Copyright (c) 2009 Bond University All rights reserved. http://epublications.bond.edu.au/peter_harrison Recent documents in Peter Harrison en-us Sun, 22 Feb 2009 21:33:24 PST 3600 http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/149 http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/149 Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:46:44 PDT This chapter focuses on four distinct phases of the relationship between science and wisdom in the West and deals with them in chronological order: (1) Early Christian and patristic views that oppose heavenly and earthly wisdom, and which identify classical science with the earthly wisdom. (2)Thomas Aquinas's thirteenth-century adaptation of Aristotle's classification of the sciences, according to which both theology and the study of nature (natural philosophy) count as sciences and as virtues. In a sense, both are forms of wisdom, with the earthly wisdom of the sciences not being opposed to the heavenly wisdom of theology, but rather providing a path to it. (3) The early modern rejection of the Thomist notion that science (scientia) was a virtue, and the tendency to regard both theology and natural science as activities related to propositions. (4)The final stage of the dissociation of wisdom and science that came with the professionalization of science in the nineteenth century, when both moral and theological issues are explicitly excluded from the scope of the natural sciences. This is followed by concluding remarks about what all of this might mean for our current understandings of the relationship between science, religion and wisdom. Peter Harrison http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/148 http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/148 Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:25:24 PDT The aim is to explore the ways in which the Genesis narratives were understood in the mediaeval and early modern West with a view to identifying the kinds of attitudes and behaviours that these texts actually promoted. As will become apparent, it is fairly clear that the biblical imperative 'have dominion' did in fact play a significant role in promoting an active and manipulative engagement with the natural world, particularly during the seventeenth century. At this time, it provided legitimation for the new science and for the mastery of nature that this science promised. By the same token, the intention behind this energetic engagement with nature, then understood in the light of the Fall, was to restore the earth to its prelapsarian perfection. Control of the natural world was thus sought in order to perfect, rather than exploit, nature. What this means is that the two apparently conflicting characterizations 'despot' and 'steward' turn out to be twin aspects of the same role. As for the purported anthropocentric emphasis of the Judaeo-Christian tradition, this is probably far less significant than has often been imagined, for it was precisely during the period when large-scale attempts to master the natural world were under way that anthropocentric attitudes began to wane. In light of this, there is a need to revise commonly held views about the religious origins of Western attitudes towards nature, and to reassess the historical significance of the categories 'despot' and 'steward'. Peter Harrison http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/147 http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/147 Wed, 20 Jun 2007 23:00:38 PDT Natural philosophers, engaged as they were in a branch of philosophy, were expected to conform to the traditional models of the philosophical persona, in which the moral characteristics of the individual were the pledge of the truth of what they knew. That said, the beginnings of a shift of focus from persons to methods was already in train in the seventeenth century. In this chapter I shall suggest that this development owed much to Renaissance and Reformation criticisms of the traditional ideal of the contemplative life and the Aristotelian notions of virtue. Peter Harrison http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/138 http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/138 Wed, 20 Jun 2007 19:46:36 PDT One of the most far-reaching consequences of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century was a crisis of authority that pervaded the whole of Western Christendom. The aftermath of the Reformation saw the development of an unprecedented diversity of religious beliefs and practices in Europe, along with destabilizing wars of religion and the vigorous persecution of religious minorities. In this context the need for a criterion of religious truth became particularly acute. During the medieval period, tradition, scripture, reason, and experience had all been acceptable sources of religious authority, although they were mediated by the magisterium of the Catholic Church. Following the religious upheavals of the sixteenth century, serious challenges were issued to each of these long-established sources of authority. These challenges were underscored by new developments in the natural sciences. Copernican ideas and the revival of ancient atomism called into question long-standing scientific beliefs and prompted a reevaluation of the medieval understanding of the relationship between science and theology. Peter Harrison http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/135 http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/135 Wed, 20 Jun 2007 18:33:51 PDT No one who is familiar with the literature of the early-modern period can be in any doubt of the ubiquity of the metaphor the 'Book of Nature'. Indeed, its constant appearance in religious, literary, and scientific works can have the effect of engendering in the reader a kind of stupor, in which these metaphors are wearily passed over in the search for something more novel.In this essay I hope to convey some sense of the variety of ways in which the metaphor was used during the early modern period. My primary concern, however, will be to show how this trope functioned in arguments concerning the social legitimacy of the new approaches to the natural world characteristic of this period, and some of the ways in which competing frameworks for the interpretation of nature exploited this metaphor in attempts to demonstrate their social legitmacy, and more particularly, their religious utility. Peter Harrison http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/125 http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/125 Sun, 20 May 2007 22:13:58 PDT This article explores in some detail the historical circumstances of the emergence of the dual categories "science" and "religion" with a view to showing their direct relevance for contemporary discussions of the science-religion relation. To a degree both categories distort what it is they claim to represent, and such distortions inevitably carry over into discussions of their relationship. Consideration of the historically conditioned nature of "science" and of "religion" brings to light a number of unspoken assumptions in some mainstream science-religion discussions and highlights the need for serious revision of common approaches to this issue. Peter Harrison http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/71 http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/71 Wed, 29 Nov 2006 19:56:36 PST [Extract] In a recent Sophia article 'Harrison and Hick on God and Animal Pain', Joseph Lynch draws our attention to the difficulties generated for the theist by the suffering of animals, and argues that the responses of John Hick and myself to this problem are inadequate. Although he does not offer any alternative account of how the apparent suffering of creatures might be reconciled with the existence of an all-good and all-powerful Deity, Lynch nonetheless concludes that '[T]heists must find a way to confront the reality of animal pain, rather than fleeing from it' (p. 72). In this response I shall consider some alternatives to the solutions put forward by Hick and myself, before concluding that the best response theists can offer to the problem of the suffering of lower creatures remains either the denial of animal pain, or the denial that animal pain constitutes a major evil. First, however, I shall consider two arguments which Lynch directs specifically against my position. Peter Harrison http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/68 http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/68 Mon, 20 Nov 2006 20:05:33 PST The Bible played a significant role in the development of modern science. Most obviously, its contents were important because they could be read in ways that seemed either to conflict with or to confirm new scientific claims. More important, however, were changes to the way in which the Bible was interpreted during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The move away from allegorical readings of Scripture and the new focus on the historical or literal sense - a development promoted by humanist scholars and Protestant reformers - contributed to the collapse of the symbolic world of the Middle Ages and paved the way for new mathematical and taxonomic readings of nature. Biblical hermeneutics was thus of profound importance for those new ways of interpreting nature that we associate with the emergence of modern science. Peter Harrison http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/65 http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/65 Mon, 06 Nov 2006 19:45:22 PST 'I believe that the intellectual life of the whole of western society is increasingly being split into two polar groups. At one pole we have the literary intellectuals at the other scientists.' This observation of C. P. Snow, made over forty years ago in his famous book The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution (1959), eloquently points to a fundamental rift in the modern west between those intellectuals whose stock in trade is words and scientists who deal with natural objects. The consequences of this deep division have been unfortunate. On the one hand, with the advent of post-modern theory, many of the disciplines of the humanities have been precipitated into an almost terminal crisis. For increasing numbers of observers, the humanities have abandoned their traditional mission of providing cultural guidance on questions of meaning and value and have sunk into a relativistic obscurantism. On the other hand, the natural sciences have given rise to remarkable technological advances and now exercise an unparalleled cultural authority. Yet the practitioners of science have tended either to ignore questions of meaning of value on account of a stated commitment to objectivity, or have sought to fill the gap left by the reticent liberal arts by offering reductionist accounts of human personhood and ethical values that are vacuous and inane.In the brief compass of this essay I shall not prescribe a panacea to heal this unfortunate rift. However, I do hope to shed some light on the origins of this great divide in the hope that it may yield some new insights into our contemporary predicament and be suggestive of ways in which more damaging consequences of the polarization of the two cultures might be ameliorated. The origins of the distinct treatments of words and things in Western society, I shall propose, lie in a series of related revolutions that took place at the dawn of modernity in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Surprising as it may seem, Scripture--its contents, the controversies it generated, the changing status of its authority, and most important of all, the new way in which it was read by humanists and Protestants--played a pivotal role in the origins of originating that division between humanities and sciences which has given shape to modernity and which to this day dominates the intellectual landscape. Peter Harrison http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/61 http://epublications.bond.edu.au/hss_pubs/61 Mon, 30 Oct 2006 19:27:58 PST [Introduction] The notion that divine voluntarism played a central role in the development of the empirical sciences is now commonplace amongst historians of the early-modern period. In a 1934 issue of Mind, M. B. Foster first proposed a link between the voluntary activity of God, the contingency of the created order, and the requirement that science be empirically based. In the 1960s, in what was the first of a number of influential articles on the significance of medieval voluntarism, Francis Oakley also drew attention to the impact of this view of the Deity on the natural and political philosophy characteristic of modernity. At that time Oakley made this observation about certain developments in medieval theology: "This was the beginning of that fruitful stream of voluntarist natural law thinking, which, although it made its way with profound effect into the ethical, political and scientific thought of the modern world, has attracted less than its due share of attention from the historians of these subjects." Since then, a number of historians have taken up Oakley's challenge and elaborations of his thesis are to found in many authoritative accounts of early modern science. So firmly entrenched has this thesis become that in a recent review article the historian John Bossy defers to the widespread view that "the fathers of science depended on a nominalist and voluntarist natural theology", confidently declaring that "the story about the Ockhamist revanche first expounded by Francis Oakley ... has surely now sufficiently established itself". There are a number of elements to the 'voluntarism and science' thesis, and several different ways of characterizing divine voluntarism. Most versions of the thesis, however, discern a common logic in the position of early modern empiricists and their medieval forbears: from the concern to preserve the freedom of the Deity follows the claim that none of his creative acts is necessitated; from the unconstrained activity of the Deity follows the contingency of the natural order; from the contingency of the natural order follows the requirement that nature be investigated empirically. The plausible logic of this position is reinforced by establishing the trajectory of this line of thought and identifying the relevant historical actors. Thus the origins of voluntarism are located amongst the medieval 'nominalists', whence it is said to have found its way into early modern thought through the theology of the Protestant Reformers. Those seventeenth-century figures thought best to exemplify the thesis, on account of their dual commitments to voluntarism and to the empirical investigation of nature, are typically Pierre Gassendi, Robert Boyle, Isaac Barrow, and Isaac Newton.In this paper I will suggest that the voluntarism and science thesis is attended with numerous difficulties. First, there were significant early modern voluntarists who were not empiricists. Second, the central categories 'voluntarism', 'necessity',and 'contingency' are used with such imprecision and ambiguity as to render many versions of the thesis virtually meaningless. Third, the now familiar story about the impact of various forms of medieval voluntarism on the thought of the early modern period is in much of its detail simply wrong. Fourth, close examination of the expressed positions of a number of those early-modern empiricists thought to exemplify the thesis shows that they were not voluntarists in any significant sense of word. Finally, voluntarism is inconsistent with the physico-theological motivations of most early modern natural philosophers, and in particular those usually mentioned in connection with the thesis. In short, the voluntarism and science thesis is fatally flawed and its major contentions should be abandoned. The bulk of this paper will be given over to making this case. However, I also hope to demonstrate that there are important insights in the thesis, and in the final section I will briefly sketch out an alternative proposal for the influence of theological conceptions on the development of experimental philosophy in which these more important insights are preserved. Peter Harrison