The Popes and Science / The History of the Papal Relations to Science During the Middle Ages and Down to Our Own Time

by James J. Walsh

Another large factor, however, in the creation of this tradition and one which meant more for us here in America than the Renaissance, was the religious revolt of the sixteenth century in Germany which has been called the Reformation. The reformers made it a point to minimize, if not actually to misrepresent, what had been accomplished under the old Church regime, and this Protestant tradition lived on here in America with much more vitality even than in Europe.

The consequence was the bringing up of a series of generations, who, if not actually believing as so many absurdly did, that the Pope of Rome was the Scarlet Woman and the Church the Babylon of the Apocalypse, were quite sure at least that no good could possibly have come out of the Nazareth of pre-Reformation times. It is only in recent years that we have come to recognize that all the talk about the Dark Ages is, as John Fiske said, simply due to ignorance of the time and its accomplishment. The later medieval period might well be called the "Bright Ages" for its art and architecture, its magnificent literature, its interest in education and [{501}] in scholarship, its development of democracy and its formulation of the great laws and constitutions by which the rights of men were guaranteed in practically every country in Europe. Just as soon as this true state of affairs with regard to the medieval period is recognized, then all question of any policy of Church opposition to education and science disappears.

I have illustrated the lack of knowledge of the true history of science as the basis of the arguments for the thesis of Church opposition to science in the present volume by impugning what President White advances as facts. It can be illustrated still better, however, from another book written twenty years before President White's, even a little consideration of which shows how the whole status of the arguments with regard to the relations of Church and science has changed during a single generation. Our growing knowledge of history has literally taken away all the ground on which the older controversialists used to stand. This is the "History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science" by Professor John W. Draper, which was issued in 1874, just forty years ago, and already in 1875 had entered its third edition, so that the book sold almost as a popular novel at that time and evidently attracted wide attention. The volume was accorded the privilege of publication in the International Scientific Series, and as this set is among the recognized serious books of the time, some of them classics in science and most of them representing important contributions to knowledge, no wonder most readers never thought of doubting its authority or above all questioning its "facts."

Some of Dr. Draper's work made him deservedly one of the best-known biological scientists of the United States in his time. He had had a very striking career. As a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania he reported in his thesis for the doctorate in medicine, which had become at this time usually such a commonplace statement of conventional science that it was shortly after given up as a requirement, a series of observations on absorption through membranes, using bubbles for his experimental work, that attracted the special commendation of the faculty and the attention of the scientific world. He was not yet thirty years of age when he made the first photograph of a human being--that of his sister--ever made and in 1840 successfully secured the first photographs of the moon. During the next ten years he made a series of observations on the spectrum which attracted deserved attention and anticipated not a little of Kirchoff's work. Melloni, himself a distinguished Italian physicist, reported these observations [{502}] to the academy of Naples. Draper's text-book of physiology was without doubt the best medical text-book issued in America up to that time and deservedly held its place for many years in our medical schools.

It was no wonder then that Draper received many distinctions in the shape of membership in foreign scientific societies, honorable mentions, and prizes. His works were translated into many of the European languages. Late in life he gave up his experimental and scientific work to devote himself to the writing of history. His history of the Civil War was widely read both in Europe and America. His "History of the Intellectual Development of Europe," which only a little reading now in the light of recent knowledge of the Middle Ages shows us to be a caricature of the philosophy of history, was translated into several foreign languages and was probably more widely read than any serious work by an American author up to that time. What was very rare for an American book at that period it was read by a great many European teachers and students. All this gave added distinction to his writing on the subject of the relations of science and religion, and so it is easy to understand that he was considered by many to have made an almost final summary of this important controversy.

Professor Draper's book then became a sort of bible, that is a book of books, for a great many American teachers of science and, above all, for the younger generation of university lecturers who were to have the shaping of opinions among the students of scientific departments of our colleges and universities during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. It does not seem too much to assume that most of the maturer scientists who are now teaching in the university scientific departments of this country, read Professor Draper's book and were led by it to an almost unshakeable conviction that religion and, above all, the Catholic Church, fearful lest science should take men away from her influence, had been constantly opposed to all true scientific progress, and what was more unpardonable, that religion as represented by the Church had been for the same reason a bitter enemy of any and every social progress that might lead to the real development of mankind. For them under Draper's inspiration it seemed that the deliberate Church policy was that if men were not happy here they would look with all the more eagerness to happiness hereafter and take all the means offered by the Church to secure it. That such a conclusion impugned the motives of millions of men whom their own generation had thoroughly respected and yielded to the most [{503}] dangerous of human ideas, suspicion, made no difference. No good could come out of the Nazareth of the Catholic Church.

It is quite certain that a great many of the younger teachers of science of that time who are still alive, even when not entirely conscious of the source of their opinions as to the relations of science and religion and the Church and education, have at the back of their minds certain prejudices, founded on the influence produced on them during their plastic, formative state of mind by the reading of Professor Draper's book. Indeed, so firm is the feeling in many of these men, that this whole subject is settled for them beyond the possibility of any modification, that they have insulated their minds from any further currents of information.

Controversy is distasteful at best; to find out that one has been cherishing a mistaken notion for years, is always disturbing as one grows older, and so it is not surprising that many of these men frequently use expressions with regard to the supposed relations of Church and science that are quite incompatible with what is now very generally known of the history of science. Their minds are made up, and they simply refuse to bring for a second time any of these subjects before the bar of judgment. Besides, though they would resent any such imputation as to their own state of mind, they have the feeling that people with religious convictions are prone to see only one side, and, therefore, anything that may be said on the other side is only a bit of special pleading for a conviction that no reasoning and no argument would change. They argue, as a consequence, that it would be quite useless for them to read the other side with any reasonable hope of getting at the real facts. This attitude of scientists is very different from the open-mindedness that is supposed to be characteristic of the devotees of science; but it is very human.

Now the interesting fact with regard to Professor Draper's books is that Professor Draper, a scientist, did not know the history of science at all. He was entirely ignorant of the great advances that were even then being made, with regard to our knowledge of the growth of science during the medieval period. He thought that there was very little, indeed practically no science, during that period. Looking about for a reason, he made the Church a scapegoat. The publication during the past generation of many German volumes on the history of the different sciences--and these German students went straight to the original documents--has shown us that there were magnificent developments of science during the medieval and early Renaissance periods, when the Church was in control of the educational institutions and of every phase of [{504}] academic work. The story of the opposition between religion and science falls to the ground at once when these facts are known. Some of them were already in process of publication even in Draper's time, but he knew nothing of them. He was so sure that there was nothing to know in this matter, that he probably did not bother his head very much about trying to get the latest results of scholarship in the matter.

Professor Draper's summary of the relations of the Church to science or learning, and his declaration of her absolute refusal to recognize anything as scholarship, except what was deduced from the Scriptures, shows how far a man can go in his assumption of knowledge when he knows literally nothing about a subject. For him the Dark Ages knew nothing because he knows nothing about them. If they knew anything, he would know it, but he does not. Of one or two men he knows something, but they are exceptions to the general rule of absolute negation of intellectual interests and developments. Draper said: [Footnote 64]