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Christian Theology and the Newtonian Science: The Rise of the Concept of the Laws of Nature

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

Francis Oakley
Francis Oakley
Affiliation:
Williams College
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Extract

R. G. Collingwood has suggested that the basic contrast between the Greek view of nature and what he calls the Renaissance view, springs from the difference between their respective analogical approaches to nature. Whereas, he argues, the Greek view of nature as an intelligent organism was based on an analogy between the world of nature and the individual human being, the Renaissance view conceived the world analogically as a machine. Instead of being regarded as capable of ordering its own movements in a rational manner, and, it might be added, according to its immanent laws, the world, to such a view, is devoid both of intelligence and life, the movements which it exhibits are imposed from without, and “their regularity due to 'laws of nature' likewise imposed from without.” Coiling- wood concludes, therefore, that this view presupposed both the human experience of designing and constructing machines, and the Christian idea of a creative and omnipotent God.

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , December 1961 , pp. 433 - 457
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1961

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References

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3. Scrutiny of the Oxford English Dietionary s.v. Law reveals two primary current meanings for the expression natural law. It is defined, on the one hand, as that law, prescribed by no enactment or formal compact, which is implanted by nature in the human mind, or is capable of being demonstrated by reason. On the other it is defined as referring, in “the sciences of observation,” to the theoretical principles deduced from particular facts, applicable to defined groups or classes of phenomena, and expressible by the statement that particular phenoniena always occur if certain conditions are present. For purposes of clarity I propose to use the term natural law to refer to the juristic concept, and the term laws of nature to indicate the scientific usage.

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96. D'ailly, Sent. I, qu. 13, art. 1 D, fol. 159r; Major, In primum Sent., dist. 44, qu. 3.

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106. Hardly surprising for, according to d'ailly, “just as the divine will is the first efficient cause in the genus of efficient causality, so also is it the first obligating rule or law in the genus of obligating law”—Sent. I, qu. 14, art. 3 Q, fol. 173r.

107. Metaphysical Foundations of Modern Physical Science, p. 294.

108. Needham, , Science and Civilization, II, p. 582.Google Scholar

109. Science of Mechanics, trans. T. J. McCormack (London, 1942), pp. 542, 551–552Google Scholar; cf. Taube, Mortimer, Causation, Freedom and Determinism (London, 1936), pp. 108–109.Google Scholar

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113. Ibid., p. 543.

114. Ibid., p. 582—Needham adds that “Modern Science and the philosophy of organism, with its integrative levels, have come back to his wisdom, fortified by a new understanding of cosmic, biological and social evolution. Yet who shall say that the Newtonian phase was not an essential one.”

115. As long ago as 1909 Pierre Duhem drew attention to the importance of those condemnations for the history of science —Etudes sur Lénard de Vinci, II (Paris, 1909), pp. 411 ffGoogle Scholar. He did so, however, because he believed that the utterances of the Bishop of Paris on specific points such as the possibility of the existence of a plurality of worlds marked the starting point of the development of modern science, and Alexandre Koyré has convincingly exposed the lack of evidence to support such a belief—“Le vide et l'espace infini au XIVe siècle,” Archives d'hist. doct. et litt. du Moyen Age, 24 (1949), pp. 45–91Google Scholar. But if the condemnations and the theological reaction to which they witnessed were unimportant in the realm of specific scientific discoveries, this was far from being the case in the realm of philosophical assumptions about nature— a point which Koyré apparently failed to perceive.