We continue from the previous post to describe the world according to Aristotle

On earth, Aristotle suggested a hierarchical model he called The Great Chain of Being. It was not only a systematic method of classification, but also a scale of value – the higher an item was in the hierarchy the more it was worth. It gave organic items higher value than inorganic matter; living organisms were placed higher than planets; and within living organisms worms were at the bottom and men at the top. In Aristotle's view, the universe was ultimately perfect, which meant that the Great Chain was also perfect with no waste or duplication – each link contained exactly one species. This left no room for change or development and led to the doctrine of fixed species: if every link is occupied and none is occupied twice, no species can ever move from its original position. To do so would leave one level empty and put two species on another level.

It is easy to see why the Church adapted to Aristotle so willingly and why it eradicated any potential challenge. Aristotle’s philosophy separated the transient, corrupt earth from the perfection of the eternal heavens, and left room for the Divine and the angels beyond the outer spheres. (Some, for instance, speculated that the angels were pushing celestial bodies in their orbits.)

The Great Chain of Being was treated not only as a description of nature, but also as philosophical justification for social immobility; that is the futility of people attempting to change their status and position in society. Man, at the very center of the universe, was the crown of the creation. Christians were superior to every other man, and the Church was assigned to rule. This was a law of nature. This was the way the Church wanted it to remain.

So let's continue with Church’s favourite philosopher, Aristotle :

Aristotle supported the geocentric model in which the earth was the center of a finite spherical universe, and all celestial bodies: the sun, moon, planets and stars circled around it in an eternal, perfectly circular motion, driven by the force of a Prime Mover. According to Aristotle, there were two distinct sets of laws, one for the earth, and the other for heaven. He dismissed Democritus idea of the atom as worthless, and instead believed that everything was made of a combination of four elements: earth, water, air and fire. The combination of these elements in each object determined how fast it would strive to reach the center of the earth – the heavier an object was, the faster it would fall. Aristotle also postulated a fifth element, ether, which he believed to be the main constituent of all heavenly bodies.

When the Church assumed power, the interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures formed the foundation for the science of the Church. However, whenever a new philosophy was adopted, it became an inseparable part of the Holy Teachings, impossible to question or challenge.

No philosopher dominated the Holy Teachings more than the Greek philosopher Aristotle (BC 384–322): the most renowned student of Plato and the teacher of Alexander the Great. His collection of lectures, covering the entire field of knowledge known in the Mediterranean world of his day, spanned over 150 volumes. He developed the art of reasoning and logic, and his biological observations and classification of animals were far ahead of his time. For example, he classified dolphins as mammals, a classification that only in the 19th century was recognized.

Although at first the Church forbade his teachings whether public or private (Council of Paris in 1210) in 1366 he received the Church’s full recognition, and his views became regarded as possessing an almost divine authority. This was ironic as Aristotle himself had used logic and observation to draw his conclusions, and as an advocate of debate and freethinking, he did not believe in blind obedience to authority, but rather that science grew out of curiosity and wonder, to which religious myth gave only provisional satisfaction.

How did the rivalry between the Church and science begin?

It started when the persecuted Christian minority had gained enough power to persecute others.

Priscillian, a Christian theologist, won his place in history for being the first Christian executed by the Christian authorities. In the year 385, shortly after Constantine had changed Rome’s religion to Christianity, Priscillian, with six of his companions, was sentenced to death for heresy: that is, not following the official line of the Church. For centuries to come, his execution set the stage for how the Church would deal with any of those subjects who questioned its teachings.

By the early Middle Ages, the Church, which had continued to consolidate its power, had established itself as the spiritual leader of the “civilized world”, and often as the political and economical superpower, successfully challenging rulers and states.

To strengthen its authority further, the Church positioned itself as the custodian of all truth, which it alone was authorized to expound under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit. It eliminated any challenge to its teachings by giving explicit sanction to officially correct views of nature and scripture; and in 1231 it established the Inquisition to maintain and defend the integrity of the faith, and to examine and proscribe errors and false doctrines. Heretics became the enemy of society.

In the beginning, interpretation of the Sacred Scriptures formed the foundation for the science of the Church. However, whenever a new philosophy was adopted, it became an inseparable part of the Holy Teachings, impossible to question or challenge.

In the outer rim of a 200 billion stars galaxy, a blue planet, earth, is traveling at a staggering speed of over 100,000 kilometers an hour. It would have disappeared in the vastness of space, if it were not for a mysterious and invisible force that keeps it orbiting, for all eternities, round a medium-size yellow sun, 150 million kilometers away.

Every 176 years, four other planets: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune, are lined up on the same side of the sun. This was not known to the ancient astronomers and astrologers, whose picture of the universe did not include Uranus (discovered in 1781) and Neptune (discovered in 1846). This fact, however, inspired the farthest exploration in the history of humankind, when in 1977 two spacecrafts, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2, were launched to reach the aligned planets. The extraordinary photos they beamed back, and the new information they are still sending from the final frontier of our solar system, some 15 billion kilometers from home, have made this exploration a great triumph of science and our understanding of the laws of nature, without which none of this could have been achieved.

These laws of nature: the principles of motion, action and reaction and gravity, are the very laws that started the age of scientific exploration and changed our understanding of nature forever. Although this new worldview did not directly contradict the principles of faith, it did threaten the monopoly the religious authorities enjoyed as the guardians of all knowledge, as declared, for instance, in the Council of Trent (1546):

No one relying on his own judgment and distorting the Sacred Scriptures according to his own conception shall dare to interpret them contrary to that sense which Holy Mother Church, to whom it belongs to judge their true sense and meaning, has held or does hold, or even to interpret them contrary to the unanimous agreement of the Fathers.

This powerful position was not to be given away lightly; so rather than choosing to become the patrons of the sciences and embracing the new discoveries in order to strengthen faith and belief, the Church and its judicial institution, the Inquisition, chose to declare the new worldview heresy and its holders heretics.

The birth of science into this environment still influences our way of thinking nowadays, nearly 500 years later. While only esoteric minorities will not embrace the many improvements that only science could bring (medicine, transportation, communication, to name just a few) many still view the scientific worldview to be a threat to their beliefs. Is it a real threat? Must scientific and religious viewpoints collide, or can there be consistent description of the universe in which each is equally valid?

In this chapter, we will demonstrate that realities in which science and religion coexist are possible. This will position science as the functional model of the world as experienced by our senses, leaving questions about the nature of reality to philosophy, faith and belief. We will start our exploration with a brief introduction to the history of the conflict.