Posted by Tom on October 22, 1999 at 12:56:09:
In Reply to: Tom as a 'scientist' and 'historian' posted by rpcman on October 21, 1999 at 14:13:06:
Since most of the objections to my position centered on what I said about Sagan's treatment of Kepler, I'll start there. Sagan tells this story on pp. 56-68 (1980, 1st ed.) The Kepler story is very appealing. I've often used it in classes to illustrate certain points about good scientific communication. However it is predicated on the popular enlightenment myth that science was invented by a small number of men of great genius. (Everything else evolved, but science was invented or reinvented by Kepler and Galileo--like Athena from the brow of Zeus. Of course Sagan has to depict the origins of science in this fashion, because of his disdain for theism. If he dated the beginnings of modern science to the late Middle Ages, as most scientific historians now do, he would have to acknowledge the pivotal role that Christian thought played in it. By changing history, Sagan is forced into a number of additional errors. One of them is to exaggerate the originality of Kepler's approach to science and downplay and distort Kepler's religious and philosophical outlook. For instance, on p. 56 Sagan writes that "Kepler's God was the creative power of the Cosmos." This seems like an effort to downplay Kepler's Christian faith by making it sound as if he were a secret pantheist. Kepler by all estimates was an orthodox Lutheran. He would never have identified God with the Cosmos as Sagan is want to do. If you read the introduction to his Epitome of Copernican Astronomy you will see what I mean (Prometheus Books, 1995, pp. 5-11.) Kepler's theological language is traditional and orthodox. God is a transcendent "architect." Natural objects are God's "works."
I presume that Sagan's failure to acknowledge the importance of Platonism in Kepler's thought occurs for similar reasons--since Platonism is so closely associated with Christianity in Sagan's mind (see p. 188 "the Platonists and their Christian successors. . . "). Since Plato was the philosopher who most influenced Christianity from the time of Augustine to that of Aquinas, to acknowledge his contributions to scientific thinking would be to acknowledge that Christianity was favorable disposed to science. Sagan denigrates both Plato and Aristotle in chapter VII of his book--pp.168-193. He plays up lesser known Ionian scientists as the real pioneers, and diminishes the influence of the Socratics. Certainly some of these other Greeks influenced modern figures like Galileo and Copernicus, (Archimedes and Pythagoras especially), but if you read modern thinkers like Newton, Kepler, Galileo, Tycho, etc., Plato and Aristotle are recognizable as the predominant influences.
Almost immediately after the previous statement, Sagan writes: "The hubristic longings of a child seminarian (the young Kepler) were to carry Europe out of the cloister of medieval thought. The sciences of classical antiquity had been silenced more than a thousand years before, but in the late Middle Ages some faint echoes of those voices, preserved by Arab scholars, began to insinuate themselves into the European educational curriculum." ( p 56.) This utterance is designed to suggest a radical break between the medieval and modern periods, but that is clearly false. First of all, it is widely known that modern science evolved incrementally beginning with the revival of Aristotelian science in the 13th century. (See for instance Edward Grant, Studies in Medieval Science and Natural Philosophy (London: Variorum Reprints, 1981). Experimental methods, which medieval scholars like Robert Grossteste and Roger Bacon had revived in the 13th century (after Aristotle's corpus was reintroduced into Europe), continued to be perfected over the next several centuries, so that by the time that Galileo and Kepler came along these had become sophisticated tools. Sagan makes it sound as if medieval Christians were completely indifferent to the scientific texts introduced by Arabs in this period. If this were so, why did the scientific revolution happen in Europe rather than in Persia? Although the Arabs preserved the Aristotelean texts that were responsible for this revival, they didn't do much with them. European Christians did.
In the introduction to the TV series, Sagan says the following:
"We wish to pursue the truth no matter where it leads, but to find the truth we need imagination and skepticism both. We will not be afraid to speculate, but we will be careful to distinguish speculation from fact."(1981, Episode 1, 104-113).
I would not complain about the anti-Christian sentiments that pervade the Cosmos series if Sagan had followed through on this promise. But in fact he seldom acknowledges what is speculation and what is fact–leading the naive viewers and readers to presume that his historical claims are firmly grounded by evidence.