Certain things about Spanish initially seemed weird to me. It expresses some ideas differently. In English we say, “He is twenty-five years old.” Spanish, on the other hand, expresses that as “Él tiene veintecinco años.” That translates literally as: “He has twenty-five years.” English treats age as a personal characteristic, something you are. Spanish, in contrast, treats it as a possession, something you have. Which is right?
Age/old tensions
It makes sense to treat age as a characteristic. Knowing whether someone is five, twenty-five, or seventy-five years old tells us a lot. Five-year-olds around the world have more in common with each other than with a retiree. But age is an odd characteristic. Most personal characteristics, such as gender, nationality, or professional status, either never change or change to a different, stable state because of some decision. But age changes at a constant rate whether we want it to or not.
However, it also makes sense to treat age as a possession. We accumulate years of living, life experiences, and (hopefully) wisdom. That is why traditional societies hold elders in high esteem—they possess more. Yet, age differs from other things we possess. The amount we have only increases—at a steady rate—and we cannot do anything about it. Despite any claims made by cosmetic companies or plastic surgeons, there is no buying or selling or giving it away.
At first glance English and Spanish seem to contradict each other. But to speak both I had to accept the tension between their different ways of communication. And holding those ideas in tension caused me to reflect deeper on the concept of age. How in some ways it characterizes us and in other ways it is something we have. It has elements of both but doesn’t completely fit either category. Holding superficially contradictory descriptions of the world in tension can spur us to a deeper understanding.
Why Western Europe?
At the end of the first part of this post, I asked the question as to why modern science arose in Western Europe and not elsewhere. I had argued that the combination of Aristotelian natural philosophy and theistic theology had prepared the intellectual ground for the emergence of modern science.
So why not did it not happen in either the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire or the Islamic world? Both had the works of Aristotle and other classical thinker centuries before. Western Europe translated them into Latin. Both were strongly theistic societies that shared beliefs about God’s creation of the world. But neither developed a culture like that of modern science.
In the first part of this post, I focused on ways that ideas from Aristotle and Christianity reinforced each other. But I also mentioned some of the conflicts between them. Those tensions also arose in the eastern Roman Empire and the Islamic world. But because of different political and educational institutions, they played out differently.
Embracing tension
Both the eastern Roman Empire and the Islamic world were theocracies (at least officially). The emperors or the caliphs ruled in the name of God as defenders of true religion. Politics and religion were closely entwined. Political and religious leaders constantly tried to influence or even control the other, but all within the same religious-political structure.
Western Europe developed differently. The collapse of the western Roman Empire fragmented it politically into multiple, frequently warring political domains. However, the Bishop of Rome continued to function like a religious emperor, exerting religious control over the whole region. Church and State functioned as distinct but intertwined spheres.
As a result, Western Europe developed separate yet parallel authority structures: temporal rulers and the Catholic Church. Naturally, this led to ongoing tension between them. Both sides constantly sought to influence or even control each other. But that division between political and religious authority structures has persisted until today.
A peculiar institution
The west also developed a unique educational institution. In both the eastern Roman Empire and the Islamic world, the education of future religious leaders happened through schools associated with the religious institutions. The study of secular topics happened elsewhere. This included natural philosophy, a forerunner of modern science as the study of the natural world, but but employing philosophical methods. The Islamic world reinforced this split by drawing a formal a distinction between “Islamic sciences” and “foreign sciences.”
The medieval university was different. It developed out of teachers’ guilds, which gave them unique characteristics. Medieval guilds brought together all those in a city that worked in a particular profession. They also functioned as self-governing organizations that set standards and protected their interests. As a result, early medieval universities were self-governing bodies of all the teachers in a city who collectively established the university curriculum, degree requirements, regulations, etc. This had important consequences:
- Universities encompassed all fields of study, from philosophy to law, from medicine to theology. The adoption of the seven liberal arts (grammar, logic, rhetoric, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, and music) for the undergraduate curriculum reinforced their breadth of material.
- As self-governing institutions, they served the needs of the political and religious authorities but were not under direct control of either.
The outcome
Another unique feature of the medieval university resulted from the embrace of rhetoric and logic as central curricular elements. Along with lectures (often involving professors literally reading the book to the students), debates between faculty and/or students became an integral part of the curriculum. A question would be posed, and the debaters would argue for different sides.
This emphasis on argument as the means to discover truth spilled over onto paper. A new scholarly genre emerged: questionnes. A scholar would identify a narrow question that he felt had not been adequately resolved and ask it. He would then lay out arguments for and against each side. He would conclude with a discussion of which arguments were stronger and his conclusion as to the correct answer. These typically would be “published” as a compendium of loosely related questions with their arguments for and against each claim.
The single undergraduate curriculum had another significant ramification. I argued in the first part of this post that the blending of Aristotelian natural philosophy and Christian theology prepared the ground for the rise modern science. Theology students had to first complete the undergraduate curriculum before beginning theological studies. Unlike in their Byzantine or the Islamic counterparts, western theologians first studied Aristotelian natural philosophy before embarking on their study of theology. This had profound implications.
Wrestling with ideas
Many points of tension existed between the Aristotelian natural philosophy and Christian and Islamic theology. Aristotle claimed the cosmos had always existed; Christianity and Islam said God created it. Aristotle argued that the cosmos necessarily had to have only one center around which celestial objects would orbit. But couldn’t a completely sovereign God create a second center if he wanted to? Or could God create a vacuum, something else that Aristotle claimed could not exist? The list went on.
The separate educational pathways and the formal distinction between “Islamic” and “foreign” sciences in the Islamic world created barriers between theologians and natural philosophers. Few, if any, had sufficient knowledge to work through the tensions. Eventually more conservative theologians gained the upper hand, and “foreign sciences” were increasingly repressed in Islamic lands.
Western Europe was different. The political structures made it harder for religious authorities to suppress secular ideas. The educational system ensured that theologians possessed at least a basic understanding of natural philosophy. Some theologians enthusiastically embraced the challenge of working through the tensions. In western Europe the system encouraged reconciling the two disciplines, not building walls between them.
Foundations for science
The medieval belief in rational debate as a reliable path to truth was critical in developing modern science. Modern scientific journals even share multiple characteristics with medieval questionnes. Both consist of collections of loosely related, evidence-based arguments seeking to answer a narrow, unresolved question.
People talking about the emergence of science sometimes suggest that Galileo and his generation were the first to question Aristotle. Far from true. European scholars had questioned and disagreed with Aristotle for over three centuries before Galileo. They had a long tradition of seeking truth through argumentation. They knew Aristotle errored on certain topics and developed fixes. But for the most part, medieval scholars simply sought to correct Aristotle. Galileo and his ilk were ready to throw Aristotle out completely.
The tension between church and state, between Aristotle and theology, played a critical role in developing scientific thought. It provided scholars with space to question previously received truths. The apparent contradictions forced them to carefully examine starting assumptions, interpretation of evidence, and the soundness of arguments. It broke up the intellectual ground to give space for new ways of thinking about the world that was necessary to put down roots and grow up to become science.
A warning for today
Today we face a grave risk as our culture loses the ability to hold ideas in tension.
The rapid expansion of universities and human knowledge has served to fragment both. Scholars in different disciplines generally know little about each other’s work. Students make little effort to connect one class with another, exacerbated by an increased vocational orientation. Today’s information explosion overwhelms the cultivation of wisdom and deep understanding.
Sound bites, video clips, and memes have replaced substantial oral and written debate as our preferred means of persuasion. Both those on the left and on the right try to suppress ideas they don’t like through social or political means. Our instant society has no time for careful examination of starting assumptions or the logical coherence of arguments.
A thousand years ago the greatest scholars and libraries inhabited Persia, the Middle East, North Africa and Muslim Spain. Early European universities built their curriculum on translations of Arabic scholarship and Arabic versions of classical works. But while European scholars wrestled with the tension between Aristotle and Christian theology, “foreign sciences” were increasingly repressed in the Islamic world. The long-term consequences of our instant society suppressing ideas we don’t like should concern us today.
Notes and references
Edward Grant, The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts (Cambridge University Press, 1996)
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