Christianity and the New European Natural Science Genesis

  1. Lemma
  2. Христианство и генезис новоевропейского естествознания
  3. Russian
  4. Saprykin, Dmitry
  5. History and philosophy of science
  6. 1997
  7. Гайденко Пиама [Author]. Philosophical and Religious Origins of Science
  8. Философско-религиозные истоки науки : Philosophical and Religious Origins of Science
  9. Newton, Isaac (1643-1727) - Descartes, René - Matter
    1. http://www.synergia.itn.ru/kerigma/rek-lit/nauka/gaidenko/Hristian-i-Geneziz.html
    1. The author of the monograph argues that it was Christian theology with its dogmas of creation and incarnation to give a significant impact to the formation of a new science. Thanks to this influence, the differentiation of all things into natural and artificial typical to ancient science was overcome, and the watershed between the heavenly and terrestrial worlds was removed. Accordingly, the fundamental difference between mathematics as a science of ideal constructions and physics as a science of real things and their movements was surmounted.

      Gaidenko examines in detail the philosophical foundations of Descartes' scientific views and makes a conclusion that, by creating a maximally mechanistic picture of nature, Descartes directs his entire supply of arguments against the idea widespread in the XV-XVI centuries that the world is the second God. In contrast with the magic and occult point of view giving self-consistency not only to the world, but to everything that exists in it, Descartes deprives the world as a whole, as well as all the processes taking place in it of self-sufficiency: he denies not only the world soul, but even individual animal souls. An un-extended (immaterial) substance, according to Descartes, is only an intelligent soul, thinking and leading “Me”. Descartes’ physics is paradoxical as natural bodies are not endowed with any independent power, including the force of inertia.

      Newton, Gaidenko writes, resolutely objects to identification of matter with space that played a key role in Descartes’ physics and philosophy, and wants to return to the natural body and the natural world as a whole, the most important part of what Descartes unequivocally attributed to the transcendental God, emphasizing that the active principle, the strength and activity origin is inherent in nature itself and natural bodies. The power all bodies without exception are endowed with, both on Earth and in space is, according to Newton, gravitation. If Descartes sees matter as an expansion, then Newton considers it more as a power.

      Gaidenko observes here a polemic between not just two scientists, but rather between two theologians, who have different interpretations of God’s nature and essence and of spirit essence in general. To Descartes, God is purely spiritual and therefore an un-extended being, transcendent, because nature is primarily a space, an expansion. Newton believes that God is incorporeal, but extended, and therefore extension is something uncreated, co-eternal to God. Newton asserts the existence of an immaterial space, immovable and eternal (co-eternal to God), endowed with a special property of activity that provides universal gravitation, calling it “Sensorium Dei”. Gaidenko sees pantheistic tendencies towards rapprochement of God and the world in Newtonian natural philosophy.

      The author of the monograph believes that the emergence of a new science received a religious impetus from Protestant Reformers, who had sharply criticized the medieval principle of hierarchy. In contrast to Aristotle's intellectualism, the reformers claimed the primacy of will. It was the emphasis on the divine will, not the divine reason, that determined the Protestant approach to the study of nature. Gaidenko comes to the conclusion that Protestant theology influenced the conceptual apparatus of classical mechanics, its fundamental principles and ways of substantiating them.