Re: [asa] Creationism Conference (The Queen of Sciences)

>>> "David Opderbeck" <dopderbeck@gmail.com> 6/24/2008 11:41 AM >>> asks
some important, relevant questions:

Yes -- magesterial and foundational. And yet -- does Galileo really
capture
what the scholastics meant by theology as Queen? And isn't Galileo's
reliance on sense experience not exactly as consonant with Patristic
epistemology as he suggests? In a postmodern / critical realist
framework,
can we give sense experience quite the pride of place Galileo affords it?

*******

My answers are as follows:

(1) My sense is that Galileo does fairly get at what the scholastics meant
by thinking of science as the "handmaiden" to the "queen" of theology. Here
is something specific to that point:

"First I question whether there is not some equivocation in failing to
specify the virtues which entitle sacred theology to the title of "queen."
It might deserve that name by reason of including everything that is
included from all the other sciences and establishing everything by better
methods and with profounder learning. It is thus, for example, that the
rules for measuring fields and keeping accounts are much more excellently
contained in arithmetic and in the geometry of Euclid than in the practices
of surveyors and accountants. Or theology might be queen because of being
occupied with a subject which excels in dignity all the subjects which
compose the other sciences, and because her teachings are divulged in more
sublime ways.

That the title and authority of queen belongs to theology in the first
sense, I think, will not be affirmed by theologians who have any skill in
the other sciences. None of these, I think, will say that geometry,
astronomy, music, and medicine are much more excellently contained in the
Bible than they are in the books of Archimedes, Ptolemy, Boethius, and
Galen. Hence it seems likely that regal preeminence is given to theology in
the second sense; that is, by reason of its subject and the miraculous
communication of divine revelation of conclusions which could not be
conceived by men in any other way, concerning chiefly the attainment of
eternal blessedness. "

David, I think this is a reasonable presentation of the situation facing
Galileo. Under the traditional view, e.g, it was OK to write hexameral
treatises in which science was used to help us understand more fully
biblical references to nature, but not to use science to challenge
traditional interpretations. This is consistent with what Galileo says
here.

(2) As for the role of sense experience, my own view -- which is to say, of
course, the correct view :-) or at least the best view -- is that Galileo
held to a model of scientific knowledge that we would call "modern", in that
science for him was capable of yielding certain or virtually certain
conclusions, based on both sense experience and reason. That is, he
accepted the classical Aristotelian view of science as demonstrated
knowledge, even while he rejected the Aristotelian approach of explaining
nature in terms of forms and qualities rather than mathematics. At the same
time, he pushed a "post-modern" view of biblical interpretation. Thus, the
demonstrated conclusions of science could and should be used to help us
determine which of the possible interpretations of a given text was actually
correct. Mathematics for him was capable of only one clear meaning, whereas
the Bible could mean any of several possible things -- mathematics was
literally the language of God, as he saw it, and the fact that we mortals
could speak that language made it possible for us to know the mind of God
deeply, halting only at infinity which God comprehends but we cannot.
Ordinary human language, on the other hand, was "accommodated to the rude
and unlearned," and therefore we would cause the Bible to err if we insisted
always on taking the "literal" meaning, ie, "what the bare words signify."

I tell students, just to help make a point, that G held a modernist view of
science but a post-modernist view of the Bible.

In our post-modern age, we might perhaps hesitate to be so quick to use
science to reinterpret a given text--we might perhaps have less confidence
in science's ability to provide certain demonstrations. However, on the
matters relevant to him (namely the motion of the earth and the structure of
the heavens), I suspect we would share G's confidence in scientific
conclusions and follow his prescription. Whether or not we hold a
post-modern view of scientific knowledge (which I do not, although I do
allow for some influence of social and political and philosophical and
religious factors on science).

Ted

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Received on Tue Jun 24 12:00:26 2008