Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-lnqnp Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-24T00:40:07.788Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false

The Protestant Reformation and the Rise of Modern Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 February 2009

G. B. Deason
Affiliation:
St. Olaf College, Northfield, Minnesota 55057

Extract

The vast literature on the Reformation and the rise of science has produced what may be called strong and weak interpretations of their relation. The strong interpretation holds that specific doctrines or attitudes affirmed by the Reformers and their followers contributed directly to the growth of science. On this view, the Reformation was among the causes of the Scientific Revolution. Without the changes in thought and values wrought by the Reformation, proponents of the strong interpretation argue, modern science would not have developed as it did. The weak interpretation, on the other hand, does not claim a direct influence of Protestantism on science. It acknowledges that modern science developed as a movement independent of the Reformation and it claims only that Protestantism offered relatively few obstacles to scientific expansion. On the weak interpretation, the absence of the Reformation would have had little, if any, effect on the Scientific Revolution. After brief discussion of each of these interpretations, I will argue that the strong interpretation is too strong and that the weak one can be strengthened. I will outline an indirect approach, which falls between the above extremes, and offers advantages not offered by either of them.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © Scottish Journal of Theology Ltd 1985

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 In addition to the literature cited elsewhere in this article, important studies of Protestantism and science include: Dillenberger, John, Protestant Thought and Natural Science (Nashville: Abingdon, 1960)Google Scholar; Klaaren, Eugene, Religious Origins of Modern Science (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977)Google Scholar; Westfall, Richard, Science and Religion in Seventeenth Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Westman, Robert S., ‘The Melancthon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory’, Isis, 1975, vol. 66, pp. 164193CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Studies of English Puritanism and science include: Webster, Charles, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626–1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975)Google Scholar; Hill, Christopher, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Jones, R. F., Ancients and Moderns (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Stimson, Dorothy, ‘Puritanism and the New Philosophy in Seventeenth Century England’, Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine, 1935, vol. 3, pp. 321334Google Scholar; Hall, A. Rupert, ‘Merton Revisited or Science and Society in the Seventeenth Century’, History of Science, 1963, vol. 2, pp. 116CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rabb, T. K., ‘Puritanism and the Rise of Experimental Science in England’, Cahiers d'hisloire Mondiale, 1962, vol. 7, pp. 4667Google Scholar; Greaves, Richard, ‘Puritanism and Science: The Anatomy of a Controversy’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1969, vol. 30, pp. 345368Google Scholar; Morgan, John, ‘Puritanism and Science: A Reinterpretation’, The Historical Journal, 1979, vol. 22, pp. 535560CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the exchange among Hugh Kearney, Christopher Hill, and T. K. Rabb in issues 28 (July 1964), 29 (Dec, 1964), 31 (July, 1965), 32 (Dec. 1965) of Past and Present.

The categories of strong and weak are useful, although they should be refined further. A more complete analysis than that given in this paper would require further distinctions to be drawn among types of strong interpretations in particular. A fuller analysis should appear soon in my article ‘Protestantism and Science: A Typology and Criticism of Interpretations’.

2 Gerrish, B. A., ‘The Reformation and the Rise of Modern Science’ in Brauer, Jerald C., ed., The Impact of the Church Upon Its Culture (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), pp. 231275.Google Scholar

3 Cited by Gerrish, , ‘Reformation and Rise of Science’, p. 250.Google Scholar

4 Calvin, John, Commentaries on the First Book of Moses called Genesis, trans. King, John, 2 volumes (Edinburgh: Calvin Translation Society, 18471850), pp. 8687.Google Scholar

5 Gerrish, , ‘Reformation and Rise of Science’, p. 263.Google Scholar

6 Hooykaas, R., Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1972), pp. 9899.Google Scholar

7 Weber, Max, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, trans. Parsons, Talcotl (New York: Scribner's, 1958).Google Scholar

8 Kuyper, Abraham, Calvinism: Six Lectures Delivered in the Theological Seminary at Princeton (New York: RevellCo., 1900), pp. 146153Google Scholar; and Mason, Stephen F., A History of the Sciences, rev. ed. (New York: MacMillan, 1962), pp. 180182Google Scholar. While this interpretation resembles Merton's in holding that Protestantism was necessary for the rise of science, it differs in claiming that Protestantism made scientific thinking possible, whereas Merton claims that it made possible the social acceptance of science. This is an example of the finer distinctions that would be drawn if a complete analysis of interpretations were to be given.

9 Mason, , History of Sciences, p. 182.Google Scholar

10 Hooykaas, , Religion and Rise of Science, pp. 107108.Google Scholar

11 For discussions of Galileo's conflict with the church, see Langford, Jerome J., Galileo, Science and the Church, rev. ed. (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1971)Google Scholar; and de Santillana, Giorgio, The Crime of Galileo (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1955).Google Scholar

12 For example, Cardinal Bellarminc's correspondence with Galileo and Galileo's ‘Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina’ repeatedly address the question of the Fathers' interpretation of key biblical passages. See Langford, , Galileo, Science, and the Chunk, pp. 5078.Google Scholar

13 A fuller discussion of the type of analysis presented in this paragraph can be found in Trocltsch, Ernst, Protestantism and Progress, trans. Montgomery, W. (Boston: Beacon Press, 1958), pp. 89127 and 155–64Google Scholar.

14 Luther, Martin, ‘Lectures on Galatians (1535)’, in Luther's Works, eds. Pelikan, Jaroslav and Lehman, Helmut T., 56 vols. (St. Louis: Concordia Publishing House, 1955) vol. 26, p. 126.Google Scholar

15 Calvin, John, Institutes of the Christian Religion, ed. McNeill, John T. and trans. Ford Lewis Battles, in The Library of Christian Classics, 26 vols. (Philadelphia: Westminster Press, 1960), vol. 20, p. 22.Google Scholar

16 Jewel, John, An Apology of the Church of England, ed. Booty, J. E. (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1963), pp. 6869.Google Scholar

17 Bacon, Francis, ‘The New Organon’, in The Works of Francis Bacon, comp. and ed. Spedding, James, Ellis, Robert Leslie, and Heath, Douglas Denon, 15 vols. (Boston: Taggard and Thompson, 18601864), vol. 8, p. 72.Google Scholar

18 ibid., p. 76.

19 Spratt, Thomas, The History of the Royal Society of London for the Improving of Natural Knowledge (London, 1687), p. 345.Google Scholar

20 This discussion of the implications of the Protestant doctrine of radical sovereignty of God for the rise of science is dealt with more fully in my ‘Reformation Theology and the Mechanistic Conception of Nature’ in God and Nature: A History of the Encounter between Christianity and Science, eds. Lindberg, David C. and Numbers, Ronald L. (forthcoming)Google Scholar.

21 Luther, , Luther's Works, vol. 26, p. 127.Google Scholar

22 Luther, , Luther's Works, vol. 1, p. 25.Google Scholar

23 ibid., p. 127.

24 Calvin, , Institute, vol. 2, p. 199.Google Scholar

25 Cited by Mason, , History of Science, pp. 187188.Google Scholar

26 Calvin, Jean, Calvin's New Testament Commentaries, eds. David, W. and Torrance, Thomas F., 12 vols. (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1960), vol. 12, pp. 362363.Google Scholar

27 Boyle, Robert, The Works of the Honorable Robert Boyle, ed. Birch, Thomas, 5 vols. (London, 1744), vol. IV, p. 361.Google Scholar

28 ibid., pp. 372 and 362.

29 ‘Isaac Newton to Richard Bentley, February 25, 1692–3’ in Isaac Newton's Papers and Letters on Natural Philosophy, 2nd edition, ed. Cohen, I. Bernard (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978), pp. 302303.Google Scholar

30 These two reasons underlying Newton's conception of matter are discussed in McMullin, Ernan, Newton on Matter and Activity (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1978).Google Scholar

31 Newton, Isaac, Unpublished Scientific Papers of Isaac Newton, eds. Hall, A. Rupert and Hall, Marie Boas (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1962), pp. 138139.Google Scholar

32 Newton, Isaac, Sir Isaac Newton's Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and His System of the World, trans. Motte, Andrew, rev.Cajori, Florian, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1934), vol. 2, p. 545.Google Scholar

33 Clarke, Samuel, The Leibniz-Clarke Correspondence, ed. Alexander, H. G. (New York: Philosophical Library, 1956), p. 22.Google Scholar