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Development of secular interests destroyed religious control of education. This chapter begins the third part of the book, which will discuss the transition to a secular basis for elementary education. The first part defined elementary education and demonstrated that the Catholic Church maintained a practical monopoly of education during the Middle Ages, and that the only important elementary schools established during this period were in the commercial cities where they were organized in response to commercial needs.

The second part of the book described the development of schools on a religious basis and the character of the work done in such schools. Most elementary schools, except the writing and reckoning schools which continued in existence in the cities, were of this narrow religious type down to the beginning of the nineteenth century.

By this time other social forces of a secular character had developed sufficient strength to rival seriously the religious control of elementary schools, and by the middle of the nineteenth century systems of secular schools had been organized in many of the states of Europe and the United States. In this chapter we shall consider the development of some of the more important secularizing influences in social life.

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Church dominated secular affairs before and after Refor mation. To appreciate the importance of this secularizing movement, the student must keep in mind the great control exerted by the Church for centuries over many secular matters. The Roman Catholic Church, for example, included in its theology and its control, not only such religious matters as believing in the divinity of Christ, but also such social matters as the divorce of kings and such scientific matters as the movements of heavenly bodies. The Church gave its sanction to such social arrangements and scientific statements as harmonized with its belief and placed all others under the ban as heretical. Nor did the Reformation divorce the Church, either Catholic or Protestant, completely

from the control of secular affairs, as we have seen in the case of the Protestant Church in Calvinistic Geneva and Puritan Massachusetts. The traditions which had become fixed during several centuries continued in force, and religious differences continued to be one of the most influential factors in European life.

"From the Reformation to the time of the Thirty Years' War (1618-1648) the discussion and settlement of religious dogmas had absorbed a wholly disproportionate share of the intellectual activity of Western Europe, where the toleration of religious opinion was even as a conception almost unknown." (1: 8.)

Independent secular interests which overthrew ecclesiastical despotism. - Prominent among the secular forces and tendencies which were gradually developing sufficient strength to overthrow this ecclesiastical despotism of thought and life were the following: (1) improved methods and new discoveries in natural science; (2) the spirit of religious toleration; (3) the development of strong centralized paternal governments; and (4) the development of democracy, which furnished a new nonreligious basis for universal education. We will take up these four factors in turn for detailed consideration.

The first of these new forces to rival the dominant ecclesiastical control was natural science. Until the end of the eighteenth century the influence of science was primarily in the field of theory; by the middle of the nineteenth century its application to industry had completely revolutionized practical life and was winning a place for it even in elementary schools.

Secularizing influence of modern science. Greek science accepted as final in Middle Ages. The universities of the Middle Ages, sanctioned by the Church, found the philosophical works of the Greek philosopher Aristotle (B.C. 384322) very valuable for maintaining the truth of the orthodox

theology of the Church. In fact these works were sometimes considered as infallible and universal a guide as the Bible or the commentaries of the Church fathers. Aristotle, the greatest thinker the world has known, had investigated and discussed not only metaphysics, ethics, psychology, politics, and rhetoric, but also natural science, including physics, astronomy, meteorology, physiology, and natural history. The universities assigned the same authority to his scientific writings that they did to his philosophical works; hence what Aristotle said about natural phenomena was almost the beginning and end of science. Although Aristotle himself had been a careful investigator of things, his followers in Western Europe were content to read and discuss what he discovered, instead of examining and experimenting to test or further his results. They even asserted that Aristotle was correct when new investigations or experiments indicated that he was wrong.

The chief practical interest in science was in the field of medicine. Here again a Greek, the physician and writer Galen (130-201 A.D.), reigned supreme. His works on anatomy and physiology, dietetics, hygiene, diagnosis, pharmacy, and surgery were the standard guides of medical practice in the sixteenth century.

In astronomy the "Mechanism of the Heavens," written by Ptolemy, an Alexandrian astronomer, about 138 A.D., was the standard authority. It was based on the theory that the earth was the center of the universe, and around it revolved the moon, Mercury, Venus, the sun, Mars, Jupiter, and Saturn.

These three Greek scientists-Aristotle, Galen, and Ptolemy were the absolute authorities in sixteenth-century science, and any one who dared to dispute their statements was liable to ridicule, imprisonment, or death.

Seventeenth-century investigations discredited Greek scientific theories. — In the seventeenth century the principle that

scientific theories should be based on actual observations and experiments instead of the statements of ancient writers gained considerable headway and resulted in many new discoveries. Much of this development was in the field of astronomy and physics, which were greatly aided by new systems of mathematics. The following are examples of the developments in mathematics: Napier (1550-1617) published his work on logarithms in 1614; decimal notation was used by Briggs (1561-1631) in 1617; modern symbolic algebra took form about 1600; analytical geometry was expounded by Descartes (1596–1650) in 1637; infinitesimal calculus was used by Newton (1642–1727) before 1666 and described by Leibnitz (1646-1716) in 1684. To most students these phases of mathematics and the scientists who discovered them are but names, but it is important to appreciate that modern astronomy and physics were greatly aided by the improved mathematical tools which the ancient and medieval world did not possess. Many of the geniuses of astronomy and physics were also mathematical geniuses.

The overthrow of the Ptolemaic astronomy was an important factor in discrediting the ecclesiastical despotism of thought. Copernicus (1473-1543) showed that the observed movements of the heavenly bodies could best be explained by the hypothesis that the earth and the other planets moved around the sun. Kepler (1571-1630) offered proof of this hypothesis and explained the motion of the planets by three simple mathematical laws. Galileo (1564-1642), about 1611, constructed a telescope which revealed new heavenly phenomena. The support given to the Copernican theory by these new observations of Galileo aroused the Church, and in 1616 the Inquisition declared that the theory that the sun is the center of the solar system was false and contrary to the Holy Scripture. The persecution of Galileo, however, attracted attention to him and made his theories generally known.

Similarly, in the realm of physics new discoveries discredited the orthodox Greek theories. Aristotle had maintained that the rate of motion of falling bodies was proportional to their weight. Galileo, in 1589, made experiments from the leaning tower of Pisa which showed that, save for the resistance of the air, all bodies fall at the same rate. The work of Torricelli (1608-1647) and Robert Boyle (1627-1691) with the barometer proved the ordinary theories concerning a vacuum to be untrue. They formulated the laws concerning the pressure of gases, which are now known by their names to even elementary students of physics.

Modern scientific method. The inductive verification of hypotheses. In all this development, actual observation and experimentation with the use of the new mathematics played fundamental parts. There was another element, however, the element of hypothesis, which it is well to understand. The important part played by this element in modern scientific work is emphasized by Whewell in his "History of the Inductive Sciences" in connection with the work of Kepler noted above. He says:

Advances in knowledge are not commonly made without the previous exercise of some boldness and license in guessing. The discovery of new truths requires, undoubtedly, minds careful and scrupulous in examining what is suggested; but it requires, no less, such as are quick and fertile in suggesting. What is Invention, except the talent of rapidly calling before us many possibilities, and selecting the appropriate one? It is true that when we have rejected all the inadmissible suppositions, they are quickly forgotten by most persons; and few think it necessary to dwell on these discarded hypotheses, and on the process by which they are condemned, as Kepler has done. . . . Discovery is not a "cautious" or " rigorous" process, in the sense of abstaining from such suppositions. .. Kepler certainly was remarkable for the labor which he gave to such self-refutations. . . . His works are a very instructive exhibition of the mental process of discovery. But in this respect, I venture to believe, they exhibit to us the usual process (somewhat caricatured) of inventive minds; they rather exemplify the rule of genius than (as has generally been hitherto taught) the exception. (2: 291, Vol. I.)

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