L'Eglise et la science: Histoire d'un malentendu de saint Augustin à Galilée

Examing Stendhai’s 5e Rouge et L NC&, the author concentrates on Juhen”s attempt to murder Mme de R&al and his subsequent sentence and execution. In his defense Mien speaks of his peasant orgins and his attempts to rise in society. The subtitle ‘Chronicle of 1830”,also set in the Restauration period, points to the revolt ofthe middle classes against the privilege of birth. Verbal pretenee can also be observed as Louis XVIII’s years of exile are counted as years of power. Language shows again its performing ability and its truth depends on what the speaker attributes to it. As to realism in fiction, the author borrows from Auerbach’s definition: ‘represented reality’ (dargestellte Wirklichkeit) and from Jakabson for whom reality has a relative concrete content. Lastly Zoia’s Gemina~ with its use of the name of the month, given by the Revolution, embodies class struggte. It centres on the scene in Hennebeau’s house where the miners’ delegates voice their grievances, The miners are seen as reified and afternate, in emphasis, with the precious furniture, the %&shed objects’ of the middle dasses, or so it is argued. zoLa”s befongs to the category of the ~at~~~ist novef with its impact of materialist description and the introduction ofthe proletariat into a novel. Aftbussex’s identification of the power of words with St Paul’s reference to logos is questionable. The conclusion, where Zola makes use of myths, shows more than a streak of romanticism. The book is something of a gratuitous game of setting a variety of linguistic, socialpolitical ideologies, fashionable critical theories, as they follow one another, against each other. It makes neither for easy reading nor for better understanding of the reenlist novel, Gne wonders whether the author cares for the novels as literature. The book is handsomely produced, but its appearance marred by the crudely grim picture from Rudt’s Marseillaise.

L’Egiise et la science: Histoire d’un malenten&r &saint Augustin 5 GalilQe, Oeorges Minois (Paris: Fayard, 1990), 484 pp,, FF150 P.R. This first of two volumes on the relationship of the catholic church and scientific research, covers the large span from the earliest times to the beginning of the seventeenth century. It uses as a motto a quotation from Pascal: ‘le pape hait et craint les savants qui ne hri sont pas soumis par voeu’. It underlines a persistent attitude of the papacy down to our own times. The early christians were indifferent to secular knowLedge of pagan origin. The Bible was regarded as &e bouk of~owied~~ Scbo~ar~y~hur~hmen~ LikeClement of Alexandria and Qrigen in particular, attempted to use Greek science for btbfieaf exegesis and encountered objections from church authorities. The hesitant attitude of the Church Fzxthers towards learning made forslow progress, whereas Islam expanded rapidly. Arabs translated Greek texts which christiaru were to discover from the eleventh century onwards. St Jerome, in his Latin versiun of the Bible, the Vulgate, saw the need for using pagan science. The church regarded scientific knowledge as subservient to the Bible, however, St Augustine pleaded for its independence, with the possibility ofScripture to be rejnterpreted in its light. The translation of Aristotle’s Physics gave new impetus to scientific study; but it remained on the level of works of compilation. Among forward looking scholars Robert Grosseteste advocated observation and experiment (his date of birth is nearer 1l7f.3,not If75, p. 235, and Essays, ed, D. C&US (Uxford, t955), should have been ~e~t~a~ed~. His discipfe, Roger Bacon, had reservations about ~~stote~ian physics, and atso stressed the need for experiments. For

Book Reviews this he was condemned and imprisoned. The two great thirteenth-century scholars, Albert the Great and Thomas Aquinas, receive somewhat scant attention; both expounded Aristotle and Aquinas integrated him into a Christian frame. They separated theology from science and gave it an independent place. The condemnation of 1277 declared science incompatible with faith and impeded further progress. Clerics were debarred from practising medicine which fell largely into the hands of Arabs and Jews. The fourteenth century was beset with difficulties: the Black Death, famines, the Hundred Years War, the beginning of the Great Schism. The papacy, unable to exercise its coercive power, left more freedom for scientific research. Mathematics became its language, as they were developed in Paris and Oxford(particularly at Merton College; The Merton Tradition.. . by C. Lewis, Padua, 1980, could have been mentioned in this connection). Scholars’like Duns Scotus and William of Ockham, tended to separate faith and science, the science of God from the science of nature. The latter built up a school of thought which claimed direct experience as the basis of science and used formal logic as its expression. Some fourteenth-century scholars, such as Nicholas d’oresme, anticipated the heliocentric system, and this was then not controversial. The papacy, between the mid-fifteenth and mid-sixteenth centuries, counted many humanists among them and made limited scientific progress possible. Some independent institutions began to be set up, the College royal by Francis I, new colleges in Oxford and Cambridge, the college of physicians in London, free from papal interference. The church’s attitude to printing was ambiguous; it was used for its own purpose, but also feared for the spread of dangerous books. It led to the creation of the Index which remained until 1966. An outstanding figure of the fifteenth century was Nicholas of Cusa. He based his thought mathematically, worked on astronomy and speculated on the movement of the earth. Just prior to the Counter-Reformation, Copernicus’ De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, with its heliocentric system, met no direct objection from church authorities. Voyages of discovery enlarged the world picture and the calendar was renewed in 1582. Humanist clerics rallied round the new ideas until Paul IV rigorously imposed submission to the church. The penultimate chapter begins with the burning of Giordano Bruno in 1600, although his scientific position was little different from Copernicus’. Paul IV created the Inquisition in Rome, together with the Index, and the church cut itself off from cultural, intellectual and scientific developments. The last chapter is devoted to Galileo and the aftermath of this deplorable affair. At the trial in 1633, Galileo was condemned for upholding the heliocentric system; he was compelled to retract, but lost his freedom. He was, however, not interrogated on his atomism, another scientific position, doggedly fought by the church. It was seen as incompatible with transubstantiation. The condemnation of Galileo did much harm to the church. There was a gradual softening towards Galileo’s position in the nineteenth century, but not until Vatican II did the church pronounce a mea culpa (Gaudium et spes) and acknowledged, very belatedly, the autonomy of science. But the world of science had become alienated from Christian faith. The book is a fair account of this ‘misunderstanding’ between the church and science. It relies for its scientific account on established research, such as A.C. Crombie’s Augustine to Galileo which covers the same period. Some articles in the History of Universities, particularly the earlier volumes (I-V), dealing with medieval learning, could have been usefully added. It is an historian’s account and provides a detailed bibliography (the Cambridge Modern History had a new edition in 1961). In its simple presentation of complex scientific problems it would seem to be aimed at the general reader. One wonders if a shorter book could not have contained as much information; perhaps length is the publishers’ policy? Elfrieda Oxford

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