The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science

I love arguments that cause you to look differently at histories you are more or less familiar with.  Here is a gem from the opening of Peter Harrison's The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science:

"From quite early in the Christian era, Patristic writers had commented on the unique intellectual capacities of our first father, on the vast extent of his knowledge, and on the magnitude of his losses at the Fall. ... During the seventeenth century this myth assumed a particular importance ... It is no exaggeration to say that this dogma dominated the theological agenda and became a crucial point of reference in both social and intellectual discussions. ... Differences between competing strategies for the advancement of knowledge put forward during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries can be accounted for largely in terms of different assessments of the Fall and of its impact on the human mind.

The early modern preoccupation with sin meant that in the realm of epistemology error was often equated with sinfulness, and the human propensity to invest false claims with the character of truth was attributed to Adam's lapse.  Considerations such as these explain why philosophers of the seventeenth century tend to be preoccupied with error and its prevention, and commonly assume that avoidance of error is not merely a necessary condition for knowledge, it is in fact sufficient for it.

... The various solutions offered to the problem of knowledge are related to assessments of exactly what physical and cognitive depredations were suffered by the human race as a consequence of Adam's original infraction. ... Those who regarded the Fall as a relatively minor event were generally far more optimistic about the possibility of constructing a complete and certain science than those for whom the Fall was an unmitigated catastrophe.  As will become apparent, the contrasting experimental, speculative, and illuminative solutions to the early modern problem of knowledge were informed by varying conceptions of the nature and severity of the fall.

 To express it in more familiar (but historically more problematic) terms, advocates of 'rationalism' and 'empiricism' largely fall out along lines related to an underlying theological anthropology.

One event that led to a renewed interest in the human condition and its inherent fallibility was the Protestant Reformation and the resurgence of Augustinian thought that accompanied it.  The reformers' focus on human depravity, originally articulated in the context of a particular view of justification, was also to set the agenda for the epistemological debates of the following two centuries.

In general, those influenced by the anthropology of Luther and Calvin were to adopt the position of unmitigated skepticism characteristic of empiricism and the experimental philosophy.  Those who took a more positive view of human nature were more inclined to assert the reliability of human reason, the possibility of a priori knowledge, and the perfectibility of the sciences.  

To a degree, then, the methodological prescriptions offered by philosophers in the seventeenth century mirror their confessional allegiances.  Hence, the Catholic Descartes held fast to a relatively optimistic Thomist account of human nature and aspired to attain, in his own words, a 'perfect knowledge of all things that mankind is capable of knowing.'  By way of contrast, Francis Bacon, raised as he was in a Calvinist environment, thought that knowledge would be accumulated gradually and only with meticulous care.

These confessional correlations are, admittedly, far from perfect, partly because of the emergence of a Protestant scholasticism that reverted to the optimistic Thomist/Aristotelian view of knowledge and human nature, and partly because early modern Catholicism witnessed its own Augustinian revival, most conspicuously in the Jansenist movement that exercised such a profound influence over Blais Pascale and Antoine Arnauld.  Nevertheless, it is possible to establish significant links between particular thinkers' commitments in the sphere of theological anthropology and their methodological prescriptions in the realm of the sciences.

Following directly from this point, the trajectories of the major philosophical projects of the seventeenth century can be understood to some extent as developments of different aspects of Augustinianism." (Quote ranges from 3-8)