Quote:
Originally Posted by Calgaryborn
Thanks for the information and correction. I guess one could at least say that the scientific method was introduced to the western by a christian; That being Rodger Bacon.
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Roger Bacon
1214 - 1294
English philosopher and scientist.
He was interested in alchemy, the biological and physical sciences and magic. Many discoveries have been credited to him, including the magnifying lens. He foresaw the extensive use of gunpowder and mechanical cars, boats, and planes.
In 1266, at the invitation of his friend Pope Clement IV, he began his Opus majus / Great Work, a compendium of all branches of knowledge. In 1268 he sent this with his Opus minus / Lesser Work and other writings to the pope. In 1277 Bacon was condemned and imprisoned by the Christian church for `certain novelties´ (heresy) and not released until 1292.
Bacon wrote in Latin and his works include On Mirrors, Metaphysical and On the Multiplication of Species. He followed the maxim ` Cease to be ruled by dogmas and authorities; look at the world!´
A paradigm example is the treatment of John Philopon in the 6th century,
the only experimental scientist in the whole of Christian history before the 13th century: he was branded a heretic and
everything he did in the sciences was effectively ignored. Though he wasn't condemned for being a scientist, he was condemned for thinking for himself in matters of theology, precisely in his effort to make science and religion compatible. But by opposing exactly that process,
the Church killed any prospect for science under its watch for nearly ten whole centuries. You can call it collateral damage, but it's damage all the same. An accidentally dead Iraqi is still a victim of war, and so was medieval science a victim of Christianity.
Aquinas and
Roger Bacon have been wheeled out here, but they are also paradigm examples: both post 1200 AD (hence again a thousand years too late), and both responding to the revival of ancient (pagan) scientific and philosophical literature and ways of thinking. At that point, that meant only some Aristotle--whose work was already largely obsolete even in antiquity. The real discoveries of what the ancients had achieved after him would take another century or more. But again,
the new ideas under Aquinas and Bacon were not inspired by Christianity but in spite of it. They were inspired, instead, by the ideas of ancient pagans, and the challenges they posed to Christian ways of thinking.
Without Authority
and this bit which doubts his scientific notions....
Roger Bacon has been a popular martyr for science since the nineteenth century. He was a scholastic theologian who was keen to claim Aristotle for the Christian faith. He was not a scientist in any way we would recognise and his ideas are not nearly so revolutionary as they are often painted. In chapter 12 of his book, White writes of Roger “the charges on which St. Bonaventura silenced him, and Jerome of Ascoli imprisoned him, and successive popes kept him in prison for fourteen years, were "dangerous novelties" and suspected sorcery.” This is untrue. As Lindberg says
“his imprisonment, if it occurred at all (which I doubt) probably resulted with his sympathies for the radical “poverty” wing of the Franciscans (a wholly theological matter) rather than from any scientific novelties which he may have proposed.”
More BornAgain myth exploded
