During the Middle Ages, there was a stark difference between the hygiene standards of Islamic and Western European societies:
Specific Contributions and Influences
The Crusades and the presence of the Moors in Spain acted as conduits for several hygienic advancements:
The Crusades and the presence of the Moors in Spain acted as conduits for several hygienic advancements:While some historians note that medieval Europeans were not "entirely unwashed"—regularly washing hands and faces—they were generally considered significantly less hygienic by contemporary Muslim observers.
A final word:
“Americans owe directly to the Saracens our southwestern and Californian architecture, our cotton industry, our asphalt paving, and a long list of such things as beds, table and bed linens, small occasional tables, strawberries, ice-cream. Americans speak Arabic when they say, mattress, sofa, cotton, talcum, sugar, coffee, sherbert, naphtha, gypsum, benzine. Our cars run, our streets are paved, our houses are furnished and our bodies clothed with things that the Saracens created.”—Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom
“As for persecution, I do not want to make too much of it. The notion that there was a sustained Christian assault on science is not true. But I do not want to make too little of it, either.”
I would like to know more. Galileo and Schopenhauer are famous examples and I had assumed that there were many non-famous examples too. Is that not the case? I’m also confused given the inquisition. How is that not a sustained assault?
That seems like a weird distinction to draw to me. Even if they aren’t persecuting scientists specifically wouldn’t it have a huge chilling effect?
I guess another interesting question would be whether the Christian persecution was more/less other places and how much those places flourished scientifically compared to the Christian world.
You’re attacking claims Don never made. He never said Bacon was reviving the Greeks or operating outside Christian culture. In fact, he explicitly acknowledges that the pioneers of modern science were Christians who often framed their work in religious terms. The point is not that Bacon was an atheist or a closet pagan. The point is that the intellectual project he launched was new.
Bacon rejected both the Greek view that knowledge is primarily contemplative and the Christian view that knowledge is subordinate to revelation and salvation. His insistence that we “conquer nature by obeying her” marks a break with both traditions. Knowledge becomes something to be won through observation, experiment, and induction—and won for the sake of improving human life in this world. That combination of (1) prioritising nature, (2) for man’s practical benefit, (3) through empirical method, is not an extension of Christian epistemology. It is a departure from it.
Your treatment of reason in the Enlightenment—especially Kant—is also off the mark. Kant did not “transform fallibility into power.” He redefined reason so radically that it could no longer know reality as it is. On his view, reason structures appearances but cannot reach the noumenal world. That is not a celebration of reason’s power; it is a restriction of its scope. And Kant himself makes his motive explicit in the second preface to the Critique of Pure Reason: he “had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.” This is not the stance of someone trying to secure the Enlightenment’s confidence in reason; it is the stance of someone trying to protect Christian faith from reason’s reach.
So the issue is not whether Bacon or Kant lived in Christian cultures. The issue is the direction of their ideas. Bacon’s method and purpose break with Christian intellectual priorities. Kant’s epistemology, far from strengthening reason, limits it to preserve faith. These distinctions matter if we want to understand how the modern scientific and philosophical revolutions actually unfolded.
Contrast in Hygiene Practices
During the Middle Ages, there was a stark difference between the hygiene standards of Islamic and Western European societies:
Specific Contributions and Influences
The Crusades and the presence of the Moors in Spain acted as conduits for several hygienic advancements:
The Crusades and the presence of the Moors in Spain acted as conduits for several hygienic advancements:While some historians note that medieval Europeans were not "entirely unwashed"—regularly washing hands and faces—they were generally considered significantly less hygienic by contemporary Muslim observers.
A final word:
“Americans owe directly to the Saracens our southwestern and Californian architecture, our cotton industry, our asphalt paving, and a long list of such things as beds, table and bed linens, small occasional tables, strawberries, ice-cream. Americans speak Arabic when they say, mattress, sofa, cotton, talcum, sugar, coffee, sherbert, naphtha, gypsum, benzine. Our cars run, our streets are paved, our houses are furnished and our bodies clothed with things that the Saracens created.”—Rose Wilder Lane, The Discovery of Freedom
Well done. Thank you.
“As for persecution, I do not want to make too much of it. The notion that there was a sustained Christian assault on science is not true. But I do not want to make too little of it, either.”
I would like to know more. Galileo and Schopenhauer are famous examples and I had assumed that there were many non-famous examples too. Is that not the case? I’m also confused given the inquisition. How is that not a sustained assault?
Oh, there was sustained and abundant persecution by Christians, it was just not generally directed at the practice of natural science.
That seems like a weird distinction to draw to me. Even if they aren’t persecuting scientists specifically wouldn’t it have a huge chilling effect?
I guess another interesting question would be whether the Christian persecution was more/less other places and how much those places flourished scientifically compared to the Christian world.
You have misunderstood everything. I can't help you.
You’re attacking claims Don never made. He never said Bacon was reviving the Greeks or operating outside Christian culture. In fact, he explicitly acknowledges that the pioneers of modern science were Christians who often framed their work in religious terms. The point is not that Bacon was an atheist or a closet pagan. The point is that the intellectual project he launched was new.
Bacon rejected both the Greek view that knowledge is primarily contemplative and the Christian view that knowledge is subordinate to revelation and salvation. His insistence that we “conquer nature by obeying her” marks a break with both traditions. Knowledge becomes something to be won through observation, experiment, and induction—and won for the sake of improving human life in this world. That combination of (1) prioritising nature, (2) for man’s practical benefit, (3) through empirical method, is not an extension of Christian epistemology. It is a departure from it.
Your treatment of reason in the Enlightenment—especially Kant—is also off the mark. Kant did not “transform fallibility into power.” He redefined reason so radically that it could no longer know reality as it is. On his view, reason structures appearances but cannot reach the noumenal world. That is not a celebration of reason’s power; it is a restriction of its scope. And Kant himself makes his motive explicit in the second preface to the Critique of Pure Reason: he “had to deny knowledge in order to make room for faith.” This is not the stance of someone trying to secure the Enlightenment’s confidence in reason; it is the stance of someone trying to protect Christian faith from reason’s reach.
So the issue is not whether Bacon or Kant lived in Christian cultures. The issue is the direction of their ideas. Bacon’s method and purpose break with Christian intellectual priorities. Kant’s epistemology, far from strengthening reason, limits it to preserve faith. These distinctions matter if we want to understand how the modern scientific and philosophical revolutions actually unfolded.