There’s no quicker way to turn me
grouchy than to start going on about “the conflict between science
and religion.” There have certainly been instances of conflict
between scientists and religious believers, but to say that there is
“a conflict,” period, is untenable.
People who ride that particular hobby
horse can point to fundamentalist Christians who deny various aspects
of evolutionary and geological science, but fundamentalist Christians
are not the whole of “religion” and Darwinism is not the whole of
“science.” Since the Catholic Church is at worst (from the
science-as-religion point of view) something of a fence-sitter about
evolution, the one argument they rely on is “Galileo!” In my
experience the attempt to respond to that by citing the long history
of the involvement of Catholics, lay and clerical, in science, and
the absence of any institutional opposition to it, provokes the
rejoinder “But—Galileo!”
One in fifty would probably be a
generous estimate of the number of these folks who would even
recognize the name Albertus Magnus, or Alfred the Great, a medieval
Dominican who made very significant contributions to the development
of the scientific method. This isn’t Catholic propaganda--let’s
look at what a couple of secular sources say.
Here is the Stanford
Encyclopedia of Philosophy:
In the first
section of his Commentary on Aristotle’s Physics Albertus
Magnus discusses the possibility of the study of natural science. If
science could only study particulars, Albert argues, then there would
be no science in the sense of the demonstration of necessary causes
because there would be as many sciences as there are particulars. But
particulars, Albert goes on to point out, belong to definite kinds
(species) and these can be studied because their causes can be
demonstrated. Species have common attributes and a determined
subject of which the attributes can be determined with necessity.
Thus science is possible.
And this
conviction about science being possible, as opposed to the Platonic
and Neoplatonic tendency to discount the world of particular reality,
and its presumed unaccountable changeableness, was not just a
theoretical position on Albert’s part. He devotes a great deal of
his time and attention to the actual empirical study of the
relationships between attributes and natural subjects. Furthermore,
he orders such study into what today would be called the “natural
sciences”. Besides the study of the heavens and the earth and
generation and corruption that he found in Aristotle, he adds the
study of meteors, the mineral, animal, and vegetable kingdoms.
Here is the Encyclopedia
Brittanica:
Albertus’ works
represent the entire body of European knowledge of his time not only
in theology but also in philosophy and the natural sciences. His
importance for medieval science essentially consists in his bringing
Aristotelianism to the fore against reactionary tendencies in
contemporary theology. On the other hand, without feeling any
discrepancy in it, he also gave the widest latitude to Neoplatonic
speculation, which was continued by Ulrich of Strasbourg and by the
German mystics of the 14th century. It was by his writings on the
natural sciences, however, that he exercised the greatest influence.
Albertus must be regarded as unique in his time for having made
accessible and available the Aristotelian knowledge of nature and for
having enriched it by his own observations in all branches of the
natural sciences. A preeminent place in the history of science is
accorded to him because of this achievement [My
emphasis.]
Both
the above links will take you to biographies of the saint, so I will
give only the basics here: he was born around the beginning of the
13th
century and died toward the end of it, approximately eighty years
later. He was primarily an academic, holding among other positions
the Chair of Philosophy at the University of Paris. Thomas Aquinas
was his student, and the two were friends, not surprisingly since
they are obviously kindred spirits, at least in the intellectual
realm. He served as Provincial of the Dominicans in Germany for three
years, from 1254 to 1257. He was made bishop of Regensburg in 1260
but apparently felt that this was not the role for him, and resigned
it after three years. He was obliged to outlive his student and
friend when St. Thomas died In 1274. Albert declared that “the
light of the Church had been extinguished.”
He
wrote a truly prodigious amount, having set himself the task of
writing down more or less everything that was known at the time, and
apparently making a pretty good job of it. He carried out physical
investigations that were truly experimental science in the sense that
we know it. And his abilities and achievement were honored during his
life. But as I noted when discussing Newman here a few weeks ago, to
be a great man and to be a saint are hardly the same thing. In the
hour or two that I’ve spent looking around for information about
him on the internet, I haven’t turned up much that discussed his
personal qualities. I am intrigued by the description of his last
years in the Catholic
Encyclopedia:
Something of his old vigour and spirit returned in 1277 when it was
announced that Stephen Tempier and others wished to condemn the
writings of St. Thomas, on the plea that they were too favourable to
the unbelieving philosophers, and he journeyed to Paris to defend the
memory of his disciple. Some time after 1278 (in which year he drew
up his testament) he suffered a lapse of memory; his strong mind
gradually became clouded; his body, weakened by vigils, austerities,
and manifold labours, sank under the weight of years.
And he died in
Cologne in 1280. What sort of purgation might he have undergone in
those two years? To have lived so long by his intellect, and then to
lose it, must have been a greater trial even than the decline of his
body. “Vigils, austerities, and manifold labours” certainly
indicate a life of severe discipline. When he was bishop of
Regensburg he declined the use of a horse, and got about his diocese
on foot.
He
was beatified in 1622 but not canonized until 1931. Considering that
Aquinas was canonized within roughly fifty years of his death, why
the long delay for Albert even to be beatified, and then another
three hundred years before canonization, a total span of roughly six
and a half centuries
between death and canonization? Well,
a book which I found on Google Books, A
Companion to St. Albert the Great,
suggests it was
...perhaps
because [his] name had been associated with false accusations of
sorcery, necromancy, and magic, rooted in suspect or spurious works
attributed to him in the later Middle Ages. That Peter of Prussia,
Albert’s 15th
century biographer, devotes a great deal of energy to defend him
against these charges indicates their gravity.
At any rate, he
was finally canonized, and declared a Doctor of the Church, and named
as the patron saint of scientists. And that job must surely involve
listening to the prayers of non-scientists engaged in the war against
the war between science and religion.
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| Maclin couldn't find many good pictures of Albertus Magnus, but thankfully my daughter and husband had their picture taken with him. |
Maclin Horton is the proprietor of his own blog Light on Dark Water from which sprang this series. You might want to check out the current series there, 52 Movies or last year's 52 Authors. In this series he has written about St Henrik, St. John Fisher, St Ansgar, St. Mary of Egypt, Bl. John Henry Newman, and St. John Kemble.
Great picture!
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