this post was submitted on 26 Sep 2024
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Nothing "makes" you anything. Questioning and exploring existence can look very different in different ages.
Okay you haven’t been very explanatory about your statement that theologians were scientists. But it seems you are using the term extremely loosely to mean anyone who explores questions.
This is not my definition at all. Science is a method of exploring questions that involves hypotheses and tests and building principles from observed results. Theologians do none of that and never did. They made shit up. That is not science.
I'll clearify my concept. If you could possibly take a midle age theologist and teleport him to the current age, they'd be total nerds and not priests.
Clergy back then was studying, and studying and studying and exploring reality in a framework that gave for granted that God exixts. You can call it whatever you want but I think it's a bit silly to reduct it to "those dumb fucks belong to the mines", while in reality it through their efforts that, unwillingly (?), we pursued knowledge to the point of refining modern science methodology.
If it’s reductive to say they were all morons, it’s fabulist to say they could step into the modern era and be nerds.
I get your point that curious people had no other outlet then, and that the clergy was just where they went. But there is one problem with that: science did in fact develop as a discipline. We did crawl out of the dark ages. We did discover we are not the center of the universe. And mostly it wasn’t the clergy who did that. There are notable exceptions like Gregor Mendel and Pope Gregory 13. But not enough to characterize the whole institution by. And in fact that same institution was a force for anti-curiosity quite a bit, as when they imprisoned Galileo, which is hardly the only example of them quashing open questioning as heresy.
If perhaps we focused only on theologians who were not part of the clergy, that could turn up slightly differently. I don’t know enough there to guess.
I'm ateist just to be clear, but it's undeniable that the path that lead to science stems from academia and univirsities rules and funded by clergy.
Leibniz was a fervent (or rather, average for the time) believer and bended backward to include God in each and any of his hypothesis about the world (so much so that in front of the logical necessities of motion he posited that God planned it all in advance, incuding some funny stuff about each of us being already alive in the ballsacks of our ancestors, to go around the fact that I wouldn't be "godlike" to just spawn new souls every couple of seconds). He invented calculus and mechanical calculators and the likes.
Newton was basically an astrologer.
Bruno hypotized the existence of multiple worlds in space and, to him, that was cool because it meant the domain of God was even wider than previously thought. The Church of the Earth did not like that idea.
On the other hand, Saint Thomas and Saint Agustine both brought back the (relatively) modern approaches of Aristotles and Plato respectively, with a focus on reason as a driving force.
I could agree to disagree but I assume we'd both hate that.
Edit: I guess you stressed the point of "clergy" rather than "fervent believer". I guess? I don't find it that relevant since the members of the clergy, monks mostly, were doing their own thing and there was no centralyzed clergy research plan. You think something too weird and too popular, and the pope comes for you.
Since literally everyone could be described as a believer in the past that’s not what I meant. We started with the word “theologian” and yes I assume any reasonable definition of that word is going to have high, high overlap with the clergy, with perhaps some exceptions.
You lost me, friend. I’m not even sure we can agree to disagree at this point. I’m just going to back away slowly…
You can run but you cannot hide: https://wiki.froth.zone/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies?lang=en
And no, the people I mentioned moved theology in different directions, they actually did study and engaged with it.
#sorrynotsorry
Edit: changed wikiless instance.
When your source throws a browser security warning, you automatically lose.
I can't lose or win this is not a fight.
Here you go, a different instance. It's just wikipedia BTW: https://wiki.froth.zone/wiki/Isaac_Newton%27s_occult_studies?lang=en
Also here: https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/astrology/newton_main.htm It's clarified that the idea that Newton was into astrology has been discredited, but you can find reference to the matter at hand, his interest in theology, and the one of many of his/our predecessors.
"From times immemorial, astrology has been a determining factor in the decisions and actions of men of all ranks and stations. At the begin of the 17th century, great scientists as Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Pierre Gassendi – now best remembered for their roles in the development of modern physics and astronomy – all held astrology in high esteem."
And later:
"inspecting the inventory of the books from his library [...] Among the 1752 books with identifiable titles on this list, no less than 477 (27.2%) were on the subject of theology, 169 (9.6%) on alchemy, 126 (7.2%) on mathematics, 52 (3.0%) on physics and only 33 (1.9%) on astronomy."
I hope you learnt something new. Have a nice day.