Medieval Science Redeemed: Michael F. Flynn's "Quaestiones Super Caelo et Mundo"

The July/August 2007 issue of Analog starts out strong with an excellent alternate history tale by Michael F. Flynn. "Quaestiones Super Caelo et Mundo" depicts a scientific revolution in the 14th century, with Jean Buridan and others discovering many of the key principles of motion, thermodynamics, and optics 300 years before Newton. It's a fun and fascinating challenge to the fallacy that the Middle Ages were intellectually backward, but the case is made even more strongly in Flynn's accompanying fact article "De Revolutione Scientiarum in 'Media Tempestas.'" This denunciation of the dominant misconceptions about the medieval period is written in the dialectic form of, among other works, Thomas Aquinas's Summa Theologica. Point by point, Flynn refutes the idea that the Middle Ages were an "Age of Faith" supplanted by an "Age of Reason," and even the idea that "faith" and "reason" are inherently opposed. After all, Aquinas is remembered not for rejecting Greek philosophy, but for reconciling it with Christian theology—and Flynn argues that this attitude was the rule among medieval philosophers, not the exception. "That faith is opposed to reason is a modern dogma accepted on faith"—I couldn't have put it better myself. I've been thinking a lot about this lately, and it seems to me that the idea that the two are in opposition stems from the Scopes Monkey Trial on one side and Bertrand Russell on the other. But we've allowed that false dichotomy to be sold to us for so long that we hold it as a basic assumption.

The entire article is peppered with excellent quotes*, such as Augustine's statement (from De Genesi ad literam) that "it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking nonsense on [natural philosophy]." But the crowning gem of them all, also from Augustine (Contra Faustum manichaeum), is a wonderful anachronistic criticism of modern-day creationists and an excellent statement on the compatibility of religion and science:

In the Gospel we do not read that the Lord said: "I send you the Holy Spirit so that He might teach you all about the course of the sun and the moon." The Lord wanted to make Christians, not astronomers. You learn at school all the useful things you need to know about nature.

The article details many of the key scientific discoveries (both practical and theoretical) of the Middle Ages, and serves as a worthy vindication of a much-maligned era of our intellectual history. As a medievalist, the one-two punch of Flynn's story and article made this my favorite issue of Analog in months.

The beginning of "Quaestiones Super Caelo Et Mundo" is available on Analog's website.

*Sadly, Flynn's notation for these quotes is inadequate, and there were more than a few quotes I was unable to adequately match up to his bibliography. He defends this by stating that "the medieval philosopher would have recognized an entire argument from a brief quotation," but throw us a bone here, Mike! We're not medieval philosophers.

Comments

[Dust I Am]

I also am enthusiastic about the two Latin-titled pieces in Analog. Too many people have no idea that the Media Tempestas was a very favorable time for science because "the Latins believed that the World has a beginning and and end (i.e., time has direction) and that a singular rational God 'disposed all things by measure and number and weight'...." Flynn adds that the "Latins made a further, crucial distinction--between primary vs. secondary causation."

[Kendalf]

Thank you for this link! By any chance is Flynn's article available online anywhere? I'd love to see what he has to say, although I did enjoy your review.