Abstract
Copernicus’s sixteenth century formulation of a heliocentric cosmos, elaborated during the next one hundred and fifty years through the work of Bruno, Kepler, Galileo and Newton, has been considered a turning point not only in astronomy but in the growth of scientific knowledge and in the history of ideas. The shift from belief in the well-ordered cosmos in which the earth occupies the central position to notions of an expanded universe in which man and his familiar world are relegated to an insignificant corner played a paramount role in the process whereby, as Alexandre Koyré put it, “human or at least European minds underwent a deep revolution which changed the very framework and patterns of our thinking.”1 Even while it was still a subject of debate within astronomic coteries, poets such as Donne and Milton intuited the broader social and religious implications of the altered conceptions of the planetary arrangements.
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Notes
Alexandre Koyré, From the Closed World to the Infinite Universe (Harper and Row, New York, 1958), pp. v; 3–4; 273–76; Preserved Smith, Origins of Modern Culture, 1543–1687 (Collier Books, New York, 1962), pp. 33–67; E. A. Burtt, The Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Science (Doubleday, Garden City, 1954), pp. 15–104.
John Donne, `The First Anniversary. An Anatomy of the World,’ quoted in Thomas Kuhn, The Copernican Revolution (Harvard University Press, Cambridge Mass., 1957), p. 194.
Arthur O. Lovejoy, The Great Chain of Being (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1973). Lovejoy suggests that the geocentric model was not altogether supportive of anthropocentric teleology nor flattering to the pride of man; the earth being construed more as a “squalid cellar” (pp. 102ff). Nevertheless, he finds it paradoxical that a worldly orientation rather than a compensatory otherworldliness should have developed in response to the new cosmology. “It was after the earth lost its monopoly that its inhabitants began to find their greatest interest in the general movement of terrestrial events.” p. 143.
See the work of Edward Grant, `Late Medieval Thought, Copernicus and the Scientific Revolution’, Journal of the History of Ideas 23 (1962), 197–226; `Hypotheses in Late Medieval and Early Modern Science’, Daedalus 91 (1962), 599–612; see also Benjamin Nelson’s response, ibid., pp. 612–16.
Edward Rosen, Three Copernican Treatises (Columbia University Press, New York, 1939), pp. 22–33. In connection with this, Rosen quotes Osiander’s epistle to Copernicus of July 1, 1540: “I have always felt about hypotheses that they are not articles of faith but the basis of computation; so that even if they are false it does not matter¡. It would therefore appear to be desirable for you to touch upon this matter somewhat in your introduction. For in this way you would mollify the peripatetics and theologians whose opposition you fear” (pp. 22–3). Osiander, not having succeeded in convincing Copernicus of his position that divine revelation was the only basis of truth, wrote the introduction to De revolutionibus which seeks to cast the Copernican hypothesis within this fictional mold. Nevertheless, from the subsequent opposition to Copernicus, it would seem that Osiander’s strategy to “mollify the peripatetics” was unsuccessful.
In using this concept, I follow the work of Professor Yehuda Elkana on the growth of knowledge. See `The Problem of Knowledge’, Studium Generale 24 (1971), 1426–1439, particularly pp. 1430–1431; also `Scientific and Metaphysical Problems: Euler and
ant’, in R. S. Cohen and M. Wartofsky (eds.), Boston Studies in the Philosophy of cience (D. Reidel, Dordrecht and Boston, 1974) XIV, pp. 277–305, particularly p. 279.
Benjamin Nelson, `The Quest for Certitude and the Books of Scripture, Nature and Conscience’, in Owen Gingerich (ed.), The Nature of Scientific Discovery (Smithsonian Institution Press, Washington, D.C., 1975), pp. 355–71.
This argument was adumbrated in connection with seventeenth century England by Robert K. Merton in 1938. A new edition and preface of this work has been recently published. Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth Century England (Fertig, New York, 1970).
See Benjamin Nelson, op. cit. Also Joseph Needham, The Grand Titration (Allen and Unwin, London, 1969), pp. 14–54, particularly pp. 34–37. Needham’s overemphasis on the relationship of democracy and capitalism on the growth of modern science blurs the boundaries between motivations and legitimation of institutions, a pitfall which we shall try to avoid.
As the penultimate draft of this paper was being completed, the recent article of Professor Andr¨¦ Neher, `Copernicus in the Hebraic Literature from the Sixteenth to the Eighteenth Century’, Journal of the History of Ideas 38 (1977), 211–226, was brought to my attention. Here is not the place to enter into a detailed discussion of his portrayal of Jewish responses to Copernicus. Suffice it to say that Professor Neher’s overemphasis on the positive response to Copernicus leads him to overlook the important issues that were at stake in the conflict between cosmological models. The presentation of reactions to Copernicus as an indicator of `religious tolerance’ leads him to an anachronistic understanding of the material. It is questionable whether Jewish commentators, at least in the earlier period, experienced this controversy in terms of religious tolerance. What is certain is that the situation was far more complex than what Professor Neher would lead us to believe in such statements as “Freedom of thought was an integral part of the Jewish conception of science and the world,” as this paper tries to indicate.
Salo Baron, A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed., Vol. VIII (Columbia University Press, New York, 1958), pp. 160ff.
The classical example of this is the dispute reported in the Babylonian Talmud, Pesahim 94b on the fixity of the spheres vs. the fixity of the constellations in which it is stated that the rabbis conceded to the gentile scholars that it was indeed the constellations which were stationary and the spheres were in rotation. That the rabbis recanted in this matter was later used to suggest that the rabbis made no claims of ultimate truth in the area of astronomy as Maimonides indicates in The Guide to the Perplexed, Part II, Chap. 8 and Part III, Chap. 14. Still later this argument was used to indicate the admissibility of the new cosmology.
Ibid., Part II, Chaps. 19 and 24. For an explication of the classification of science in medieval Jewish philosophy, see the articles of Harry A. Wolfson republished in Isadore Twersky and George Williams (eds.), Studies in the History of Philosophy and Religion (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1973), pp. 493–560. In Christian epistemology following Aquinas and particularly in the thirteenth century, there is a steady erosion of the authority of reason and the averroistic solution of the Double-truth’. This corresponds with the rise of Probabilism and the anti-deterministic trends which expand the domain of faith with the additional consequence of increasing the power of the Church. See the above cited articles of Grant. For an alternate explanation see Maurice De Wulf, An Introduction to Scholastic Philosophy (Dover, New York, 1956), pp. 145–54. For an assessment of the impact of Probabilism on the rise of modern science, see Nelson’s response to Grant in Daedalus 91, 3. In the Jewish community, a similar decline in the authority of rationalism takes place in the wake of the Maimonidean controversies. However, the development and diffusion of Jewish mysticism as an explanatory system, as will be argued below, replaces religious skepticism and uncertainty. This is similar to the effects of the rise of empiricism in Christian Europe, particularly in those areas most affected by the decline of Church authority following the Reformation.
Maharal of Prague, Netivot Olam (London, 1961), p. 60.
David Ganz, Nehmad V’naim (Yesnitz, 1733), p. 9a.
Derek J. de S. Price, `Contra-Copernicus’, in Marshall Clagett, Critical Problems in the History of Science (University of Wisconsin Press, Madison, 1962), p. 216, indicates in regard to the period following Copernicus, during which there was no way of measuring or proving his claims, that it is “no wonder scientists remained skeptical until the new and decisive evidence was forthcoming.”
Joseph Solomon Delmedigo, Sefer Elim (Odessa, 1864), p. 27.
Ibid., pp. 292, 293.
Ibid., p. 304.
This may be compared with the earlier attacks of Hasdai Crescas upon Aristotle. See Harry A. Wolfson, Crescas’ Critique of Aristotle: Problems of Aristotle’s Physics in Jewish and Arabic Philosophy (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1971), pp. 114–127. Also see Shlomo Pinas, `Scholasticism after Thomas Aquinas and the Teachings of Hasdai Crescas and His Predecessors’, Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (Jerusalem, 1967), vol. 1, no. 10, pp. 1–101, particularly pp. 13–51.
Thomas Kuhn, op. cit., p. 195. Amos Funkenstein, The Dialectic Preparation for Scientific Revolutions: On the Role of Hypothetical Reasoning in the Emergence of Copernican Astronomy and Galilean Mechanics’, in Robert Westman (ed.), The Copernican Achievement (University of California Press, Berkeley, Los Angeles, 1975), p. 197ff.
Tobias Katz, Ma’asai Tuviah (Venice, 1707), p. 24a.
Ibid., pp. 44a, 41a.
Clifford Geertz in his study Islam Observed (Chicago University Press, Chicago, 1975) used the concept `scripturalism’ to indicate the literalness with which scriptures are applied as part of the religious reaction to modernization. While the historical conditions under consideration are quite different than those described by Geertz, the concept is, nevertheless, apt.
David Nieto, Hakuzari Hasheni (Jerusalem, 1958), pp. 126–30.
Responsa of the Haham Tsevi, no. 18.
Solomon Basilea, Sefer Emunet Hahamim (Mantua, 1730), author’s introduction, 2b-3b.
See Frank Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass., 1959) and The Religion of Isaac Newton (Oxford Univ. Press, New York, 1974).
Jonathan Eibschütz, Sefer Y’arotD’vash, Part I, pp. 30b-32a.
Jacob Emden, Sidur Bait Ya’akov (Jerusalem, 1973), p. 447.
Jacob Emden, Mitpahat S farim (L’vov, 1870), pp. 52–54.
Jacob Emden, Tefilat Yesharim, pp. 47–57, especially pp. 52–55.
Eliakim Hart, Asarah Ma’amarot (London, 1794), p. 8b.
Ibid., p. 9b.
Ibid., p. 10b.
Ibid., p. 29a.
Pinhas Elijah Hurvitz, Sefer Habrit (Jerusalem, 1960), p. 98ff. Published from 2nd edition.
Ibid., p. 101.
Ibid., p. 102.
Hama’asef (Berlin, 1809), pp. 68–75.
Moses Sopher, Kiddush Hahamah,printed from unpublished manuscript in Poel Hashem (B’nai Brak, 1968), Chap. 1.
Ibid.
Ibid., Chap. 3.
Yaron Ezrahi, Words and Works in the Social Iconography of Scientific Knowledge: A Study in Science as a Cultural System (Jerusalem, 1976).
The sociological implications of Jewish rational propensities as discussed by Weber, Sombart and others and the applicability of concepts such as `worldliness’ to Jewish life, particularly in the period with which this paper is concerned, requires further investigation. See Max Weber, The Sociology of Religion (Beacon Press, Boston, 1967), p. 246ff.
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Levine, H. (1983). Paradise Not Surrendered: Jewish Reactions to Copernicus and the Growth of Modern Science. In: Cohen, R.S., Wartofsky, M.W. (eds) Epistemology, Methodology, and the Social Sciences. Boston Studies in the Philosophy of Science, vol 71. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-017-1458-7_8
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