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Medieval Lessons for the Modern Science/Religion Debate

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Robert Grosseteste and the pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages

Part of the book series: Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind ((SHPM,volume 18))

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Abstract

We take Grosseteste’s scientific practices and works, together with their intellectual and theological milieu, as a ‘distant mirror’ in which to calibrate the anxious and fraught debates around the relation of science and religion today. Urging that we are missing a cultural teleological and ethical narrative in support of science, we look at the deeper theological and philosophical resources that Grosseteste drew on, and identify five that, after suitable transformation, can be applied in our time to rethink what science is for, and how we might guide its application: (1) the disruption of damaging myths, (2) the long history of science, (3) a cultural narrative for science, (4) a unified vision and (5) a relational and incarnational metaphysics.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Aristotle, De sensu et sensatu available in translation at http://classics.mit.edu/Aristotle/sense.html

  2. 2.

    Grosseteste’s access to and knowledge of this seminal work of Bede is discussed in (Southern 1986).

  3. 3.

    See the chapter on the Hexaemeron by Giles Gasper in part IV this volume for Grosseteste’s views on the all-encompassing canvas of Scripture.

  4. 4.

    We recall Paul’s categories in 1 Cor. 1: 7.

  5. 5.

    This may be an abbreviation of a five-step ‘ladder of intelligence’ detailed by Isaac of Stella in his Sermon 4 on the Feast of All Saints (1977): ‘For the soul too, while on pilgrimage in the world of its body, there are five steps towards wisdom: sense-perception, imagination, reason, intelligence and understanding.’

  6. 6.

    Trans. Sigbjørn Sønnesyn (personal communication); Aristotle’s Post. An. II.19 is also in the background here, where the emergence of general understanding from particulars of sense-perception is described: ‘It is like a rout in battle stopped by first one man making a stand and then another, until the original formation has been restored’.

  7. 7.

    Remarkably, the visual perception of depth in materials beneath a translucent surface, is currently an active topic in vision research, see e.g. (Motoyoshi 2010) and the chapter by Hannah Smithson (Part I this volume).

  8. 8.

    This special sort of ‘seeing’ which is Wisdom- and also the great metaphor for scientific insight- is also picked up strongly by Oxford theologian and philosopher Paul Fiddes (2014).

  9. 9.

    See for example (Bowen and Viltberg 2009).

  10. 10.

    Lucretius De rerum natura.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Durham University, Durham, UK

    Tom McLeish

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  1. Tom McLeish
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Correspondence to Tom McLeish .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Bishop Grosseteste University, Lincoln, UK

    Jack P. Cunningham

  2. University of Lincoln, Lincoln, UK

    Mark Hocknull

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McLeish, T. (2016). Medieval Lessons for the Modern Science/Religion Debate. In: Cunningham, J.P., Hocknull, M. (eds) Robert Grosseteste and the pursuit of Religious and Scientific Learning in the Middle Ages. Studies in the History of Philosophy of Mind, vol 18. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33468-4_15

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-33468-4_15

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