Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes: Conclusion

Conclusion: More Missing Footnotes

 All of this is to say one simple thing: both science and theology are internally diverse practices and concepts; one can oppose them, or join them together in the historical record in general ways only by hollowing both out.  As I have attempted to demonstrate, it was often not the separation of science and religion, but their occasional complete fusion that provided problems. At any rate their relationship, and indeed the very nature of their identities, has to take into detailed consideration of the very specific historical locales in which either are situated and assumed to appear.  We all have “maps” of concepts and practices based on expectations very specific to our own time and location.  Theology and science, or religion and science, can certainly conflict.  But we must then ask: whose theology?  Which science?

                  

Of course, a lot has been left out of our presentation.  Originally I had planned to include a detailed look at the Galileo affair to show how it can only disrupt any facile “the war of science and Christianity” narrative, but this has been done many times elsewhere for those interested.[1]  As I hope is now clear, history is much more complex than we are often taught.  Indeed, it has been quite some time since any reputable historian of science has spoken in terms of “warfare” between science and religion.  A question then may have been brewing in the back of your minds (that is, if you have not been totally overwhelmed by the amount of information I’ve tried to squeeze in here): why, then, does the myth persist?  There are many answers to this, I think, including the dominance of extreme voices on all sides; but I want to propose one answer to conclude, and indeed it is the one we opened with: illicit pictures of the past hold us captive. 

Though we live in an age that vaunts its ”scientific” prowess, we are all still, it seems, just as susceptible to the lazy course of prejudices as any other age.  Of course, no one has time to investigate everything, especially not the hordes of notes that mill about at the bottom of Draper and White’s works on the history of warfare.  But specialists do; yet their work hardly reaches the masses.  This is unfortunate, since academics are not above reproach, and our popular histories are so often lopsided.  We have seen several examples of this already.  To close with one more we turn to some remarkable detective work reminiscent of what we opened with regarding the flat earth. Edward Rosen has traced down another missing footnote.  I end with the tale of this detective work to elaborate once again, much as we opened our paper with, images of warfare and ignorance that summarize history are often capturing our attention more than the actual histories themselves.

Our perceptions of the Galileo affair often skew our interpretations of pre-Galilean Copernicanism and its reception by theologians (which was, as we might imagine from this essay, various).  Edward Rosen noticed that in Bertrand Russell’s immensely popular History of Western Philosophy Russell puts a very anti-Copernican phrase into the mouth of Calvin[2]: “Who will venture to place the authority of Copernicus above that of the Holy Spirit?”  Rosen, who is an expert on the reception of Copernican theory, was quite interested in this juicy quote.  Now, Russell’s book was originally based on lectures, and so Russell up front apologizes and says that he has not tracked all his sources down for citation.  This is what happened here.  As Russell did note, however, he was “quite indebted” to Andrew Dixon White.  Thus Rosen turn to this work next to find the source for this quotable Calvin.  When he compared how a similar quote appeared in a later work from White, to the one in Russell, Rosen concluded “we shall feel fully justified that it was from White, not Calvin, that Russell took the anti-Copernican exclamation that interests us.”[3]  White himself got the quote from one F.W. Farrer, but from there the trail again goes cold, as Farrer does not cite Calvin’s works.  In fact, as his journey continued, Rosen came to the conclusion that not only did Calvin never utter this sentence, looking over the entirety of Calvin’s works, Calvin had most likely never even heard of Copernicus.  “What was Calvin’s attitude toward Copernicus?  Never having heard of him, Calvin had no attitude towards Copernicus.”[4]  And yet, in addition to Russell, Rosen notes nine other prominent historians had used this phantom quote to push the Warfare agenda.  Indeed, if you walk into a Powell’s bookstore today, you will still see Russell’s work in the “recommended reads” section despite its age.

Alfred North Whitehead, Russell’s friend and co-publisher with him of a work on mathematics called the Principia Mathematica, yet who was much friendlier to Christianity, once argued that: “When we consider what religion is for mankind, and what science is, it is no exaggeration to say that the future course of history depends upon the decision of this generation as to the relations between them.”[5]  It seems that all too often the decision has already been made, and afterward, the history is written.  But if we expose the myths upon which we hang our most cherished prejudices in this area, perhaps we can begin to move forward, off of the well-worn paths and missing footnotes that lead, often quite literally, to nowhere.

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[1] Cf. Brooke and Cantor, Reconstructing Nature, 106-141; William R. Shea, “Galileo and the Church,” in God and Nature, 114-136; Maurice O. Finnocchiaro, “Myth 8: That Galileo Was Imprisoned and Tortured for Advocating Copernicanism,” in Galileo Goes to Jail, 68-79.

[2] Edward Rosen, “Calvin’s Attitude Toward Copernicus,” in Copernicus and His Successors (London: Hambledon Press, 1995), 161-173.

[3] Ibid., 163.

[4] Ibid., 171.

[5] Alfred North Whitehead, quoted in Conor Cunningham, Darwin’s Pious Idea, 280.