VI The retreat of the Church after its victory over Galileo CHAPTER 4 - FROM "SIGNS AND WONDERS" TO. II The sacred theory of language in its second form III Decomposition of the theological view. V Victory Of The Scientific And Literary Methods VI Reconstructive Force Of Scientific Criticism Publishers Notes.
My work in this book is like the Russian mujik on the Neva. Then it was that there was born in me a sense of the real difficulty - the contradiction between the theological and. The lecture was published the next day in the New York Tribune at the request of Horace Greeley, its editor, who was also one of the Cornell University trustees.
This fact will explain to the benevolent reader not only the citation of different editions of the same authority in different ones. Evans, formerly of the University of Michigan, but now of Munich, for extensive assistance.
CONTENTS
FROM CREATION TO EVOLUTION I The Visible Universe
GEOGRAPHY I The Form of the Earth
ASTRONOMY
First argument: that Galileo was not condemned because he confirmed the motion of the earth, but because he supported it from the Bible. Third argument: that it was all a quarrel between Aristotelian professors and those who favored the experimental method.
FROM “SIGNS AND WONDERS” TO LAW IN THE HEAVENS
Death blow dealt to traditional Flood theory by discovery of Chaldean stories. Caves and Slide Beds New Evidence for Man's Antiquity.
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN, EGYPTOLOGY, AND ASSYRIOLOGY
THE ANTIQUITY OF MAN AND PREHISTORIC ARCHAEOLOGY
The unfavorable influence on the scientific activity of the political conditions of the beginning of the nineteenth century.
THE “FALL OF MAN” AND ANTHROPOLOGY
THE “FALL OF MAN” AND ETHNOLOGY
THE “FALL OF MAN” AND HISTORY
FROM “THE PRINCE OF THE POWER OF THE AIR” TO METEOROLOGY
FROM MAGIC TO CHEMISTRY AND PHYSICS
FROM MIRACLES TO MEDICINE
Effect on the theological view of the growing knowledge of the relationship between imagination and medicine.
FROM FETICH TO HYGIENE
FROM “DEMONIACAL POSSESSION” TO INSANITY
FROM DIABOLISM TO HYSTERIA
FROM BABEL TO COMPARATIVE PHILOLOGY
FROM THE DEAD SEA LEGENDS TO COMPARATIVE MYTHOLOGY
FROM LEVITICUS TO POLITICAL ECONOMY
Struggle in England for the recognition of the right to accept interest. Invention of a distinction between usury and interest. Attempts by Escobar and Liguori to reconcile the expression of interest with the teachings of the Church.
FROM THE DIVINE ORACLES TO THE HIGHER CRITICISM
A Change in the Spirit of the Controversy on Higher Criticism VI THE RECONSTRUCTIVE FORCE OF SCIENTIFIC CRITICISM. Shortly before the mid-nineteenth century, the mainstream movement culminated in the Bridgewater debates. In the second half of the eighteenth century, a great obstacle was thrown to this flow - the authority of Linnaeus.
The next great successor in the apostolate of this idea of the universe was Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire. Even more uncompromising was another of the leading authorities in the same university - Rev.
GEOGRAPHY I
But as civilization developed, ideas about the spherical shape of the Earth emerged, especially among the Greeks. The universe is therefore made according to the plan of the Jewish tabernacle – box-shaped and elongated. He goes into detail and quotes the sublime words of Isaiah: “It is He who sits on the circle of the earth;
Even in the later centuries of the Middle Ages, John of San Geminiano tried desperately to save it. From this old conception of the universe as a kind of house, with the heavens as the upper floor and the earth as the ground floor, came an important result. This terror among sailors was one of the main obstacles in Columbus's great voyage.
But the ancient germ of scientific truth in geography — the idea of the sphericity of the earth — still lived. Every great people of antiquity, as a rule, regarded its central city or holiest place as necessarily the center of the earth. The book of Ezekiel speaks of Jerusalem as the center of the earth and all the other parts of the world around the holy city.
That the doctrine of the antipodes continued to have life is shown by the fact that in the sixth century Procopius of At the end of the sixth century came a man from whom much might be expected—St. Pierre d'Ailly, by the power of thought and study, had risen to become provost of the College of St.
It gives us one of the most striking examples in history of a great man in theological chains. As we have seen, this great man, while denying the existence of the antipodes, did, as St. To the religious spirit are largely due some of the noblest among the great voyages of discovery.
ASTRONOMY I
Finally he prepared his great work on the revolutions of the heavenly bodies and dedicated it to the Pope himself. Calvin took the lead in his Commentary on Genesis by condemning anyone who claimed that the earth is not at the center of the universe. It was declared that the doctrine was proved false by the sun standing still before Joshua, by the declarations that.
De Lauda, fortified by a letter from the Pope, orders the astronomer to be placed in the dungeons of the Inquisition if he refuses to yield. Herein was one of the greatest pieces of misfortune that ever befell the older church. Urban now became more angry than ever, and both Galileo and his works were placed in the hands of the Inquisition.
All the long series of attempts made in the supposed interest of the Church to mystify these transactions have ultimately failed. In this he argues, as usual, to establish the scriptural doctrine of the stability of the earth;. Fortunately Reverend Knak came to the latter, and his denunciations of the Copernican theory as absolutely incompatible with a belief in the Bible dissolved the whole congregation into ridicule.
RESULTS OF THE VICTORY OVER GALILEO We now return to the continuation of the Galileo affair. There was then in Europe one of the greatest thinkers ever given to mankind - Rene Descartes. But it has long been seen that this triumph of the Church was in fact a wonderful defeat.
At this Settele appealed to Pope Pius VII, and the Pope referred the matter to the Congregation of the Holy Offices. If the divine guidance of the Church is such that in s. The first effect of Monsignor Marini's book seemed useful to cover the retreat of the church apologists.
The Inquisition itself, supported by the greatest theologian of the age (Bellarmin), held the same position. Like the countryman lashing himself to the anchor of the sinking ship, they simply attached themselves.
FROM “SIGNS AND WONDERS”
TO LAW IN THE HEAVENS I
In the history of the Caesars signs of all three kinds occur; for at the death of Julius the earth was enveloped in darkness, the birth of Augustus was heralded by a star, and the fall of Nero by a comet. So also in one of the Christian legends about the crucifixion, darkness spread over the earth from the sixth to the ninth hour. This view of the relationship between nature and man continued among both Jews and Christians.
Archbishop Sandys expected eclipses to be the last signs of woe at the destruction of the world, and traces of this sentiment have come down to our own time. The picturesque story of the Connecticut statesman who, when his staff in the General Assembly were startled by a solar eclipse. In the third century, Origen, perhaps the most influential of the earlier Fathers of the Universal Church in all matters between science and faith, insisted that comets indicate catastrophes and empires and the end of worlds.
Thomas Aquinas, the great light of the universal Church in the thirteenth century, whose works the now reigning Pope esteems as the center and source of all university learning, accepted and gave the same opinion. Saint Albert the Great, the most outstanding genius of the medieval church in natural science, took up and developed this theory. And this belief in the extraordinary character of comets as an essential part of the divine government, being, as it was thought, entirely in accordance with Scripture, became for centuries a source of terror to mankind.
In the mid-eleventh century, a comet was thought to accompany the death of Edward the Confessor and foretell the Norman conquest. Even as far back as the ninth century, in the midst of the sacred learning which was so abundant at the court of Charlemagne and his successors, we find a scholar protesting against the accepted doctrine. One of the most striking scenes in the history of the Eastern Church is that which took place at the condemnation of Nikon, the great Patriarch of Moscow.
Zwingli, the boldest of the greater reformers in shaking off traditional beliefs, could not shake this off and insisted that the comet of 1531 was a sign of disaster. His minute and precise observation of it remains to this day one of the wonders of science. He published this manual as a triumph of religious science, under the name Comet Hour-Book.