Theology and Science at the dawn of modern times

1. Entity type Lemma
2. Original titleTeologie şi Ştiinţă în zorii modernităţii
3. Language term Romanian
4. lemma category Modes of interaction > Antagonism - Concepts of knowledge and modes of reasoning > Orthodox gnosiology - Concepts of knowledge and modes of reasoning > Philosophy of science/epistemology - Various approaches to the problem of correlation between science and theology
5. Publication date 20-02-2013
6. lemma work Mihalache, Sorin [Author]. Teologie şi Ştiinţă în zorii modernităţii [Theology and Science at the dawn of modern times]
7. lemma manifestations Ziarul Lumina
8. Keywords Western culture - misunderstandings - Saint Basil the Great - Andreyev Ivan [Author]. Orthodox apologetic theology
9. Url Click Here
10. Lemma body

    1. In this article, Sorin Mihalache looks back at how scientific knowledge about the sky has evolved over the centuries, and analyses the constrasting ways in which this knowledge permeated the Western and Eastern worldviews. In particular, he points out wrong assumptions about the role of scientists, which have played a key role in creating a false cleavage between science and religion. For the ancient Greeks, the sky was the cosmos. As the name suggests, it was linked to harmony and beauty; however, it simultaneously raised many philosophical questions, which received a lot of attention and generated a number of interesting hypotheses. This is why it is in Greece where we first find the main ideas that came to underlie the most popular cosmological models: the geocentrism and the heliocentrism. According to Archimedes, Aristarchus of Samos (310-230 î.d.H.) was one of the supporters of heliocentrism. The other model, the geocentrism, was mentioned in the texts of Aristotle and Hipparch († approx. 120 î.d.H.), being further developed by Ptolemy († approx. 168 D. H.). The author goes on to mention other endeavours to crack the sky’s mystery. Several decades after 1420, for example, an observatory was built in the Islamic world, in Uzbekistan (Samarkand), by the mathematician and astronomer Muhamad Taraghay. Decades later, between 1501 and 1503, Copernicus came across astrology in the university of Padua, where he also got familiar with the writings of Cardinal Bessarion. Bessarion († 1472) who was born in Anatolia by the Black Sea, translated Aristotle and Xenophon, and supported several Greek intellectuals living in Italy, such as Theodore of Gaza and George of Trebizond. The Copernican heliocentric theory, developed between 1514 and 1543, was followed in 1572 by Tycho Brahe's discoveries. In Europe, there was a growing interest in the study of the sky. In 1580 Frederick II of Denmark built the first astronomical observatory. In 1596, Johannes Kepler, who was Brahe's assistant until 1601, published "Mysterium cosmographicum" (The sacred mystery of the universe). A few years later Kepler suggested that planets follow elliptical orbits, as stated in his Astronomia nova, and formulated the three laws of planetary motions. It is during these years that the Aristotelian cosmology started to fade away, while heliocentrism, as developed by Copernicus, came to be supported by further evidence from the observations of Kepler and Galileo. In 1633 Galileo introduced relativity in physics, while in 1638 he formulated the laws of motion and of friction, that would have a strong and irreversible impact on how we perceive the universe. After being amended by Nicholas of Cusa, Aristotle was further contradicted by Galileo, who showed that objects fall to the ground in a uniformly accelerated motion, as long as they move in an environment that opposes negligible resistance. Yet Galileo did not generalize these results to the whole visible world; their validity was believed to be restricted to the Earth. The movement of celestial bodies was later described by Kepler; eventually it was Newton who came up with a remarkable outstanding mathematical description to account for these phenomena. After this detailed review of the most significant scientific achievements in ancient and modern history, Sorin Mihalache turns to the consequences they had on the Christian worldview. In the section “Historical clichés on the birth of modern science”, he attempts to identify the real causes of the undeniable tension between science and religion that started to build up around that time. This is all the more important given that those clichés are still powerful today and prevent us from correctly appreciating the problem. In his view, the aforementioned scientists are in no way responsible for the misunderstandings which later brought about this huge rift in knowledge: Kepler, Isaac Newton and Galileo Galilei did not attempt to deny the existence of God. On the contrary, they frequently mention the idea that God is the creator of the universe and that the order and harmony that emerged from their studies are the very evidence of God’s wisdom. Unfortunately Mihalache does not discuss the possibility that these statements might have been insincere, a mere trick used by the authors to elude religious censorship in order to get their work published. Mihalache believes that this tension could have been avoided altogether if medieval theology did not systematically glorify the scientific models. It is significant that in the Christian East this did not happen. Here, the effort of understanding the world’s rationality is a way of discovering God, who makes Himself known through Creation, as it becomes clear from the writings of St. Basil the Great. In a similar way, St Maximus the Confessor shows that the whole Creation should be understood as a Scripture, which testifies about God. Ultimately, orthodox apologetics links the things of the world that make the objects of sciences with their intelligible meanings that are contained in the Revelation.