This is Part 9 of our continuing series based on the Math Circles of math scholar James Duane Nickel.
In the late 1960s and early 1970s, a math professor named Howard Eves wrote a series of books called In Mathematical Circles. He used the idea of a circle having 360 degrees to write 360 short pieces, each one showing something interesting about math—its beauty, history, people, humor, and real-life uses.
In a similar way, James Nickel has been using that same approach to explore math from a Biblical Christian perspective, aiming to show its depth, meaning, and significance through the lens of faith.
EN: Many people still believe the Middle Ages were a period of intellectual stagnation, yet your essay argues that the university, the printing press, and the mechanical clock all emerged from medieval Christian civilization. Why do you think this narrative has persisted, and what does the history of the clock reveal about the relationship between Christianity and scientific innovation?
James D. Nickel: Why has the narrative persisted? It is a combination of factors, the primary one being a failure to either read or address the scholarship engaging with this history. I begin with science historian and Columbia University professor Lynn Thorndike’s (1882-1965) eight-volume work A History of Magic and Experimental Science (1923). He reflected on the overall thrust of the cultural matrix of Europe during the Middle Ages:
“When men still believed in demons and witches and divination from dreams, it is not surprising that they believed also in natural magic. Only a small part of nature’s secrets were revealed to them; of the rest they felt that almost anything might turn out to be true. It was a time when ‘one vast realm of wonder spreads around.’ They had to struggle against a huge burden of error and superstition which Greece and Rome and the Arabs handed down to them; yet they must try to assimilate what was of value in Aristotle, Galen, Pliny, Ptolemy, and the rest. Crude naive beginners they were in many respects. Yet they show an interest in nature and its problems; they are drawing the line between science and religion; they make some progress in mathematics, geography, physics and chemistry; they not only talk about experimental method, they actually make some inventions and discoveries of use in the future advance of science. Moreover, they themselves feel that they are making progress. They do not hesitate to disagree with their ancient authorities, when they know something better. Roger Bacon affirms that many scientific facts and truths are known in his time of which Plato and Aristotle, Hippocrates and Galen, were ignorant. The ancients, says Peter of Spain in effect, were philosophers, but we are experimenters. Magic still lingers but the march of modern science has begun” (2:979).
Lynn Thorndike, Public Domain.
UCLA Professor Lynn Townsend White Jr. (1907-1987) explains how to understand the dynamics of the early European Middle Ages, especially in terms of technological development:
“The Dark Ages doubtless deserve their name: political disintegration, economic depression, the debasement of religion and the collapse of literature surely made the barbarian kingdoms in some ways unimaginably dismal. Yet because many aspects of civilization were in decay we should not assume too quickly that everything was back-sliding. Even an apparent coarsening may indicate merely a shift of interest … The so-called realms of culture might decay, government might fall into anarchy, and trade be reduced to a trickle, but through it all, in the face of turmoil and hard times, the peasant and artisan carried on, and even improved their lot. In technology, at least, the Dark Ages mark a steady and uninterrupted advance over the Roman Empire. Evidence is accumulating to show that a serf in the turbulent and insecure tenth century enjoyed a standard of living considerably higher than that of a proletarian in the reign of Augustus” (Medieval Religion and Technology, p. 12, 15).
Here are a few astute observations on attitudinal factors from Alastair Cameron Crombie’s (1915-1996) two-volume work The History of Science from Augustine to Galileo ([1959, 1970, 1979] 1995):
“In Western Christendom during the early Middle Ages men were concerned more to preserve the facts which had been collected in classical times than to attempt original interpretations themselves. Yet, during this period, a new element was added from the social situation, an activist attitude which initiated a period of technical invention and was to have an important effect on the development of scientific apparatus” (1:25).
In these times Crombie saw “remarkable progress in technology: new methods of exploiting animal-, water- and wind-power, new machines were developed for a variety of purposes, often requiring considerable precision. Some of the inventions—the mechanical clock and magnifying lenses—were to be later used as scientific instruments” (2:117-120).
Regarding these instruments: “The adoption of this system [60 minutes to the hour, 60 seconds to the minute] of division completed the first stages in the scientific measurement of time, without which the later refinements of both physics and machinery would scarcely have been possible” (1:219).
Crombie cited Lynn White regarding the theological ground of medieval inventiveness: “Behind this inventiveness lay, without a doubt, the motive of physical and economic necessity; but, as Lynn White has pointed out in an article to Speculum in 1940, ‘this necessity is inherent in every society; yet has found inventive expression only in the Occident.’ Necessity can be a motive only when it is recognized, and among the most important reasons for its recognition in the West must be included the activist tradition of Western theology. By asserting the infinite worth of responsibility of each person, this theology placed a value upon the care of each immortal soul and therefore upon the charitable relief of physical suffering, and gave dignity to labour and a motive for innovation. The inventiveness that resulted produced the practical skill and flexibility of mind in dealing with technical problems to which modern science is the heir” (1:242-243, Cited in White, “Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages,” reprinted in Medieval Technology and Social Change, p. 22).
Theology and a respect of the givenness of the natural world engendered a curiosity and interest in making things that can make living more efficient, that improve life, that develop resources that multiply food, that multiply human power by using both animal power (e.g., horse collar, harness, horseshoe) and mechanical power.
In the realm of mechanical power (e.g. water- wind- and fulling-mills, the cam, spring and treadle, refinement of gearing for the clock) people were engaging in the rudiments of the physics of motion, especially the theory of impetus and with the crank, i.e., connecting-road and governor, the conversion of reciprocating motion into continuous rotary motion. These ideas and instrumentation were to bear much fruit during the Scientific Revolution.
As White observes: “By the latter part of the fifteenth century, Europe was equipped not only with sources of power far more diversified than those known to any previous culture, but also with an arsenal of technical means for grasping, guiding, and utilizing such energies which was immeasurable more varied and skilful [White also notes how we moderns have failed to appreciate the aesthetical elegance of this skill.] than any people of the past had possessed, or than was known to any contemporary society of the Old World or the New … Considering the generally slow tempo of human history, this revolution in machine design occurred with startling rapidity. Indeed, the four centuries following Leonardo [da Vinci—1452-1519], that is, until electrical energy demanded a supplementary set of devices, were less technologically engaged in discovering basic principles than in elaborating and refining those established during the four centuries before Leonardo” (Medieval Technology & Social Change, pp. 127-129).
White concludes: “The chief glory of the later Middle Ages was not its cathedrals or its epics or its scholasticism: it was the building for the first time in history of a complex civilization which rested not on the backs of sweating slaves or coolies but primarily on non-human power. The study of mediaeval technology is therefore far more than an aspect of economic history: it reveals a chapter in the conquest of freedom. More than that, it is a part of the history of religion. The humanitarian technology which our modern world has inherited from the Middle Ages was … nurtured in the activist … tradition of Western theology … The labor-saving machines … were produced by the implicit theological assumption of the infinite worth of even the most degraded human personality, by an instinctive repugnance towards subjecting any man to a monotonous drudgery which seems less than human in that it requires the exercise neither of intelligence nor of choice … The Latin Middle Ages first discovered the dignity and spiritual value of labor—that to labor is to pray. But the Middle Ages went further: they gradually and very slowly began to explore the practical implications of an essential Christian paradox: that just as the Heavenly Jerusalem contains no temple [Revelation 21-22—JN], so the goal of labor is to end labor” (“Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages,” in Medieval Religion and Technology, p. 22).
EN: Why has the narrative that the “Christian Middle Ages encompassed nothing but darkness” persisted?
JDN: It persists because of the prejudicial turning of a blind eye to history, specifically this era’s technological/human labor-saving achievements. It persists by refusing to recognize the pioneering and creative aspects of that era. It is this pertinacity that cuts off a proper grasp of the dynamics that laid the groundwork for the Scientific Revolution.
Clocks as a Reflection of a Worldview
EN: You suggest that the first mechanical clocks were motivated by something deeper than commercial convenience—they were attempts to mirror the orderly movement of God’s creation. How did this vision of the universe as an orderly, intelligible cosmos inspire technological creativity, and do you think modern science has retained or lost that sense of wonder?
James D. Nickel: From his study of the history of technology, English science historian James Burke (1936-) concludes: “The mechanical clock is one of the most fundamental inventions in the history of technology” (Connections, 1978, p. 128).
It was ca. 1280 that the verge and foliat, one of the most ingenious inventions ever constructed, came into existence. (See details in my essay.) Regarding this invention and others, the late Donald S. L. Cardwell, professor of the history of science and technology at the University of Manchester Institute of Science and Technology observed:
“If we seek the reasons for this remarkable emancipation of the human spirit we shall find it difficult to avoid the conclusion that the basic cause must have been the universal religion of Europe. Christianity laid positive duties on men while at the same time rejecting the enervating fatalism of so many ancient and Eastern religions. It provided the right spiritual armour for a man confronting nature in the raw. There is one sovereign Deity who is the ultimate protector and saviour. One does not need to—indeed one must not—appeal to a host of minor deities, godlings, spirits, ghosts. Of course the varieties of Christian religious experience are very wide and the number of philosophies which, in their time, have been reconciled with Christianity considerable. We cannot therefore argue that Christianity was always and everywhere uniform in effect. But we do suggest that a central component of its doctrines had the effect we have just described and thus emboldened medieval man to develop his technics and later, in fact, to establish his science” (Turning Points in Western Technology (1991), p. 7. See also his extraordinary 1995 book Wheels, Clocks, and Rockets: A History of Technology).
Medieval “mini clock,” a precursor of the wristwatch. From the James Burke video series, “The Wheel of Fortune,” Episode 5 in Connections.
In Science and Creation ([1974, 1986] 2016), the late Stanley L. Jaki wrote a chapter entitled “The Leaven of Confidence” (pp. 163-191). He showed that early Christian theology, while appreciating some positive aspects of ancient paganism, also swung a crushing counter-punch. Its liberating doctrine of an orderly, intelligible cosmos engendered the leaven of boldness when interacting with the world of time and space.
It was this leavening of the Faith that produced, in time, the creative attitudes/inventions of the Middle Ages. As I stated in my answer to Question 1, the many labor-saving devices thus invented set humans free to pursue other creative activities, thus generating a feedback loop, a process where the output of one age circles back to become an input for another, influencing future results that create another cycle of cause and effect. The feedback loop of the Middle Ages bore the fruit of the Scientific Revolution, which bore the fruit of the Industrial Revolution, which bore the fruit of the digital Information Age of our time.
Do I think modern science has retained or lost a sense of wonder? It has lost wonder in its failure to see these feedback loop connections. When a scientist or scientific historian sees these connections, wonder is the crowning result. The work of historian James Burke and physicist Richard Feynman (1918-1988) exemplifies the wonder of seeing connections.
TO BE CONTINUED
Original essay, Clocks: The Heritage of the Christian Faith