快猫短视频

鈥淚 CANNOT and will not retract anything, since it is neither safe nor right to go against conscience. I cannot do otherwise. Here I stand, may God help me.鈥�

There is something thrilling about how the rebel monk Martin Luther defied his accusers. According to his supporters, he uttered these eloquent words of defence in 1521 before the Diet of Worms, a papal council, when his liberty and possibly his life were on the line. It was four years earlier, on 31 October 1517, now almost exactly 500 years ago, that tradition says he nailed his 鈥�95 theses鈥� decrying the practices of the Roman Catholic church to the door of the castle church in Wittenberg in present-day Germany, and so kicked off what became the Protestant Reformation.

Popular history says that Luther showed more guts than Galileo a century later, when the Catholic Inquisition insisted he deny that Earth moves around the sun. Elderly and cowed by the veiled threat of torture, Galileo did what the cardinals said. A muttered 鈥渁nd still it moves鈥� was said to be his only, almost certainly apocryphal, dissent.

Some historians directly link these two challenges to Rome鈥檚 authority: Luther鈥檚 theological revolution and the ensuing scientific one. Luther opened the intellectual floodgates, the story goes, pitting open, forward-thinking Protestantism against conservative, anti-science Catholic dogma. The Enlightenment took root in the northern European countries that embraced Lutheran ideas, while the south languished under the Catholic yoke. It took the Roman Catholic church until 1992 to formally declare Galileo right.

It鈥檚 an appealing story. But is it true?

The Reformation was born of Luther鈥檚 deep conviction that the established church had left the path of true belief. It practised nepotism, especially during the infamous reign of the Borgia popes in the late 1400s, bewitched believers by intoning in a Latin they didn鈥檛 understand and made salvation contingent on the capricious authority of priests. Some clerics raised funds by selling 鈥渋ndulgences鈥� that guaranteed the holder or their relatives time off the mild discomfort of purgatory before being admitted to heaven.

Challenging authority

Luther became convinced that salvation could be granted by God alone, without priestly intervention. His ideas do seem to have stimulated some Protestant intellectuals to a wider questioning of authority figures, says historian of science at the University of Edinburgh, UK. These included ancient Greek and Roman natural philosophers such as Aristotle and Ptolemy on whose work the prevailing world view was largely based. 鈥淟uther spoke of a priesthood of all believers, and encouraged every man to read the Bible for himself,鈥� says Henry. 鈥淪o they began to read what was called 鈥楪od鈥檚 other book鈥� 鈥� the book of nature 鈥� for themselves too.鈥� Adherents of the new faith, such as Johannes Kepler 鈥� sometimes called the 鈥淟uther of astronomy鈥� 鈥� and his mentor Tycho Brahe, began to make empirical observations that challenged long-held beliefs.

This idea that the Reformation made Protestant Europe more 鈥渕odern鈥� and progressive, and less in thrall to authority and superstition, goes way back. In the early 20th century, the sociologist Max Weber drew a direct line between the new Protestant freedom and the birth of Western capitalism in the mercantile economies of northern Europe. The idea that the Reformation directly sparked the scientific revolution was fuelled in a 1938 book by US historian Robert Merton. He argued that Puritanism, an English strand of the Protestant movement, helped foster the work of Isaac Newton, Robert Boyle, Robert Hooke and their peers in London鈥檚 Royal Society. Puritanism鈥檚 ascetic ideals fitted comfortably with the approach of arguably the first quantitative scientists, committed to using pure reason, mathematics and measurement to understand the world.

Merton鈥檚 thesis was debated extensively in the ensuing decades, says historian of science at the University of York, UK 鈥� and 鈥渢he assumption is still widespread that Protestant religion and the new science were somehow inextricably intertwined鈥�, he says.

鈥淧uritanism鈥檚 ascetic ideals fitted comfortably with the scientific approach鈥�

Elements of the story are undoubtedly true. Christian worship before the Reformation was certainly surrounded by what even priests of the time considered superstition. The communion host was believed to have magical healing powers. The magician鈥檚 incantation 鈥渉ocus-pocus鈥� is possibly a corruption of the ecclesiastical Latin used in the communion service, hoc est corpus meum: this is my body.

But plenty of Catholic theologians lamented this muddying of Christian doctrine by folk beliefs, and many saw no conflict between their religious convictions and the study of the physical world. In the late 1400s, Italian scholars such as Marsilio Ficino and Giovanni Pico della Mirandola were already arguing that the most reliable way to get knowledge was not from ancient texts, but from direct experience: to look for yourself.

By the mid-1500s, physician Andreas Vesalius was conducting human dissections in Padua, in what is now northern Italy, that led him to dispute the anatomy established by the Greek physician Galen in Roman times. In Naples in the 1550s, the polymath Giambattista della Porta began to experiment with lenses and optics, and pretty much described the telescope well before Galileo, having heard of an instrument invented in Holland, made one to survey the heavens. By the early 1600s, some of the best astronomical work was being done by Catholic Jesuits.

The notion that Catholic dogma was inherently a brake on science is something of a myth, says historian of science and religion Sachiko Kusukawa at the University of Cambridge. She thinks the misconception was nourished by the 鈥渃onflict thesis鈥�, an idea shaped by two 19th-century Americans, educator Andrew Dickson White and chemist John William Draper, who argued that science and religious belief are historical enemies destined never to agree. The conflict thesis still has some advocates today, especially among scientists. Evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, for instance, has proposed that 鈥渋f after the fall of Rome atheism had pervaded the Western world, science would have developed earlier and be far more advanced than it is now鈥�.

But this is a distortion of history, says Kusukawa. Even the notorious story of Galileo鈥檚 persecution by the church is not as black and white as it might appear. The heliocentric cosmology he championed was unveiled in 1543 by Nicolaus Copernicus, himself a Catholic canon in Frombork, now in Poland. Copernicus鈥檚 book On the Revolutions of the Heavenly Spheres challenged the accepted Earth-centred cosmology described by Ptolemy in the 2nd century AD, but drew little objection from the church when it was published. Copernicus dedicated the book to the then pope, Paul III.

Galileo was bullied appallingly, but a less provocative person might well have got away with putting forward his heliocentric views. It didn鈥檛 help that in Galileo鈥檚 Dialogue on the Two Chief World Systems, published in 1632, the simpleton who defended the old Ptolemaic universe was a thinly veiled caricature of (among others) pope Urban VIII.

Early Protestantism was hardly more progressive or 鈥渟cientific鈥�, either. Luther had a rather low opinion of Copernicus, whose ideas he heard about from other scholars in Wittenberg before they were published. Luther called Copernicus a fool who sought 鈥渢o reverse the entire science of astronomy鈥�. What about the biblical story in which Joshua commanded the sun 鈥� and not Earth 鈥� to stand still? For Luther, religious faith trumped all: it was hubris and blasphemy to suppose that one could decode God鈥檚 handiwork. Men should not understand; they should only believe. Reason was 鈥渢he devil鈥檚 harlot鈥�.

Disentangling the effect of the Reformation is further complicated by the fact that there never was a single Reformation. Luther鈥檚 Germany was a mosaic of small kingdoms and city states. Separate religious revolts, sharing many of Luther鈥檚 convictions, happened in the Swiss cantons in the 1530s, led by Ulrich Zwingli in Zurich and Jean Calvin in Geneva. England鈥檚 break from the Roman church in the same decade had quite different origins: Henry VIII had denounced Luther in the 1520s, but when he was denied a papal divorce from Catherine of Aragon, he passed laws that established the Anglican church.

All these places and movements had their own doctrines and politics. Catholic and Protestant powers saw radical new ideas they didn鈥檛 like. If the Catholic church was more successful in suppressing them, it is perhaps because it had been around longer and had a better-oiled machinery of censorship. 鈥淣o doubt Luther and Calvin would have liked to have a similar set-up to the Inquisition and the Index [of banned books], but they just didn鈥檛,鈥� says Henry.

That is why, for example, Galileo鈥檚 Dialogue was smuggled to the Elzevirs, a Dutch printing family (the forerunners of Elsevier Publishing) in Protestant Amsterdam. Similarly, the philosopher Ren茅 Descartes, himself a good Catholic but unsettled by Galileo鈥檚 fate, moved from France to the Netherlands before publishing his heretical ideas on the nature of matter, which undermined transubstantiation, the supposed transformation of wine into Christ鈥檚 blood in the communion service.

Devil and deep-blue sea

But the traffic of condemnation was by no means one-way. The Spanish physician Michael Servetus, who discovered the pulmonary circulation of the blood from the right to left ventricle of the heart via the lungs, was imprisoned in Catholic France for his supposedly heretical religious views. However, when he escaped and fled to Calvinist Geneva, he was burned at the stake there, having previously argued bitterly with Calvin on points of doctrine.

But such drastic interventions by religious leaders, Protestant and Catholic, were more about maintaining worldly power and authority than about fundamental conflicts between reason and belief. There were broad-minded protoscientists, as well as reactionaries, in both camps. Any differences on natural philosophy were 鈥渁ctually relatively trivial鈥�, says historian and writer . No one 鈥� not Copernicus, nor Galileo, nor Newton 鈥� denied what both Luther and the popes believed, that the ultimate authority lies with God. Both sides shared a belief in a universe created by a consistent God whose laws let it run as smooth as clockwork.

Read that way, the birth of modern science was a development that happened across Europe quite independently of the religious schism. 鈥淭he scientific revolution would have gone ahead with or without the Reformation,鈥� says Wootton. Hannam thinks something similar. 鈥淓vidence that the Reformation had any material effect on the rise of science is almost impossible to isolate from other effects,鈥� he says.

In this view, it was not the Reformation but the Renaissance, a movement that began in 14th-century Italy and rediscovered and built anew upon classical literature, philosophy and art, that gave scholars the confidence to look for God鈥檚 laws of creation. The invention of the printing press in the mid-1400s allowed the rapid dissemination of these new ideas (see 鈥�Information revolutions鈥�).

Some remain unconvinced we can write the Reformation out of the picture entirely. 鈥淚t would be remarkable if the tumultuous religious upheavals of the 16th century, and the subsequent schism between Catholics and Protestants, did not leave an indelible mark on an emerging modern science,鈥� says historian at the University of Queensland in Brisbane. But perhaps it is better to say that religious factors seasoned, rather than dictated, science鈥檚 flourishing in the 17th century.

鈥淭oday鈥檚 religious fundamentalism is a peculiarly modern delusion鈥�

Protestantism emphasised the Fall of Man, Adam and Eve鈥檚 expulsion from the Garden of Eden, which had left humankind with diminished moral, cognitive and sensory capacities. But whereas Luther concluded that 鈥渋t is impossible that nature could be understood by human reason after the fall of Adam鈥�, 17th-century Anglicans were less defeatist. They held that systematic science could be a corrective: it could let us recover, with the aid of devices like the microscope, the understanding and mastery of the world enjoyed by Adam. Scientific investigation, far from being a secular or even an atheist pursuit, was a religious duty: we had an obligation to understand the world God had made.

But much the same view can be found among Catholics too. 鈥淚n the book of nature things are written in only one way鈥�, wrote Galileo 鈥� and that was 鈥渋n the language of mathematics鈥�. Some of the cardinals who condemned him would have gladly agreed.

For all his maltreatment, Galileo鈥檚 assertion that the Bible is not meant to be a book of natural philosophy was uncontroversial to all but a few in his day. Today鈥檚 religious fundamentalism that denies evolution and Earth鈥檚 age is a peculiarly modern delusion. The arguments back then were not so much about the kind of Earth God had made, but about how best to represent and honour Him on Earth 鈥� less a case of what beliefs you had, and more of what you did with them.

This article appeared in print under the headline 鈥淟uther鈥檚 legacy鈥�