps of theology."
I'm much more interested in liberating mankind from this kind of theological doublethink. Nineteen Eighty-Four
is a powerful, terrifying novel, but doublethink and doublespeak and the Ministry of Love and "Two and two are as many as we say" remind me so much more of Christianity than of any Communist institution past or present.
By Naff's standards, witches and the laws of alchemy and astrology were real almost everywhere as late as the late 15th century. Lynn Thorndike gives a fascinating account of how prevalent such beliefs were in medieval society in Chapter XXII of Volume VIII
of the old Cambridge Medieval History, New York: MacMillian, 1936. Universities published annual astrological predictions, physicians were required to own astrolabes and handbooks of astrology and vie for astrological prowess with the theologians, most leading monarchs employed court astrologers, as even leading humanists such as Aeneas Sylvius, the later Pope Pius II, urged that they should.
A scant five centuries and change, and look how such superstitions have been almost entirely overcome, and who would argue that this is not for the good?
As with one superstition, so with another.
"In reconceptualizing faith," Naff assures us, "you can liberate God from the ancient traps of theology."
I'm much more interested in liberating mankind from this kind of theological doublethink. Nineteen Eighty-Four
is a powerful, terrifying novel, but doublethink and doublespeak and the Ministry of Love and "Two and two are as many as we say" remind me so much more of Christianity than of any Communist institution past or present.By Naff's standards, witches and the laws of alchemy and astrology were real almost everywhere as late as the late 15th century. Lynn Thorndike gives a fascinating account of how prevalent such beliefs were in medieval society in Chapter XXII of Volume VIII
of the old Cambridge Medieval History, New York: MacMillian, 1936. Universities published annual astrological predictions, physicians were required to own astrolabes and handbooks of astrology and vie for astrological prowess with the theologians, most leading monarchs employed court astrologers, as even leading humanists such as Aeneas Sylvius, the later Pope Pius II, urged that they should. A scant five centuries and change, and look how such superstitions have been almost entirely overcome, and who would argue that this is not for the good?
As with one superstition, so with another.
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