Did the Condemnation of 1277 Create Modern Science?

Examining a Claim by Pierre Duhem

Historian of science (and physicist) Pierre Duhem (1861-1916) claimed that an official pronouncement by the bishop of Paris led to the birth of modern science. The Condemnation of 1277, argued Duhem, “impressed on scholastic science, in France as well as in England, a new orientation that obliged it to deviate from the Aristotelian tradition at many points… If we must assign a date to the birth of modern science, we would without doubt choose this year 1277.”¹

Recent historians such as Edward Grant have rejected Duhem’s claim as too strong, but they have nonetheless argued that the Condemnation of 1277 led to an intellectual climate supportive of modern science. Christian apologists have seized on these claims as evidence that the Church stimulated the development of science.²

What was the Condemnation of 1277?  What is the reasoning behind Duhem’s claim, and does it have any validity?

What was the Condemnation of 1277?

From the eleventh through the thirteenth centuries Europe was discovering the writings of Aristotle. In the 1150s, Latin translations of Aristotle started becoming widely available in libraries.

The explanatory power of Aristotle’s philosophical system was impressive, always starting from common sense observations, and then proceeding beyond them to such things as the cause of falling objects, the movement of the celestial bodies, the development of plants and animals, and the functions of their parts. Aristotle also provided an explanation of logical thought, a method for the discovery of abstract truths, an account of the fundamental nature of physical substances, and discussions of aspects of human nature (such as our need for ethics, art, and politics).

Aristotle’s ideas seemed generally consistent with Christianity; however, Aristotle's overall attitude toward the physical world, together with his positive view of human nature, went strongly against the centuries-dominant otherworldliness of the Church.

Moreover, on a number of issues, Aristotle’s writings explicitly contradicted official Church doctrine. For example, Aristotle held that:

• The world has always existed; it is eternal.

• There is no personal immortality; when a man dies, his personal soul ceases to exist.

• A void or vacuum (a place with absolutely nothing in it) cannot exist. (This implied that not even God can create a void.)

• There is and can only be one universe, with the earth at the center. (This implied that not even God can create multiple universes.)

These clashes with Christian doctrine alarmed many officials, since Aristotle’s writings were becoming popular in the universities. Church officials introduced a series of bans on the study of Aristotle, with the conflict reaching its peak during the thirteenth century at the University of Paris .

In 1210, the Parisian Synod (a council of bishops) issued a decree that “no lectures are to be held in Paris either publicly or privately using Aristotle’s books on natural philosophy or the commentaries, and we forbid all this under pain of excommunication.”³

In 1215, this ban was renewed. In 1231, Pope Gregory IX issued another renewal of the ban, specifying that Aristotle’s books on natural philosophy were not to be used until they had been “examined and purged of all suspected error.”⁴

But these bans were apparently disregarded, and by the 1240s, a number of teachers were lecturing on Aristotle’s works. In spite of Pope Gregory’s ban, no one created a purged version of Aristotle. During the time of these bans, Aristotle’s works were openly studied at other universities such as Oxford.

Interest in Aristotle continued unabated. Furthermore, in 1255 Aristotle’s writings on natural philosophy became required reading for all faculty of arts students at the University of Paris.

Why were these bans so ineffective? Aristotle’s philosophic system had such explanatory power, and most of Aristotle’s ideas seemed like they could be reconciled with official Church doctrine.

Apparently in frustration from the failures of these bans, in January 1277 Pope John XXII wrote to Bishop Tempier of Paris requesting investigations of rumors of heresy.  Soon after this, Tempier issued his Condemnation of 1277. Instead of banning works of Aristotle, this condemnation identified a list of 219 unacceptable propositions.

Many of these propositions put limits on God’s absolute power, for example:

(Prop. 21) That nothing happens by chance, but all things occur from necessity…

(Prop. 34) That the first cause [God] could not make several worlds.

(Prop. 49) That God could not move the heavens [or world] with a rectilinear motion; and the reason is that a vacuum would remain.

(Prop. 140) That to make an accident [a quality] exist without a subject [a thing having that quality] is an impossible argument that implies a contradiction.

(Prop. 141) That God cannot make an accident exist without a subject, nor make several dimensions exist simultaneously [in the same place]⁵

(Prop.150) That on any question, a man ought not to be satisfied with certitude based upon authority.⁶

Propositions such as 140 and 141 were included because Aristotle’s metaphysics denied the possibility of the miraculous sacrament of the Eucharist. During this sacrament, the Church asserted that the substances of the bread and wine actually become the substances of the body and blood of Jesus Christ, while the qualities of the bread and wine (e.g. color, taste) stay unchanged.

Many propositions were included because the authorities wanted everyone to concede that God could do anything whatsoever, short of an explicit contradiction (and even those dealing with “accidents” and “subjects” seem to call for accepting explicit contradictions.)

Pierre Duhem’s Argument

Historians of science have often pointed out how dogmatic adherence to Aristotle’s cosmology held back the development of better ideas, such as the heliocentric theory advocated by Copernicus in the 1500s (in which the earth moves around the sun).

Pierre Duhem argued that this was just as true in the thirteenth century as in the sixteenth.

With the banned article 49 it was forbidden to consider the view “that God could not move the heavens [or world] with a rectilinear motion.” In other worlds, people had to accept that God could move the earth away from the center of the universe if He wanted to. According to Edward Grant, after 1277 scholastic natural philosophers now routinely accepted this point.⁷ Grant explained:

“By emphasizing God’s absolute power to do anything short of a logical contradiction, the articles condemned in 1277 had a curious, and probably unintended effect: they encouraged speculation about natural impossibilities in the Aristotelian world system, which were often treated as hypothetical possibilities.”⁸ [emphasis mine]

Historians such as Duhem and Grant implied that, now that the earth could move, this opened the gateway for Copernicus to suggest that the earth rotates and orbits the sun. On its face, this argument seems plausible.

Unintended Effects

In the quotation from Grant above, note the phrase “probably unintended effect.” The purpose of the Condemnation of 1277 was to stomp out any thought not strictly in accord with Church doctrine, including its various miracles such as the transformation in the Eucharist. To the extent that this condemnation was actually followed, it would have led to complete intellectual stagnation.

Indeed, well over two centuries elapsed between 1277 and Copernicus’ consideration of a moving earth. In the decades immediately after 1277, there were no significant scientific advances in cosmology or any related field. Contrary to Duhem’s claim, there was no “birth of modern science” at this time.

Virtually all cosmological “reasoning” between 1277 and 1500 centered on thought experiments that were completely disconnected from reality. Such speculations addressed whether God could create a void, or whether He could create many different worlds, each with its own earth at the center. All of these conceptions were completely cut off from any experimental, observational, or even mathematical approach.

During this period, the two main fields in which there were signs of scientific progress were optics (especially the study of the rainbow) and the mathematics of motion. Both of these occurred in Oxford, well outside the purview of the Condemnation of 1277. In Oxford of the early 1200s, Robert Grosseteste was stimulated by various Greek and Arabic sources to initiate a European tradition of optical studies involving mathematics and experimentation. His work was then expanded upon by his student Roger Bacon, and their work eventually led to Theodoric of Frieberg’s complete explanation of the rainbow around 1300. In the fourteenth century at Oxford, a group now known as the “Oxford Calculators” developed (purely mathematically) the Mean Speed Theorem, which was later used by Galileo in reference to free fall.

When, in the early 1500s, Copernicus de-centered the earth in his astronomy, he was taking a courageous step forward. He was challenging a well-established and universally-held belief about the universe. Had the ground been at least partially prepared for this step by the unintended effect of a few of the condemned propositions of 1277? This is possible.

But when we examine any particular effect (or possible effect) of the Condemnation of 1277, we must bear in mind the meaning of the condemnation as a whole. Into an intellectual environment in which non-Christian Aristotelian ideas were threatening the ideological status quo, Bishop Tempier declared, in effect, “I forbid you to think about these ideas! I forbid you to use your minds on these issues! You must defer to the authority of the Church!” Recall the banned proposition number 150: “That on any question, a man ought not to be satisfied with certitude based upon authority.”

The Condemnation of 1277, far from being the birth of modern science, was in actuality a desperate attack on the human mind itself.

---

Recommended Reading:

Edward Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts (Cambridge University Press, 1996). In spite of my disagreements with Grant on the effects of the Condemnation of 1277, I consider his book an extremely well-written overview.

Jason Gooch, “The Effects of the Condemnation of 1277,” The Hilltop Review: Vol 2: Iss. 1, April 2006, Article 6.

1. Pierre Duhem, Etudes sur Leonard de Vinci, 3 vols. (Paris: Hermann, 1906-1913), Vol. 1, p. 412, quoted in Jason Gooch, “The Effects of the Condemnation of 1277,” The Hilltop Review: Vol 2: Iss. 1, April 2006, Article 6.

2. See the writings of Stanley Jaki and Thomas Woods. For example, Woods claims that “the Condemnations of 1277 … had a positive effect on the development of science.” (Thomas Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization (Washington, DC: Regnery, 2005), p. 91.

3. Quoted in Edward Grant, A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 143.

4. David C. Lindberg, The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450. 2nd ed. (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2007), p. 227.

5. Quoted in Edward Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 78.

6. Quoted in Edward Grant, A History of Natural Philosophy: From the Ancient World to the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2007), p. 245.

7. Edward Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 79.

8. Edward Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts (Cambridge University Press, 1996), p. 81.