Happy birthday, Gregor Mendel.

[rug]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gregor_Mendel

[LuvNewcastle]

1. Thanks for that.

It's interesting to read about Mendel and his education and scientific work and then to reflect on these high school dropout, anti-science, rock star preachers we have in America today. What a different world we live in!

[trotsky]

2. The church back then helped keep the masses ignorant.

If you wanted to read and have access to books, you became a monk. There was really no other choice. But some think we're supposed to be grateful to the church for supporting the intellectual efforts of a tiny few (provided they didn't contradict church dogma, of course).

[LuvNewcastle]

3. Mendel was alive in the 1800's.

You're talking about the Church in the Middle Ages, before the printing press and the Protestant Reformation. By the time Mendel came along, people were reading and writing all sorts of things.

[trotsky]

4. Ah yes, my mistake.

My eyes read "Gregor Mendel" but my brain was somewhere else.

[okasha]

5. And learning to do so in both public and parochial schools.

I's also a myth that only the clergy was literate in the Middle Ages. Literacy spread fairly rapidly not only to the nobility and professional classes but to artisans and merchants who had to be able to read specifications, shipping bills and contracts. The urban and rural poor, of course, especially serfs, had no access to education unless a benefactor spotted and sponsored a particularly bright child.

[Jim__]

7. Richard Hofstadter talks about the evolution of religion in America in his book,

Anti-Intellectualism in American Life. He starts with the original settlers and their building of Harvard largely so that they can have an educated clergy. Then as the settlers move west, there are fewer educated clergy and a largely itinerant, uneducated ministry begins to take hold. He talks about this trend in the various religions and covers some of the better known preachers, IIRC, he brings it all the way up to Billy Graham.

[edhopper]

6. Reading the wiki entry

I see that being a monk had little to do with his education or his research. It is just a tangential circumstance. I don't see where the church sponsored or supported his research. And the scientific support came from the secular scientific community.

[rug]

8. He must have snuck out of his monastery at night to a lab in an undisclosed location.

[okasha]

9. Then there's the fact that the church

sponsored his university education. Or maybe he sneaked out at night for that, too.

[edhopper]

10. He happened to be a monk

The church afforded him the luxury of pursuing his research. But this was not something the Church was asking him to do. Their benign indifference enabled him.
I am assuming that you are trying to make a point that the Church was responsible for the advancement in science. (If I am wrong about my inference, then I don't need to go any further).
I am saying his being a monk was not the reason behind his research, but rather a tangential happenstance.

[rug]

11. I see. The science of genetics was begun by a priest despite the church.

Did I get your thesis correct?

[okasha]

12. They just didn't notice

his little six-acre pea patch on the monastery grounds. Or his hives, when he took to hybridizing honeybees.

[rug]

14. Every time the abbot sent the monks out to trample it as the devil's work

Gregor snuck out and replanted it.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

22. Are you aware nobody here is saying the church hampered Mendel's work?

[rug]

23. That's nice of you to say. Are you also willing to say the church encouraged it?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

25. If you call something along the lines of...

"It's OK for our employees to have hobbies. Gardening is nice and harmless."

..."encouraging", yes. But what does it being a church have to do with it? The same thing could happen at a school, a hospital, a park, a private citizen's house...

If you want to advertise good intellectual works by the church, there's much better material. Like, for example, preservation of ancient documents during the Middle Ages. That was actually deliberate. This? It was accidental.

[rug]

29. Read the link below. This was not a benign accident.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

34. Oh, yes, I read that. Here's a paragraph of it people should read.

Although the monastery was a stimulating place for the study of natural science, the religious training and exercise in the Brno monastery seems to have been perfunctory. The bishop of Brno criticized Napp and the monastery for devoting so much attention to science, while neglecting the spiritual dimension of monastic life. Shortly after Mendel arrived, a monk there was stripped of his authority to teach because he was accused of introducing Hegelian and pantheistic doctrines into his scientific writings. Napp tried to defend this monk, but to no avail. Mendel never challenged the Catholic Church or its teachings, but his energies were clearly devoted more to scientific pursuits than to religious ones.

So, Abbot Napp semms to have been something of a freethinker. Good for him. :thumbsup:

[rug]

43. I think Abbot Napp was more a balanced individual than a freethinker.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

44. There's a huge overlap between those two traits.

[edhopper]

13. Not despite

but not because of either.
So i take it my assumption on the purpose of this thread is correct?

[trotsky]

27. Your assumption is dead on. n/t

[rug]

30. What assumption?

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

35. The one in post #10 you already read and understood and therefore doesn't need to be stated again.

[edhopper]

15. Looking at wiki

I don't see anywhere that the church knew about or promoted his work. It seems it feel into obscurity until the secular science world rediscovered it. We do know at the time the church was fighting tooth and nail against the ideas of Darwinian evolution. So I don't see them as very pro-science.
I also see that he was promoted to Abbot which effectively stopped his research. So I don't see where they really cared about what he was doing enough to want him to continue or not.

Would you give the same credit to the German Patent Office for Einstein's Theory of Relativity as you do the Church for Mendel?

[rug]

16. Keep looking. Despite your preference, you won't find his superiors were clueless.

You can start here.

"On July 22, 1822, Mendel was born in the village of Heinzendorf (now Hyncice) in northern Moravia (in the present-day Czech Republic), a part of the Austrian Empire that was culturally German. Mendel was originally named Johann, but took the name Gregor in 1843 upon entering the Augustinian order of the Roman Catholic Church. His father was a peasant farmer with a keen interest in improving agriculture. A priest in his community, Father Schreiber, used his knowledge of fruit trees to help his parishioners practically. He studied the latest techniques for improving fruit yields, practiced artificial fertilization, and distributed grafts to community members, including the Mendel family.

"Mendel's intellectual abilities were recognized early in his life, and his family sent him to school first in Leipnik (Lipnik) and then to Gymnasium in Troppau (Opava). After graduating from Gymnasium, he attended a two-year course of study at the Philosophical Institute in Olmütz (Olomouc), which was interrupted for a year due to illness. He graduated from the Philosophical Institute in 1843, having studied religion, philosophy, ethics, mathematics, and physics, in order to prepare for further studies in natural science at a university. While in Olmütz, Mendel had grave financial difficulties because his father was incapacitated from work as a result of an injury, and Mendel had difficulty finding tutoring jobs. His poverty probably brought on his illness and caused him continual travail.

"Upon the recommendation of one of his teachers, Mendel entered the Augustinian monastery in Brno in 1843. He had begun contemplating entering the Catholic priesthood about three years earlier, but it is not known how seriously or deeply he felt a religious calling. Mendel's own account of entering the monastery emphasized his need to escape from poverty rather than an inner religious motivation. Mendel also knew that the monastery in Brno would be a hospitable environment for pursuing studies in the natural sciences.

"Indeed, the Brno monastery, under the leadership of Abbott F. C. Napp, attracted a number of talented men interested in science. Napp himself studied horticulture and wrote a manual about improving plant varieties. He set up a nursery in the monastery where new plant varieties could be developed. Thus, the monastery provided a very propitious environment for the young Mendel, who was encouraged to teach science in nearby schools. The monastery also allowed him to attend the University of Vienna from 1851 to 1853 to study natural science so he could pass the exam to qualify him to teach in a Gymnasium. Mendel never passed this exam, however."

http://www.enotes.com/science-religion-encyclopedia/mendel-gregor

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

39. Did you write that article? Or, at least, the first paragraph?

[okasha]

17. You have it backwards.

The scientific work done by Mendel at his monastery was actually a continuation of that begun by Abbott Napp, who was the one who saw to it that Gregor got a scientific university education. It was the scientific world, not the church, that initially rejected his findings in favor of "blended inheritance." The scientists finally managed to put his work together with Darwin's in the 1930's for a coherent explanation of natural selection. They were fifty years late to the party, but they did finally get there.

[edhopper]

18. So the Church accepted his work right away.

I don't see it saying that anywhere.

[rug]

20. Nice shift from "I don't see anywhere that the church knew about or promoted his work."

[edhopper]

28. #18

is a reply to #17.
Not a new comment. No shift.
But if you want to play semantics gotcha, go ahead and play with yourself.
I understand where you are coming from. I believe I have made my thoughts clear.
We disagree on the Church's place in the advancement of science.

[rug]

31. Not only that. Your facts surrounding Mendel's work are demonstrably wrong.

[edhopper]

38. Uh-huh

Not playing.

[edhopper]

19. I think we are talking about different things

obviously the Monastery where he lived was open to scientific study, due to it's Abbot Napp.
I just don't buy into the inference that the Church was a font of scientific advancement.
I don't accept your premiss that Christianity had a positive influence on science.
If you want to extrapolate that Mendel somehow is strong evidence for that idea, good for you.
I don't think it is.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

21. A man who unknowingly helped drive a stake through creationism's dark, shriveled heart.

Sadly, creationism isn't a vampire, it's a zombie.

[rug]

24. Gothic metaphors aside, the 21st century notion of creationism is not the 19th's.

I suspect Mendel knew exactly what he was doing and I doubt he'd have any idea of the bogeyman you're pounding.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

26. Other that weasely caling it ''Intelligent Design'', how is it different?

[rug]

32. Since you reference creationism, define it sans references to Dracula.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

36. You and I know what it is.

Please explain in which ways "the 21st century notion of creationism is not the 19th's."

[rug]

40. I know what it is but you say it has something to do with zombies.

I'm puzzled.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

41. You're so funny and witty.

[Taverner]

46. Sorry - the religious aristocracy has been against science since day one

Go reread the Garden of Eden story


What was their sin? Disobedience, but disobeying what? Eating from the tree of knowlege of good and evil

Right there - RIGHT FUCKING THERE - is religion's opinion on intellectual curiosity

If you don't see it you're blind

[Deep13]

33. What's this got to do with religion or theology? nt

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

37. You know what? I think you're right.

[rug]

42. Depending on whose post you read

it's the triumph of science over the indifference and/or oppression of religion or

it's groundbreaking work done by a priest with the support of the church.

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

45. ...