Is there a connection between the return to the Bible and the beginnings of modern science?
What brought about the birth of modern science?
It’s an ongoing question which academics still ponder. Though the Greeks, and Chinese and Muslim scholars, had previously made some headway in mathematics and trying to understand the workings of the world, the turning point in the development of modern science came in Europe between 1500 and 1700 AD. This seems significant.
In other words, at least chronologically, the Scientific Revolution went hand in hand with the rediscovery of biblical faith in the period of the Protestant Reformation.
Whatever the exact connection, there is distinct evidence and a plausible rationale for a clear link between the beginnings of modern science and the Reformation.
A created universe
First, the biblical worldview gives a solid foundation for scientific endeavour.
Scripture tells us of one God over all creation. It means that we can think in terms of a universe where the same principles apply throughout the whole.
The Bible also tells us that this God is not capricious, but a God of order, wisdom, faithfulness and law (as well as grace). With this outlook, the idea of universal laws that apply throughout the physical universe makes sense. This is foundational to the whole feasibility of the scientific project.
Further, the biblical view of human beings is that we were originally made in God’s image (Genesis 1.26-28), with a mandate to be stewards of his creation. One of the great questions is: ‘Why should we as human beings expect to be able to understand the world?’ Such understanding is not necessary for the evolutionary survival and thriving of other species. Dogs and cats don’t understand physics or solve differential equations.
But the biblical truth that mankind is made in the image of God provided the early scientists with reason to think that they could uncover God’s laws for the physical world he had made. Because we are made in God’s image, we can expect, in the words of the astronomer Johan Kepler, to be able to ‘think God’s thoughts after him’.
Key people
Second, it is simply a fact of history that many of the early scientists were either Protestants or supported by Protestant benefactors.
In 1543 a Lutheran nobleman, Duke Albrecht of Prussia, subsidised the publication of the work by the astronomer De revolutionibus orbium Copernicus coelestium which proposed and defended the idea of the sun, rather than the earth, being at the centre of our planetary system. And it was Andreas Osiander, a Lutheran theologian, who arranged for the book’s printing and who wrote the Preface.
The astronomersTychoBrahe (1546–1601) and Johan Kepler (1571–1630) were both devout followers of Luther. Johann Frabicius, a Lutheran layman, first observed sun spots and the rotation of the sun, and Samuel Dorffel, a Lutheran pastor, first proposed that comets move according to a parabola.
Meanwhile in England in 1645, meetings began which in 1661 were formalised as the scientifically prestigious Royal Society. Seven of the ten men who formed the nucleus of these meetings were Puritans. 62% of the members of the Royal Society in 1663 were clearly Puritan by origin – at a time when Puritans were only a small minority in England after the Restoration of the monarchy in 1660. The Puritan interest in science was later encouraged in the Dissenting academies of the 17th and 18th centuries.
Experimentation
Third, the Reformation opened the way for the experimental method.
Immediate observation of nature as it is may be important, but a deliberate and carefully planned experiment will give less ambiguous results. Greek philosophy, guided by Platonic and Pythagorean ideas, gave prominence to human thought in such a way as to major on the theoretical and neglect the practical. Dominated by the thought of Thomas Aquinas, the Catholic Church had adopted much of the ancient Greek outlook into its theology.
The Scientific Revolution would take off with the rise of experimentation. In order to be accepted, scientific experimentation had to receive two things to begin with. First, it had to receive moral sanction – avoiding suspicion of it being an instrument of illicit curiosity or even sorcery. Second, it had to receive social sanction – that it be considered a respectable and worthy pursuit.
Early experimentation and science was closely linked to trades, e.g. glass making and grinding lenses. It is arguable that it was because ancient Greek thinkers viewed manual work as beneath them as intellectuals, that they made limited progress in science, not engaging directly with the world but merely theorising about it. But with the Reformation came a new understanding of the dignity of manual work. After all, God had created Adam to be a gardener and Jesus, the Son of God, was the carpenter of Nazareth (Genesis 2.15; Mark 6.3). Paul’s second occupation was that of a tentmaker (Acts 18.3). This understanding gave both permission and impetus for intellectuals to pursue experimentation. Thus the experimental method, which is the foundation of modern science, was enabled to emerge and be embraced.
The Reformation doctrine of the priesthood of all believers, that all our work can be offered to the glory of God whoever we are, underpinned this attitude. The great 16th-century preacher and theologian William Perkins (father of English Puritanism) considered a manual trade, performed to the glory of God and the benefit of mankind, to be as blessed before God as that of a magistrate or a minister of the gospel. The Reformer Hugh Latimer told his listeners that nobody should disdain to follow Christ the carpenter in a ‘common’ calling, as all occupations were equally blessed by his example. In the 17th century we find George Herbert, in his poem Elixir, teaching that the clause ‘For thy sake’ makes a servant’s drudgery divine: ‘Who sweeps a room as for thy laws, makes that and the action fine.’ By the 18th century, Charles Wesley is writing hymns for the working man: ‘Forth in thy name, O Lord I go, my daily labour to pursue; thee, only thee, resolved to know, in all I think or speak or do.’
God and science
Today there is a commonly assumed opposition between science and ‘religion’. But at the beginning of the Scientific Revolution, rather than there being a conflict between science and religion, the two went together.
Francis Bacon (1561–1626) is regarded by many historians as the ‘father of the scientific method’. He wrote in his famous essay ‘On Atheism’: ‘It is true that a little philosophy inclineth man’s mind to atheism; but depth in philosophy bringeth men’s minds about to religion. For while the mind of man looketh upon second causes scattered, it may sometimes rest in them and go no further; but when it beholdeth the chain of them confederate and linked together, it must needs fly to Providence and Deity… I had rather believe all the fables… than that this universal frame is without mind.’
REFERENCES
Religion and the Rise of Modern Science, by Reijer Hooykaas, 1972. A Lion Handbook: The History of Christianity
