This page will be a working site of my magnum opus, currently under construction, and is representative of my thinking. In this work will be scrutiny of a bewildering fact that the scientific revolution took place in Western Europe and nowhere else at any time. Why did it happen there? Why then? Why at all? There existed in Western Europe a unique constellation of circumstances whose consequence was the invention of science; not just the clever innovations of some extraordinary devices but the invention of a widespread practice established on the basis of a particular point of view of physical reality. The practice is known as the critical method or the scientific method. The point of view is that the universe was created. 

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The constellation of circumstances primarily is the presence and influence of the Christian church. And I intend to demonstrate that were it not for the influence and presence of Christianity there would not have been science. The rudiments of the critical method are ultimately grounded on presuppositions that are clearly non-Greek. The presuppositions are plainly Biblical. That science did not develop in the Eastern Roman Empire (Byzantium), nor out of Islam deserves additional explanation, such as devoting a chapter for each. Anyone can trace the beginnings of Christianity from the book in the Bible, the Acts of the Apostles by Luke. Churches were established within the Roman Empire and were a sometimes-persecuted minority among the pagans. The emperor Constantine, a Christian, legalized Christianity in the fourth century. Christianity became accepted and then venerated, and paganism was reduced to a distinct minority. The Roman Empire was vast and encircled the Mediterranean Sea and differences within it were large. The eastern side of the empire favored the use of the Greek language whereas the western side spoke Latin. Constantine saw the usefulness of moving the capitol of the empire to Byzantine and renamed it Constantinople. Division of the empire deepened and included division of east from west within the church. Although it took centuries, the empire in the west began to be diluted by infiltration of the culture by the Germans, the barbarians east of the Rhine and north of the Danube. Changes in Roman life were gradual but eventually Germanic presence in the ruling class became common place. In time means of taxation withered and support of the military was undermined and then disappeared. In Gaul, Italy, and Iberia, rule was established by the Franks, Visigoths, Ostrogoths, and Lombards. Christianity survived from the empire in the monasteries and churches. And the church prevailed in the conversion of the Franks to the Christian faith from their Arian heresy. All other Germanic groups came under the abiding presence of Christianity such that Christianity endured in Western Europe as the Roman Catholic Church. There were established cathedral schools for the sake of educating the clergy. Charlemagne mandated these schools and they along with the monasteries became the primary means of education. About the years 1100 to 1200 manuscripts from Islamic occupied lands, Spain, Sicily, and Arabia, and Byzantium began arriving to these schools and monasteries in Europe. The manuscripts were mostly written in Arabic and Western Europeans set about making translations into Latin. Arabia had translated into Arabic virtually everything available from the ancient Greek culture. Some manuscripts, such as those from Byzantium, were in Greek. Over the time of one or two centuries, as Europeans discovered the wealth of wisdom of ancient Greece and of Rome the cathedral schools and monasteries grew. European society regarded as completely acceptable the life of learning. The monasteries and cathedral schools became universities, something never before seen anywhere in the world. And study of these translations changed the curricula of schools as scholars undertook to absorb the knowledge of Aristotle, Galen, and other ancient Greeks. The students were voraciously curious, and believed in the virtue of what they were doing.

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But there arose a rift, a difficulty. Europe was Christian, the universities were led by Christian clergy, and they held to the precepts of the Bible. Aristotle and Plato, however profound and sagacious their thinking, were idolaters and followed definitely non-Christian presuppositions, most especially they accepted that the world was eternal and not created. A Catholic academic, in his Scholasticism, was in the position of sincerely trusting what the Bible says about creation and yet conducting discourse using Aristotelian logic, employing Aristotle's four kinds of causes, and invoking Aristotle's concepts of physics. Apparently, Aristotle had provided the most universal outlook of the world of all the ancient Greeks, and he was closely followed. There occurred the Condemnations of 1277 when Etienne Tempier at the University of Paris on the recommendation of Pope John XXI drew up a number of articles of objection to the thinking of Aristotle as were being taught. It is a matter of some debate as to the effectiveness of these Condemnations and as to whether or not they were followed. However, whatever is the case, that they were postulated at all is evidence that objections to the thinking of Aristotle derived from the Biblical perspective were extant. During the medieval era there were a number of thinkers, John Duns Scotus, Jean Buridan, and William of Occam, who are associated with Voluntarist Theology. This, among other things, is the idea that the God of the Bible is answerable only to His own will. The Almighty God can and did create the world out of His own choosing and was not and is not confined in any way by preordained principles or ratiocinations. He is not limited by what we humans think nor by the so-called laws of His created universe. This then provides justification for the use of experiment since we often do not know exactly what the Almighty has done or is doing with His creation. The ancient Greeks, such as Aristotle who adhered to an eternal world and did not hold for the idea of creation, provided a rationale of how physics operated based upon a few fundamental notions according to what seemed reasonable from experience. For him there were four earthly elements: earth, air, fire, and water that behaved according to the four kinds of causes that he devised: material cause, formal cause, efficient cause, and final cause. The earth was at the center of the universe and all the celestial bodies moved around the earth in perfectly circular motion and were made of the fifth element ether. Aristotle did provide a more comprehensive depiction of the world than any other of the ancient Greeks which may explain his appeal. Aristotle's thinking was coupled with that of the astronomer Ptolemy who provided a means of predicting the motion of celestial bodies: the sun, moon, planets, and stars by a system of cycles and epicycles with the earth at the center. Together they ingeniously explained the universe and they among other ancient Greeks were assimilated by the medieval scholars of, at first, the cathedral schools and monasteries and, then later, the universities as the appetite for learning swelled these centers of learning until they evolved into universities, a unique and unprecedented institution in all the world. 

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The intellectual history of the critical method may have begun with the Condemnations of 1277 or with the theological voluntarism of Jean Buridan, John duns Scotus, or William of Occam. Perhaps not until Francis Bacon espoused his inductive method did science begin. Histories of the scientific revolution most often start with the Polish astronomer Nichlous Copernicus in that he formulated a radical revision for the construction of the solar system (with the sun at the center of the solar system) which, although new and unfamiliar, explained all the data with equal sufficiency (and greater efficiency) as that of Ptolemy, the orthodox and well-established framework. Since this is a workspace, and what I have written is an extremely incomplete and rough early draft, this juncture is the area most needing research. At present, I am deep into Michael Foster, a very obscure and, I think, important philosopher. As it turns out, in the final scene (late 19th century), Aristotle was completely rejected when in the earliest days of medieval Europe, he was everyone's darling. I am stopping here for now and will continue construction on this work site.

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