More Bright Earth
I think I mentioned before that I had recently been reading Philip Ball's Bright Earth : Art and the Invention of Color (New York : Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2002). Regardless, I've been finishing up my processing of the book, checking my notes, and writing my book note — in this case a rather lengthy one — for Science Besieged.
I think said then, too, how delightfully entertaining and informative I found the book. I can heartily recommend it to anyone to whom the topic sounds the least bit interesting.
As is now my wont, I found plenty of bits to quote from the book. Many that I thought were interesting and that suited my notes are copied into the previously mentioned book note. There were two leftovers; here they are.
This first one is just too good to pass up for its assessment of science — both Gombrich's misunderstanding and Ball's gentle correction.
Ernst Gombrich asserts that "art is altogether different from science," but the reason he gives will bring a rueful smile to the lips of many a scientist: "Art itself can hardly be said to progress in the way in which science progresses. Each discovery [in art] in one direction creates a new difficulty somewhere else. " One can see that Gombrich never dabbled in science. [p. 7]
This paragraph seemed so concise and piquant that I read it over several times just for pleasure at the language and the barely ominous pirouette about the Inquisition at the end:
Luther's Reformation engendered the Counter-Reformation as if preempting Newton's law of action an d reaction. It was a last attempt by the theocracy to assert dominance before the Enlightenment banished God's earth forever from the center of all creation. The Church, seeing its authority undermined by humanistic rationalism, rallied and imposed a theological set of values akin to that of the Middle Ages. Classical (that is, pre-Christian) learning, said papal Rome, was all very well, but the ultimate arbiter of all questions of conscience was God (or his representatives on earth), not science or nature. As judge and gatekeeper of the conscience of man, the Society of Jesus and the Inquisition offered their services. [p. 130]
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on Sunday, 28 January 2007 at 01.09
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"The Church, seeing its authority undermined by humanistic rationalism, rallied and imposed a theological set of values akin to that of the Middle Ages."
I think it would've been more accurate to write, The Church, perceiving an undermining of its authority . . .
I say that because even without Earth being the center of the universe or its own teachings being verified by the astronomer upstarts, the Church managed to carry on in tolerably good shape for the several centuries since.