The Warfare of Science

by Andrew Dickson White

Among the first who took up arms against the new thinkers was Eusebius. He endeavored to turn off these ideas by bringing science into contempt, and by making the innovators understand that he and the fathers of the Church despised all such inquiries. Speaking of the innovations in physical science, he said: "It is not through ignorance of the things admired by them, but through contempt of their useless labor, that we think little of these matters, turning our souls to better things." [2]

Lactantius asserted the ideas of those studying astronomy to be "mad and senseless." [3]

But the attempt to "flank" the little phalanx of thinkers did not succeed, of course. Even such men as Lactantius and Eusebius cannot pooh-pooh down a new scientific idea. The little band of thinkers went on, and the doctrine of the rotundity of the earth naturally led to the consideration of the tenants of the earth's surface, and another germ idea was warmed into life—the idea of the existence of the antipodes, the idea of the existence of countries and men on the hemisphere opposite to ours. [4]

At this the war-spirit waxed hot. Those great and good men determined to fight. To all of them such doctrines seemed dangerous; to most of them they seemed damnable. St. Basil and St. Ambrose [5] were tolerant enough to allow that a man might be saved who believed the earth to be round, and inhabited on its opposite sides; but the great majority of the Fathers of the Church utterly denied the possibility of salvation to such misbelievers.

Lactantius asks: "... Is there any one so senseless as to believe that there are men whose footsteps are higher than their heads?—that the crops and trees grow downward?—that the rains and snow and hail fall upward toward the earth?... But if you inquire from those who defend these marvelous fictions, why all things do not fall into that lower part of the heaven, they reply that such is the nature of things, that heavy bodies are borne toward the middle, like the spokes of a wheel; while light bodies, such as clouds, smoke, and fire, tend from the centre toward the heavens on all sides. Now, I am at loss what to say of those who, when they have once erred, steadily persevere in their folly, and defend one vain thing by another."

St. Augustine seems inclined to yield a little in regard to the rotundity of the earth, but he fights the idea that men exist on the other side of the earth, saying that "Scripture speaks of no such descendants of Adam."

But this did not avail to check the idea. What may be called the flank movement, as represented by Eusebius, had failed. The direct battle given by Lactantius, Augustine, and others, had failed; in the sixth century, therefore, the opponents of the new ideas built a great fortress and retired into that. It was well built and well braced. It was nothing less than a complete theory of the world, based upon the literal interpretation of texts of Scripture, and its author was Cosmas Indicopleustes. [6]

According to Cosmas, the earth is a parallelogram, flat, and surrounded by four great seas. At the outer edges of these seas rise immense walls closing in the whole structure. These walls support the vault of the heavens, whose edges are cemented to the walls; walls and vault shut in the earth and all the heavenly bodies. The whole of this theologic, scientific fortress was built most carefully, and, as was then thought, most scripturally.

Starting with the expression, Το ἁγιον κοσμικὁν, applied in the ninth chapter of Hebrews to the tabernacle in the desert, he insists, with other interpreters of his time, that it gives a key to the whole construction of the world. The universe is, therefore, made on the plan of the Jewish Tabernacle—box-like and oblong.