The Italian Renaissance

Science in the Italian Renaissance: The End of the Medieval World

Robert Bellarmine wrote "his displeasure with Copernican theory" (Patrick 1253) to Paolo Antonio Foscarini in 1615. Bellarmine was a cardinal in the Roman Catholic Church, a doctor of theology and later to be declared a saint. Foscarini was a Carmelite who, with Galileo, had taken some interest in Copernicus' heliocentric model of the universe. In 1616, Foscarini's book defending heliocentrism was placed on the Church's Index of Forbidden Books. By 1633 Galileo would also be forbidden to spread his heliocentric doctrine, which he had put in the vernacular Italian as opposed to the language of the learned, Latin (Patrick 1254). Thus, while the new astronomers were attempting to set up a new model of the universe, the Church attempted to preserve its own perspective: namely, that the earth, man and God made Man were the center of the cosmos. Yet, through technological innovations, the Church's control over the gathering and disseminating of information was slipping. Galileo had studied the heavens using his new telescope, while Bellarmine's studies had been grounded in philosophy, theology and Scripture. Bellarmine represented the old science. Galileo the new. Such conflict between scientific study grounded in theological traditions and scientific study emphasized by technological cues marked the end of the medieval world and the beginning of the modern world.

Having little knowledge of science in the Italian Renaissance, I was surprised to learn how seriously such a claim as Galileo's could affect man's notion of self and place. But let's first define our terms.

Science, according to the medieval church, was rooted in the kind of scholasticism made famous by Thomas Aquinas. Aquinas combined a deep spiritual knowledge of the mysteries of the Roman Catholic religion with the classical knowledge of the ancient pagan philosophers such as Aristotle. The result was the Summa Theologica, the book that for centuries defined Catholic thought. Science, for Aquinas, was the study of all things in the light of God. As Aquinas says:

Just as the musician accepts on authority the principles taught him by the mathematician, so sacred science is established on principles revealed by God….Individual facts are treated of in sacred doctrine, not because it is concerned with them principally, but they are introduced rather both as examples to be followed in our lives (as in moral sciences) and in order to establish the authority of those men through whom the divine revelation, on which this sacred scripture or doctrine is based, has come down to us.

Aquinas illustrates, with what later theologians and philosophers would call far too much complexity (or certainty), the relationship between faith and reason -- a relationship that intensely shaped medieval scholastic thought -- and a relationship that by the twentieth century would find fewer and fewer followers. For example, after WWII, one rector of a seminary in France lamented that there was so little knowledge of the relationship between faith and reason in his own seminarians that he was forced to go back to the teachings of Aquinas to restore this sense to his pupils. Said one of the students, "It was always St. Thomas, St. Thomas, St. Thomas! We had come from the novitiate where they did not refer much to St. Thomas….At Mortain we practically bathed in St. Thomas; as for me, I liked it" (Tissier 149).

But not everyone liked it -- then or in 1600. Discovery was in vogue in Renaissance Italy. The cold powers of deduction were yesterday's news.

Yet despite what Copernicus would say about Ptolemy's geocentric model of the universe being too complex and unable to account for certain celestial movements, scholasticism was the "Science of the Schools." According to John Laux in his Church History, "Scholasticism did not attempt to add anything to Divine Revelation or to teach new doctrines, but only to furnish a rational basis for Christianity by showing the harmony which exists between faith and reason, and also to reduce the doctrines contained in Scripture and Tradition to an orderly and definite system" (374).

That the science of Copernicus and Galileo threatened the harmony of faith and reason and the orderly system of the universe (i.e. Ptolemy's model) can be seen readily enough in the Holy Office's denouncement. But what led Copernicus and Galileo to their conclusions?

One of the things that led them to their conclusions was the scientific method -- a method of inquiry that takes two approaches to knowledge and combines them: the empirical or inductive and the rational or deductive. Empirical evidence is stressed in fields such as biology or anatomy, while rational evidence helps establish principles in mathematics and physics. Although these methods of inquiry were not unknown in medieval times, for they built off the teachings of Plato and Aristotle, "the success of the scientific method in modern times arose from the skillful synchronization of induction and deduction by such giants as Leonardo, Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton" (Perry 384).

In fact, many avenues of inquiry served to stimulate scientific study as we understand it today. Renaissance humanists interpreted works by ancient pagans such as Archimedes, Ptolemy and Plato, which questioned the authority of medieval scholastics. Renaissance artists, whose "desire to imitate nature led them to rely on a close observation of nature," inspired in turn great interest in the observance of the natural world. Italian Renaissance merchants were moving goods across seas at an immense rate, and so merchants also inspired scientific inquiry: "Technical problems, such as calculating the tonnage of ships accurately, also served to stimulate scientific activity because they required careful observation and accurate measurements. Then, too, the invention of new instruments and machines, such as the telescope and microscope, often made new scientific discoveries possible" (Spielvogel 326).

Also important to what would later be termed the Scientific Revolution was mathematics. "Nature," claimed Leonardo da Vinci, "is inherently mathematical." Likewise, "Copernicus, Kepler, Galileo, and Newton were all great mathematicians who believed that the secrets of nature were written in the language of mathematics" (Spielvogel 327).

Finally, but not least important, alchemy and the study of Hermetic magic helped steer the new scientific inquiries away from the study of God (theology as propagated by Aquinas and Bellarmine) and toward "the desire to control and dominate the natural world" (Spielvogel 327). And such a desire is precisely what we can see around us today, from iPhones that connect us to the seemingly unlimited amount of information that these phones can download; from the satellites orbiting Earth to the cables running from shore to shore at the bottom of the sea; from the television screens proffering acne-free skin, birth control for women, age-reducing wrinkle cream to the philosophical ethos of Planned Parenthood and the euthanasia clinics of Switzerland -- our global society attempts to control and direct the course of its own life, while it struggles to define its own spiritual significance. Perhaps the spiritual malaise that modern writers such as Walker Percy, Jean-Paul Sartre and Edward Albee expound is a result of the drift away from the study of God to the study of the iPad? Whatever the case may be, there can be no doubt that the science born out of the Italian Renaissance marked the end of the scholastic science of the medieval world and the beginning of the modern science of our world.

The medieval concept of the universe was more mythically and mystically-based than ours. The idea of the Heavens, heavenly spheres, orbs of pure light, Empyrean, God and the angels watching man's activity on Earth was very religious. Like Homer's Greek epics, wherein the gods actively participated in the affairs of men, the Christian conception of men's lives, movement, the Prime Mover, and the Final End, found relief in the idea that God did become Man.

However, with Galileo's telescope, the Heavens suddenly deteriorated (or expanded) into an incomprehensible, limitless universe. Empyrean faded into a highly mathematical model of orbiting spheres. Ptolemy's hierarchic design disappeared into a seemingly random set-up. The magic that was sought to change metal into gold in alchemy, now took the magic out of mystery, and paved the way from the Triune God to the God of our forefathers, who were Deists -- who worshipped a God that had created the universe and set it in motion, but took no part in its activity. Galileo could not find Heaven through his telescope. Perhaps Heaven was not where and what the Church had preached.

It is no surprise to me that the Scientific Revolution arose at the same time Catholics were rejecting the teaching authority of the Catholic Church; both the Protestant Reformation and the Scientific Revolution found roots in the humanism of the Renaissance; alongside one another they led Europe to its cultural Enlightenment, which helped spawn the French Revolution; and following on the heels of this revolution was another, the Industrial Revolution -- and not long after that, here we are. Science as born out of the Italian Renaissance concentrated on explaining what could be seen without the aid of traditional models such as those provided by the Christian Church. Technology has now reached such dizzying heights that it attempts to give us here and now the Empyrean that Galileo's telescope neglected to find. How has it worked? Perhaps that should be the subject of another discussion. All the same, it is interesting to note that modern science is still attempting to explain the mysteries of the universe that in the medieval world were simply accepted on faith as part of the Faith revealed by God. Today, that God is dead (as Nietzsche tells us), and we are left creating new myths of Supermen, whom we adore in droves at the cinemas every year. What does it all mean?

These are interesting points for speculation.

If we look at the reaction to Galileo's article in the Starry Messenger in 1610, we find both approval and condemnation. The Carmelite Foscarini, for example, was in favor of pursuing Galileo's discoveries. The Holy Office, however, condemned the Copernican model as "false and absurd, formally heretical and contrary to Scripture." (Spielvogel 329). Because of the official condemnation, new scientific inquiries, stifled now in Italy, had to be initiated by other Europeans, such as Isaac Newton.

However, if Italy turned away from the Heavens, it turned toward Man. Andreas Vesalius was a Belgian who studied medicine at the University of Padua, where he later became a professor of surgery. Thanks to the artistic strengths of the Italian Renaissance, Vesalius was able to produce a book that dispelled many of the errors expounded by the hitherto authority on anatomy, the ancient Greek physician Galen.

And thanks to Johannes Gutenberg's printing press out of Germany, books could be printed and sold all over Europe, which made it impossible for the Church to quarantine anyone's ideas for very long -- especially those of Copernicus and Galileo.

An example of just how popular the printing press had become by the early 1600s can be found in Cervantes' masterpiece of literature Don Quixote. In the second part of the novel, Quixote finds himself at a printing press which is publishing the exploits of the infamous knight before they have even happened. Quixote is highly perturbed to find himself the victim of such an abuse of printing power. and, sure enough, copies of a false Quixote begin circulating all over Spain to the agitation of the hero.

Despite what cannot be mistaken as anything but a warning by Cervantes, the power of the printing press was unstoppable -- and has only been surpassed by the power of telecommunications today, most notably by the Internet. What would Quixote have to say about the phenomenon of Twitter, I wonder?

Nonetheless, the Italian Renaissance was not strictly concerned with what went on in the Heavens and what went on inside Man. It was also concerned with how man dealt with his fellow man -- especially in war. Some of the greatest architects of fortified dwellings were Renaissance Italians. For example, the famed four hundred-year-old Bassein Fort built under the watchful eye of the colonizing Portuguese on the outskirts of modern-day Mumbai in India, had an Italian as its architect (Parker 13). The design of its bastions helped the fort to withstand several enemy attacks. Only the capitulation of governments allowed the churches and sanctuaries inside to be raided and destroyed. The walls of the amazing fort still stand firm today.

As our century has shown, war is big business. The science of technology in the Italian Renaissance surely helped assist this business. However, such assistance is only one aspect of the Italian Renaissance that helped shaped the coming centuries. Perhaps what is most significant remains that invention of the "Father of Astronomy" Galileo, whose pointing of a Flemish-design magnifying glass at the sky served to reshape man's sense of place and self, especially with regard to God and the universe. Galileo excited an interest in an alternative way of thinking -- in an alternative model of our world. This alternative model opened the doors to an alternative way of living.

But what have been the effects?

If Ben Stein is to be believed, the current academic world is just as inimical to the idea of medieval scholastics as medieval scholastics, with its geocentric vision, was inimical to heliocentrism and the reduction of God's Divine Word. In his 2008 film Expelled: No Intelligence Allowed, Stein gives us a number of examples of professors who were marginalized in academia precisely for asserting a hierarchical, mythical vision of the universe in which a Creator plays a role. Is this ironic? Or simply a matter of course?

Solange Hertz says of heliocentrism that it warped the philosophical viewpoint of man. It made man a random being on a random rock in an utterly random and accidental universe. It also, she explains, disconnected his reason from his senses. For example, whereas in a geocentric model, any man can look up and see the sun moving across the sky as though circling the earth; in a heliocentric model, man must dissociate what he sees with what he "knows" -- that the sun is not moving, but rather the earth. In terms of philosophy, this dislocation of the senses from reality played a major role in the ideas of French philosopher Rene Descartes and German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Kant virtually asked the question, "How can you know what is real?" And the answer seemed to be, "You can't."

Perhaps it is for reasons such as these that Edward Albee's 2001 play the Goat, or Who is Sylvia? was subtitled: Notes toward the definition of a tragedy. Perhaps it is an attempt to reach back to the Philosopher so elevated by Aquinas in his Summa Theologica, a voluminous book that attempted to define so much. Perhaps it is an attempt to recognize that which we lack in America today: adequate definition (as opposed to politically correct sentiment). After all, the ancient Greeks had no problem defining the tragic genre in their golden age of theater. Shakespeare at the end of the medieval world and the beginning of the modern age re-defined it just as answers about everything were being called into question. Four hundred years later, Albee seems to feel the absence of anything absolute -- and seems to present in his play the need to find it.

Then again, is Albee of any consequence? More people have logged more hours on YouTube than on any of Albee's plays -- or so I presume.

Interestingly enough, if pop culture is any frame of reference, a recent episode of the animated cartoon for adults South Park showed a futuristic society that had utterly replaced the authority of God with the authority of Science, to such an extent that when anyone wished to curse he or she exclaimed: "Science damn you!" No two guys are better at digging up controversy than Parker and Stone. Perhaps the controversy that made Robert Bellarmine write to Antonio Foscarini in 1615 is not so dead after all.