Modernization of Science and the Catholic Church — a brief overview
The sixteenth and seventeenth centuries marked the beginning of a slowly emerging period of attempted (and arguably successful) modernization, influenced by scientists and philosophers who challenged the doctrinal dogma imposed by the Catholic Church over one and a half millennia earlier. The doctrines levied by the dogmatic power structure set a traditional tone that was not quickly challenged by individuals, or communities, with revolutionary ideas. Regardless of the title applied to the period, shifting from the old way of thinking to considering new possibilities became increasingly consistent. While the acceptability of particular theories varied, the modernizer’s impact was forever made and indeed transcended society’s perception of science and thinking beyond the confines of what was deemed socially acceptable.
In the early seventeenth century, modernizers, including Descartes and Galileo, sought to challenge the ancient Aristotelean authority methods. Descartes went so far as to offer his writings to Jesuits in La Flèche “to persuade the [faculty] to use his writings as part of their teaching curriculum.” He dreamt of “replacing Aristotle as the master of philosophy,” challenging the traditional institution norms that placed Aristotle first and foremost in their cannon. Likewise, Galileo’s “militant” attack on Aristotlean theories added significance to the pursuit against traditionalist forces in the education systems. Nevertheless, these intellectual giants were not alone in their assault on the old-school reasoning, as “attacks on the Aristotelianism of the schools…had become so frequent by the early seventeenth century [that the assault] produced a fearsome armoury of argumentative weapons (82).”
Such overt attempts to challenge traditionalism were not only an attack on education systems but also a partial, indirect attack against the Catholic Church’s authority (since the Church theologians saw value in Aristotelian metaphysics, most notably with Saint Thomas Aquinas). However, the offense was not directed at the Church. Theologians and the clerical hierarchy saw partial merit in Aristotelian reasoning and other metaphysics that did not reconcile well with Christian teachings and doctrine.
The partial saving grace for Descartes came with his active use and “getting inside the mind of God” applied in his theories. He specifically challenged the institutional structure of the academy. While challenging the concept of God accepted by the masses at the time, Descartes used the abstraction of God for his thought experiments, which helped to be less provocative when faced with the power of the Catholic Church. In his famous work, he leads the reader along a developed logical track of truths that the reader would be convicted of if paying attention. The philosopher questioned everything, realizing that there was nothing that was not possible to be challenged, including mathematics. Descartes stopped upon realizing that because he thinks, he exists: I think therefore I am.
In one sense, the Catholic order would not have been triggered by this rebellious act because Descartes validated the power and “perfection of God (84)” lending to the readers, and Catholic church officials, to feel less threatened. However, the centralized power structure would have felt challenged in that the guarantor of truth was no longer the Catholic power structure, the keeper of God’s order, but a man who was subservient to God. However, with the actions of Martin Luther initiating the Catholic reformation almost one hundred years before Descartes’s provocative works, Descartes had some momentum to build on and was far from a central target.
Academia was more impacted than the Catholic Church threatened by Descartes’s philosophical foundation and his reexamination of science with the same principles, following “hard on the heels of [his] metaphysical argument.” Between Descartes and the Aristotelian institution, “the existence in a body of sensory qualities such as colour or temperature constituted a particularly crucial point of contention (85).” Descartes’s purpose was ultimately “to provide philosophical underpinning for his physico-mathematical corpuscularism,” which would be a “comprehensive natural philosophy capable (in principle) of explaining everything (86).” With his thinking path to arrive at truths laid out, he could logically refute Aristotelian concepts of how the world worked.
Other modernizers, including Galileo, also pushed forward, challenging the ancient academic structures of science. In his work Dialogo, he had “considered why, if the earth spins on its axis, objects on its surface do not fly off, much as they will from a potter’s wheel.” The question and realization by Galileo inspired Newton, who pondered “what the centrifugal force at the earth’s surface would be (159)” considering the mathematical relationship with the phenomena that Galileo had discovered. In addition to Newton’s influence by Galileo, “Descartes’s much-criticized rules of motion and collision…formed the background to Newton’s work (160).”
While there were individual players, including natural philosophers, scientists, and thinkers alike, the most provoking quality of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century modernizers was their collective effort to not only work alone to overthrow the status quo but that their efforts fed each other and helped make the new direction much more straightforward for society. While Galileo was directly persecuted for his works and contributions by the inquisition, his momentum and the notable works of Descartes and later Newton, among others, propelled the rest of the movement forward, transforming the traditionalist academic institutions forever.
Source:
Dear, Peter. Revolutionizing the Sciences: European Knowledge and Its Ambitions 1500–1700. Second ed., Princeton University Press, 2009.
