I always tend to think that there is a clear correlation between Christianity and the modern scientific revolution. The main reason for this conjecture was because it happened in the society where Christianity was the fundamental foundation of the people's philosophy and religion. Basic idea is that the idealism of freedom and the yearning for the eternal life and the love for all our neighbors taught in Christianity may have contributed by some magical way to the modern scientific revolution. What if they didn't have Christianity in the European society. Could the scientific revolution still have happened in the European society? It seems to me though the breaking up of the English monarch from the Roman catholic church's authority was the major first step for the freedom of the human spirit which may have contributed to the freedom of thoughts and also to the blossom of many of the scientific discoveries that eventually contributed to the modern scientific revolution. In a way, in terms of the timing, this coincides with the protestant movement in Europe.
One thing is certain in all of these changes and that is all of these events coincides with the ending of the black plague in Europe. The human spirit has encountered the most horrific tragedy and in the middle of these disaster, the church authority could not save any of the lives of those people who suffered the disease. So, this has become the beginning of the end of the catholic church's absolute authority and also the beginning of the new scientific revolution. Basiclaly, the authority of the church and the established academics could not control the freedom of thoughts and the search for the truth that spread like wild fire among the surviving young generations.
It is a tragic example, but somehow it seems that for the leap of a scientific advancement and the freedom of human spirit to happen there was a massive human tragedy that proceeded. Could this be a coincidence or something destined?
I predict, therefore, before the leap of the new advancement of our science to happen, despite all of the new frontier's(from Tesla to Moray and other's) effort to develop the new physical ideas, there could be a massive human tragedy that will proceed before such a remarkable change to happen.
It was not in the existing religion, rather, it was in the breaking up process of the established religion by peeling off of its dead skin and growing up that the real scientific progress of the human society has happened. On the other hand, Christianity has such a wonderful fundamentals in such a way that it allows itself to continuously reform.
What puzzled me for a long time though was the example of Japan, which is not fundamentally a Christian country yet succeeded in modernizing itself in the wake of the Portuguese unexpected arrival in its shores. On the other hand, a country like Korea which was heavily influenced by the Confucian philosophy was very reluctant to the changes brought up by the western civilization. The Buddhism was introduced and spread to Japan by a monk from the Shilla kingdom very long time ago, and in a way Buddhism was a very loose religion without a strict moral code. Probably this may helped Japaneses to adopt the western style materialism easily without too much resistance, because the Confucian philosophy was not very prevalent in Japan although it had its share of its influence.
Although it started from China, Confucian philosophy was never popular in China nor in Japan as much as it was in Korea. It never made up itself to become the national ruling philosophy in China nor in Japan. This is another reason to believe that Confucius was an ancient Korean who happened to live in China other than the Chinese historical script saying that he was from Dongyi which is the name they called Korea in ancient Chinese terms.
With a reasonable yet strict moral code toward parents, ancestors and elders, it satisfied the basic moral sentiment of the Korean people especially after the failure of the Buddhists faith and practice in an attempt to defeat Mongols by building the 100,000 pieces of Buddhism songs and poems in the wooden platforms. For them, the Confucian philosophy made a perfect sense.
Although Confucius never openly admitted heaven as an entity for a religious worship, it was tacitly assumed among his disciples that heaven exists as an individual entity. However, Koreans worshipped heaven ever since they lived in the Korean peninsula. This may explain the phenomenon of the exploding Christian population in South Korea. It is not a foreign religion in a way for them, they lived with the same basic principles of faith all along. They even had the eight forbidden rules exactly like that of the ten commandment. The only thing that is missing in there is about the explicit mention of the heavenly God and also regarding the keeping of the sabbath. It almost gives you the impression that the basis of the one God religion started from the ancient north east Asia and went over to the west across the continent with the addition of the clear one personal God concept to become the Judeo and then later the Christian religion.
For a supporting evidence of the migration of the north east asian people to the west and settled in the modern day Turkey, the striking resmeblance of the language structure of the Turkish people, isolated from its neighbors, which is a Tungustic language which is shared by other north eastern Asians like Koreans, Mongols and Japanese. If you learn both Japanese and Korean, you will immediately realize that they are basically the same language that has independently been branched off at certain point of the east asian history. You can translate almost one to the other by using a simple sound conversion chart.
But then no one knows for sure since when Turkish people started using such a unique language. There is no written historical records confirming the date. It only shows the far north eastern asian influence in this part of the land that happened in the remote past of the history. Can it also be a coincidence that the mount ararat was located in the eastern Turkey? The ancestors of the Jewish people must have had a connection to the history of this part of the land or at least the remote memory of what happened there.
Could all these explain the exploding scientific technology and advancement in South Korea?
Theory of Gravitation, Cosmology and a part of general relativity
I have a theory that the flowering of religious and intellectual freedom originated with the birth of the universities, notably in Oxford with Wycliffe and even the scholastics who perhaps engendered a culture of vigorous debate. Hus and Luther were university men also if I remember right. Then there was a great explosion of liberty in 17th century England after the mass production of the bible in English, followed by the emergence of new churches and doctrines and political movements. At the same time there was a rise in interest in the occult including freemasonry and rosicrucianism which seem to have been highly influential in the milieu of the Royal Society. So we have Newton exploring both biblical prophecy and alchemy. His belief in a creator seems to have been a positive factor in expecting to find harmony and order in the universe. This was even more true of Michael Faraday who was a very committed Christian believer.
ReplyDeleteIt strikes me that the Christian Protestant doctrine of grace - that salvation is a free unmerited gift to the believer in Hesus Christ - has a parallel to the notion of free energy. You don't have to earn it, it proceeds freely from a loving God - perhaps this is the ultimate source of the zero-point energy too?
By the way, interesting about the pre-Christian Korean belief in heaven. There's a book by a Korean American called Choo Thomas about visions or visits to heaven. I heard that it is a best-seller in Korea.