Medieval Catholicism and Science

[Chirios]

If you read this thread, you'd almost think that scientific discoveries follow inevitably, as long as there's no external force hampering the internal progress of science. I didn't realize teleology was back in.

Of course scientific discoveries follow inevitably if there's no external force hampering the internal progress of science. If enough people study a subject eventually someone will find the answer, this isn't teleology at all.

[Thanas]

Perhaps it's wrong for me to stress natural philosophy as the crucial element (although I rather doubt that), but the point that I'm trying to make is: the above conglomerate of natural philosophy, mixed mathematics and engineering isn't something that must necessarily develop. It didn't develop in ancient Athens. It didn't develop in ancient Alexandria. It didn't develop in the Islamic world. It didn't develop in China. It didn't develop in Africa. It didn't develop in the Americas. It only developed in Europe. The development of modern science is a unique event - it's the exception, not the rule. In such a case, it's wiser to look for causes of that development rather than looking for inhibiting factors that held it back.

What now? Please elaborate on what elements you think were missing in antiquity.

Also, the church was most definitely an inhibiting factor. I don't think you can describe the complete anti-intellectual attitude held among several church councils any other way.

[Simon_Jester]

If you read this thread, you'd almost think that scientific discoveries follow inevitably, as long as there's no external force hampering the internal progress of science. I didn't realize teleology was back in.

Of course scientific discoveries follow inevitably if there's no external force hampering the internal progress of science. If enough people study a subject eventually someone will find the answer, this isn't teleology at all.

You're bypassing some very important questions by taking this stance.

What constitutes an external force? Do there have to be inquisitors who will torture you for disagreeing with them? Is it an "external force hampering the internal progress of science" if the intellectuals of a given period think that contemplating philosophy, or art, or literature is more important than analyzing the natural world and trying to figure out how it works? What if philosophers and artists receive public funding, while scholars who focus on the natural world are not?

What if the internal mindset of the scholars themselves creates hangups? What if they're more interested in presenting arguments that show philosophical symmetry than in what we'd consider scientific criteria like experimental verifiability?


To take an example, consider the Platonic argument for the afterlife, as outlined in the Phaedo dialogue. One element of the argument proceeds as follows:

Throughout nature, we see pairs of opposites, which proceed out of one another. Sleep proceeds from awakeness, and vice versa, through the process of falling asleep and waking up. Objects may come together or be separated; the state of being together proceeds out of the state of being separated through the process of combination, and the state of separation proceeds out of the state of being together through the process of division.

These opposites cannot exist without each other. There would be no way to define sleep without awakeness, or vice versa, or to have waking-up without falling-asleep, or the reverse. Likewise, there can be no division of a composite body into pieces unless there is a process by which pieces can be combined into a composite whole- and vice versa.

And, proceeding from this notion, one must conclude that since life and death are opposites, and there is a well known process by which life becomes death (dying) there must be a corresponding process by which life emerges from death (resurrection, reincarnation, call it what you will). This latter process is invisible to us, of course, but by symmetry it must exist.

...

Now, before you start jumping up and down and howling "BULLSHIT!" at the argument itself, bear in mind that I am not asserting the strength or weakness of this argument. My point is that Plato considered this a credible way to convince an audience. Why? Was he stupid? Surely not- or if he was, so was practically everyone else in the ancient world. Was his entire audience stupid? Again, surely not- since he was talking to many of the most intelligent people in his society at the time. I find it hard to believe that human beings were all stupid in those days.

So what has changed since 390 BC, that made what was once a compelling philosophical argument sound like mystical gibberish? Might this change have something to do with the fact that the ancient Greco-Roman philosophers, in centuries of thought, did not uncover principles which were uncovered in a roughly equal number of centuries of European thought?

Obviously, yes, "standing upon the shoulders of giants" and all, Copernicus could refer back to Ptolemy and build upon his progress while Ptolemy himself had no such advantage. But I'm not convinced that this is the sum total of what made the difference.

Consider likewise how much trouble the early European astronomers of the 1500s had freeing their mind of the preconceived notion that the planets must move in 'perfect' circles. why did the ancients adopt this assumption, and why is there so little evidence of them trying to move beyond it, given that they had sophisticated skills at geometry and were quite capable of doing all the observations and mathematics someone like Kepler could?

I think there's a difference in the approach to knowledge here- I can't place my finger on it, but I don't think it should be ignored. Nor do I think we should assume that classical thought from the Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman cultures would have led predictably to the Scientific Revolution as we know it if they'd had 'just a few more centuries' or some such. It might have, but I'm not confident in assuming so.

[bz249]

So what has changed since 390 BC, that made what was once a compelling philosophical argument sound like mystical gibberish? Might this change have something to do with the fact that the ancient Greco-Roman philosophers, in centuries of thought, did not uncover principles which were uncovered in a roughly equal number of centuries of European thought?

Obviously, yes, "standing upon the shoulders of giants" and all, Copernicus could refer back to Ptolemy and build upon his progress while Ptolemy himself had no such advantage. But I'm not convinced that this is the sum total of what made the difference.

Consider likewise how much trouble the early European astronomers of the 1500s had freeing their mind of the preconceived notion that the planets must move in 'perfect' circles. why did the ancients adopt this assumption, and why is there so little evidence of them trying to move beyond it, given that they had sophisticated skills at geometry and were quite capable of doing all the observations and mathematics someone like Kepler could?

I think there's a difference in the approach to knowledge here- I can't place my finger on it, but I don't think it should be ignored. Nor do I think we should assume that classical thought from the Greek, Hellenistic, and Roman cultures would have led predictably to the Scientific Revolution as we know it if they'd had 'just a few more centuries' or some such. It might have, but I'm not confident in assuming so.

You identified the most important inhibiting factor in scientific progress, the works of others. Of course these works represent a tremendous aid, if you are working within the paradigm. Then you can find plenty of experimental evidence to support you, theories and even authority (in principle a free-minded scientist is free from those preconceptions, but scientist are just people and the text of someone respected worth more). So there can be a rapid advance if there is enough room to expand.

However when one totally exploited the possibilities run into the walls of the existing paradigm. Outside there is nothing, but uncharted land, the framework of the mind cease to function. And indeed the world is governed by laws which are illogical. This means that even though the philosphers discover there is something wrong with the paradigm (as happened in the ancient Greece and the High Medieval time also) but they can not propose a better alternative. And the weight, the completeness of the former paradigm is also against the progress. There are too many things explained and the system works fine in almost every cases.

And about illogical things. So take this, the foundation of modern science:

The velocity of a body remains constant unless an external force is acting the body.

It is contrary to the everyday experience. Someone need a high level of abstraction and the denial of the common sense (the cart does not go with constant velocity without a horse to pull, and indeed the cart does not pull the horse) to arrive to this conclusion. So achieving this state is not guaranteed and indeed only happened in one cultural group. And some game changing events are really based on blind luck, like the Italian guy who believed the circumference of the Earth is only 28.000 km not 40.000 km as accepted by the contemporary scientific community. This led to the discovery of something totally unknown to the Antiquity, a new continent (a serious insult against the Aristotelean world).

[Zed]

Perhaps it's wrong for me to stress natural philosophy as the crucial element (although I rather doubt that), but the point that I'm trying to make is: the above conglomerate of natural philosophy, mixed mathematics and engineering isn't something that must necessarily develop. It didn't develop in ancient Athens. It didn't develop in ancient Alexandria. It didn't develop in the Islamic world. It didn't develop in China. It didn't develop in Africa. It didn't develop in the Americas. It only developed in Europe. The development of modern science is a unique event - it's the exception, not the rule. In such a case, it's wiser to look for causes of that development rather than looking for inhibiting factors that held it back.

What now? Please elaborate on what elements you think were missing in antiquity.

Oh, come on, are you honestly trying to claim that the science of antiquity and modern science are the same thing?

Also, the church was most definitely an inhibiting factor. I don't think you can describe the complete anti-intellectual attitude held among several church councils any other way.

It was an inhibiting factor, but it was also a stimulating factor. It's completely unclear which one dominates.

[Zed]

If you read this thread, you'd almost think that scientific discoveries follow inevitably, as long as there's no external force hampering the internal progress of science. I didn't realize teleology was back in.

Of course scientific discoveries follow inevitably if there's no external force hampering the internal progress of science. If enough people study a subject eventually someone will find the answer, this isn't teleology at all.

1) The very notion of the "internal progress of science" assumes that there is a goal for that progress, and that science aims at that goal. This is teleological.
2) Your statement is hogwash. I can think of a multitude of subjects I can investigate that you'll never find the answer for, simply because of problematic conceptual schemes or assumptions.

[Thanas]

Perhaps it's wrong for me to stress natural philosophy as the crucial element (although I rather doubt that), but the point that I'm trying to make is: the above conglomerate of natural philosophy, mixed mathematics and engineering isn't something that must necessarily develop. It didn't develop in ancient Athens. It didn't develop in ancient Alexandria. It didn't develop in the Islamic world. It didn't develop in China. It didn't develop in Africa. It didn't develop in the Americas. It only developed in Europe. The development of modern science is a unique event - it's the exception, not the rule. In such a case, it's wiser to look for causes of that development rather than looking for inhibiting factors that held it back.

What now? Please elaborate on what elements you think were missing in antiquity.

Oh, come on, are you honestly trying to claim that the science of antiquity and modern science are the same thing?

No, but please answer the question.

Also, the church was most definitely an inhibiting factor. I don't think you can describe the complete anti-intellectual attitude held among several church councils any other way.

It was an inhibiting factor, but it was also a stimulating factor. It's completely unclear which one dominates.

What is your evidence on that?

[Zed]

What now? Please elaborate on what elements you think were missing in antiquity.

Oh, come on, are you honestly trying to claim that the science of antiquity and modern science are the same thing?

No, but please answer the question.

[*] moving away from the ontological distinction between naturalia and artificialia / the belief that natural objects and artificial objects are governed by different principles
[*] (related to the above) accepting the notion that intervening in nature allows us to distinguish causes in nature (and, related to this, the isolation of situations into experiments)
[*] (related to the above) a greater emphasis on experiment and its quantification (and the social technologies required in asserting their validity).

Will that do?

Also, the church was most definitely an inhibiting factor. I don't think you can describe the complete anti-intellectual attitude held among several church councils any other way.

It was an inhibiting factor, but it was also a stimulating factor. It's completely unclear which one dominates.

What is your evidence on that?

The positive effects of the Catholic Church on the Scientific Revolution have already been mentioned in this thread, and I'm not the one claiming which of the two dominates.

[Thanas]

[*] moving away from the ontological distinction between naturalia and artificialia / the belief that natural objects and artificial objects are governed by different principles
[*] (related to the above) accepting the notion that intervening in nature allows us to distinguish causes in nature (and, related to this, the isolation of situations into experiments)
[*] (related to the above) a greater emphasis on experiment and its quantification (and the social technologies required in asserting their validity).

Will that do?

No, because all I see is a lot of words with no proof at all.

The positive effects of the Catholic Church on the Scientific Revolution have already been mentioned in this thread, and I'm not the one claiming which of the two dominates.

It takes a lot of gall to just ignore a lot of the history and then go with "They might have helped somewhere along the line" when in fact the examples of surpressing experiments etc. are pretty massive. For example, the prohibition on disecting corpses. Or the emphasis on not reading anything besides the bible. Or the burning of the apothecaries.

[Chirios]

If you read this thread, you'd almost think that scientific discoveries follow inevitably, as long as there's no external force hampering the internal progress of science. I didn't realize teleology was back in.

Of course scientific discoveries follow inevitably if there's no external force hampering the internal progress of science. If enough people study a subject eventually someone will find the answer, this isn't teleology at all.

1) The very notion of the "internal progress of science" assumes that there is a goal for that progress, and that science aims at that goal. This is teleological.
2) Your statement is hogwash. I can think of a multitude of subjects I can investigate that you'll never find the answer for, simply because of problematic conceptual schemes or assumptions.

1) No it doesn't. It means that with increased study you gain further understanding, it has nothing to do with aiming at a goal, it's about learning things.
2) Am I every single person that will ever study science from now until eternity? No, I'm not, therefore your statement is ridiculous. Study, plus experimentation and testing of hypotheses on a large enough scale will inevitably lead to increased understanding of any natural phenomena.

[Simon_Jester]

Of course scientific discoveries follow inevitably if there's no external force hampering the internal progress of science. If enough people study a subject eventually someone will find the answer, this isn't teleology at all.

1) The very notion of the "internal progress of science" assumes that there is a goal for that progress, and that science aims at that goal. This is teleological.
2) Your statement is hogwash. I can think of a multitude of subjects I can investigate that you'll never find the answer for, simply because of problematic conceptual schemes or assumptions.

1) No it doesn't. It means that with increased study you gain further understanding, it has nothing to do with aiming at a goal, it's about learning things.
2) Am I every single person that will ever study science from now until eternity? No, I'm not, therefore your statement is ridiculous. Study, plus experimentation and testing of hypotheses on a large enough scale will inevitably lead to increased understanding of any natural phenomena.

Ahem.

Study, plus experimentation and testing of hypotheses.

Do you have any idea, Chirios, how many underlying assumptions are wrapped up in those seven words?

"Study" didn't mean the same thing to people living a thousand years ago- to most of them it meant memorizing a holy book, and the commentaries on the holy book, and the commentaries on the commentaries... so that you could live a good life. For ancient Athenian philosophers, it meant endless back-and-forth about the nature of virtue and the true essence of ideas, because the philosopher could then live a good (virtuous) life. For most of human history in which a definable scholarly elite existed, that scholarly elite was much more preoccupied with philosophical than with what you would call "scientific" questions. Not because someone was oppressing them- because that's how people thought, that was the point of acquiring knowledge in the first place.

"Experimentation" and "testing" didn't mean the same thing to people living a thousand years ago, or even five hundred. It meant fooling around more or less at random, with far, far less in the way of quantification and careful analysis. There was almost no sense of devising specific experiments to demonstrate specific principles or concepts. No one had ever heard of things like 'control groups' or 'null hypotheses' or any of countless other concepts vital to what we think of today as scientific experimentation. There was little or no concept of testing one's ideas to prove or disprove them, or of restricting oneself to ideas that could be proven or disproven.

"Hypotheses" didn't mean the same thing to people back then, either. There was, again, no sense of an obligation to have ideas about the world that could be fitted into a coherent framework of 'natural philosophy.' "Why do trees exist?" could be a more important question than "how do trees get the food they need to grow?" from the point of view of a scholar.

That's what people are trying to get at: science as we know it is a construct. We had to devise this framework of thinking about the world before we could turn it into a machine for learning new useful things. Before the framework was built, there was no such thing as a machine for learning new useful things, or not at nearly the same scale and pace of advances.

Do you see how that affects the situation? There doesn't have to be some outside force 'holding back' science in a society where science as we know it simply does not exist as a meaningful concept. Nothing 'held back' ancient Greek science; it just didn't happen.

[bz249]

It takes a lot of gall to just ignore a lot of the history and then go with "They might have helped somewhere along the line" when in fact the examples of surpressing experiments etc. are pretty massive. For example, the prohibition on disecting corpses. Or the emphasis on not reading anything besides the bible. Or the burning of the apothecaries.

Not reading anything besides the commentaries on the Bible, the Bible itself was rather restricted. The priest who has a biblical cite from each and every situation is a product of the Reformation so something relatively recent.

[Marcus Aurelius]

It takes a lot of gall to just ignore a lot of the history and then go with "They might have helped somewhere along the line" when in fact the examples of surpressing experiments etc. are pretty massive. For example, the prohibition on disecting corpses. Or the emphasis on not reading anything besides the bible. Or the burning of the apothecaries.

Not reading anything besides the commentaries on the Bible, the Bible itself was rather restricted. The priest who has a biblical cite from each and every situation is a product of the Reformation so something relatively recent.

We have to remember that this was all before the invention of the printing press, which meant that scrolls and later books were expensive and rare. In the Roman world there existed a class of scholars and men rich enough to purchase writings in large quantities, which were copied by professional scribes. This group of people vanished almost completely from the West somewhere around 400-600 C.E. Partially they were absorbed to the church, but increasingly lowering standards of living just made that life style impossible. The new emerging secular upper class were usually not interested in book learning, because their success depended on rather more practical and violent set of skills.

Therefore copying texts became almost solely a Church monopoly. There was very little market left for secular copying of texts and if you weren't a clergyman you simply couldn't walk into the local monastery and ask them to copy yourself the Bible, let alone any other writing they might have. There was no perceived need for secular people to read the Bible, so it was not unreasonable to limit access to clergymen. A different matter is the fact that later the anti-scholarly attitude Thanas referred to went to so far that even regular priests in the countryside often could not read properly. However, even that was not really planned by anyone, it just followed from the circumstances. The need to understand the Bible is central to Reformation, but it wasn't as central to the Catholic Church, which held the apostolic tradition as important (or even more so) as the canonical scriptures. It was more important for an ordinary priest to perform the church Sacraments properly than read the Bible.

[Zed]

[*] moving away from the ontological distinction between naturalia and artificialia / the belief that natural objects and artificial objects are governed by different principles
[*] (related to the above) accepting the notion that intervening in nature allows us to distinguish causes in nature (and, related to this, the isolation of situations into experiments)
[*] (related to the above) a greater emphasis on experiment and its quantification (and the social technologies required in asserting their validity).

Will that do?

No, because all I see is a lot of words with no proof at all.

You're welcome to read Gaukroger, Cohen, Biagioli, Shapin and others for elaboration.

The positive effects of the Catholic Church on the Scientific Revolution have already been mentioned in this thread, and I'm not the one claiming which of the two dominates.

It takes a lot of gall to just ignore a lot of the history and then go with "They might have helped somewhere along the line" when in fact the examples of surpressing experiments etc. are pretty massive. For example, the prohibition on disecting corpses. Or the emphasis on not reading anything besides the bible. Or the burning of the apothecaries.

Or the emphasis on conversion by means of experiment. Or the gathering of scholars in individual locations. Or the patronage of science.

That sword cuts both ways.

[Thanas]

No, because all I see is a lot of words with no proof at all.

You're welcome to read Gaukroger, Cohen, Biagioli, Shapin and others for elaboration.

Specific cites, please.

Or the emphasis on conversion by means of experiment. Or the gathering of scholars in individual locations. Or the patronage of science.

That sword cuts both ways.

Yes, but nowhere does this support your claim unilaterally - every action like that is also possible to be interpreted as a reaction. The patronage of the right science (as evidenced in the struggles of the papacy and bishoprics to get control over the universities). The gathering of scholars in individual locations is also a dubious achievement in itself, considering it was not until the renaissance that this really started to get results. Heck, international correspondence was very, very small in church times and that it picked back up cannot be laid upon the doorstep of the church as some kind of accomplishment. Neither did the church get universal credit for the conversion by means of experiment - and it is not as if experiments were unknown before the church came along.

[darthscott]

After reading a great of material on this topic from both sides of the spectrum, I believe the Church was most definitely a positive influence on Natural Philosophy at the time, which in turn lead to the birth of the Scientific Revolution in Europe. The Church's polices during the Middle Ages led to a more technical advanced and freer Europe. The Church founded many universities, began the first wide spread school system, financially supported many the natural philosophers's/scientists of the day, and many members of the Clergy were themselves contributors to advances in both science and mathematics.

Unfortunately this age of history has been much derided over the last half millennium due to some very biased authors. Lies, myths, over exaggerations, and misinterpretations have lead to the negative perception of the Catholic Church during this era. Early Protestant and secular historians over the past few hundred years have created or twisted things like the 1,000 year Dark Age of Europe, the importance of the Renaissance, the Flat Earth business, the over-exaggerated Galileo Trials, and other suppression of science stories(things like banning human dissection, etc...) to suit their own agendas and put forth their own personal opinions. The Church was by no means perfect all of the time, but the anti-intellectual version of the Middle Ages is far from the truth.

With that said you are more than welcome to stick to the old version of what life in the Middle Ages was like, that is primarily based upon opinion and secondary sources written long after the events in question. However, if you are interested in reading about what actual happened and get past the fairy tales, here are a few good books to read:

Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion by Ronald L. Numbers
When Science and Christianity Meet by Ronald L. Numbers
Science in the Middle Ages by David C. Lindberg
The Beginnings of Western Science: The European Scientific Tradition in Philosophical, Religious, and Institutional Context, Prehistory to A.D. 1450
by David C. Lindberg
God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science by David C. Lindberg
Cathedral, Forge and Waterwheel: Technology and Invention in the Middle Ages by Joseph Gies
Those Terrible Middle Ages: Debunking the Myths by Régine Pernoud
God's Philosophers by James Hannam
The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution by James Hannam
Seven Lies About Catholic History by Diane Moczar
God and Reason in the Middle Ages by Edward Grant
The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success by Rodney Stark
For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, and the End of Slavery by Rodney Stark
How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization by Thomas Woods Jr.
Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians by Jeffrey Burton Russell

These are good reads all, some being from secular historians themselves who admit to the distortions created by biased historians in the past.

[Darth Wong]

There's nothing like the "blizzard of names" technique to make an argument without really making an argument.

In reality, the fact that you've read so many books with similar conclusions rather strongly suggests that you seek out material which confirms that hypothesis, and that your whole method is probably bunk.

Just how old do you think the scientific revolution is? The scientific revolution really did not occur until a couple of key realizations:

1) When you concoct hypotheses, they have to be natural, not supernatural.
2) The only kind of data you can rely on is empirical data.

Neither of these realizations came from Catholicism or any other religion. No scientific discovery in the entire history of science occurred by straying from those two basic principles. Even when religious people made the discoveries, they were employing these two principles.

[Darth Wong]

Interestingly, the arguments for Catholicism creating science are very similar to the arguments for Wall Street greed creating scientific innovation today: that they provided the resources necessary for innovators to work. Of course, one could also argue that janitors are necessary for innovators to work, because they need clean working environments, but nobody says that janitors create scientific innovation.

[Lord Baal]

Dragon Angel, the phrase "Knowledge is power, hide it well" could apply to what you describe on the original post.

[Darth Wong]

Knowledge is power, but the problem is that there are different kinds of knowledge. Religious knowledge is based on faith, while scientific knowledge is based on empiricism. The original post treats "intellectualism" as one big concept, but there is a huge difference between a religious scholar and a scientific one. Both may be considered intellectuals, but the latter employs empiricism: a mindset which is not only foreign to the church but which is actively opposed by it.

Did the church oppose intellectualism? Not all of it, but they opposed any intellectualism which contradicted their teachings, and the ability to empirically falsify an idea is absolutely central to the scientific method. Without it, you do not have a scientific method. Ergo, while they may not have opposed all intellectualism, they opposed science at a fundamental level.

Some say "Yes, but they supported science until it ran into certain core teachings", but that's the whole point: it isn't science if there are certain ideas which are exempt from empirical disproof.

[Lord Baal]

They new most of their teachings where fallacies(as still does), quite ironic for a system of belief that held the truth so high, I guess the truth is subjective and is not bound to the facts...

And to explain myself better, I would say that the church as a enterprise(a business like it is), did not pursue scientific endeavors beyond some individual cases out of personal conviction (a bunch of dudes locked up in a building for years and years are bound to get bored...). But being what it was and is, if any of those studies was to be against any of their ideas or perceived them as a threat to the established order they will quickly go out to ban it. That's not science, at least not how a truly scientific research environment would work, I agree with you.

But over everything they pursue the wealth accumulation by several ways, extortion among them.... The most infamous case led to the 13th Friday purge.

[Simon_Jester]

My impression is that there was a contribution by medieval Catholicism to science, but that it was mostly accidental.

he Scholastic tradition at least created a large population of scholars in Europe who had the toolkit needed to do science. The tools weren't being used consistently or optimally, but they existed, and might not have existed had it not been for the way the Church provided a sheltered environment for scholars in turbulent times. But none of this was done with any intent by the Church to sponsor what we would now call "science," because science as we know it hadn't been invented yet.

When something we could recognize as science did finally emerge, during the 1500s and 1600s, the Church was deeply ambivalent about accepting it. If Science as we know it was a child of Scholasticism and the medieval Church, it was a bastard child, never really acknowledged by the parent because it so quickly diverged from what they were willing to accept.
___________

*The 9th through 13th or 14th centuries AD weren't a true Dark Age. But unless I'm badly mistaken, they were still a rough period when the European economy was struggling to stitch itself back together from its height during Roman times, and when waves of invaders and internecine warfare were common. Not a great time to be a scholar, if you couldn't find a place under the aegis of a large, respected institution.

[Alyrium Denryle]

My impression is that there was a contribution by medieval Catholicism to science, but that it was mostly accidental.

he Scholastic tradition at least created a large population of scholars in Europe who had the toolkit needed to do science. The tools weren't being used consistently or optimally, but they existed, and might not have existed had it not been for the way the Church provided a sheltered environment for scholars in turbulent times. But none of this was done with any intent by the Church to sponsor what we would now call "science," because science as we know it hadn't been invented yet.

When something we could recognize as science did finally emerge, during the 1500s and 1600s, the Church was deeply ambivalent about accepting it. If Science as we know it was a child of Scholasticism and the medieval Church, it was a bastard child, never really acknowledged by the parent because it so quickly diverged from what they were willing to accept.

This is pretty much it. Most of the scholars (and this includes the humanities and arts) were clergy, mostly because the church provided the only safe place for them to do it, and the leisure time necessary (they were not desperately trying to produce enough food to survive, or doing the feudal burden thing). At least, that is, until the Renaissance began (or at least after the crusades ended). Then systems of noble patronage started to develop. Once the eye of the church was not on scholars anymore... well, scholarship diverged from what was approved, and things started to get hostile. Especially with the Reformation in swing, and the church trying to hold onto its power base.

There is also a certain bias involved. Where was someone going to become sufficiently literate and educated enough to become a philosopher? The place where old books get read, copied, and illuminated. Where is someone going to learn how to compose music that might survive to modern times? The monastery where the composers are literate (as opposed to the peasant composer who probably was not).