[Buddha-l] it's not about belief -= science & Christian religion

[Jim Peavler]

On Jan 4, 2006, at 10:38 PM, Richard P. Hayes wrote:

> On Wed, 2006-01-04 at 18:28 -0500, SJZiobro at cs.com wrote:

>
> You are now equivocating, as is your wont. The kind of science that  
> Curt
> was talking about was pretty clearly that which is part of the post-
> Enlightenment enterprise, which is quite specialized and should not be
> confused with "science" in the sense of a body of knowledge in  
> general.
> Aquinas and other theologians made use of bodies of knowledge such as
> grammar, logic and rhetoric, but they knew absolutely nothing of  
> science
> as we now use the word, but that sort of science did not exist in
> patristic and medieval times. It existed neither in Europe nor in  
> Asia,
> nor even in Africa or New Mexico. Indeed, to this day, it exists in  
> only
> about 10% of the population in continents of darkness such as North
> America.

I believe there was something very much like what we call "science"  
going on if fields like physics, astronomy, and medicine in, oddly  
enough, countries we now call Iran and Iraq much earlier than the  
idea got to mediaeval Europe. They didn't know quite what they were  
doing or how to go about it yet, but folks like Avicenna and Averoes  
and their kind in early mediaeval Persia were certainly on the right  
track, saved Aristotle for the mediaeval Europeans, and excited the  
mediaeval universities of Europe into developing colleges that led to  
what we now call science. It may be a little simplistic to state a  
date or a century when "science" is born. Is William of Occam a  
scientist? Bruno? Was the Oxford school a college of science?