• dwindling7373
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    2 months ago

    I’m ateist just to be clear, but it’s undeniable that the path that lead to science stems from academia and univirsities rules and funded by clergy.

    Leibniz was a fervent (or rather, average for the time) believer and bended backward to include God in each and any of his hypothesis about the world (so much so that in front of the logical necessities of motion he posited that God planned it all in advance, incuding some funny stuff about each of us being already alive in the ballsacks of our ancestors, to go around the fact that I wouldn’t be “godlike” to just spawn new souls every couple of seconds). He invented calculus and mechanical calculators and the likes.

    Newton was basically an astrologer.

    Bruno hypotized the existence of multiple worlds in space and, to him, that was cool because it meant the domain of God was even wider than previously thought. The Church of the Earth did not like that idea.

    On the other hand, Saint Thomas and Saint Agustine both brought back the (relatively) modern approaches of Aristotles and Plato respectively, with a focus on reason as a driving force.

    I could agree to disagree but I assume we’d both hate that.

    Edit: I guess you stressed the point of “clergy” rather than “fervent believer”. I guess? I don’t find it that relevant since the members of the clergy, monks mostly, were doing their own thing and there was no centralyzed clergy research plan. You think something too weird and too popular, and the pope comes for you.

    • scarabic@lemmy.world
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      2 months ago

      Since literally everyone could be described as a believer in the past that’s not what I meant. We started with the word “theologian” and yes I assume any reasonable definition of that word is going to have high, high overlap with the clergy, with perhaps some exceptions.

      Newton was basically an astrologer.

      You lost me, friend. I’m not even sure we can agree to disagree at this point. I’m just going to back away slowly…

          • dwindling7373
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            2 months ago

            I can’t lose or win this is not a fight.

            Here you go, a different instance. It’s just wikipedia BTW: https://wiki.froth.zone/wiki/Isaac_Newton’s_occult_studies?lang=en

            Also here: https://webspace.science.uu.nl/~gent0113/astrology/newton_main.htm It’s clarified that the idea that Newton was into astrology has been discredited, but you can find reference to the matter at hand, his interest in theology, and the one of many of his/our predecessors.

            “From times immemorial, astrology has been a determining factor in the decisions and actions of men of all ranks and stations. At the begin of the 17th century, great scientists as Tycho Brahe, Galileo Galilei, Johannes Kepler and Pierre Gassendi – now best remembered for their roles in the development of modern physics and astronomy – all held astrology in high esteem.”

            And later:

            “inspecting the inventory of the books from his library […] Among the 1752 books with identifiable titles on this list, no less than 477 (27.2%) were on the subject of theology, 169 (9.6%) on alchemy, 126 (7.2%) on mathematics, 52 (3.0%) on physics and only 33 (1.9%) on astronomy.”

            I hope you learnt something new. Have a nice day.