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The Judeo-Christian Origins of Modern Science — Transcript

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0:00there are very powerful voices in our
0:02culture who tell us that if you have a
0:06scientific worldview or world picture
0:08you should not take religion
0:11seriously now historians of Science in
0:14the 20th century have roundly and almost
0:17universally rejected this
0:20simplistic retelling of the history of
0:22science turns out there's more to the
0:25story than you may have been told
0:36thank you it's really nice to uh see so
0:39many people here in person last year we
0:41had to go to the online format only so
0:46um it's really good on the way here I
0:47was told that we had 878 people
0:51registered and um I tell always tell
0:53this bad joke that gets the staff guys a
0:56little nervous I said well then I better
0:58think of something to say I guess so um
1:02I am giving a new talk and in fact it's
1:04um a bit of uh a an new talks there's
1:09three separate modules to this I'll
1:11probably get through two and we may
1:13address the third in a Q&A but I I
1:17wanted to start first by talking about
1:20the influence of a judeo Christian
1:23indeed even a Biblical worldview on the
1:26origin of modern science it's a story
1:28that historians of science sence know
1:30very well but is has not percolated
1:33through to the public as we still have
1:35this Trope that science and religion are
1:38in a kind of warfare or conflict so the
1:43first part of the talk will just
1:45address uh the influence of the
1:48judeo-christian thinking on the rise of
1:50modern science and uh the second part of
1:54the talk we'll give a case study in that
1:57um interaction between the ology and
2:00Science in looking at Sir Isaac Newton
2:03and his ideas about universal
2:05gravitation and a fascinating
2:08controversy about his ideas that broke
2:10out at the time when he first published
2:12his prinkipia his famous work and if we
2:16have time I want to talk a little bit
2:18about a story that we've all heard about
2:21Newton about how he invoked God or the
2:24Angels or something to fix the planetary
2:27orbits every once in a while and he was
2:30guilty of this great intellectual sin
2:33known as the god of the gaps fallacy
2:36turns out there's more to the story than
2:38you may have been told so if we if we
2:40get there we'll get into that if not we
2:41can discuss it in the Q&A so we've got a
2:44um a talk with three modules today and
2:47the first is I I like to think it's
2:49you've got but wait there's more right
2:51we've got more and more more anyway the
2:53first part is about the judeo-christian
2:55origins of modern science and I want to
2:58repair back to something something that
3:00happened at this conference 3 years ago
3:03uh we had um in the evening uh an
3:07interview with uh Eric Maxis and me
3:12discussing my then forthcoming book
3:14Return of the god
3:16hypothesis and during the interview a
3:18very poignant thing happened there was a
3:20young camera operator stage right to me
3:25I think uh who began to weep visibly
3:29during the interview and um she was a
3:33little embarrassed and later wrote a
3:35letter to the the producer who was
3:38getting everything filmed explaining and
3:40asked him if he would forward it on to
3:42us and apparently this young woman had
3:47gone to college as a believer in God and
3:51had found that as a science major she
3:53was continually encountering professors
3:56who were aggressively prizz students in
4:00in uh service of what's now called the
4:03new atheism the idea that scientific
4:06evidence uh undermines the the the
4:10plausibility of belief in God this is
4:12what she wrote to us she said throughout
4:13my college career professors would
4:16constantly lecture that based on the
4:17evidence they had provided there should
4:20be no way that anyone in class could
4:22believe in God they'd argue that this
4:24that the science was proven God was
4:26hence a myth I was not equipped to
4:29present a valid opposition in debate I
4:32was desperate to find a commonality
4:34between my beliefs and my scientific
4:36education and so hearing about some
4:38evidence that provided commonality
4:41between belief and science um she
4:44realized that she'd been um living in a
4:47state of cognitive dissonance that had
4:49been very troubling to her and the tears
4:52began to flow I'll tell you a little bit
4:54about the rest of the story at the end
4:55of the lecture but it's not hard to see
4:59how uh many college students might
5:01acquire this perspective there are very
5:03powerful voices in our culture today who
5:07tell us that if you have a scientific
5:10world view or world picture if you take
5:13science seriously you should not take
5:15religion seriously uh that science shows
5:19that God does not exist or as Richard
5:21Dawkins put it on a famous um series of
5:25billboards that he had plastered on to
5:27London buses back in9 n God probably
5:32does not exist therefore and and then
5:35and then the next line under was uh so
5:38enjoy your
5:39life logically that doesn't quite follow
5:42if God probably does not exist then what
5:44he should have said is then you can
5:46probably enjoy your life but uh he he
5:48wasn't that logical uh in any case he
5:51wrote a famous book in 2007 The God
5:55Delusion and many other books in this
5:57same genre now called the the genre of
6:00new atheist writing uh breaking the
6:02spell by Daniel dennet can you guess
6:04what the spell is religious belief what
6:08breaks it science okay and this this
6:12idea that there that that science
6:13properly understood undermines belief in
6:16God is very common and very widespread
6:18in the culture and when we've done
6:20polling of young people we' found that
6:23the the number one reason cited for
6:27young people either rejecting their
6:29faith or not considering Faith seriously
6:31is no scientific evidence for God number
6:34two what in our in a survey that we
6:36commissioned uh was uh theories of
6:39biological and chemical Evolution a
6:41distant third was the problem of pain
6:43and suffering in the world very
6:44interesting so Sciences has has had an
6:47outsized influence in undermining
6:50confidence in the in belief of uh in Bel
6:55in God now this is the the the view of
6:58the new atheists which be came which
7:00they popularized in the early part of
7:03this Century uh' 07 up to I think the
7:07the books of this this publishing genre
7:09has started to wne in its its influence
7:12but 07 through 16117 there were a lot of
7:15books of this kind but this is not a new
7:17thesis at all goes back to the late 19th
7:20century with two famous books uh to
7:24books of historical books written by uh
7:28John William Draper
7:30and another author named Andrew
7:32Dickinson white um and these were
7:35profoundly revisionist histories of
7:38Science and they had really interesting
7:40titles that kind of tell the whole story
7:41one was a history of the conflict
7:44between science and religion and the
7:46second was a history of the Warfare
7:48between science and Theology and these
7:51were written in the immediate wake of
7:53the darwinian Revolution it's 1870s
7:561880s and these uh the conf ICT that did
8:00arise because of darwinian theory and uh
8:04the controversy about it um these
8:08authors characterized as indicative of
8:10the whole of the history of Science Now
8:14historians of Science in the 20 Century
8:16have roundly and almost universally
8:19rejected this
8:21simplistic retelling of the history of
8:23Science and one of the reasons for that
8:25is that uh two very prominent historians
8:28of science
8:30uh Joseph NM and Herbert Butterfield
8:32both of Cambridge
8:33University uh asked uh what might be
8:37called the why there why then
8:40question uh why did science did the
8:42Scientific Revolution with its
8:46systematic and organized methods for
8:50investigating nature Arise at a specific
8:54place at a specific and identifi at a
8:58specific and in an identifiable time
8:59period historians of science uh call the
9:03period from roughly 1500 to 1700 though
9:06some will push that back a bit further
9:08into the late Catholic Middle Ages they
9:11call that period the period of the
9:12Scientific Revolution sometimes they
9:14think of it as the period from cernus to
9:16Newton when there was just a tremendous
9:18flowering of scientific activity a
9:21formalization of scientific methods of
9:23investigation and this this this period
9:26is now called the Scientific Revolution
9:28and NE who was himself sort of a Marxist
9:32leaning
9:33intellectual asked the question well why
9:35did it happen in Western Europe then why
9:38did it happen there in Western Europe
9:40and why did it happen then out of all
9:42the centuries out of all the places we
9:44could have gotten science going why did
9:47it happen in Europe Western Europe and
9:51interestingly the the the conclusion
9:54that he and
9:55Butterfield and many other historians of
9:58Science and my book Return of the god
10:00hypothesis I list almost 20 prominent
10:03historians of science who have affirmed
10:05this basic
10:06thesis um and the answer they came to
10:09was that there was an X Factor and The X
10:12Factor had nothing to do with the
10:13material conditions of Western Europe
10:15Peter Hodson another historian of
10:17science from Oxford also a great nuclear
10:20physicist put it this way he said if we
10:22think about what is needed for the
10:24viable birth of science we see first of
10:27all that it needs a fairly well develop
10:29Society so that some of its members can
10:31spend most of their time just thinking
10:33about the world without the constant
10:35preoccupation of finding the next meal
10:38it needs some simple technology so that
10:40the apparatus required for experiments
10:43can be constructed there must also be a
10:45system of writing so that the results
10:47can be recorded and sent to other
10:48scientists and mathematical notation for
10:51the numerical results of measurements
10:53these may be called the material
10:55necessities of Science Now Hodson and
10:58other historians went on to say these
11:01were common in many cultures the
11:04Egyptians built Great Pyramids the
11:06Chinese uh invented gunpowder and block
11:10printing um you had the Romans built the
11:13Great aqueducts there were technological
11:16achievements of various kinds but the
11:20systematic interrogation or
11:23investigation of nature that arose in
11:25the period of the Scientific Revolution
11:27was
11:28unique and and what was the X Factor
11:31what was the difference that made the
11:33difference what was the variable that we
11:35could
11:36isolate and numerous historians of
11:39Science in this Century well in in the
11:4220th century and in this Century have
11:44identified an intellectual X Factor the
11:48there were certain presuppositions that
11:50the Western Europeans had about nature
11:53and about even human nature that made
11:58science possible
12:00in fact and in fact these
12:01presuppositions were judeo-christian
12:03they were biblical and the first there
12:07were three that have been identified at
12:08least three and we're going to focus on
12:10these the first is the intelligibility
12:12of
12:13nature the second is the order of Nature
12:17and the third is the contingency of
12:20nature so let's talk about each one of
12:23these first the intelligibility of
12:25nature this is a wonderful concept it's
12:28the idea that
12:29that nature is the product of a great
12:33mind of an
12:34intellect that nature was made by a
12:37Creator and therefore within the natural
12:41world there is a design an order that
12:44can be perceived by human beings with
12:48our rational Minds because our minds
12:50were made in the image of the Creator
12:53who made the world that the as uh Sir
12:56John polkinghorn A great Cambridge
12:58physicist and Anglican priest once put
13:01it the reason within the Mind matches
13:04the reason without out in the world
13:08because there was a common source for
13:10both there's a principle of
13:12Correspondence between our reason and
13:14the reason that designed and ordered the
13:17world and because of that we can
13:19understand the hidden secrets the
13:22underlying order and design of the world
13:24and it's intelligible to us now this
13:27seems second nature to us in Western
13:29culture today because of the success of
13:32science but this is an actually an
13:35uncommon assumption about nature many
13:39many cultures have had the idea that
13:40nature is essentially chaotic that if
13:42there are many gods there may be many
13:45different ordering principles at work in
13:47different parts of nature but the
13:50monotheistic tradition of the abrahamic
13:52religions in specifically of the judeo
13:55Christian idea with the idea of the
13:57humans being made in the image of God
13:59gave a theological underpinning to the
14:02idea of intelligibility and therefore a
14:05motivation to study nature if you don't
14:07think there's an order out there that
14:09you can discover you're not going to go
14:11look for it and so this was one of the
14:13the the the key
14:15Inspirations motivations for modern
14:18science is beautifully summed up in a
14:19famous quote from Johannes Kepler the
14:23um great
14:26astronomer and Kepler put it this way he
14:29said I was merely thinking God's
14:31thoughts after him that's the most
14:33famous part of the quote that the the
14:35scientist or the what was the the people
14:38at the time who were called natural
14:39philosophers what we call scientists
14:41today were called natural philosophers
14:43at the time he says the natural
14:44philosopher has the High Calling to
14:46think God's thoughts after him and he
14:48went on he said since we astronomers are
14:50priests of the highest God in regard to
14:53the book of
14:55nature it benefits us to be thoughtful
14:58not of the Glory of our minds but rather
15:00Above All Else of the glory of God
15:02notice that metaphor too the book of
15:05nature as opposed to what or in
15:08complimentarity to what the book of
15:11scripture is a one it was a very
15:13powerful metaphor goes all the way back
15:14to the Middle Ages with St Thomas
15:15aquinus and others the idea that God
15:18revealed himself in two books in The
15:19Book of of of scripture but also in the
15:21book of Nature and what does that if
15:23nature is a book what does that imply we
15:26can read it it's intelligible it makes
15:28sense okay so so that's one of the the
15:31the key Concepts let's let's now look at
15:33the second of the order of nature we're
15:34already touching on that because one of
15:36the things that is intelligible is
15:38Nature's orderorder now the ancient
15:40Greeks also had the idea of order and
15:42when I first encountered this um
15:45discussion of the importance of of judeo
15:48Christian theistic ideas on the rise of
15:50modern science um I was a bit puzzled by
15:53this because the Greeks already had a
15:55concept of order they're rationalist
15:57credos so the the universe is orderly
16:00and uh knowable and best known by human
16:03reason H but there was a difference in
16:05the kind of order and we'll get to that
16:07but um Alfred North Whitehead also um
16:11he's got a little collar there that
16:13makes him look like a priest but but uh
16:15he he was actually not a Christian again
16:17another historian philosopher of science
16:20who realized the importance of the
16:21judeo-christian tradition on the rise of
16:23modern science but he said there can be
16:25no living science unless there is a
16:27widespread instinct inve conviction in
16:30the existence of an order of things in
16:32particular an order of Nature and he
16:35attributed that widespread Instinct uh
16:38conviction to the theological background
16:40of Western Europe which was
16:42judeo-christian U white Whitehead
16:44himself was a a process
16:47philosopher um now when I was in grad
16:50school I came across a fascinating paper
16:53written uh by an historian of science
16:55fairly obscure historian of science
16:56named Edward zilsel and the the paper
16:59was called titled the Genesis of the
17:02concept of the laws of nature and he
17:05studied the the idea that nature had
17:07this orderly P these orderly patterns
17:10that could be discerned and described
17:14mathematically and such that we would
17:16call them laws of nature and he he
17:18traced that back all the way to the Book
17:21of Job and the recovery of the um the
17:26the emphasis on scripture is the basis
17:29for the Christian faith during the
17:30period of the
17:31Reformation uh and he said that the the
17:34concept of the laws of
17:36nature um as applying to the physical
17:38world was unique to this period of the
17:41the Scientific Revolution you don't
17:42really have it in Greek in Roman times
17:45um and he called it a juridical metaphor
17:49of theological origin that's where we
17:51get the idea of the laws of nature and
17:53so this idea of regularity the
17:55regularity of nature was captured in
17:57other metaphors that the early sence
17:58scientists used and these metaphors were
18:00also theological Robert Bole anyone
18:03remember him from chemistry class Bo's
18:05law okay um uh Bole said this way he
18:10said nature is like TI in the archaic
18:14English is like a rare clock where all
18:17things are so skillfully contrived that
18:19the engine being once set in MO in
18:22motion or a moving all things proceed
18:25according to the artificer's design so
18:28nature is a not only a book but it's a
18:30clock the Clockwork nature and that
18:33implied again intelligibility because
18:34you can open up a clock and figure out
18:36how it works but also a
18:39regularity an order to the processes of
18:43nature now this was also captured in the
18:46work of Sir Isaac Newton about whom
18:48we'll talk quite a bit more um this is
18:51the frest piece of his famous
18:54prinkipia um or the full title was the
18:58mathematical principles of natural
19:00philosophy I'll spare you the Latin um
19:04the mathematical principles this was the
19:07idea that the laws of nature the
19:09regularities that we observe in nature
19:11have a Precision to them that can be
19:13described with mathematics so that
19:17there's a lawful order to Nature that
19:20and we'll see in Newton's work he very
19:22much thought it was the product of a
19:25Divine mind and and God's constant
19:28Spirit action as one of my Cambridge
19:31supervisors put it uh that that that the
19:34orderly principles of nature that we can
19:37discern the orderly mathematical
19:39principles are a product of divine
19:42governance there's a passage in the New
19:44Testaments that says that God sustains
19:46the universe by the word of his power
19:49that what we call the laws of nature are
19:52a mode of divine action a way in which
19:55God is ordering the physical world this
19:57was this was the concept so you see it
19:59in the metaphor of the laws of nature
20:02and also in the metaphor of the
20:04Clockwork nature in both cases there's a
20:06regularity that's that we can we can
20:08trust now I mentioned that the Greeks
20:12had an idea of the order of nature as
20:14well but there was an important
20:17difference and the Greeks believed that
20:19the nature of the order of nature was
20:24um necessary that it was logically
20:27necessary that it flowed from a deeper
20:29principle that they called the logos
20:31okay and that what and that there was a
20:35way that nature must be ordered because
20:37there was a way that was most logical
20:39for nature to be ordered so they had for
20:42example the idea that the universe or
20:44that the solar system all the planets
20:46were Mo moving in per perfect circles
20:49not because their measurements showed
20:52that but because the circle was the
20:55perfect mode of of motion that's what
20:58seemed most logical to us as we sat like
21:02philosophers and thought about it okay
21:05and there was a a break from that way of
21:08thinking that historians of science have
21:10really emphasized and that was the idea
21:14that yes there is an order of nature but
21:17it's not a necessary order it's not the
21:19order that necessarily seems most
21:22logical to us it's a contingent order an
21:26order that could have been otherwise and
21:28which was chosen
21:30voluntarily by the Creator himself let's
21:33go back to that Clockwork idea there's a
21:36lots of different ways to tell time we
21:39can have the great old-fashioned clocks
21:42with all their gears like in the straber
21:45the center of strawberg which was the
21:47kind of emblematic clock of the of the
21:50time during the Scientific Revolution we
21:52can have um have our watches we can do
21:56it digitally we could use a we can use
21:59uh one of those those little sand or
22:02hourglasses with the sand in them can do
22:04a uh you you get the idea lots of
22:07different ways
22:09to tell time to produce a device that
22:12will in an orderly way give us
22:14information about the
22:16world so which device was
22:19used the point of these of this what was
22:23called the the tradition of theological
22:26voluntarism it's inherent in in
22:28Christianity that God and in Judaism
22:32that God could have made the world
22:33differently it was heavily emphasized by
22:37um late medieval Catholic thinkers like
22:40William of aam and by the reformers that
22:44God could God is perfectly free he is
22:46Sovereign and therefore he could have
22:48made the world lots of different ways
22:49Newton had a a famous equation to
22:52describe gravitational motion it was
22:54something called an inverse Square law
22:57but it could have been an inverse cubed
22:59law or it could have been a linear
23:01relationship it could have been God
23:03could have ordered the universe
23:04differently so what the therefore
23:06follows from that well that we have to
23:10go and look we have to observe we can't
23:12do armchair philosophizing to figure out
23:15the most logical way for ordering the
23:17world we have to go and empirically
23:20investig we have to investigate the
23:22empirical world we have to look at how
23:24the world actually operates now there's
23:27a famous decree
23:28in 1277 by a pope who outlawed at the uh
23:36um 277 different thesis that were called
23:41um reflected this necessari in theology
23:44there was a early synthesis in the
23:46Middle Ages between a lot of Greek
23:48thinking and Christian thinking and
23:49there was a pope who said M that idea
23:53that nature must be a certain way is is
23:56is actually not Christian God was free
23:58to make the world any way he wanted and
24:00while that seemed very restrictive
24:02intellectually at the time the Paradox
24:04was it opened up it created a different
24:07kind of intellectual climate in Europe
24:08where people began to think oh well then
24:10I need to go and look and Robert Bole
24:12centuries later famously said it's not
24:15the job of the natural
24:17philosopher to ask how God must have
24:21done it but rather to go and look and to
24:24see how he did do it okay now there was
24:28another proposition that went that was
24:31closely related to this that also became
24:34ascendant During the period of the
24:35Reformation was called the depravity of
24:37man the idea that human beings are
24:40fallible and not just morally but
24:42intellectually we can jump to
24:44conclusions we can allow our biases to
24:47influence the way we look at evidence we
24:50can well we're fallible we just might
24:53get it wrong so we've got to test our
24:55hypotheses against the world and so very
24:59systematic methods for doing that were
25:02developed methods of difference methods
25:04of isolating variables methods of
25:06setting up experiments and so this also
25:08went hand inand with the idea of the
25:10contingency of nature God could have
25:12done it otherwise and we're
25:14inclined
25:17towards bias blindness getting it wrong
25:20we're
25:21fallible and both of these things led to
25:24an Impulse towards empirical
25:25investigation this is fascinating three
25:28great
25:28assumptions that flowed right out of
25:30judeo-christian theology or a
25:32judeo-christian worldview the
25:34intelligibility of nature the order of
25:35nature the contingency of Nature and the
25:39fallibility of human reasoning led to
25:42the Scientific Revolution and with that
25:44there were these three metaphors and
25:46I've talked about them already in
25:48passing but nature is a book nature is a
25:50clock and nature is a law governed realm
25:54all of these are theological metaphors
25:56if you doubt the thesis I'm advancing as
26:00I did when I first encountered it um one
26:03of the things that will change your mind
26:05is reading the these early scientists in
26:09their original you know their original
26:11texts they're constantly using these
26:13metaphors well where do they come from
26:15and what do they imply they're all
26:17metaphors of theological
26:22origin and beyond all that in the
26:24writings of the early scientists you
26:26also see one other thing which is that
26:27they make design arguments they don't
26:30just presuppose that God made the world
26:33as they begin to investigate it they see
26:36evidence of that one of the early works
26:39of biology by John Ray and one by way
26:43one of our Texas supporters recently
26:45sent me an early edition of this book
26:47which I treasure it's a uh it's one of
26:50the early books of of of uh Modern
26:52Biology it's called the wisdom of God
26:54manifested in the works of creation now
26:57this is a this this is basically a
26:58paraphrase of a passage in the Book of
27:00Romans where where the famous passage in
27:03Romans 1:20 where um Paul says that that
27:08uh from the foundations of the world go
27:10God's invisible qualities his eternal
27:13power and divine nature in the older
27:16translations translated wisdom is
27:18clearly seen in the things that are made
27:21so this is this is you can see the
27:22theological inspiration for doing
27:24science but this is a work which is also
27:27which is actually arguing
27:28for the evidence of that the wisdom of
27:30that Creator by looking at the things
27:32that are made you saw it in we see it in
27:35the works of Robert Bole there's a
27:36terrific historian of science uh Ted
27:39Davis at Messiah College and Davis came
27:43across this passage a lengthy passage
27:47from which this quote is extracted and
27:49he realized that the famous watch to
27:52watchmaker argument that was made uh
27:55Popular by William paly in the 19th
27:57century was already present in the works
27:59of Robert Bole in this in the 17th
28:02century and here's a passage where Bole
28:04says every indication of contrivance
28:07every manifestation of design which
28:09existed in the
28:11watch exists in nature in the works of
28:14nature what can we conclude therefore
28:16nature was designed just as the watch
28:18was
28:20designed and this tradition of what's
28:23also called natural theology reasoning
28:27from nature to the exist existence and
28:28reality of God reached an almost
28:31Majestic tradition um in in in the works
28:34of Sir Isaac Newton this is a passage
28:36from the theological epilogue to the
28:41prinkipia where in the prinkipia he he
28:44develops his universal theory of
28:47gravitation and then in a later addition
28:49he adds an epilogue which is a
28:51theological reflection on what he's done
28:54and he makes a an Exquisite design
28:57argument based on on the fine-tuning of
28:59the position of the
29:01planets and how his argument is that
29:05only if the planets are positioned very
29:08precisely would you get a stable orbit
29:10and this to him suggests um an
29:13Aboriginal design of the whole system
29:15and here's what he says though these
29:17bodies the planetary bodies May indeed
29:19continue in their orbits by the mere
29:21laws of gravity they could by no means
29:24have at first derived the regular
29:26position of the orbits themselves from
29:28those laws thus this most beautiful
29:30system of the sun planets and comets
29:33could only proceed from the council and
29:36Dominion of an intelligent and Powerful
29:39being with a capital b a design argument
29:43I once was um asked to
29:46testify uh before the US Commission on
29:50civil rights and the Commissioners were
29:51investigating whether or not there was
29:53Viewpoint discrimination in the teaching
29:55of biological origins in public school
29:58science instruction when I heard what
30:01they were investigating I thought I
30:02wouldn't have thought you needed a
30:03commission to determine that you know
30:05just open your any old biology textbook
30:08and you get the full orbed Allelujah
30:11chorus to Charles Darwin and that's it
30:13no other perspective um so be it I did
30:17go and testify and um while I was
30:21explaining the view that I held the idea
30:23of intelligent design one of the um the
30:28the person opposite testifying for the
30:31Darwin only approach to Science
30:33Education uh interrupted me and said
30:36well it's true what Young Dr Meyer says
30:39um I was young once and um uh uh that
30:44Isaac Newton uh was a he was a very
30:48religious man but he took great pains to
30:50keep his religious ideas about
30:52intelligent design out of his scientific
30:55writing and I quoted this passage I had
30:58it nearly I had just written it in an
31:00essay it was a block quote on the first
31:02page of an essay in my briefcase so I
31:03had it nearly memorized and I I pretty
31:06closely quoted it back in rebuttal and I
31:09made the point that in the general
31:11scholium to the prinkipia arguably the
31:15greatest work of physics ever written
31:17Isaac Newton said the following and what
31:19he made was a design argument okay so in
31:23the period of the Scientific Revolution
31:25we do not have a conflict between
31:27science and religion
31:28there are some minor things there's the
31:29Galileo Affair and we can talk about
31:31that in the Q&A but the
31:34overwhelming uh train of thought is the
31:38interest in studying the natural world
31:41for as one historian of science Rodney
31:43Stark from Baylor University put it in
31:45his famed uh book at Princeton
31:47University press for the glory of God
31:51the purpose that was his title the
31:53reason that there was a science was that
31:55the scientists were trying to reveal the
31:56glory of God in what had been made so no
31:59conflict and upon viewing nature they
32:03also saw evidence of that
32:06Glory
32:08so that I think is the is the big train
32:11of thought the the the exciting uh thing
32:14that is not talked about by so many
32:17contemporary authors who want to tell us
32:18that there's always been this inherent
32:20or intrinsic conflict now of course they
32:24can argue if they like that well that
32:26was then and this is now
32:28but the force of my book Return of the
32:31god hypothesis is to look at the many
32:33new things that are being discovered the
32:35evidence we have that the Universe had a
32:37beginning that it's been finely tuned
32:40since the beginning or from the
32:41beginning and that we have had big
32:44bursts of new biological information
32:46entering our Earth's biosphere since the
32:49beginning I focus on those three big
32:51discoveries of modern science and I
32:52argue that they have theistic
32:54implications that they if if we had a
32:56time in the 19th century where that
32:58Harmony between science and religion was
33:00lost it's now coming back it's not the
33:04purpose of this lecture though to make
33:05that case um I can direct you to the
33:08book um but I wanted to do in the second
33:11part of this lecture um a little case
33:16study to show just how deep the
33:20integration or Harmony between science
33:23and religion was during this period of
33:25the Scientific Revolution and how
33:28profoundly the disciplines of Theology
33:31and science were intermingled as people
33:34began were thinking about not only the
33:37evidence that God created the universe
33:40and their and how their
33:42presuppositions gave them a way and a
33:44motivation to study that but also
33:47thinking about exactly how did God
33:49interact with the world and what's the
33:51right way to conceive of that
33:53interaction as uh one of my super visors
33:58when I was a grad student in England put
34:00it uh science was a deeply theological
34:03project it was a theological project we
34:06were studying the scientists were
34:07studying The Works of God so in in
34:10looking at that I want to look at
34:12Newton's theory of universal
34:15gravitation and the controversy that
34:17broke out around it here again is that
34:19frontus piece of the prinkipia the uh
34:22mathematical principles of natural
34:25philosophy Newton published this in 18
34:2867 and in publishing this he replaced an
34:33older theory of
34:34gravity uh called The Vortex Vortex or
34:38vortices Theory this is a little picture
34:40from my book I'm not sure how yeah just
34:42come across on the PowerPoint if you
34:44look at the bottom you'll see the older
34:47Theory and the idea was that around each
34:51planetary body the the bodies were moved
34:55because of a pushing and pulling
34:56mechanism
34:58there was some sort of uh ether some
35:01sort of invisible but physical substance
35:04that was was pushing and pulling and
35:06causing the planets to swirl in their
35:09orbits U so you can think of it as you
35:11know dropping a stick in a Vortex or you
35:14know watching the bathtub drains and the
35:16little duckies get closer and closer to
35:18the drain you know there's something
35:19pushing the the the planets around in
35:22their orbits and that was the idea uh
35:25that was common when newon formulated
35:28universal gravitation and he begins the
35:31prinkipia with a famous line the theory
35:34of vortices is beset with many
35:37difficulties so he's going to take this
35:39theory on but it's important to
35:41understand the background of this Theory
35:44because there was a kind of um part of
35:47the Scientific Revolution was an
35:50emergence of a different kind of
35:52explanation that we need to explain
35:54things by reference to mechanisms
35:57remember that
35:58Clockwork uh illustration or metaphor as
36:03opposed to what well as opposed to what
36:04was common during the Scholastic period
36:08uh an appeal to what we called
36:11substantial forms or Aristotle's idea of
36:14formal causes and there's a lot of good
36:17sense to Aristotle we're not going to
36:19spend any time ripping on him this
36:21morning but there was a an uh a habit of
36:25intellectual laziness that arose During
36:28the period of the medieval
36:30Scholastics such that they would tend to
36:34explain as the cause of something they
36:37would tend to take the name of an effect
36:39and treat it as if it was the cause of
36:40the effect let me give you an example if
36:43you eat some bread and it makes you
36:47stronger then we could say that the
36:49bread has a nutritive
36:52virtue if you smoke some opium and it
36:55puts you to sleep they would say that
36:56the Opium had had a dormitive virtue
37:00because it emed the form of sleep
37:04inducing and so there's this kind of
37:06circularity you just named the effect
37:09the thing that you saw
37:11happening as its own cause why does
37:14opium put you to sleep well because it
37:16has a sleep inducing
37:19virtue we are not entirely immune to
37:21this way of thinking have you ever heard
37:23there the the commercials well aspir
37:26aspirin has a pain pain relieving
37:28formula why does aspirin relieve it you
37:30your pain well because it has a pain
37:32relieving formula that's not really a
37:35very satisfying explanation but it was a
37:38common way of thinking and during the
37:40Scientific Revolution the early
37:43scientists or natural philosophers or in
37:45this case a particular branch of natural
37:47philosophy called mechanical philosophy
37:49said enough we need to dig down a little
37:53deeper and find out what
37:55materially is happening that is
37:57responsible for the effects that we see
38:01so Robert Bole in his famous gas law
38:05said it had to do with little core
38:06pusles of of gas that were knocking into
38:08each other and the volume and the
38:10temperature and the different variables
38:13um and and the action of gases could be
38:16explained by the interaction of of
38:18actual physical matter core pusles of
38:21gas okay inside the clock you've got
38:24mechanisms that explain why the hands
38:26move right that the idea get to a
38:29mechanistic cause and there was a lot of
38:31sense to
38:33that and so that was part of the
38:35mechanical no more substantial forms
38:38explain things by the interactions of
38:40matter and if we talk about design in
38:43nature let's not be talking about let's
38:46not be invoking God episodically we
38:49don't say the clock maker is every
38:53minute of the every once in a while
38:55adjusting the the the the the uh the
38:59gears to make sure the hands move rather
39:01he set it up in such a way that the
39:03hands would move in a regular way so we
39:05see the design in the
39:07overall um uh in the whole contrivance
39:11is the way they put it in the overall
39:12structure of the whether it's a the
39:15universe or an organism not in episodic
39:19interventions of God okay that was the
39:21these were sort of tenants of the of
39:23natural of mechanical philosophy well
39:26now Newton comes along and he's very
39:28unhappy with this Vortex Theory first of
39:31all we have no evidence of The Ether
39:33pushing the planets around and it had a
39:35lot of other problems mathematically and
39:38otherwise it didn't really provide any
39:40kind of consistent understanding of the
39:43orbital
39:44motions and he formulated a new Theory
39:47and it was called the theory of
39:48universal
39:49gravitation
39:51and it had a number of features and it
39:56was the idea that there the
39:58gravitational force is transmitted
40:01between the bodies that are affected by
40:04it so we've got the Earth Earth here the
40:06moon up there okay and there is a force
40:10of attraction between those two massive
40:12bodies and that gravitational force acts
40:16instantaneously and it acts at a
40:18distance even though the Moon and the
40:20Earth are not touching each other the
40:22Moon is mysteriously moving the tides on
40:25planet Earth
40:27and the Earth is affecting the movement
40:29of the of of the the moon as well it's
40:33also and this is happening unobservably
40:35we can't see the grav gravitational
40:37force itself but we see its effect it's
40:40also happening
40:42universally his famous dictum was all
40:45matter
40:46gravitates the Moon is affecting the
40:48Earth but it's also affecting objects on
40:50the earth and it's also affecting Pluto
40:53if we can still call Pluto a planet I
40:55don't know it got demoted recently um I
40:58have no view on that
41:01controversy and most importantly
41:04gravitation acts in accord with a
41:07precise mathematical formula and
41:10Newton's formula we you won't be tested
41:13on this afterwards but it's a famous
41:16formula the force of gravity f equals
41:19some constant G and we can that's
41:21another issue but it's proportional to
41:24the masses of the two bodies that are
41:26interacting the bigger they are the
41:28harder they
41:29pull and it's inversely proportional to
41:32the distance between
41:34them squared yes thank you got an
41:38engineer physicist in the second row I
41:40appreciate that yes don't forget the
41:42squared could have been a cubed could
41:44have been a cubed because it's a
41:45contingent universe but it was a
41:47square but that was the
41:50rub that's what made this controversial
41:53what do you mean sir Isa he wasn't sir
41:55at that point I Isaac baby what do you
42:00mean distance inversely proportional to
42:03the distance between
42:07them a good explanation we're no longer
42:10the
42:11Scholastics a good explanation involves
42:13pushing and pulling no distance between
42:16them if I ask you why does the chair
42:20move the answer is you pushed it there
42:25was a touch there was a push there was a
42:29contact how does
42:33the moon affect the water on the
42:38Earth when the two aren't
42:40touching in fact they're quite a long
42:42ways
42:43apart took us a long time to get a man
42:46up
42:47there so when I I was teaching when I
42:50tried tried to get the the mechanical
42:52philosophers of the day the
42:58students of the great Robert Bole
43:01said wait a minute just to get they were
43:05bothered by this Newtonian concept of
43:07gravity no pushing and pulling when I
43:09was teaching I used to use my wallet as
43:11a visual aid with students I'd ask them
43:15well what caused the wallet to
43:18fall and they'd say well
43:23gravity I'd say okay good what's gravity
43:28well it's a force I said what kind of
43:30force is it well it's the force that you
43:32know causes stuff to
43:34fall oh thank you thank
43:37you wait so what caused the wallet to
43:40fall gravity and what is gravity the
43:42thing that
43:44makes while it's
43:47fall how is that different than the
43:49dormitive
43:50virtue or The nutritive Virtue you see
43:52what immediately bothered
43:54them and there was this dude
44:00godfried
44:01libnet and he and Newton had some issues
44:05because they both invented the calculus
44:07at the same
44:08time I'm serious I mean the two great
44:11minds these were the great minds of
44:13the late 17th century and they had a
44:16what's called a priority dispute we now
44:19actually use liet's notation with the
44:21calculus more than Newton's but they
44:24both came up with the idea independently
44:26it's pretty pretty well established so
44:29they were rivals in a way but godfried
44:32liet also a Christian but he had a very
44:34different view of the way God interacted
44:37with the world than
44:38Newton and he did not like Newton's
44:42Theory at
44:43all we all learned universal gravitation
44:46we learned that famous equation in
44:47physics today do you know it was super
44:50controversial at the
44:51time and liet said Mr Bole would never
44:55have allowed such a Shamira whole
44:58notion like a Shima like ghostly
45:03vacuous vague indistinct lacking
45:07specificity where's the pushing and
45:10pulling where's the
45:14cause he called it an occult property
45:18gravitation is occult why was it occult
45:20well because gravitational Forks acts at
45:23a distance with no material or
45:25mechanical interaction the gravitational
45:28force is
45:29unobservable and he said the
45:31gravitational the cause of gravity is
45:33either
45:34unintelligible it's either like one of
45:36those Scholastic explanations where we
45:39say you know the bread nourishes because
45:41it has a nutritive virtue gravitational
45:43force acts because what is gravity well
45:45it's the force that causes gravitational
45:48attraction it's the same kind of thing
45:50right where where's the explanation in
45:52that where's the C where's the cause or
45:55if there is a cause he says
45:58it's
45:59theological you're bringing God into
46:01science where we just agreed we wouldn't
46:03do
46:05that it's
46:07miraculous and so he writes a letter to
46:11Newton and it he doesn't get Newton to
46:15write him
46:16back Newton writes back through an
46:18intermediary a man named Samuel Clark
46:21because Newton doesn't want to daine to
46:23give Li Nets the same standing
46:27there's a little rivalry and there's
46:29this famous correspondence called the
46:31the liet Clark correspondence and it is
46:33f it's really fascinating and in that
46:36correspondence liman just strips the
46:38bark off of Newton and says this is a
46:40your theory is a recourse to absurdities
46:43or a Perpetual miracle and if it's not
46:45miraculous it's false and he goes on and
46:48says more more he's got all kinds of
46:50Juicy quotes Newton's law he says gives
46:53Refuge to ignorance and laziness by
46:55means of an irrational system which
46:57maintains not only that there are
46:58qualities which we do not understand of
47:01which there are far too many but further
47:03that there are some which could not be
47:05comprehended by the greatest intellect
47:07if God gave it every possible
47:09opportunity this is a bad
47:13Theory what's the what's the problem
47:15here there's no cause Newton does not
47:18identify a cause of gravity and as
47:21liance is thinking through the
47:23possibilities all the possible causes
47:25are either absurd
47:28there either a recourse to absurdity or
47:30he's or Newton is somehow bringing in
47:32the miraculous in just the way that Bo
47:35said we didn't need to do
47:37anymore three causes if you think of the
47:41let's let's think of the the moon up
47:42there okay we got the moon up there and
47:45we got the Earth here we got empty space
47:46between and a force is being transmitted
47:48through a distance so what could be
47:51causing that Force well it could be
47:53matter within the bodies it could be
47:55something about the Earth and the moon
47:58they in other words they could have some
47:59gravitational virtue each of them oh
48:03well that's just renaming the effect
48:04well maybe the gravitational virtue is
48:06caused by something else material within
48:08the bodies but since they're not
48:10touching what could that be well maybe
48:11it's like maybe they both have a sucy
48:14power or a vacuity or
48:19a it they couldn't if the if the if the
48:22cause is within the bodies and they're
48:24not touching each other there's no
48:26material interaction
48:27all you can do is rename the effect as
48:29its cause and you're right back to the
48:31Scholastic so cross that one out that's
48:33the recourse to
48:36absurdity but it could be some matter in
48:38between the
48:39bodies like an
48:41ether but Newton says no ether it's
48:44empty space it's action at a distance
48:48now later in his career Newton finally
48:50gave into these Jokers and he said okay
48:53you can have your ether and so we had
48:55ether in physics until the late 19
48:56Century but Newton did not want
48:59ether he he thought it was just it was
49:02just empty space but if it's not the
49:05matter in the
49:07bodies and if it's not the matter
49:08between the bodies that's causing
49:12gravitation maybe it's not
49:16material and that's why liet said or
49:20else you mean miraculous
49:23right
49:25and so
49:27so Newton publicly says this he says
49:30well when asked what the cause is he
49:33said hypothesis non fingo which means I
49:36don't Fain to know the cause I don't
49:38pretend to know the
49:39cause but privately he says something
49:43different in a correspondence with a
49:47famous cleric at the time named Richard
49:50Bentley um Bentley queries Newton and
49:52he's aware of this same logic these
49:54three possibilities and he says as I
49:56read you I think you're saying it's
49:58inconceivable that inanimate brute
49:59matter should without a Divine
50:01impression operate upon and affect other
50:04matter without Mutual
50:06contact are you saying that the real
50:08cause of gravity is is the constant
50:11Spirit action of God himself that's why
50:14it's instantaneous and added distance
50:15and all that and Newton says first in
50:20reply well gravity must be caused yes it
50:23must be caused by an agent acting
50:25constantly according to certain law
50:27though be that a material or an
50:30immaterial agent I leave to the
50:32discretion of my
50:33readers he's not going to be drawn at
50:36first but then in the same
50:38letter he is he
50:41says well actually I like very much your
50:43second proposition and then he quotes
50:45back to Bentley what he said with a
50:48slight twist he says is in yes you're
50:50right I like what you say that it's
50:51inconceivable that inanimate brute
50:53matter should without the mediation of
50:55something else which is not not
50:58Material operate upon and affect other
51:00matter without Mutual contact as it must
51:02if gravitation be essential and inherent
51:04in it in other words he says yeah the
51:08material agent thing I floated is not
51:10what I think it's an immaterial agent in
51:14other words AKA God one of my Cambridge
51:15supervisors put it this way he said yeah
51:17what Newton believed was the ultimate
51:19cause of God was constant Spirit
51:23action God sustains the universe by the
51:25word of his power
51:28and later in the general scholium to the
51:30prinkipia so that this correspondence is
51:33taking place in
51:351692 U 20 years later he affirms in the
51:39General scholium in him all things are
51:43contained and moved the ultimate source
51:46of gravitational motion is the constant
51:49Spirit action of God so he has a
51:52profoundly theistic View and in fact
51:54liet had sused it out he had he you know
51:58um Newton didn't want to be seen to be
52:00violating the tenants of the mechanical
52:02philosophy but but he was so often times
52:06Newton is presented as the great
52:08mechanist we hear about Newtonian
52:10mechanics and the Newtonian mechanistic
52:12world picture incorrect portrayal of the
52:15man he was not a mechanist he believed
52:18that something immaterial was the
52:20ultimate cause of the most fundamental
52:22force in the universe
52:24gravitation he was also not a DE because
52:27deist don't believe that God is involved
52:28in a moment by- moment way with the
52:30universe he's often portrayed as a deist
52:33he was definitely a theist with a
52:36profound Theology of
52:38nature a profound understanding of how
52:41God is interacting with the world and
52:43also a theist who made profound natural
52:45theological arguments design
52:48arguments now there is a debate among
52:51Scholars about whether Newton was he was
52:54a devout Christian of some kind the
52:56question is was he an Orthodox Christian
52:58who believed in the Divinity of Christ
53:00and The Trinity or was he more of an
53:02Aryan heterodox Christian who believe
53:05that in a Transcendent God but as some
53:08of our uh friends in the Jehovah's
53:10Witnesses World believe uh that God that
53:13Jesus was created to be an agent of God
53:17in the world and was the Exemplar to man
53:19but not fully
53:21Define uh that's the more common view of
53:23Newton's theological position but I've
53:26come to doubt it in recent years and
53:28I've been made aware of some scholarship
53:30by a a historian of ideas and historian
53:32of science named Thomas
53:34fitzmier in a in a seminal article
53:37called was Isaac Newton and Aryan and
53:39what seems to be the I think the best
53:41view of Newton's view was that he
53:44doubted the aanan formulation of the
53:47Trinity um with its Reliance on Greek
53:50philosophical Concepts like
53:53substance um but was trinitarian
53:56um and therefore did believe in the
53:58Divinity of Christ I first got skeptical
53:59about this when I saw that passage from
54:01the the the typical interpretation of
54:03Newton when I saw that passage in the
54:05general scholium because it's a close
54:07paraphrase to the passage in Colossians
54:09which says in Christ all things are held
54:11together okay and I wondered and and he
54:15wrote a lot on Messianic prophecy so
54:18anyway very interesting figure um in a
54:22very interesting way in which Theology
54:23and science are deeply deeply
54:27entwined and in conversation in the 19th
54:29century by the way uh this mystery about
54:32gravitation has not been resolved right
54:34up to the present day this was
54:35emphasized to me when I was doing
54:37tutorials on this in Cambridge our new
54:39theory of general relativity formulated
54:40by Einstein says that massive bodies
54:43move because of the way that space is
54:45curved and massive bodies curve space or
54:48SpaceTime but space is empty so how does
54:51an empty thing cause a physical thing to
54:53move still very occult in the libnan
54:56sense and we have newer theories of
54:58quantum gravity and or string theory
55:02that posit gravitons as the the
55:04elementary particles that are mediating
55:06gravitational force but oddly gravitons
55:10also warp SpaceTime to do that and they
55:13are massless
55:15particles so chew on all that and I
55:18think I'm a little bit over time but I
55:20didn't know how long this was going to
55:21go thanks so much for your attention
55:24[Music]
55:25[Applause]
55:30[Music]

About this transcript

This page contains the full transcript of The Judeo-Christian Origins of Modern Science by Discovery Science, generated from the public captions YouTube serves with the video. The transcript has 8,564 words across 1,299 segments, with the original timestamps preserved so you can click any line to jump to that moment in the embedded player.

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