Science and the Accidental Midwife
It is no surprise for those who know me, that I am a lover of all things relating to science. It started with the third-grade science teacher who defended me from students teasing me about the giant baby shoes I wore to correct my pronation. Since that time, I loved him and the class he taught, science. Perhaps it was also because he told me I was smarter than my detractors or perhaps it was because I was always an inquisitive child. None the less, the love has stuck with me my whole life.
In The Evolution of the West: How Christianity has Shaped Our Values, Nick Spencer presents a collection of essays and reviews delivered at Theos, a Christian think tank in the UK, that explain how Christianity has actually influenced and shaped the values of the Western world. Alas, Christianity is not the enemy after all but shaped our minds in many wonderful ways. I was drawn to the essay in chapter 7, The Accidental Midwife: The Emergence of a Scientific Culture. In this chapter, Spencer says, “Historians have long asked why the Scientific Revolution happened, and why it happened when it did.”[1] Spencer points out the there were scientific revolutions throughout history as well as great advances in China by the fourteenth century, but without capitalizing on this and transforming it into a full-scale “Scientific Revolution” as the Europeans did later in the sixteenth-seventeenth-century.[2]
Spencer lists a few dramatic changes that happened at the same time which caused Christianity to serve as a mid-wife to science. First, he lists the “discovery of the New World”; with this discovery, it showed the ancients did not know everything since “new flora and fauna” were discovered that did not fit the classifications previously known.[3] Another factor Spencer lists are the change in the way Scripture was read; Scripture was read less symbolically, reading it more “horizontally” than “vertically”.[4] Also, Spencer points to a transformation of the understanding of vocation in the Reformation period, which allowed natural philosophers to show how they might bring glory to God in his works.[5]
This change of the understanding of vocation in the Reformation period also points to the secularization of the Western world. James K. A. Smith in How (Not) to Be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor, explains how Taylor believes the Reform was the fulcrum of Modernity and that it describes “that difficult space of unstable equilibrium between the demands of eternal and creaturely life. In particular, Taylor highlights “a profound dissatisfaction with the hierarchical equilibrium between lay life and the renunciative vocations”.”[6] Spencer believes it is this separation that allows Christianity to help birth science.
Although this looking outside of God to understand the natural world may have been instigated by the Reformation and how we changed the reading of the Bible, it is interesting that many during that same time period of the Reformation actually found the Bible instructive to the formation of scientific theory. Galileo supported his view of the cosmos both “with arguments both theological and scientific”.[7]
In reality, as Christians, we now know that God created the world and all of its wonder, including science. The truth is Christianity can birth science but only as it is unencumbered by erroneous beliefs about God.
[1]. Spencer, Nick. The Evolution of the West: How Christianity has Shaped Our Values. Louisville: Westminster John Knox Press. 2016: Kindle ed. Chap. 7, sec. 1.
[2]. Ibid., Chap. 7, sec. 1.
[3]. Ibid., Chap. 7, sec. 4.
[4]. Ibid.
[5]. Ibid.
[6]. Smith, James K. A. How (Not) to be Secular: Reading Charles Taylor. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Co. 2014: 35.
[7]. Dawes, Gregory W. Galileo and the Conflict Between Religion and Science. New York: Routledge. 2019:1.
About the Author
Mary Mims
I am a licensed and ordained Baptist minister and have worked with the children and youth for the last seven years. I have resided in the Washington, DC area for the last 30 years, but I am originally from Michigan. I am also bi-vocational and work at the US Patent and Trademark Office in the Scientific Library.6 responses to “Science and the Accidental Midwife”
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Mary,
Thanks so much for your thoughtful and well-cited post. I was most appreciative of your Galileo citation. I appreciate your life-long love of science and how even Scripture understood contextually, can inform scientific exploration. Thanks again.
Thanks, Mary. I had a two science teachers that had a profound effect on me. One called me “trouble” and had me present my project on creationism to the school board. I somehow knew that God’s world was infinite and that he loved when we sought to discover it because in so doing we discover him. As Christians it is that curiosity that is so important. God’s world can teach us so much.
I’m curious what you thought about his chapter on Darwin if you got to it. I really debated on writing about it because I found it interesting. I didn’t know much about Darwin but I was impressed and surprised by some of his conclusions! If you haven’t read it, you should!
I will Karen.
I love science. It just makes me think, wow, every time. However, a no scientist. And the reason I am no scientist is that I cannot think with such focussed and minute precision. However, most of the scientist I know are Christians who see God in their research. Rather than finding that knowledge decreases the need for God, they see that it increases their awe of little we know and how transcendent God is. As Spenser says, faith and research have been holding hands for centuries. Does knowledge i crease or decrease your need of God?
Hi Mary. I always enjoy your blogs, my friend. I appreciated the way you married Christianity and science together as you stated that “Christianity serves as a mid-wife to science.” Then, your conclusion that “we know that God created the world and all of its wonder, including science. The truth is Christianity can birth science but only as it is unencumbered by erroneous beliefs about God” was spot on! Powerful post – thanks for sharing!