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GENESIS WEEK
JOHN PHILOPONUS,
ARISTOTLE'S EARLY CREATIONIST CRITIC
Author: Dan Graves
Subject: History
Date: 6/24/1998
Article adapted from the Dan Graves' book, Scientists of Faith
The first to present his case seems right until another comes forward and questions
him. Proverbs 18:17.
The power of the creationist view can be better seen at the very outset of Western science
in the person of John Philoponus.
Aristotle (384-322 B.C.), the ancient Greek philosopher and scientist whose views still
reverberate today, did more than perhaps any other thinker to shape pre-Christian science.
But his theories, while innovative for his day, often combined brilliant insights with a
good deal of nonsense-nonsense that opposed several fundamental tenets of first Judaism
and then Christianity.
Significantly, Aristotle's most serious critic in the first seven hundred years was John
Philoponus, an Alexandrian Christian. In response to Aristotalian error, Philoponus
forged a sustained attack against Aristotle's chief proponent during the seventh century
A.D., a Greek philosopher named Simplicius. Fortunately for modern science, Simplicius
often responded to those attacks with long quotations from Philoponus, inadvertantly
preserving his opponent's work for posterity.
Philoponus's application of Christian theology to physics prefigured a new era in science.
The Alexandrian scholar was the first to combine scientific cosmology (the study of the
nature of the universe) with monotheism and the Christian doctrine of creation. In doing
so, Philoponus anticipated not only the findings but also the methods of modern science.
He controlled his observations in the manner of genuine research, although it is not
certain he ever progressed beyond thought experiments-that is, experiments carefully
thought out, but not actually performed.
Philoponus taught that light is a directional phenomenon. Rays are not projected from our
eyes to the object, but they move from the object to our eyes. This now seems obvious,
but to early thinkers, attempting to explain the conic spread of light, it did not.
While almost all early religions and philosphers believed in either an eternal universe or
one that emerged from an earlier substance (the body of a murdered god, for example)
Philoponus argued strongly against the notions of infinite space and time. Since the world
is a creation, it cannot be infinite, he hypotheized. His reasoning made use of infinite
cardinal numbers and pointed out the logical problems found in infinite series. For
example, if the amount of all numbers is infinite, and if the amount of all even numbers is
infinite, there must be a one to one correspondence between all numbers and the even
numbers. Commonsense says there should be twice as many odd and even numbers as
there are even numbers. Since it seemed absurd to suppose there really are, infinities of
any countable sort of thing are an absurdity, said Philoponus. He is the first person
known to have made this argument.
His use of infinities anticipated modern concepts by thirteen hundred years. Current
theory now takes us where Philoponus thought we could not go. But today's cosmology
also has mathematical and material proof that time and the universe are finite. Again and
again Philoponus's theology led him to insights surprisingly close to modern science. All
these ideas were the outcome of working out the logical implications of creation and
time.
John Philoponus is believed to have lived an extraordinary long and productive life. His
reputation for hard work earned him the name, "Lover of Labor." He was also a lover of
books. According to legend, he was still alive when the Islamic armies under Amrou
sacked Alexandria (c. 642-646). Muslims were not generally offended by Philoponus's
Christian writings because of his monophysite leanings. He supposedly discoursed on
theology with the learned Amrou and pled that the Library of Alexandria be spared the
torch. But acting on orders from home, Amrou burned the library anyway. Whether the
legend is rooted in fact is unclear, but we do know that his own writings were taken by
the Arab conquerors and lost to the West. Still, Islamic science seems to have been
positively influenced through them.
Philoponus successfully challenged Simplicius and the fundamental errors of Aristotalian
theory. His originality and keen insight helped pave the way for many of the discoveries
of modern science. Reading him centuries later, Galileo praised Philoponus. But the
Alexandrian's greatest contribution is his demonstration that acceptance of the
fundamental assertions of Scripture, especially the fact of creation, will direct us toward
the truth. It is the clearest path to scientific enlightenment.
References:
Canfora, Lucius. The Vanished Library: A Wonder of the Ancient World. Berkeley and
Los Angeles: UCLA Press, 1987.
Edwards, Paul, ed. The Encyclopedia of Philosophy. New York: Macmillan and free
Press, 1967.
Gillispie, Charles Coulston, ed. Dictionary of Scientific Biography. New York:
Scribner's, 1970.
Jaki, Stanley L. The Milky Way; An Elusive Road for Science. New York: Science
History Publications, 1973.
Pedersen, Olaf. Early Physics and Astronomy. Cambridge: cambridge university, 1993.
Taton, Rene. Ancient and Medieval Science; From the Beginnings to 1450. History of
Science. New York: Basic Books, 1963.
Philoponus. Corollaries on Place and Void. Trans. David Furley. Ithaca, NY: Cornell
University, 1991.
Philoponus. Against Aristotle on the Eternity of the World. Trans. Christian Wildberg.
Ithaca, NY: Cornell, 1987.
Sorabji, Richard. Philoponus and the Rejection of Aristotalian Science. Ithaca, NY:
Cornell, 1987.