Conflict and Complexity in the Historiography of Science and Religion: A Comparison of Andrew Dickson White and David C. Lindberg, Part 2

David C. Lindberg, the Complexity Thesis,
and the Deconstruction of the Conflict Thesis

Lindberg acknowledges two typical techniques used by White to explain early Christians’ lack of interest in empirical science: “First, the early Church denigrated the investigation of nature for its own sake: with the kingdom of heaven just around the corner, there was no time or energy to waste on irrelevancies.”[1] For virtually every major scientific paradigm shift, White discerned a traditional religious figure opposing it: “The establishment of Christianity, beginning a new evolution in theology,” White intoned,

arrested the normal development of the physical sciences for over fifteen hundred years… The general belief derived from the New Testament was that the end of the world was at hand… This belief appears frequently throughout the entire period of the Middle Ages; but during the first thousand years it is clearly dominant. From Lactantius and Eusebius, in the third century, pouring contempt…over studies in astronomy to Peter Damian, the noted chancellor of Pope Gregory VII, in the eleventh century declaring all worldly sciences to be “absurdities” and “fooleries,” it becomes a very important element in the atmosphere of thought.[2]

Lindberg continues: “Second, whatever truth was discovered through patient observation and reasoning was forced to yield to the puerile opinions extracted by dogmatic superstitions from sacred writings. The result was a tyranny of ignorance and superstition that ‘perverted’ and ‘crushed’ true science.”[3] White consistently uses this quarrelsome language throughout his Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom—“conflict,” “war,” “attack,” “besiege,” “battles,” “triumph,” “defeat,” “soldier,” and so on, appear dozens of times throughout the work.[4] In the introduction to his abridgment, Warfare of Science, White even employs a direct analogy to historical and contemporary military leaders of what were, to him, far less serious conflicts in the long arc of history: “A hard contest it has been; a war waged longer, with battles fiercer, with sieges more persistent, with strategies more shrewd than in any of the comparatively transient warfare of Caesar or Napoleon or Moltke.”[5] He continued to employ this rhetoric throughout his work. For example, White reestablished the familiar trope of a flat earth—which had not been seriously used to describe the shape of the earth since before the time of Plato—in his scathing denunciation of medieval geography:

Although the great majority of the early fathers of the Church, and especially Lactantius, sought to crush [the idea of a spherical earth] beneath the utterances attributed to Isaiah, David, and St. Paul, the better opinions of Eudoxus and Aristotle could not be forgotten. Clement of Alexandria and Origen had even supported it. Ambrose and Augustine tolerated it, and, after Cosmas had held sway a hundred years, it received new life from a great churchman of southern Europe, Isidore of Seville, who, however fettered by the dominant theology in many other things, braved it in this.[6]

Although White acknowledged that some early Christians understood the physical geography bequeathed to them by the ancient Greeks, he mistrusted the Christian patristic writers who, in his mind, merely “tolerated” it in spite of their scriptural predilections. In his warfare metaphor, White drew the battle lines and pitted his soldiers against one another:

Columbus is the next warrior. The world has heard of his battles: how the Bishop of Ceuta worsted him in Portugal; how at the Junta of Salamanca the theologians overwhelmed him with quotations from St. Paul, and from St. Augustine. And even after Columbus was triumphant, and after his voyage had greatly strengthened the theory of the earth’s sphericity, the Church, by its highest authority, was again solemnly committed to the theory of the earth’s flatness…But in 1519 Science gains a crushing victory. Magellan makes his famous voyages. He proves the earth to be round, for his great expedition circumnavigates it…but this does not end the war.[7]

As we have seen, the “perversion” and “crushing” of science demonstrated for White, not the pitfalls of religious belief, but the drawbacks of authoritarianism in religious institutions. Lindberg, whose specialty is the history of the physical sciences in late antiquity and the Middle Ages, presents numerous rejoinders in his voluminous writings in direct opposition to White’s dualistic arguments. For example, White decries Augustine’s positions on rationalism and empiricism and styles him as among the worst offenders in Western history:

Following [the] precept[s] of St. Augustine, there were developed, in every field, theological views of science, which have never led to a single truth—which, without exception, have forced mankind away from the truth, and have caused Christendom to stumble for centuries into abysses of error and sorrow. In meteorology, as in every other science which he dealt, Augustine based everything on the letter of the sacred text…[8]

The influence of Augustine on not only Christian theology but also the Western intellectual and philosophical traditions need not be overstated. However, Lindberg describes Augustine’s concept of science, which consisted not as a barrier to spiritual truth but as a handmaiden to better comprehend the mysteries of God and His creations, thusly:

Augustine, who did so much to determine medieval attitudes, admonished his readers to set their hearts on the celestial and eternal, rather than the earthly and the temporal. Nonetheless, he acknowledged that the temporal could serve the eternal by supplying knowledge about nature that would contribute to the proper interpretation of Scripture and the development of Christian doctrine. And in his own works, Augustine displayed a sophisticated knowledge of Greek natural philosophy. Natural philosophy, like philosophy more generally, was to serve handmaiden functions.[9]

Roger Bacon serves as another interesting character in the narrative White presents in his epic war between science and religion. In the thirteenth century, Roger Bacon, an English Franciscan friar and natural philosopher, was imprisoned for a period of ten years. Lindberg maintains a rather skeptical position of his incarceration:

Despite a widespread popular belief that Roger Bacon was imprisoned for his attack on authority and his urgent assertion of a novel scientific methodology, for example, Bacon in fact represented very old methodological traditions, and his imprisonment, if it occurred at all (which I doubt), probably resulted from his sympathies with the radical “poverty” wing of the Franciscan Order (a wholly theological matter), rather than from any scientific novelties that he may have proposed.[10]

A devoted supporter of empirical observational techniques, Bacon made great strides in optics and the refraction of light, kept detailed astronomical observation, and anticipated the uses of gunpowder, among many other things.[11] Bacon is often described as an eccentric—even by the even-tempered Lindberg—and portrayals of his odd personality, intertwined with his advocacy of notions seemingly out of step with medieval sensibilities, contribute to the misunderstanding that he was imprisoned for experimentation. White added to this archetypal character the prescience of a prophet:

It should be borne in mind that his method of investigation was even greater than its results. In an age when theological subtilizing was alone thought to give the title of scholar, he insisted on real reasoning and the aid of natural science by mathematics; in an age when experimenting was sure to cost a man his reputation, and was likely to cost him his life, he insisted on experimenting, and braved all its risks…. On this man came the brunt of the battle. The most conscientious men of his time thought it their duty to fight him, and they fought him steadily and bitterly. His sin was not disbelief in Christianity, not want of fidelity to the Church, not even dissent from the main lines of orthodoxy; on the contrary, he showed in all his writings a desire to strengthen Christianity, to build up the Church and to develop orthodoxy. He was attacked and condemned mainly because he did not believe that philosophy had become complete, and that nothing more was to be learned; he was condemned, as his opponents expressly declared, “on account of suspicious novelties.” [12]

Lindberg is highly skeptical of the allegation that Bacon’s difficulties with religious authorities originated from his dabbling with “scientific novelties” and it is telling that he preserves White’s language in his revision. Lindberg ventured to “rescue Bacon from the mythologizers and debunkers,” and he surely had White in mind when he proposed this reclamation of Bacon’s identity as “a brilliant, combative and somewhat eccentric schoolman of the thirteenth century endeavoring to take advantage of the new learning just then coming available while remaining true to traditional notions, patristic in origin, of the importance to be attached to philosophical knowledge,” rather than “a modern, out of step with his age, [or] a harbinger of things to come.”[13] White positioned Bacon as an ally of science in his binary war, but Bacon, a Franciscan friar, confounded these clear-cut divisions by advocating both empiricism and adherence to Church doctrine. Lindberg forcefully redefines him not as the “champion of autonomous, secularized natural science against a repressive church,” but as a more dynamic figure with internal contradictions: “The growing autonomy and secularization of science were among the things he feared. But he also feared the suppression of new learning. He was endeavoring, therefore, to steer a middle course between two equally dangerous extremes. In this he reflects, in microcosm, the dilemma of the thirteenth century.”[14] Indeed, he reflects the dilemma of simplifying any historical figure to the point of misrepresentation.

The trial of Galileo—the penultimate archetype in the story of religion leveling a crushing blow against an undeserving scientific mind—offers, of course, the most dramatic example of White’s Conflict Thesis in action. Galileo Galilei championed the heliocentric theory of Copernicus after his telescopic observations of the heavens in 1609 and 1610 yielded evidence of mountains and valleys on the moon, sunspots, the phases of Venus, and moons orbiting Jupiter. In 1632, he was brought before the Roman Inquisition to defend his position that the earth revolved around the sun. After the Inquisition found his views suspect of heresy, Galileo was forced to retract his offending statements, and he spent the remainder of his life under house arrest.[15] Most modern interpretations of the trial have cast a far more nuanced light on the subject than the black-and-white affair promoted by White. According to Mario Biagioli, Galileo’s difficulties emerged out of the convoluted nature of early seventeenth century patronage dynamics. Galileo’s guilt was regarded by religious authorities as a double indignation—not only did he contest the official position of the Church on Copernicanism, but he also insulted his former benefactor. In his early years as a mathematics professor in Padua, Galileo received significant support from Cardinal Maffeo Barberini, later to become Pope Urban VIII. It is possible that with an ally in the upper echelons of the Church, Galileo believed he might escape retribution for publishing hypotheses subtly challenging established Church positions. It did not help matters that Galileo, in his groundbreaking Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems, put the geocentric, Aristotelian-Ptolemaic system, of which Pope Urban VIII availed himself, in the mouth of a character named Simplicio. Although modeled upon a sixth century commentator on Aristotle, the unfortunate connotations of the name did not endear Galileo to his former patron.

White suffused this story with his usual aggressive language, claiming that “the whole war [between science and religion] was at last concentrated” on Galileo, against whom it “was long and bitter.”[16] For White, Galileo’s trial also served as a proxy war for the Church to squelch the rising tide of Copernicus’ theory, and its conclusion brought a “victory for the Church” over his erroneous ideas.[17] It would require the undeniable proofs of later observational science to herald “the retreat of the Church” after this victory:

In spite of all that has been said by the…apologists, there no longer remains the shadow of a doubt that the papal infallibility was committed fully and irrevocably against the double revolution of the earth. As the documents of Galileo’s trial show, Paul V, in 1616, pushed on with all his might the condemnation of Galileo and of the works of Copernicus and of all others teaching the motion of the earth around its axis and around the sun. So, too, the condemnation of Galileo in 1633, and in all the proceedings which led up to it and which followed it, Urban VIII was the central figure. Without his sanction no action could be taken.[18]

However, Lindberg acknowledges the “complex realities” that better construe the proper nature of Galileo’s troubles with the authorities. He notes the obvious facts that are often obscured by didactic narratives of the affair:

Every one of the combatants, whether Church official or disciple of Galileo, called himself a Christian; and all, without exception, acknowledged the authority of the Bible. Many on both sides of the struggle, including Galileo, were theologically informed, capable of articulating carefully reasoned theological positions.[19]

Lindberg is careful not to minimize the importance of the conflict over heliocentrism in sixteenth and seventeenth century Europe, but he also definitively states that “it is impossible to identify clearly defined battle lines falling along a divide separating heliocentric scientists, prepared to overlook the Bible or interpret it allegorically, from geocentric theologians or clergy, committed to church tradition and Biblical literalism.”[20] Rather, the conflict was located “as much within the church (between opposing theories of biblical interpretation) and within science (between alternative cosmologies) as between science and religion.”[21]

Conclusions

Science and religion are, arguably, the most potent forces in modern life. As human institutions with a history of entanglement, modern historians face a difficult task in attempting to delineate their complex historical and contemporary relationships. Simplifying this relationship as one of unmitigated conflict obscures the rich tapestry of cooperation in which theological precepts often motivated empirical discovery, and natural philosophy often augmented the authority of Scripture. The simple act of defining “science” and “religion” as unified monoliths, ossified into rigid categories that are immune to historical change, ignores the transformations and modifications both have undergone in their long histories. David C. Lindberg reminds us that “strictly speaking, ideas cannot clash and theoretical claims cannot, of themselves, engage in combat.”[22] Obviously, Andrew Dickson White’s Conflict Thesis exerted immense influence over the historiography of science in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries and still wields considerable clout among the general populace today. And certainly, White reflects the spirit of his own age of progress, enlightenment, and scientific optimism. However, Lindberg’s reinterpretation of this relationship presents a more fruitful method of inquiry. If the proper territory of the historian is the study of people, then we must always emphasize the human dimensions of both conflict and complexity in science and religion.

[1] Lindberg, “Science and the Early Christian Church,” Isis 74 (1983): 510.
[2] White, Warfare of Science with Theology, 375-376.
[3] Lindberg, “Science and the Early Christian Church,” Isis 74 (1983): 510
[4] White, Warfare of Science with Theology, passim.
[5] Andrew Dickson White, Warfare of Science, 7.
[6] White, Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, vol. 1, 97.
[7] White, Warfare of Science, 20-21. The myth of the medieval acceptance of a flat earth derives almost entirely from Washington Irving’s mostly fictional biography The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus, 1828. For a modern-day synthesis of historical scholarship on the endurance of this myth in popular culture and the American educational system, see Jeffrey Burton Russell’s Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians (Westport, Connecticut: Praeger Publishing, 1991).
[8] White, Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, vol. 1, 325.
[9] David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 150-151.
[10] David C. Lindberg, “Medieval Science and Its Religious Context,” Osiris 10 (1995): 76.
[11] David C. Lindberg, “Science as Handmaiden: Roger Bacon and the Patristic Tradition,” Isis 78 (1987): 520.
[12] White, History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, vol. 1, 387.
[13] Lindberg, “Science as Handmaiden: Roger Bacon and the Patristic Tradition,” Isis 78 (1987): 520.
[14] Ibid., 534.
[15] David C. Lindberg, “Galileo, the Church, and the Cosmos,” in When Science and Christianity Meet (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2003), 34-35 and 53-57. Galileo is the subject of an extraordinary amount of scholarship. See especially Giorgio Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955) for an adequate, if dated, general biography. For a more modern, politically contextualized study, see Mario Biagioli’s Galileo, Courtier: The Practice of Science in the Culture of Absolutism (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994).
[16] White, Warfare of Science with Theology vol. 1, 130.
[17] Ibid., 140.
[18] Ibid.
[19] Lindberg, “Galileo, the Church, and the Cosmos,” 58.
[20] Ibid.
[21] Ibid.
[22] Ibid., 34.

"Choice, Chance, and the Actions of Others": A Religio-Scientific Interpretation of Free Will

First, imagine the conceivable dimensions of space geometrically: a line connecting two points is the first dimension - it has length but no width or depth. If we add a line branching from this original line, we have created the second dimension - on a plane, these two lines taken as a whole have length and width but no depth. Visualizing the third dimension is the easiest since we live in this dimension, but if we think of this dimension not as a third line on another plane, but as a fold connecting the two original lines, it will help us to imagine dimensions higher than the fourth. So, imagine that we cannot simply draw another line along another plane to give it depth. Now, imagine the third dimension, instead, as a fold of one of the original lines to meet the other line (like a two dimensional ant on the surface of a two dimensional newspaper, or Mario in one of the wrap around screens) being able to seemingly blink from one section to another if we were to fold those two points together. Still, with me? If we imagine the fourth dimension, time or duration, as another geometric line, then the fifth dimension is a line branching from our fourth dimensional line of time. There are infinitely many branches, all of which exist and represent all of the possible future available to us in this universe, but they are inaccessible to us, since we are bound by three dimensions. Getting to any of these branches requires only "choice , chance, and the actions of others", although we can only travel down one of these branches at any given moment. This is another way of saying that free will is our access point to the fifth dimension. We'll return to this notion at the end to demonstrate the conceptual possibility of viewing free will outside the realm of our own three dimensional universe. The implications of these amorphous suppositions have roots in both scientific and religious disciplines, and I wish to explore these in their totality.

I was prompted into deeper thinking about these topics recently because of four things: firstly, the recent posting of my graduate writing sample discusses the concept of free will in the historical context of astrology, witchcraft, the thought of Patristic writers and other pre-modern Christian theologians, and the writings of Shakespeare; secondly, a recent post by my friend Jason on the "implications of omnipotence" and the incompatibility of free will and an omnipotent God; thirdly, my recent, and almost unintentionally relevant, reading of two books on the topic: Science and Creation: A Search for Understanding by theoretical physicist turned Anglican priest John Polkinghorne and Freedom of Choice Affirmed by agnostic humanist philosopher Corliss Lamont; and fourthly, the previous video, linked here and above, which, quite frankly, was mind-boggling to me the first time I watched it, but which illustrates how to visualize dimensions higher than the fourth. This has profound implications for what we may call free will or the freedom of choice. Since I've already posted 15,000 words or so on the first section, we'll jump right into the blog post, books, and end by reconceptualizing the contents of the video within the context of free will.

In the discourse of the modern day discussion of free will vs. determinism, one must begin with the Church Fathers and Christian theologians of the Middle Ages. And, if we begin with the most influential of them all, Augustine, we immediately run into contradictory interpretations of the phenomenon. On the one hand, Augustine seems to deny free will, giving all power over the past, present, and future to God. He states that the number of saved souls is fixed, has been since the beginning of time, and that all are predestined to go either to heaven or hell. But Augustine, perhaps counterintuitively from a contemporary perspective, differentiates between determinism and predestination. The former is an absolute fixity in the future of the universe, which he denies, whereas the second only refers to the ultimate fate of individual souls, whose choices, freely made, determine their final location. The Catholic Church, which holds the existence of free will to be compatible with its doctrine, regards the writings of Augustine as affirming free will, in that he asserts that "any can be saved if they wish." Indeed, the Calvinist view of hard determinism would be diametrically opposed to the Catholic doctrine of free will beginning in the 16th century. The difference is merely in the perspective - our lack of knowledge as to our ultimate fate renders free will a reality, while from God's perspective, it is already known and decided. While contradictory, this nevertheless represents Augustine's and the Church's position, as Augustine constantly refers to free will as the ability of any person to accept Christ and thus be saved through grace. He says as much in his theological treatise "On Free Choice of the Will". The pre-determinism found in his writings is usually contextualized with the contemporary heresy of Pelagianism that Augustine was combating - Pelagius taught that humans could be saved of their own accord and did not need the saving grace of Christ, which Augustine rejected.

If free will is equivalent to freedom of choice, then perhaps the question lies in cause and effect. Here, however, the verdict, both philosophical and scientific, is still out. One of the earliest and most influential conceptions of cause and effect, is Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover," an imagined originator of the universe, defined as the original cause through which all existence may be termed an effect. Though the idea may seem similar to the concept of "God", it must be noted that Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover" was not anthropomorphic and did not play an active role in creation as the Judeo-Christian God did. Thus, it was originally considered incompatible with the creator God until the the great Scholastic Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas did Aristotle one better, or five better as it were. Aristotle had contended that the universe was eternal and had proposed the idea of a hypothetical "Unmoved Mover" as a necessary attribute of any universe that did have a temporal beginning. Aquinas, who as a Christian believed in a finite universe with a definite temporal beginning, took the "Unmoved Mover" concept as a given and as his starting point for his Quinquae Viae, or the Five Ways. The Five Ways, originally conceived as a rational approach to proving the existence of God, also contains major implications for the conflict between free will and determinism. Polkinghorne simplifies them thusly: "1) The existence of change...conclude[s] that there must be a first originator of change; 2) the existence of causation...conclude[s] that there must be a first cause; 3) the existence of coming to be and ceasing to be...conclude[s] that the world's actual continuance requires an unchanging ground of its existence; 4) the existence of gradations and qualities...conclude[s] that there must be one whose perfection is the ground for all partial qualities; 5) the existence of purpose in this world...conclude[s] the necessity of an intelligence directing it." (I plan on posting more on this later). A "first cause" equivalent to God implies a certain top-down control in the matter if we accept Aquinas' version of a "first cause" rather than Aristotle's, though I think Polkinghorne is right when he points out that Aquinas was more concerned with a "logical hierarchy" than a "temporal priority." This continues to muddy the argument and even though the official Catholic position is one of free will, the greatest writings on the matter do not shed any particularly coherent light on the issue.

Science, however, is no clearer. Traditional Newtonian physics is fairly cut and dried. It is classically mechanistic: 1) a body at rest or in uniform motion stays in that state unless acted upon by an external force, 2) force equals mass times the acceleration of a given object (F=ma), and 3) for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. These are Newton's three laws of motion simplified, and these, in some ways, also seem to imply determinism. The late 18th century French physicist and astronomer Pierre-Simon Laplace used these physical laws to create his own thought experiment, oftentimes called "Laplace's demon", which posits that if a demon with unlimited calculating power were given the location and momentum of every atom in the universe, he could predict the entire future of that universe. Carried further, this suggests that, of course, no human (Hari Seldon aside) could ever have this knowledge considering our own intellectual limitations, but an infinitely superior being with such power could in fact have such knowledge. Laplace called this being a demon, but what is to stop us in our conceptual language from granting this ability to God? Again, is this not exactly the God described by the Calvinists? This is where the conflict between knowing the future and controlling the future comes into play, which Augustine and other Christians have explained simply as a difference in perception. But, we must push this idea even further. As it turns out, Newtonian physics only describes the universe in general macroscopic terms, and at very small sizes and very fast velocities, it does not describe reality accurately. The determinism of Laplace's demon is overturned by Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle, which states that if one knows the location of a subatomic particle, one cannot know its precise momentum, and if one knows the momentum of a subatomic particle, its precise location is indeterminate. So much for a demon with a calculator knowing our future - he can never input both variables into his equation. Einstein famously mused, in regards to quantum mechanics, that "God does not play dice." By playing dice, though, quantum physics, at least in this respect, affirms a universe of free choice.

The truth of the matter remains murky, and even more recent scientific discoveries swing the pendulum back in the direction of determinism: certain electrons seem to be able to "communicate" with each other no matter the distance and in certain experiments involving these electrons, effects are quite capable of appearing before causes (according to some). Recent studies by neurobiologists and cognitive scientists in the realm of simple voluntary movement have shown that the brain is aware of the movements we are about to make before our conscious minds are. Chance is another conundrum. What we call chance, may not really be chance at all (though I don't suspect a coin flip in our universe will come up heads ninety-two times in a row) but "infinitely complex order." When odds are calculated in a coin flip, for example, one would say that the odds of a coin coming up heads is 1 in 2, all things being equal. In reality, all things are never equal, and variations in the weight of the coin, the strength and direction of the toss, which side it is on to begin with, how many times it bounces, etc. will have an effect on the outcome. Only the hypothetical continuation of the flip for all eternity will give a statistical average of 1 in 2. Chance is simply infinitely complex order, indistinguishable from what we may call chaos but which is not chaos. In other words, order and disorder are not mutually exclusive, but "disorder" is simply order so complex as to be unpredictable and thus equivalent to what we would call chance. Perhaps free will is this very form of "unpredictability", so complex at a universal scale, that only God Himself is capable of discerning the order from the disorder. The acausal connecting principle synchronicity, by this definition, could be defined as more than chance - it could be a pattern found in the apparent disorder of the universe, a glimpse at the infinite complexity of reality. In short, science is no clearer than religion is on this matter.

Justice is an entirely separate concern. If we ask the question "Do humans have free will?" and the answer is no, does this necessarily imply that the universe is unjust? Some critics point out, I believe with a fair amount of justification, the incompatibility of an omniscient and omnipotent God who nevertheless has endowed us with free will. If an all-knowing and all-powerful God, both established conditions for Christian belief, truly does exist, then His knowledge about the universe, the criticism goes, implies that your choice is really His choice (an effect that can trace itself all the way back to Aquinas' "First Cause" of Aristotle's "Unmoved Mover"), and this lack of control on our part is unjust. The traditional Christian rebuttal would be something to the effect of "God exists outside of time and space and thus His knowledge does not affect your will. All of eternity is a continual unified 'present' from God's perspective, whereas we are forced to perceive the universe temporally and spatially." Implicit in this argument is the fact that, as God exists outside of any conceptual framework we could ever attempt to comprehend, so too is His justice and judgment beyond our comprehension.

In closing, let us return to the thought experiment we began with. Beyond our perceivable three spatial dimensions and the fourth of time, superstring theory posits the existence of 10 dimensions (or 11 if time is included as a dimension rather than a "direction"). The fifth dimension, according to the geometric concept laid out in the opening paragraph, consists of branches extending out from the "line" of time. In the totality of the universe, the point from which we start "contains" all of three dimensional space starting with the big bang and the point where the line ends is the temporal and spatial end of the universe. But, since time is not fixed (at least from our three dimensional perspective), there are an infinite number of "branches" from this line that creates the fifth dimension (heat death, big crunch, etc.). A "folding" of this fifth dimensional line to meet another fifth dimensional line takes us into the sixth dimension, and this would be the equivalent of a warp or wormhole leading to another timeline within our own universe. Then, taking all these branches as a new geometric point (just as we did to the first three dimensions), we could term this "infinity", since every timeline that could possibly exist within our universe exists within this point. We can then draw a line from this infinity to entirely different infinities. How is this possible? Because the first "infinity point" contains only all possible timelines in our current universe and does not contain timelines from other universes (the "multiverse"), where the initial conditions following the big bang are different and create different physical laws (for example, another universe may have a light speed faster than ours or a boiling point of water higher than 100 Celsius or where gravity is stronger than the electro-magnetic force, etc.) Following the original premise, branches and folds produce the eighth and ninth dimensions, which, when collapsed into a point, creates the tenth dimension. No more lines can be drawn from here, since we have already exahausted "all possible timelines for all possible universes". Does this make sense? No, not really. . . just watch the video. It will be easier to understand it conceptually as opposed to reading an imperfect verbal description. So what's the point in describing all these dimensions? Because, according to this conceptualization of supersting theory's "higher dimensions," everything that exists beyond the fifth dimension is dependent upon "choice, chance, and the action of others" in order to exist. All of the possible future timelines (the fifth dimensional branches from our fourth dimensional "line" of time) require our active choice to occur. Or, put another way, the indeterminate nature of the future is simply another way of envisioning the necessity of choice. If we could picture an entity or being that exists in or beyond the 10th dimension, who would necessarily have access to the lower dimensions (as we have access to the second and first), does their knowledge of time, our future, all possible futures, and all possible other universes abrogate our own free will? At least in this respect, I'm not sure that knowledge equals control, even if creation is implied.

I find it telling that Corliss Lamont titled his book Freedom of Choice Affrimed rather than Confirmed. Confirmation presupposes objective knowledge about the subject, and this may prove impossible. This essay was not meant to prove free will valid or invalid, but to shed some light on a new way of thinking about the issue. However, I am certain I feel more confused after exploring this topic over the past week, than less. But when we open new doors we often find ourselves in rooms with completely new mental furniture. And this is never a bad thing.

Tout comprendre, c'est tout accepter. . .

These "Damnable Superstitions": Legal Double Standards and Cultural Reflections of Witchcraft and Judicial Astrology, ca. 1200-ca. 1600: Part 4

Biblical Admonishments on Prophecy
and St. Augustine on Astrology

How were astrology and witchcraft differentiated in legal and moral terms and to what authorities did prosecutors and inquisitors submit? Biblical verses, from the Old and New Testaments, were extremely common and effective allusions to which to appeal when proclaiming the immorality and sinfulness of astrology, witchcraft, and prophecy, and there is no dearth of Biblical quotations in support of this condemnation.[1] For example: “Thus says the Lord concerning the prophets who lead my people astray…it shall be night to you, without divination. The sun shall go down upon the prophets, and the day shall be black over them; the seers shall be disgraced, and the diviners put to shame; they shall cover their lips, for there is no answer from God” (Micah 3:5-7).[2] However, as is often the case with Biblical references, more than one meaning can be extracted. On the one hand, these verses display an obvious aversion to the conceit of those who believe they can endeavor to know the will of God, yet there is no outright disapproval of this divination because prophecy was and still is a vital element of the Judeo-Christian tradition. In other words, there is nothing wrong with the act itself, merely in those who attempt it without the inspiration or the due credit attributed to God. This may be defined as the difference between divination and revelation.

Similarly, in the midst of his great exhortation against idolatry and image worship in Deuteronomy, Moses offers this warning to those who would divert their attention from God to other matters: “And beware lest you lift your eyes to heaven, and when you see the sun and the moon and the stars, all the host of heaven, you be drawn away and worship them and serve them, things which the Lord your God has allotted to all the peoples under the whole heaven”(Deuteronomy 4:19). This cause is taken up again in the Book of Zephaniah, in which the Lord proclaims that he will “sweep away…those who bow down on the roofs to the host of the heavens” (1:3-5). These verses may be in reference to the original Jewish innovation of monotheism in an age when most of the Hebrews’ cultural neighbors were polytheists, some of whom worshiped the stars and planets directly as gods and goddesses. More deeply, these quotations serve as a reminder that the Creator is not to be confused with the creation and that nature-worship is just as sinful as idol-worship. Yet, in terms of the comparison of astrology with witchcraft in relation to their reception by religious and secular authorities, one must not confound worshiping the heavens with studying the heavens. This is one way that witchcraft was specifically differentiated from astrology—the latter was viewed as a scholarly enterprise separate from Christian worship while the former was believed to derive its information directly from the worship and divination of demons. Astrology dealt with the objective study of the heavens without necessarily confounding Christian worship while witchcraft dealt directly with the antithesis to that worship. The Book of Isaiah proposes an explanation of the correlation between astrological determinism and the functioning of God in the world. It states,

Now therefore hear this, you lover of pleasures, who sit securely, who say in your heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me; I shall not sit as a widow or know the loss of children”: These two things shall come to you in a moment in one day; the loss of children and widowhood shall come upon you in full measure, in spite of your many sorceries and the great power of your enchantments. You felt secure in your wickedness, you said, “No one sees me”; your wisdom and your knowledge led you astray, and you said in your heart, “I am, and there is no one besides me.” But evil shall come upon you, for which you cannot atone; disaster shall fall upon you, which you will not be able to expiate; and ruin shall come on you suddenly, of which you know nothing. Stand fast in your enchantments and your many sorceries, with which you have labored from your youth; perhaps you may be able to succeed, perhaps you may inspire terror. You are wearied with your many counsels; let them stand forth and save you, those who divide the heavens, who gaze at the stars, who at the new moons predict what shall befall you. (Isaiah 47:8-13)[3]

The Christian writers of the first few centuries after Christ, especially the Church Fathers and in particular Augustine of Hippo (354-430), urged new Christians to abandon old pagan superstitions such as astrology in favor of free will and the option of salvation through Christ. Was it not the very free will of Christians that gave them earnest to forsake a worldly life in favor of Christ? Augustine had dabbled in many philosophies in the personal quest that would eventually lead him to Christianity, including Manichaeism and Greek skepticism, both of which were more receptive to astrology. Although the argument between faith and reason is not in the crux of this investigation, for astrology could rely on either or both depending on the practitioner, it is interesting to note that in his denunciation, Augustine appealed more to reason than to faith to counter the argument for astrology. Twins, he writes, are by definition born at a time when the stars should rule over them to a similar degree and that if astrology were a valid science then we should expect to see them live their lives with comparable personalities, statuses, and fates. However,

[The astrologers] have never been able to explain why twins are so different in what they do and achieve, in their professions and skills, in the honors they receive, and in other aspects of their lives and deaths. In all such matters, twins are often less like each other than complete strangers; yet, twins are born with practically no interval of time between their births and are conceived in precisely the same moment of a single sexual semination.[4]

Augustine had attributed the occasional success of astrologers to simple luck and had said that “that guesswork was often borne out of mere chance. If a man made a great many predictions, several of them would later prove to be true, but he could not know it at the time and would only hit upon them by chance.”[5] The more likely explanation for the similarity in the life twins, said Augustine, in reference to Hippocrates, was that they shared similar medical fates “since their parents’ condition at the time of conception could easily affect the embryos, and it would be no wonder if the twins should be born with the same kind of health, since they had developed in the same way in their mother’s womb.”[6] Another practical example was related to him by a friend, Firminus, whose father was a respectable practitioner of astrological divination. Firminus’ father discovered that one of his slaves was expected to give birth at the same time as his wife, and he decided that this would be the supreme trial of the effect of the stars on the course of human lives:

Both were delivered at the same instant; so that both were constrained to allow the same constellations, even to the minutest points, the one for his son, the other for his newborn slave. For so soon as the women began to be in labor, they each gave notice to the other what was fallen out in their houses, and had messengers ready to send to one another, so soon as they had notice of the actual birth, of which they had easily provided, each in his own province, to provide instant intelligence. Thus then the messengers of the respective parties met, he averred, at such an equal distance from either house, that neither of them could make out any difference in the position of the stars, or any other minutest points; and yet Firminus, born in a high estate in his parents’ house, ran his course through the gilded paths of life, was increased in riches, raised to honors; whereas that slave continued to serve his masters, without any relaxation of his yoke, as Firminus, who knew him, told me.[7]

Despite his unwavering dismissal of astrology as a means of obfuscating the free will of man, Augustine, like most other Christian thinkers with a classical education, affirmed that the stars could in fact have an influence on the earth and the material of the sublunar sphere and that this could affect man insomuch as man was subject to the happenings of nature. That is, man’s will was untouchable, but his body, being simply matter, was susceptible to astrological authority:

It is not absurd to say, with reference only to physical differences, that there are certain sidereal [i.e. stellar] influences. We see that seasons of the year change with the approach and the receding of the sun. And with the waxing and waning of the moon, we see certain kinds of things grow and shrink, such as sea urchins and oysters, and the marvelous tides of the ocean. But the choices of the will are not subject to the positions of the stars.[8]

Augustine had been less dismissive of the comparable concept of fate, by which he meant that which “happens without cause or rational explanation, and that fate is what is bound to happen, in spite even of the will of God or of men,”[9] but he stated that the disparity was only in the symbol used to describe those acts which seemed to happen randomly. Among those who regard such acts as the will of fate “but mean by fate the will and power of God, they should keep their conception, but change their expression.”[10]

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[1] Other important Biblical quotations concerning astrology, witchcraft, and prophecy include: Exodus 22:18 (for elaboration of Exodus, see Sir Christopher Heydon’s quote in Post 7), Deuteronomy 18:10-11 (witchcraft), Leviticus 19:26 & 31 and 20:27 (witchcraft and wizardry), 1 Samuel 25:3-25 (witchcraft), and Jeremiah 10:2-3 & 23:9-22 (see Footnote 8 in Post 7 for more information on Jeremiah). The confluence of the scientific enterprise with religion was an aspect of astrology that has been found in many separate astrological traditions (notably the Chinese and Mayan versions), but this merger did not, at first, hold up to the rigorous moral standard of the new Christian religion sweeping the Mediterranean region as it had once enjoyed with Greek paganism and philosophy. It was only when certain natural philosophers were able to reconcile this science with Christianity that it managed to reestablish itself as one of the premier faculties of study. See next post for more details.

[2] Biblical quotes come from The New Oxford Annotated Bible: Revised Standard Version: 1962 and 1973, Oxford University Press.

[3] The annotations in the Oxford edition of the Bible state that this chapter is meant to “emphasize God’s control over history and his action within it,” but the ancient historian D. Brendan Nagle goes so far as to state that this passage was included to display the Israelites’ satisfaction with the Persian conquest of Babylon and the destruction of their idolatrous temples in 539 B.C.E. as well as their satisfaction that despite all their claims to the ability of prognostication, the Babylonians were unable to foresee their own downfall, thus proving the error of astrology and the power of God in the world. See Nagle, D. Brendan, The Ancient World: A Social and Cultural History. Upper Saddle River, New Jersey: Prentice Hall, 2002, p. 70.

[4]Augustine of Hippo. City of God. trans. by Demetrius B. Zema and Gerald G. Walsh. New York: Fathers of the Church, Inc., 1950, Book V, Chap. 1, p. 243. This is also quoted in Lindberg, David C., “Science and the Early Christian Church.” The Scientific Enterprise in Antiquity and the Middle Ages. ed. Michael H. Shank, readings from Isis (first published 1983, 74: 509-530). Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000, p. 143.

[5] Augustine of Hippo, Confessions, trans. by R.S. Pine-Coffin, New York: Penguin Books, Ltd, 1961. Book VII, Chap. 6, p. 140.

[6] Augustine, City of God, Book V, Chap. 2, p. 244.

[7] Augustine, Confessions, Book VII, Chap. 6, p. 141. Also quoted in Boorstin, Daniel J. The Discoverers: A History of Man’s Search to Know His World and Himself. New York: Vintage Books, 1983, p. 23 and 24. David C. Lindberg also mentions in his essay in Isis that the “twins” argument is not original to Augustine.

[8]Augustine of Hippo, City of God, Book V, Chap. 6, p. 251, also quoted in Lindberg, David C., The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, 600 B.C. to A.D. 1450. Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1992, p. 277.

[9] Ibid. Book V, Chap. 1, p. 241.

[10] Ibid. p. 242.