The Sleepwalkers (254 page)

Throughout
the
Dark
Ages,
the
monasteries
had
been
oases
of
learning
in
a
desert
of
ignorance,
and
the
monks
the
guardians
of
the
dried-up
wells.
There
was
dearth,
but
no
quarrel
between
theology
and
philosophy:
both
agreed
that
vulgar
Nature
was
no
worthy
object
of
knowledge.
It
was
an
age
of
double-think,
of
a
culture
divided
from
reality,
but
the
partition
was
not
between
theologian
and
scientist,
because
the
latter
did
not
exist.

The
later
medieval
cosmology
of
the
Great
Chain
of
Being
was
a
highly
integrated
one.
It
is
true
that
the
"Venus
riding
on
the
third
epicycle"
of
the
Divine
Comedy
could
not
be
represented
by
a
mechanical
model;
but
here
again
the
dividing
wall
stood
not
between
religious
and
natural
philosophy,
but
between
mathematics
and
physics,
physics
and
astronomy,
as
the
Aristotelian
doctrine
demanded.
It
is
also
true
that
the
Church
was
partly
responsible
for
this
state
of
affairs
because
she
had
allied
herself
with
Aristotle,
as
she
had
before
with
Plato;
but
it
was
not
an
absolute
alliance,
as
the
example
of
the
Franciscans
and
the
Ockhamist
schools
prove.

There
is
no
need
to
recapitulate
the
reinstatement
by
Aquinas
of
the
Light
of
Reason
as
an
active
partner
of
the
Light
of
Grace;
nor
the
leading
part
played
in
the
revival
of
learning
by
Dominicans
and
Franciscans,
ecclesiastics
like
Bishops
Oresme,
Cusa
or
Giese;
nor
to
dwell
again
on
the
joint
impact
of
the
recovery
of
the
Greek
texts
of
the
Septuagint
and
Euclid.
The
reformation
of
religion
and
the
renaissance
of
science
were
related
processes
of
breaking
up
petrified
patterns
of
development,
and
going
back
to
their
sources
to
discover
where
things
had
gone
wrong.
Erasmus
and
Reuchlin,
Luther
and
Melanchton,
went
back
to
Greek
and
Hebrew
texts,
as
Copernicus
and
his
successors
went
back
to
Pythagoras
and
Archimedes
–
prompted
by
the
same
urge
of
reculer
pour
mieux
sauter
,
of
regaining
a
unifying
vision
lost
by
doctrinaire
over-specialization.
Throughout
the
golden
age
of
humanism,
and
even
the
gunpowder
age
of
the
Counter-reformation,
the
scientists
remained
the
sacred
cows
of
cardinals
and
popes,
from
Paul
III
to
Urban
VIII;
at
the
same
time
the
Roman
College
and
the
Jesuit
Order
took
over
the
lead
in
mathematics
and
astronomy.

The
first
open
conflict
between
Church
and
Science
was
the
Galileo
scandal.
I
have
tried
to
show
that
unless
one
believes
in
the
dogma
of
historic
inevitability
–
this
form
of
fatalism
in
reverse
gear
–
one
must
regard
it
as
a
scandal
which
could
have
been
avoided;
and
it
is
not
difficult
to
imagine
the
Catholic
Church
adopting,
after
a
Tychonic
transition,
the
Copernican
cosmology
some
two
hundred
years
earlier
than
she
eventually
did.
The
Galileo
affair
was
an
isolated,
and
in
fact
quite
untypical,
episode
in
the
history
of
the
relations
between
science
and
theology,
almost
as
untypical
as
the
Dayton
monkey-trial
was.
But
its
dramatic
circumstances,
magnified
out
of
all
proportion,
created
a
popular
belief
that
science
stood
for
freedom,
the
Church
for
oppression
of
thought.
That
is
only
true
in
a
limited
sense
for
a
limited
period
of
transition.
Some
historians,
for
instance,
wish
to
make
us
believe
that
the
decline
of
science
in
Italy
was
due
to
the
"terror"
caused
by
the
trial
of
Galileo.
But
the
next
generation
saw
the
rise
of
Toricelli,
Cavallieri,
Borelli,
whose
contributions
to
science
were
more
substantial
than
those
of
any
generation
before
or
during
Galileo's
lifetime;
the
shift
of
the
centre
of
scientific
activity
to
England
and
France
and
the
gradual
decline
of
Italian
science,
as
of
Italian
painting,
was
due
to
different
historical
causes.
Never
since
the
Thirty
Years
War
has
the
Church
oppressed
freedom
of
thought
and
expression
to
an
extent
comparable
to
the
terror
based
on
the
"scientific"
ideologies
of
Nazi
Germany
or
Soviet
Russia.

The
contemporary
divorce
between
faith
and
reason
is
not
the
result
of
a
contest
for
power
or
for
intellectual
monopoly,
but
of
a
progressive
estrangement
without
hostility
or
drama,
and
therefore
all
the
more
deadly.
This
becomes
evident
if
we
shift
our
attention
from
Italy
to
the
Protestant
countries
of
Europe,
and
to
France.
Kepler,
Descartes,
Barrow,
Leibniz,
Gilbert,
Boyle
and
Newton
himself,
the
generation
of
pioneers
contemporary
with
and
succeeding
Galileo,
were
all
deeply
and
genuinely
religious
thinkers.
But
their
image
of
the
godhead
had
undergone
a
subtle
and
gradual
change.
It
had
been
freed
from
its
rigid
scholastic
frame,
it
had
receded
beyond
the
dualism
of
Plato
to
the
mystic,
Pythagorean
inspiration
of
God,
the
chief
mathematician.
The
pioneers
of
the
new
cosmology,
from
Kepler
to
Newton
and
beyond,
based
their
search
into
nature
on
the
mystic
conviction
that
there
must
exist
laws
behind
the
confusing
phenomena;
that
the
world
was
a
completely
rational,
ordered,
harmonic
creation.
In
the
words
of
a
modern
historian,
the
"aspiration
to
demonstrate
that
the
universe
ran
like
a
piece
of
clock-work
...
was
itself
initially
a
religious
aspiration.
It
was
felt
that
there
would
be
something
defective
in
Creation
itself
–
something
not
quite
worthy
of
God
–
unless
the
whole
system
of
the
universe
could
be
shown
to
be
interlocking,
so
that
it
carried
the
pattern
of
reasonableness
and
orderliness.
Kepler,
inaugurating
the
scientist's
quest
for
a
mechanistic
universe
in
the
seventeenth
century,
is
significant
here
–
his
mysticism,
his
music
of
the
spheres,
his
rational
deity
demand
a
system
which
has
the
beauty
of
a
piece
of
mathematics."
³
Instead
of
asking
for
specific
miracles
as
proof
of
God's
existence,
Kepler
discovered
the
supreme
miracle
in
the
harmony
of
the
spheres.