Medieval Thinking

Surely we in the twenty first century do not think like those in medieval time period, right? We don't set up Inquisitions, severely abuse lower classes, or wage Holy Wars. But before you get too haughty, look at the next two frameworks for thinking, based on medieval cosmology, and see if you actually are more like those folks from way back when than you might have guessed. First, look at what this cosmology was. The prevailing (and ruling) thoughts was the egocentric notion that the earth was the center of everything, and the universe truly does revolve around us (reminds us of our teenage years).
"The waters lie above it, the air above that, and fire soars upward to the heavens. . . " beyond the moon lies the fixed "crystal spheres [stars]" and beyond that is where God and the angels reside (Primack and Abrams in The View from the Center of the Universe).

Note that the physical location of everything is very ordered. This helped shape the strongest framework of thought of the day, which is to say that everything was put into its place by God. Kings were made kings by God, peons were made peons by God, and one simply lived out the role God placed them in. To deny the divine right of the king was the same as completely tearing down their universe as they saw it. Now for us, especially in America with the American dream, we no longer think of things quite like this, and certainly not for politics or occupation, but I think that we still see this paradigm exhibited to some extent. Questions such as "What is our 'calling'?" or " What did God intend for us to do with our life?" or any sort of questions of destiny or fate all demonstrate this same idea that the positions and places we fill or will fill is all orderly and preordained by God.

The second framework for thinking comes from when the medieval cosmology came crashing down due to the work of Galileo and his contemporaries. What happened was what is considered the Cartesian Bargain. This was applicable to the culture and political structure of the time, but it continues to permeate many folks' thoughts today. What this agreement boils down to is a divorce between the spiritual and the physical. At the time, this meant that scientists would be allowed to work on explaining the physical, but leave any spiritual implications out of it. Similarly, religion would not attempt to overstep its bounds and use their religious views to explain physical phenomena. I see this divorce everywhere today, and certainly has had chain reactions within the past two hundred years that affect us today. For instance, take the common reaction of the church to the Big Bang cosmology. Here, instead of seeing this as evidence for a creation event, secular scientists make no effort to interpret the powerful meaning of their discovery, and Christians simultaneously condemn the scientific data, facts, and theories because it doesn't fit with one particular prominent religious view. Today, much work is being done to see how chemical changes within the brain affect spiritual experience. I will make two predictions: First, scientists will use this to explain away the validity of spiritual encounters, and second, Christians will condemn the science, come up with poor excuses for found data, and not even consider the possibility that perhaps God reaches us through physical means and not by magic. As a final example, go to any church, talk loudly about evolution, note the angry or offended expressions, and then see how many of those folks have read anything about the theory (this does not include reading a dismantling of the theory without reading an unbiased explanation or defense). This is the divorce between science and religion that occured in the 1600's still seen today.

Are we more civilized and sophisticated then the people who lived through and shaped medieval times? Certainly. But I think it important to recognize how these people still shape many contemporary thoughts.