One of the most interesting books I've read in a long while. In short, modern science owes a debt to medieval theology that many people today would like to forget. Unlike both modern militant atheists and religious fundamentalists, the world of medieval theological inquiry was surprisingly tolerant of different ideas.
Many of the popular images of the medieval Church as having held back the development of science are simply wrong. While religious teachings did sometimes clash directly with scientific discoveries, most people were happy to interpret the Bible figuratively rather than literally when the evidence was sufficient. The famous trials of Bruno and Galileo were a lot more complicated than is often depicted today - Bruno was a nutcase, and Galileo got into trouble more for insulting the Pope than he did for his observations.
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the invisible college, alchemy... there was a lot of tolerance that stem from the fact that people hid their beliefs and used iniciatic groups and official institutions to hide and survive.
ReplyDeleteForgotten is the fact that the first universities in Europe were in practice an effort to control scholars.