The point in time that we are concerned with regarding the emergence of a modern science is leading up to and after
1,000. It is really worldview that is the important thing here, not stability. Stability affected worldview as the first phase of migration began about 300 AD or so. These people were not Christian, or even very civilized, so where ever they
went and settled and fought worldview suffered. When the later Christian kingdoms fought with each other it was largely a Christian world.

We are now at Babylon and I have a tendency to drift off topic. This is Stacy’s series and if you read it through to the end you will still be able to disagree.

No, I take your point that in Western Europe, since the fall of Rome, there was less stability. I'm not convinced there was insufficient stability for science to develop, particularly when we look at the literate classes, generally monks in fortresses of monasteries.

But the point is well taken, at least for the sake of argument, which is why, in the same paragraph I asked about the eastern Empire that remained stable and Christian, at least when compared to China, Egypt, Babylon and so on. All this to say that it seems the evidence is inconclusive at best that the missing piece to allow science to develop was the Christian worldview. Byzantium seems to have all the missing pieces, yet science was stillborn there.

I will stop here with this one. This one illustrates my
point. To begin to understand by automatically saying “No not really” instead of What do you mean? inhibits any understanding.

The context is Christianity and a combox is not a history
book or a lecture it is a conversation.

Since the scientific method was developed in Western Europe and your question was why it didn’t develop sooner that it did, I restricted my comments to that place and question. Stacy is covering other cultures and places better than I could attempt to do.

Compared with the previous centuries, Christianity reached it’s height of stability and acceptance with Emperor Constantine (d 337 AD). Christianity finally had reached acceptance to the point of protection by
law, Roman law. An era of great turmoil erupted after that when the Barbarian invasion began. The Empire also withdrew it’s protection from Britain.

This invasion I believe was the single most important
factor in the decline of a Christian worldview at that time. It took conversion to Christianity and a major event like the establishment of the Carolingian Empire to see it’s revival.

This story has to unfold over many centuries, and it is not finished yet unless you have studied Fr. Jaki.

If it is not legitimate to comment unless and until we have studied Fr. Jaki, then Strange Notions was not the proper forum for this series.

So let us take the first one. "Well not really", I assume you really mean you believe in fact that there was great stability in the Roman Empire and that this disappeared about 330 A.D.

I will grant retract my statements about the Punic Wars and Celtic Invasions as these were Republican Rome. So let us start with Augustus. His reign started with civil war between himself and Mark Anthony and in the Battle of Teutoburg Forest he lost 3 legions, to the barbarians hardly a model of stability.

His grandson was Caligula, who made his horse a Senator. Certainly Claudius' reign saw some stability, England is conquered, but then there was the Boudica rebellion. We have Nero soon thereafter and Rome itself burning.

We then have the years of the four, five and six emperors with their social, military and political upheavals which Wikipedia describes as having "Empire-wide repercussions, which included the outbreak of the Batavian rebellion."

We have other rebellions and civil wars, including the Jewish revolt around 7 AD.

We have the crisis of the 3rd century, again from Wikipedia "(AD 235–284) was a period in which the Roman Empire nearly collapsed under the combined pressures of invasion, civil war, plague, and economic depression."

And this is just from 15 minutes of internet research. Certainly Roman rule provided some stability. There is the Pax Romana of about 200 years, but it ended around 180 AD, not 330.

Not true and yes.

“I think this is a bad way to do history.”

“I really don't think they have”

“If the scientific revolution could begin
in these conditions I see no reason why it could not in Byzantium”

“Well, not really”

“Enlightenment that allowed for science to develop”

“It was when people were allowed to say
things like "maybe the church and the pope don't have all the answers" without being burned alive that we see scientific advancement begin to flourish.”

“The big names in early science did not look to the Bible or the catechism for how to view the world”

“The emergence of science, largely in the west over hundreds of years, is just not something that can be pinned down in any meaningful way to a single factor like a religious worldview.”

I suspect that there will be more in the future.

Hey, I really do not disagree with anything you have said. Do you disagree with something I have said?

"This whole series seems to be trying to..."

You have not read to whole series. You are reacting to the suggestion that Christianity could have done something important.

This story has to unfold over many centuries, and it is not finished yet unless you have studied Fr. Jaki.

The essential elements are:

1. The reasons the modern scientific method DID NOT emerge in other cultures. Answer that question culture by culture.

2. This is a story of the CHRISTIAN Worldview which has not change essentially (the essence) in the centuries following the reformation. So if you can acknowledge such things as, "..science, which really flourished in Protestant (Christian) Europe" and the creation and administration of the universities by the Christian church, and support for science by that church, we are left with the details of a part yet untold here.

A knee-jerk anti-Catholicism is a bad way to understand history. Analysis without hearing the story is bad anytime, unless we only discuss one-liners or take the Monty Python course in European History.

I really don't think they have, but I agree, as I have noted, such a long and complex issue as the development of modern science can't be boiled down to a one liner or a single issue, such as a pantheistic worldview.

This whole series seems to be trying to do just that, examine other civilizations who had all the elements required for science to develop, but one, presumably Christianity.

I think this is a bad way to do history.

Thanks Andrew, this makes sense to me. I would tend to agree that the emergence of independent institutions with freedom of thought and inquiry, was a huge factor in the development of science.

I think also there must be technological factors as well, and a number of discoveries which opened the medievil mind, such as the new world, all kinds of different animals.

My whole point is that we shouldn't boil it down to a single factor such as theological perspective.