Re: Colson on Christianity and science

Oh, dear!

The dialogue from Chiari's play (below) perpetuates a falsehood that should
have been laid to rest long before 1979. Every educated person (almost all
of them churchmen) in the Middle Ages knew the earth was a sphere. If you
went to university, you learned it from Aristotle (at the University of
Paris, two-thirds of the Arts curriculum was science-based, i.e., mainly
Aristotle's works on natural philosopy). The dialogue would have been more
accurate and more interesting if the Prior and Columbus had argued over the
wisdom of sailing west to find the East. If my increasingly feeble memory
is correct, Columbus was led to his decision by a calculation that put the
earth's circumference a few thousand miles less than it actually is. He got
this figure from the book by the 14th century natural philosopher Nicole
Oresme. His _Le livre de ciel et du monde_ was a reworking of the latin
version of a treatise by the 9th century Muslim astronomer Alfarabi, who had
published the wrong figure. Thinking that it would be the same length or
less to sail west than east around the Cape of Good Hope, Columbus launched
a new era of discovery. Part of his confidence in launching out into an
unexplored deep was based on the fact that Columbus was the best
dead-reckoning sailor around, and didn't feel the need to hug the
coast-lines as the Portugese captains who first sailed to India did.

But of course Columbus was not the first European to sail to the new world:
St. Brendan the Navigator, the Vikings (also superb dead-reckoning sailors)
and, I also believe, Portugese cod fishermen sailing out of England had
already reached the northern coasts. The Vikings knew they wouldn't fall
off the edge of the world, even though they hadn't read Aristotle. And
Brendan? well, those Irish will go anywhere!

How often have such errors changed the world!

Dante was familiar with Alfarabi's work and used it for his _Divine Comedy_.

Bob Schneider

----- Original Message -----
From: "Michael Roberts" <michael.andrea.r@ukonline.co.uk>
To: "Jay Willingham" <jaywillingham@cfl.rr.com>; "ASA" <asa@calvin.edu>
Sent: Monday, December 08, 2003 3:26 PM
Subject: Re: Colson on Christianity and science

> Any comments on any of these quotations - unless you are from Messiah
> College
>
> Michael
>
>
> THE FLAT EARTH, 1491
> Columbus; The earth is not flat, Father. It's round!
> The Prior; Don't say that!
> Columbus; It's the truth; it's not a mill pond strewn with islands. It's a
> sphere.
> The Prior; Don't say that; it's blasphemy. (i.e. Columbus would have
sailed
> off the edge.)
>
> Joseph Chiari; Christopher Columbus, 1979. (a play)
>
> CALVIN ON COPERNICUS
> "Who will dare to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy
> Spirit?" (referring to Psalm 93 v1)
>
> GEOLOGY AND GENESIS AT WAR, 1800-1840
> 'The hunch that God might not have done precisely as Bishop Ussher had
> suggested [creation in 4004BC],., was beginning to be tested by real
> thinkers, by rationalists, by radically inclined scientists who were bold
> enough to challenge both the dogma and the law, the clerics and the
courts.'
> '
>
> p29 Simon Winchester, The Map that changed the World
>
> 'The first rumblings of trouble ahead, for all who were fixed in these
> beliefs, came from the science of geology. In the 1830s books by Sir
Charles
> Lyell and Dean Buckland establsihed the geological succession of rocks and
> fossils, and showed that the world to be much older than the accepted date
> for the Garden of Eden.'
>
> Alec Vidler , The Church in an Age of Revolution p114
>
> DARWIN DESTROYS THE LITERAL VIEW OF GENSESIS
> 'The conclusion that the higher animals and man had evolved . was
obviously
> fatal to the literal accuracy of the Book of Genesis, and what is more, it
> seemed that the traditional Christian doctrines about the creation and the
> fall would have to go by the board.'
>
> Vidler p116
>
> In 1860 the Bishop of Worcester's wife said, "Oh, my dear, let's hope that
> what Mr Darwin says is not true. But if it istrue, let us hope that it
will
> not become generally known."
>
> Many sources, also Sunday Times 17 Feb 2002
>
> '. those religious believers who rejected Darwin's theory because they
> thought it conflicted with the account of Genesis have been pretty much
> discredited.'
>
> p62 Keith Ward , God, Chance and Necessity
>
> '. in 1862 the eminent physicist Lord Kelvin greatly worried Darwin by
> 'proving' that the .earth could not possibly be more than 24 million
years.
> Although this estimate was considerably better than the 4004BC date then
> favoured by churchmen.
>
> p155 R Dawkins in The Oxford Companion to Animal Behaviour
>
>
>
>
Received on Mon Dec 8 19:23:51 2003