GrecoRoman Era

1

• Greco-Roman Era
• Ancient World View
• 500 BCE 500 CE

2

• 312 Battle of Milvian Bridge
• 313 Edit of Milan
• Barbarian invasions 4th to 6th centuries.
• St. Augustine, early 5th century.
• 455 Rome sacked by Vandals.
• 476 Last Roman Emperor in the West. The Fall of
  Rome.

3

• THE MIDDLE AGES
• Early Middle Ages, 500-1000
• (Dark Ages)
• Late Middle Ages, 1000-1350

4

• Faced with the fact that there already existed
  in the greater Mediterranean culture a
  sophisticated philosophical tradition from the
  Greeks, the educated class of early Christians
  rapidly saw the need for integrating that
  tradition with their religious faith. Yet this
  was considered no marriage of convenience, for
  the spiritually resonant Platonic philosophy not
  only harmonized with, it also elaborated and
  intellectually enhanced, the Christian
  conceptions derived from the revelations of the
  New Testament. Thus as Christian culture matured
  during its first several centuries, its religious
  thought developed into a systematic theology, and
  although that theology was Judaeo-Christian in
  substance, its metaphysical structure was largely
  Platonic.It was Augustines formulation of
  Christian Platonism that was to permeate
  virtually all of medieval Christian thought in
  the West Tarnas p.101-103.

5

• Safeguarding the faith was thus the first
  priority in any question of philosophical or
  religious dialogue hence that dialogue was often
  curtailed altogether lest the devil of doubt or
  unorthodoxy gain a foothold in the vulnerable
  minds of the faithful. And so it was that the
  pluralism of classical culture, with its
  multiplicity of philosophies, its diversity of
  polytheistic mythologies, and its plethora of
  mystery religions, gave way to an emphatically
  monolithic system one God, one Church, one
  Truth. Tarnas p. 118-119.

6

• In the later Middle Ages, Christianitys earlier
  need to distinguish and strengthen itself by a
  more or less rigid exclusion of pagan culture
  lost some of its urgency.. Within the womb of
  the medieval Church, the world-denying philosophy
  forged by Augustine and based on Plato began
  giving way to a fundamentally different approach
  to existence, as the Scholastics in effect
  recapitulated the movement from Plato to
  Aristotle.That shift was sparked in the 12th and
  13th centuries with the Wests rediscovery of a
  large corpus of Aristotles writings, preserved
  by the Moslems and Byzantines and now translated
  into Latin. Tarnas p. 175-176

7

• it was the meticulous and energetic attempt to
  synthesize Aristotelian science with the
  indubitable tenets of Christian revelation that
  was bringing forth all the critical intelligence
  that would ultimately turn against both the
  ancient and the ecclesiastical authorities. In
  retrospect, Aquinas Summa had been one of the
  final steps of the medieval mind toward full
  intellectual independence. Tarnas p. 201.

8
THE RENAISSANCE AND THE REFORMATION

• 1350 - 1600

9
PRECURSORS OF THE RENAISSANCE HIGH MIDDLE AGES
( 1000)

• A measure of political security
• Innovations in agriculture
• Population increase particularly in cities
• Increased literacy
• Contacts with Islamic and Byzantine cultures and
  the recovery of classical texts
• Founding of Universities in the West
• Changes in the Churchs attitude toward secular
  learning

10
Anselm of Canterbury(1033 - 1109)

• It seems to me a case of negligence if, after
  becoming firm in our faith, we do not strive to
  understand what we believe.

11
RENAISSANCE

• A reaction against Aristotle and a revival of
  Platonism (in part because of his superior
  literary style).
• Ancient culture was a source not just for
  scientific knowledge and rules for logical
  discourse, (as it was for the Scholastics) but
  for the deepening and enrichment of the human
  spirit. Page 209.
• Forsaking the ideal of monastic poverty,
  Renaissance man embraced the enrichment of life
  afforded by personal wealth, and Humanist
  scholars and artists flourished in the new
  cultural climate subsidized by the Italian
  commercial and aristocratic elites. Page 228.
• There was an emphatic emergence of a new
  consciousness -- expansive, rebellious, energetic
  and creative, individualistic, ambitious and
  often unscrupulous, curious, self-confident,
  committed to this life and this world. Page 231.

12
REFORMATION

• FACTORS LEADING TO THE REFORMATION
• The selling of indulgences.
• The long-developing political secularism of the
  Church hierarchy.
• The prevalence of both deep piety and poverty
  among the Church faithful, in contrast to an
  often irreligious but socially and economically
  privileged clergy.
• The rise of nationalism.
• An anti-Hellenic spirit that sought to purify
  Christianity and return it to its pristine
  biblical foundation.

13
Martin Luther(1483 - 1546 Germany)

• 1507 - near-death experience and vow to become a
  monk.
• 1517 - nails Ninety-five Theses against
  indulgences to church door.
• Bible is the only spiritual authority.
• Priesthood of all believers.
• Salvation by faith alone.

14

• Luther desperately sought for a gracious
  Gods redemption in the face of so much evidence
  to the contrary, evidence both of Gods damning
  judgement and of Luthers own sinfulness. He
  failed to find that grace in himself or in his
  own works, nor did he find it in the Church --
  not in its sacraments, not in its ecclesiastical
  hierarchy, and assuredly not in its papal
  indulgences. It was, finally, the faith in Gods
  redeeming power as revealed through Christ in the
  Bible, and that alone, which rendered Luthers
  experience of salvation, and upon that exclusive
  rock he built his new church of a reformed
  Christianity. Page 234.

15
Protestantism and the Scientific Revolution

• At first glance, the spirit of Protestantism
  would seem to have very little to do with that of
  the New Science, since in matters religious
  Protestantism placed all the weight of its
  emphasis upon the irrational datum of faith, as
  against the imposing rational structures of
  medieval theology. In secular matters, however
  and particularly in its relation toward nature
  Protestantism fitted in very well with the New
  Science. By stripping away the wealth of images
  and symbols from medieval Christianity,
  Protestantism unveiled nature as a realm of
  objects hostile to the spirit and to be conquered
  by puritan zeal and industry. Thus,
  Protestantism, like science, helped carry forward
  that immense project of modern man the
  de-spiritualization of nature. William Barrett,
  Irrational Man, p. 24.

16

• THE SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION
• 1600 - 1700

17
SCIENTIFIC REVOLUTION

• Both the final expression of the Renaissance and
  its definitive contribution to the modern world
  view.
• Acute metaphysical turmoil due to irresolvable
  religious conflicts produced a need for a
  clarifying and unifying vision.
• Neoplatonic/Pythagorean conviction that nature is
  ultimately comprehensible in simple and
  harmonious mathematical terms.

18
Nicolaus Copernicus(1473-1543 Poland)

• Reintroduced the heliocentric model
• Simplified explanation of retrograde motion,
  variable brightness of planets, Mercury and Venus
  always appearing near Sun
• Opposed because
• It contradicted the Bible
• Geocentric universe had been incorporated into
  the very theology of Christianity (heaven, hell,
  the centrality of humanity)

19

• Copernicus dissatisfaction with the
  Ptolemaic theory did not stem from a preconceived
  notion that the Sun, not the Earth was the center
  of the Universe. He felt that a satisfactory
  representation of the solar system should be
  coherent and physically plausible, not requiring
  a different construction for each phenomenon, as
  Ptolemys system did. To him, Ptolemys system
  was ugly and therefore could not represent the
  work of the Creator (neoplatonism).

20
Tycho Brahe(1546-1601 Denmark)

• Accumulated decades of very accurate data on the
  locations of celestial objects
• Developed geocentric model based on observational
  evidence that the earth did not move
• Hired Kepler in 1600 to mathematically analyze
  his data with the aim of proving his model correct

21
Johannes Kepler(1571-1630 Germany)

• Believed for aesthetic reasons in heliocentric
  model
• Determined laws of planetary motion by trial and
  error, checking calculations against Brahes data
• Like Copernicus, believed in the physical reality
  of the model

22
Galileo Galilei(1564-1642 Italy)

• First to use telescope to study heavens
• Mountains and craters on the moon
• Rotation of the sun
• Phases of Venus
• Moons of Jupiter
• Stars in the Milky Way
• Revealed heavens in their gross materiality
• 1633 - condemned by Inquisition

23
Isaac Newton(1642 - 1727 England)

• Copernican system destroyed Aristotles
  explanation of motion and offered nothing to take
  its place.
• 1687 - Principia. Laws of motion and the law of
  gravity.
• Established physical basis for Keplers laws as
  well as the trajectory motion of cannonballs.
• Basis for later mechanistic-deterministic world
  view.

24

• It was not accidental to Newtons accomplishment
  that he had systematically employed a practical
  synthesis of Bacons inductive empiricism and
  Descartes deductive mathematical rationalism,
  thereby bring to fruition the scientific method
  first forged by Galileo.

25
Modern Worldview

• Science emerged as the Wests new faith. 282
• Autonomous human reason had fully displaced
  traditional sources of knowledge about the
  universe and in turn had defined its own limits
  as those constituted by the boundaries and
  methods of empirical science. 284
• no multiplicity of cognitive modes rational
  and empirical faculties alone. 287
• The universe was impersonal not personal
  natures laws were natural not supernatural. The
  physical world possessed no intrinsic deeper
  meaning. 288

26

• The Christian sense of Original Sin, the Fall,
  and collective human guilt now receded in favor
  of an optimistic affirmation of human
  self-development and the eventual triumph of
  rationality and science over human ignorance,
  suffering and social evils. 290
• Elements of the modern world view are evident
  today just as elements of earlier views were
  evident in 18th and 19th century, but it is not
  todays view.
• Many feel reliance on reason characterizes modern
  worldview. However empirical evidence is much
  more important.
• 18th and 19th century scientists were, in
  general, believers though many were Deists.

27
The Mechanistic-Deterministic Worldview
Given the classical physicists world view, it is
reasonable to believe that everything that
happens in the universe is no more than a
manifestation of the motion and interaction of
the constituent atoms of matter. This motion is
governed by perfectly deterministic laws the
mathematical physicist Laplace speculated that if
one could only observe at some instant every atom
in the universe and record its motion, both the
future and the past would hold no secrets. Put
another way, all of history was determined, down
to the last detail, when the universe was set in
motion. The rise and fall of empires, indeed, the
heart break of every forgotten love affair,
represent no more than the inevitable workings of
the laws of physics the universe marches on like
a gigantic clockwork. Robert March, Physics for
Poets.
28
Charles Darwin(1809 - 1882 England)

• 1831 - 1836 Darwin served as naturalist aboard
  the H.M.S. Beagle.
• Beagle
• 1859 Origin of the Species
• I have called this principle, by which each
  slight variation, if useful, is preserved, by the
  term Natural Selection. From Origin of the
  Species.