The philosophers of the Middle Ages were responsible for drawing findings in line with church regulations based on the material provided by theologians. Theological dicta were to the philosophers of those days what Euclid’s axioms and definitions are to the geometers of today. They were given the high honor of demonstrating, by logical reasoning, how and why what the Church said was true must be true. And if their demonstrations fell short or surpassed this limit, the Church was maternally prepared to restrain them, if necessary, with the assistance of the secular arm.
Between the two, our forefathers were provided with a concise and comprehensive critique of life. They were told how the world began and how it would end; they learned that all material existence was but a base and insignificant blot on the fair face of the spiritual world, and that nature was, to all intents and purposes, the playground of the devil; they learned that the earth is the center of the visible universe, and that man is the cynosure of things terrestrial; and, most importantly, they were taught that the course of nature had no fixed order, but that it The sum and content of the entire philosophy was to instill the sense that the only thing truly worth learning in this world was how to obtain that better place that, under certain conditions, the Church promised.
Our forefathers believed in this theory of life and applied it to all aspects of their lives, including education. Culture was saintliness in the manner of the saints of those days; the education that led to it was, of course, theological; and the path to theology was through Latin.
Men thus trained did not believe that studying nature beyond what was required to satisfy basic needs would have any influence on human life. Indeed, because nature had been cursed for man’s sake, it was a foregone conclusion that people who meddled with nature would come into direct touch with Satan. And, if any born scientific investigator followed his impulses, he could fairly expect to earn the reputation, and most likely suffer the fate, of a sorcerer.
If the western world had been left alone in Chinese isolation, it is impossible to predict how long this situation would have lasted. Fortunately, it was not left to itself. Even before the thirteenth century, the rise of Moorish civilization in Spain and the great Crusade movement introduced the leaven, which has never stopped working since. The western nations of Europe got acquainted with the writings of ancient philosophers and poets, and, eventually, with the entire enormous literature of antiquity, first through the intermediation of Arabic translations, and then by the study of the originals.
Whatever high intellectual aspiration or dominant capacity existed in Italy, France, Germany, and England was spent for ages acquiring the rich heritage left by the dead civilizations of Greece and Rome. The introduction of printing greatly facilitated the diffusion and flourishing of classical learning. Those who held it were proud to have acquired the highest level of culture then available to mankind.
And justly. For, with the exception of Dante, there was no figure in modern literature throughout the Renaissance to compare with the masters of antiquity; there was no art to match with their sculpture; and there was no physical knowledge other than what Greece had accomplished. Above all, there was no better example of complete intellectual independence than the unwavering acceptance of reason as the solitary guide to truth and ultimate arbiter of behavior.
The new knowledge inevitably had a significant impact on education. The language of the monks and schoolmen appeared little better than gibberish to scholars fresh from Virgil and Cicero, and Latin studies was given a new foundation. Furthermore, Latin ceased to provide the exclusive key to knowledge. The student who sought the highest thinking of antiquity found only a second-hand reflection in Roman writing, so he turned to the full light of the Greeks. And, following a war remarkably dissimilar to the one currently being fought over the teaching of physical science, the study of Greek was recognized as an essential component of higher education.
Thus, the Humanists, as they were known, won the day, and the vast change that they implemented was of incalculable benefit to humanity. However, the Nemesis of all reformers is finality, and educational reformers, like religious reformers, made the deep, albeit widespread, mistake of mistaking the beginning for the conclusion of the reforming endeavor.
In the nineteenth century, Humanist advocates firmly believe that classical education is the only path to culture, as if we were still living in the Renaissance era. However, the current intellectual interactions between the modern and ancient cultures are significantly different from those that existed three centuries ago. Aside from the existence of a great and characteristically modern literature, modern painting, and, especially, modern music, there is one feature of the current state of the civilized world that distinguishes it more widely from the Renascence than the Renascence did from the Middle Ages.
This special character of our period can be traced back to the huge and ever-expanding role that natural knowledge plays. Not only does it impact our daily lives, but it also determines the prosperity of millions of people. Our entire philosophy of life has long been influenced, consciously or unconsciously, by the general conceptions of the cosmos imposed on us by physical science.
In fact, even a basic understanding of scientific research results reveals a broad and stark opposition to the beliefs implicitly credited and taught during the Middle Ages.
Our forefathers’ beliefs about the world’s beginning and end are no longer plausible. It is certain that the earth is not the primary body in the material cosmos, and that the world is not subjugated to human use. It is even more certain that nature is the expression of a specific order with which nothing interferes, and that the primary task of humanity is to learn that order and govern themselves properly. Furthermore, this scientific “criticism of life” comes with a unique set of credentials. It appeals to nature rather than to authority or what anyone has believed or said. It accepts that all of our interpretations of natural reality are imperfect and symbolic, and encourages the student to seek truth among objects rather than words. It tells us that making an assertion that outweighs the evidence is not merely a mistake, but a criminal.
The completely classical education advocated by Humanist advocates today makes no mention of any of this. A man can be a better scholar than Erasmus and still not understand the root reasons of the current intellectual ferment. Scholarly and pious persons, deserving of all respect, bestow upon us allocutions on the sadness of science’s opposition to their mediaeval way of thinking, which reveal an ignorance of the first principles of scientific investigation, an inability to understand what a man of science means by veracity, and an almost comical unconsciousness of the weight of established scientific truths.
The tu quoque argument lacks force; otherwise, champions of scientific education can reasonably counter to modern Humanists that, while they may be learned specialists, they lack a solid foundation for a criticism of life worthy of the label culture. Indeed, if we were unkind, we would argue that the Humanists have brought this accusation upon themselves, not because they are overly full of the ancient Greek ethos, but because they lack it.