Peter,

The Journal of the History of Science Society might have an article to help you learn about the orgin of the term Enlightment. I am having database access problems at the moment, so I can't research for you.

I tend to see scientific progress more in the area of the Great Divergence (c. 1760), when Episte (theory) started to drive (Techne) knowledge. The West has a debt to the Ancient Greeks [preserved by Muslims]

Peter (Sells),

The foundation of the Elightenment is founded the Scientific Revolution a century early [Galilei, Kepler, Descartes [as you note]). It was a revolution in progress. It also has its roots in France and Germany and was quickly taken up by England.

The French mathematian d'Alembert [ held that subsequent generation should not be restrained by the reasoning of earlier generations. Onne generation would lay the foundation of the next so each "succeeding completes that [its] revolution" and passes it to the next to reason and complete [never does].

Initially, the Scientific Revolution referred to mathematica and astronomy and mathematics. Herein, Fontenelle [1699] the "Histoire" of that new Scientific Revolution could also be applied to politics, morals, literary critism and free speech, placing rational thinking on a collision with the authority of the Church, especially in Spain. "Reason was the correct method" [Hankins]. The Inquisition needed to challenged". In France, the 1700s had become the century of light [siecle des lumiieres). Very anti-clerical: perhaps not yet anti-religious.

...cont...

…cont…

The origin of the term Enlightenment however is not French but German; from Emanual Kant, whom like d'Alembert saw a revolution in progress; a reasoned way of thinking against fixed beliefs; a trespass on the langsyne affinities to authority.

When Kant asked in 1785 whether he lived in an age of enlightenment: Kant replied, "No we are living in an age of enlightenment". [Answer to Peter’s question posed]

Presumably, restrain from the churches aside, we, in the 21st century are still in the Enlightenment, as scientific method, and, latter-day philosophers, like Karl Popper, push mythologies and doctrinaire attitudes aside. We question. We progress.

The French Revolution was an example of the effect of the Enlightenment, encouraging freedom and individualism. The people became the dog not the tail.

In England, "reason" enjoined with “nature”. In fact, some religions, as you note, attempted to apply reason to Deity; for example, John Locke and Robert Boyle to prove the existence of God", based on the observable "works of nature" [Locke] and no one had shown how the inanimate could become animate [Boyle].

As science progressed, and, our understanding of how to understand improved after the Great Divergence of Episte and Techne, we have significant advances in understanding the very nature of Nature Herself, though great scientific leaps foreward [e.g., Darwin/Evolution] applying a "reasoned" approach to nature. Humans could ask was the created by physical laws that could be understood at some indeterminate time in the future [without a god(s)] or was it through reason and nature we learn more about the "manifestation of a divine intellect" [there is a God]?

S Early-on Voltaire and others held "arguments from design" demonstrated the existence of God; however, the Science of Man [People] via Scientific Method successfully provided alternative explanations for our very being.

[p.s. William of Ockham lived c.1285-1349 and Rene Descartes lived 1596-1650. Given your discourse, perhaps you should have mentioned this history.

[p.p.s Penrose's "Road to Reality" {Hi George} is an advanced lay book on the laws of the Universe. A good loooooong read.]

Regards,

O.

...cont...

1. Please my immediately above last posts,

2." ...a consistent polemic against the Church." - Sells

- Not this straight forward. First against clerics, then, the
freedom of thought linking Episte to Techne, then, science provided. Then the results of scientific method allowed for [tentative] hypotheses to divine creation. Science is typically is equally opposed to Eygyptian mythology as its Christian equal. So the term "the [Christian] should not be accepted in isolation.

Best,

O.

Sells, waterboy, boxgum,
thanks for the interesting insights and comments which I do not necessarily see in disagreement with what I was trying to say myself, namely that in any cognitive process there is a time for deductive, top-down thinking and time for inductive, bottom-up thinking (I would not dare to comment on theological, i.e. pastoral, practice), one only should not play one against the other. In physics, like in most human endeavours, theory and practical verification go hand-in-hand, and useful, acceptable theories are those that are verified by practice (observation/experimentation). In this sense I understand waterboy’s proposition that “the evidence of 2000 years of History is that (the Trinitarian doctrine) has been 'effective' in subsequent theological work.

However, the “unreasonable effectiveness of mathematics” does not refer - as I understand it - to this usefulness of physical theories (relativity theory, quantum mechanics, etc.) but to that of “speculative”, deductive (pure) maths: The speculation “imagine the square root of -1 would exist” led to complex numbers without which there would not be any modern science and technology. I somehow cannot see anything in theology that would be analogous to this effectiveness of mathematics. So I completely agree with waterboy that “(in) deductive theology ... it has become very difficult to establish general agreement on any set of propositions which can be agreed to be the premises from which to commence work.”

Nowadays no philosopher tries to “prove God deductively” from a more general axiom (neither did, I think, Aquinas, though Descartes perhaps did). What is called “natural theology” tries to find arguments in favour of a divine presence, not to prove it like you prove e.g. a mathematical or legal conclusion. At least this is how I see the “God of philosophers and scientists” (as understood by e.g. John Polkinghorne), with a (human and humane) face of the “God of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob”. In this way Christians, I hope, are in a position to communicate with Muslims who see a different face of the same God, or the Buddhists, who see Him (if at all) as completely “faceless.”

George.
Thank you for the balanced view of deduction and induction and the clarification of the “unreasonable effectiveness” of mathematics. I think we are largely in agreement. But on another note I do wonder about your characterising of the God of Islam as being a different face of the same God as worshipped by Christians and Jews. There is a very good article in the Oct edition of First Things written pseudonymously (for obvious and sad reasons) about Islam. The line the author takes follows some remarks by Rosenzweig in his book “The Star of Redemption”. He accuses the prophet of plagiarism and of Islam being a pagan religion in which the individual disappears from view. I think that it is too easy to blur the differences between Judaism/Christianity and Islam for the sake of appearing to be tolerant. On deeper investigation we find that between them and us there is a great gulf fixed. Of course this only increases the demand made on us by the gospel that we should love them.