1. A Medieval Theory of Everything: Lessons for Modern Challenges to Science and Religion Tom McLeish
With thanks to the “Ordered Universe” project:
Giles Gasper
Hannah Smithson
Richard Bower
Sig Sonnysyn
Michael Huxtable
Cecilia Panti
Brian Tanner
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Hellos – and welcome on Copernicus 540th birthday
Introductions
- Tom on the interdisciplinary project: need for special places to create these networks, Graduate Center is one such, Durham well situated for this and well managed
- v. succinct description of how we met.
CiS Oxford
February 2017

2. Some Prejudices ….
Science needs (desperately) a deep cultural narrative
Science the inheritor of a very long human history
Current perception that ‘Science is Modern’ is a harm
impoverishes wellbeing
paralyses public debate
distorts relation of science and religion

3. Durham MS A iii 12

4. De Luce – Concerning Light
Formam primam corporalem, quam quidam corporeitatem vocant, lucem esse arbitror. Lux enim per se in omnem partem se ipsam diffundit, ita ut a puncto lucis sphaera lucis quamvis magna subito generetur, nisi obsistat umbrosum. Corporeitas vero est, quam de necessitate consequitur extensio materiae secundum tres dimensiones, cum tamen utraque, corporeitas scilicet et materia, sit substantia in se ipsa simplex, omni carens dimensione …
.. This is not principally about light .. It’s about the “stability of matter” .. A very real problem with atomism not solved until quantum theory
… Quicquid igitur hoc opus facit, aut est ipsa lux, aut est hoc opus faciens in quantum participans ipsam lucem, quae hoc facit per se.

5. The Ordered Universe Project www. dur. ac
The Ordered Universe Project
Historians, Latinists, Paleographers, Scientists.
New translations and editions of the texts
“Functional Analyses” of the documents
New interdisciplinary questions and methodologies.
OUP Publication series + science papers

6. Robert Grosseteste: Brief Biography
Born of humble origins, rural England, c. 1175
1198 d. of William de Vere, Bishop of Hereford
Learning at Paris? At Oxford?
Archdeacon at Abbotsley (Lincoln) 1225
1228/9-35 Tutor to Franciscans (Oxford)
1235 Bishop of Lincoln
1250 Mission to Innocent IV at Lyons
1253 Dies October 9th
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How exciting from the humanities side: Grosseteste
- peculiarlay good for interdisiciplinary research

7. Grosseteste at Work Liberal Arts Science Theology Greek and Hebrew
Pastoral Care
Agriculture
Bishop
Politician
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Amazing polymath

8. Translation of Aristotle
Aristotelian translation movement
Ibn Rushd (Averroes) ( )
What does Grosseteste inherit?
Latin Kingdom of Jerusalem
Constantinople
Sicily
Spain

9. 13th Century Science Ancient science
11th and 12th Century intellectual revival
Re-conquest of Aristotle
‘Natural’ Science and Scientific Method
God’s Creation
Reason and Rationality
An Ordered Universe
Observation
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Extraordinary moment for history of thought and science: intellectual revival – paradigm shift
Aristotle: Opera Logica

10. A Theological Transition
From Augustine to Aquinas
From Divine Light to Human rationality
From a doctrine of senses as fallen
… to senses as a restorative gift
Adoption of Aristotle into Christian Metaphysics
From a rich Biblical tradition of nature into natural enquiry (e.g. Hexaemera to De natura)
From an Arabic to a European transmission

11. Grosseteste’s scientific treatises
De generatione sonorum: On the generation of sound De motu supercelestium: On the movement of heavenly bodies De luce: On light De colore: On colour De lineis: On lines (and angles) De natura locorum: On the nature of place De iride: On the rainbow And many others……
Say something about the structure: short – not like Aquinas.
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Structure and talk about De luce
- Lux, Lumen, expanding universe, expositing Aristotle….
De colore
- experiment, experience, three dimensions, embodiement - v. imp. carry over from the De luce.

12. A Mathematical argument for corporality
Et sunt infinita aliis infinitis plura et alia aliis pauciora
“Different magnitudes of infinities” – not Cantor’s argument but an early searching towards limits
… it is clear that light through the infinite multiplication of itself extends matter into finite dimensions that are smaller and larger according to certain proportions that they have to one another, namely, numerical and non-numerical
(numerales et non numerales )

13. De luce:
A “Newtonian” leap – from materials to cosmology
“Light… at the beginning of time, extended matter (which it could not leave), drawing it out along with itself into a mass the size of the world-machine”
And against Aristotle ...

14. Two simplifying assumptions:
Light extends matter down to a fundamental limit of rarefaction (actually a ratio of L/M)
When extended to the limit, matter becomes “perfected” and re-radiates lumen

15. A Mathematical model The key equations Lumen intensity
Generation of lumen
Opacity of matter
lumen-matter Interaction
Generation of velocity
No momentum
Continuity equation
Matter is pushed around but not created or destroyed
Crystalisation condition
Quantised thresholds
lumen/matter ratio
Computer implementation (skip the details!)
Some aspects are non trivial!

16. A collaboration with the Durham Institute of Computational Cosmology:
Calculations by Prof. Richard Bower

17. Mnsr Georges Lemaître 1894-1966
Co-discoverer of uniformly expanding solutions to Einstein’s equations of General Relativity: physics applied to the universe as a whole.

18. Long History and Reception
“I believe that it is possible and scientifically profitable to develop [RG’s cosmogeny in the De luce] into a physical doctrine capable of mathematical expression (though the mathematics I foresee is beyond me”
Letter from J.A. Smith to A.G. Little
Magalene College Oxford
1924

19. Grosseteste’s Lessons
Provides disruptive critiques of perpetual myths
Contributes to a continual, long, historical chain of natural philosophy
Provides material to reconstruct a cultural narrative of science
Urges a unified picture of nature
Reminders of epistemological assumptions in science
Moves from “Theology and Science” to a (relational)
Theology of Science.

20. Myth-busting “Scientific practice and motivation is modern”
“Medieval thinkers just recapitulated ancients”
“Medieval church suppressed science”
“Theology and science were all one”

21. A cultural narrative of science
Commentaries on Psalms
Hexaemeron
A new way of “seeing” (“Sollertia”)
Biblical mandate to study nature
On John Damascene’s De Fide Orthodoxa:
“These two chapters, namely the 24th about seas and the 25th about winds, are omitted in some Greek mss; perhaps because they did not seem to contain a theological subject. But according to truly wise men, every notice of truth is useful in the explanation and understanding of theology.”

22. Silence Falls: Beyond justice The Hymn to Wisdom: Job 28
Surely there is a mine for silver, and a place where gold is refined.
Iron is taken from the soil, rock that will be poured out as copper.
An end is put to darkness, and to the furthest bound they seek the ore in gloom and deep darkness. A foreign race cuts the shafts; forgotten by travelers, far away from humans they dangle and sway. That earth from which food comes forth is underneath changed as if by fire. Its rocks are the source of lapis, with its flecks of gold.
Hymn to Wisdom – Ch 28
But God understands the way to it; it is he who knows its place.
For he looked to the ends of the earth, and beheld everything under the heavens,
So as to assign a weight to the wind, and determine the waters by measure,

23. Grosseteste on Posteria Analytics
“Sollertia is the penetrating power in virtue of which the mind’s eye does not rest on the outer surface of an object, but penetrates to something below the visual image. For instance, when the mind’s eye falls on a coloured surface, it does not rest there, but descends to the physical structure of which the colour is an effect. It then penetrates this structure until it detects the elemental qualities of which the structure is itself an effect.” Color est lux incorporata in perspicuo…

24. A unified picture of nature
“Light Metaphysics” is an early example of unifying principle.
“And it is clear that every higher body in respect of the luminosity begotten from it is the species and perfection of the following body. And just as unity is potentially every following number, so the first body by the multiplication of its luminosity is every following body. Earth, in contrast, is all higher bodies by the collection in it of the higher luminosities.” De luce
… communicat in natura… (in De cessatione legalium)
Worked example: sub- and super-lunary emergence in the De luce

25. Epistemological assumptions
Einstein: “The most incomprehensible thing about the universe is that it is comprehensible” RG differs from Aristotle in a complex combination of (dulled) senses and (remnant) innate insight (‘intellectus’ and James of Venice ‘sollertia’ – Comm. Post. Analytics) “Since sense perception, the weakest* of all human powers, apprehending only corruptible individual things, survives, imagination stands, memory stands, and finally understanding, which is the noblest of human powers capable of apprehending the incorruptible, universal, first essences, stands!” *1 Cor 1v7

26. Six perspectives on creation in Job
J.-P. De Puy:
Exploitation
Alienation
Sacred
Evil
Desire
Enshrining retributive moral law
Eternal Mystery
Book of Nature
Uncontrolled chaos
Object of worship
Way to wisdom

27. Narrative Clues today
G Steiner: “Only art can go some way towards making accessible, towards waking into some measure of communicability, the sheer inhuman otherness of matter…”
Real Presences

28. A Theology of Science: Characteristics
Long, linear history of relationship between human and non-human
High view of human aptitude to re-imagine nature
Dual structure: Wisdom and Knowledge
Engaging with nature is ambiguous and painful
Balance of order and chaos
Centrality of the Creative Question
The role and work of love