SUMMARY OF RICHARD TARNAS BOOK THE PASSION OF THE WESTERN MIND:

UNDERSTANDING THE IDEAS THAT HAVE SHAPED OUR WORLD

INTRODUCTION
The world is said to have been built on ideas, that which has so far shaped our conception of it. The Western mode
of thinking and doing things has evolved through the ages bringing it to where it now stands. The book Passion of
the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that have Shaped our World by Richard Tarnas aims at producing a
chronological narrative of how ideas and thought have evolved in the Western world through time especially in the
history of philosophy and how also these thought and ideas have changed the world and its still undergoing some
transformation. Tarnas approaches this history from a chronological dimension beginning with the ancient Greek
period down to contemporary time. He believes it is the task of every generation to examine the ideas that have
helped shaped its understanding of it.
V. THE MODERN WORLD VIEW
The modern world view is made up of a complex and intermingled cultural interpretation namely; the Renaissance,
the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution.
The Renaissance
This period heralded a drastic change in the way the human person viewed the world and natures secret could now
be penetrated and reflected upon. The human life and endeavors achieved a more complex form during this period
and the development of human consciousness and culture had now been reborn. The renaissance period emerged
against the backdrop of a series of crises and conflict that was besieging Europe and the world, so it would be a
mistaken judgment to think that the renaissance was all light and splendor though it was amidst crises that rebirth
took place.
Four major inventions played a pivotal role in the making of the new era they are: the magnetic compass, which
permitted the navigational feats that opened the globe to European exploration; the gun powder, which contributed
to the end of the feudal order and the ascent of nationalism; the mechanical clock, which helped in the regulation
of how the human person related to time, nature and work, and also separating and freeing the human structure of
activities from the dominance of natures rhythm; and the printing press, which produced a tremendous increase in
learning and eroded the monopoly on learning long held by the clergy. All these and many more shaped the Wests
horizon and brought about changes and expansion in unprecedented ways.
Italian states began to evolve as the papacy began to weaken making the Italian-city states the forerunners of
modern states. Secularism became the order of the day and the Catholic Church still became a force to be reckoned
with during this time. Renaissance era was a synthesis of religiosity and secularism which flourished inextricably
of each other. It was its arts that best expressed these eras contraries and later propelled scientific advancement
which foreshadowed the scientific revolution.
There was a quantum leap in the cultural evolution of the West as the Renaissance was a direct outgrowth of the
rich culture of the high middle ages and historians of the Renaissance has define the past in a tripartite structure
ancient, medieval, modern thus making a sharp distinction these eras with the renaissance acting as the vanguard
for the new age.
The renaissance period had some of the following personalities on its stage; Columbus, Copernicus, Luther,
Castiglione, Raphael, Durer, Michelangelo, Giorgione, Machiavelli, Cesare Borgia, Zwingli, Pizarro, Magellan and
others. During this period, the nation of Spain was formed via a marriage between Ferdinand of Aragon and
Isabelle of castile, the Tudors succeeded to the throne of England, Leonardo and Verrocchio began their artist
career, Ficino wrote Theological Platonica and published his first complete work of Plato in the west, Erasmus
received his early humanist education in Holland and Pico della Mirandolla composed the manifesto of renaissance

humanism, the oration of the dignity of man. Amidst the high drama and painful convulsions, modern man was
born in the renaissance trailing cloud of glory.
The Reformation
The unity of Western Christendom was shattered after a rebellion that was sparked by the Augustinian monk
Martin Luther, which heralded the protestant reformation. The proximate cause was the papacys attempt to raise
money for some of its project through the sales of indulgences which in turn compromised the sacrament of
penance and other socio-politico-cultural problem. The fundamental cause also was the spirit of rebellion, selfdetermining individualism which had developed to a critical point where a potently critical stand could be
sustained against the Roman Catholic Church.
Luther got disillusioned with the church and his new found faith in the redeeming power of God as revealed in the
bible was enough and so began the process of reformation. Erasmus tried to reform the church from within but the
churchs hierarchy was absorbed in other matters to be sensitive and respond to the ensuing problem. He was
named a heretic for refusing to recant and been backed by rebellious German princes and knights, his case attained
an international dimension. On the long run, the Roman Catholic Church was undermined by this and the
protestant spirit prevailed in half of Europe thereby breaking the old order.

Luther and Calvin ended up reinstating the more strictly defined, morally rigorous and ontological dualistic
Augustinian. The Catholic Church finally awakened with the council of Trent in the mid-sixth century to reform
itself from within and still restated the basics of Christian beliefs. Europe was thus divided having Catholics in the
south and Protestants in the north. All the reformers wanted were an individual autonomy for Christians to relate to
God directly and not through the mediation of an institutionalized church. Luthers reforms went beyond his
expectation and desire but in the end, it was more of a larger cultural transformation that took place in the Western
mind and spirit.

Another paradox of the reformation was that it opened the Western culture to religious skepticism as Luthers
reform gave room for the formulation and relativity of individual religious truth. Since the bond between faith and
reason no longer existed, the consequence of this for Luther was that the Western mind became apprehensive of the
natural world. The biblical injunction that man should subdue the earth was not seen only as a religious duty but
also took on a secular momentum which aided science as the worth of the human self and autonomy increased in
the modern era. Secularism also triumphed because the notion of truth by the Catholic and Protestant differs; for
the former, it was tradition and sacred scripture while for the latter, it was the sacred scripture alone.
The practicality of science brought about tension between religious truth and scientific truth which allowed the
modern mind of the west to shift its faith to science. The subjectivity of truth once again made man the measure
of all things thereby paving the way from pietism to Kantian critical philosophy and romantic philosophical
idealism to finally philosophical pragmatism and existentialism of the late modern era.

The reformation brought about the disintegration of Europe as loyalties shifted and the effect of which political
power moved away from the church as every leader decided what religion their territories would embrace.
Protestantism thus became associated with the cause for political freedom. Holy matrimony became an ideal form
of vocation as against solely religious life and its control was taken away from the Catholic Church thereby
becoming secular and something that could be easily entered and more easily dissolved. Since work was
considered as holy, it kind of led to an accumulation of wealth since puritans demanded renunciation of self and
frivolous spending. This in turn paved the way for capitalism; thus the religious zeal yielded to economic vigor,
which pressed forward on its own.
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A counter-reformation was launched by the Catholic Church to check the ever rising spread of Protestantism and
this was spearheaded by the Jesuit (a Roman Catholic Religious Order) and their strategy was the education of not
only Catholics but all persons and the teaching of all humanistic programs thereby developing a scholarly soldier
of Christ. This was replicated by Protestant leaders also. Education thus became source of cultural unity which
Christianity once was. Scientific Revolution which triumphed in the Western mind was born out of the chaos that
arose from the seemingly self-destruction that split Christianity as new divisions emerged and battled each other
throughout Europe with unbridled fury.
The Scientific Revolution
Copernicus
The scientific Revolution was both the final expression of the Renaissance and its definitive contribution to the
modern world view. Copernicus was born in Poland and educated in Italy; thus lived during the height of the
renaissance. Being an astronomer and a mathematician, Copernicus sought a new solution to the age-old problem
of the movement of the planet. Copernicus came up with his own thesis after study and reflecting on the works of
his predecessors in this regard. He posited a heliocentric system as opposed to the geocentric system already in
place. He did set down the first version of his work in a short manuscript the commentariolus in 1514. Two
decades after his new system was approved by the Pope and a formal request to publish the work was made. In
1543 on the last day of his life, a copy of the published work was brought to him. Little was it known that during
the several decades, an unprecedented revolution in the Western world view had been initiated. It was actually the
religious implication of this new cosmology that quickly provoked the most intense attack.
The Religious Reaction
Opposition to Copernicus did not start from the Catholic Church because Copernicus was a canon and in good
standing with the church. It was the reformers who started the attack blaming the Catholic Church for tolerating
and even encouraging secular thinking thereby allowing Christianity and the literal truth of the bible to be
contaminated. The literary interpretation of a passage from the Psalms, the world is established, that it cannot be
moved by Calvin stoked the antagonism against the Copernican hypothesis. The Catholic Church at first hand had
no problem with Galileo s work but during the reformation while the Church was struggling to survive, decided to
clamp down on all persons teaching and holding the Copernican view because they felt it had a dire consequence
on the Christian mind even more than Luther and Calvin put together. So with the Copernican theory,
Catholicisms long held tension between reason and faith had finally snapped.
Kepler
Kepler tried to solve the problem also posed by the Copernican heliocentric theory. He believed in the power of
numbers and geometrical forms and so tried to better understand the Copernican theory. Kepler views Copernicus
as having initiated something greater than the heliocentric theory was presently capable of expressing. He also
inherited a vast body of unprecedently accurate astronomical observations calculated by Tycho de Bruhe (the
imperial mathematician and astrologer to the Holy Roman Emperor) and spent a decade to fit them to actually
explain the movement of the planetary body. Kepler at last discovered that the observations and works of Euclid
and Apollonius matched orbit shaped as ellipse and he however in the end arrived at a better understanding and
explanation for the movement of the planetary body.
Keplers work finally did help make mathematics now an established instrument not just astronomical predictions
but as an intrinsic element of astronomical reality as he agrees with the Pythagoreans claim for mathematics as the
key to cosmic understanding has now been validated thereby revealing the previously hidden grandeur of Gods
creation.
Galileo
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Keplers breakthrough would have brought the Copernican revolution in the scientific world to have certainly
succeeded through sheer mathematical and predictive superiority but coincidentally, in 1906 Galileo turned his
recently constructed telescope to the heavens and saw empirically for the first time the phenomenon of the
Copernican theory. This led many to believe this theory and gave room to a fresh examination of empirical
phenomenon with a critical eye thereby opening Western mind to the new celestial world just as new terrestrial
world was been opened by the global explorers.
The Catholic Church might not have reacted the way she did but her situation at that time forced her to wanting to
clamp down on all new theories that seemed contradictory to the scriptures and the reformers also aided in this
clamp down. This move did not augur well for the Catholic Church as her influence among the European
intelligentsia was drastically cut. Galileos findings coupled with the Copernican revolution created a schism
between science and religion which took a step further to the actualization of intellectual independence outside
religion thereby establishing a new principle and opening new territory.
The Forging of Newtonian Cosmology
Although Kepler and Galileo had succeeded in explaining the heliocentric theory, they were yet to give an all
encompassing conceptual scheme to their theory for the old cosmology was shattered; a new one was yet to be
forged. Kepler taking a cue from William Gilbert suggested that the sun had a magnetic nature of its own (anima
motrix) which attracts other planetary body and helps keep them in orbit and motion as well. Kepler inadvertently
laid the foundation for an emerging cosmology.
Galileo in his own case still pursued the mechanical-mathematical mode of analysis which led him to develop a
new method for science where in observation alone was not to be the key but a development of a host of technical
instrument to achieve the desired goal-bringing in practicality and not just mere verbal argument and discourse.
His methodology and new categories ended up demolishing the spurious dogma of academic physics. The first to
be debunked was the notion of motion. Contrary to earlier held belief that two objects of different sizes can never
fall at the same time and speed was refuted by Galileo stating that motion was independent of weight or
compositions of bodies. This further led to his explanation of why the Earth though in orbit is stationary. For its
movement is based on collective inertia thereby making its motions imperceptible.
Question concerning the celestial movement was now brought to the fore. Galileo had missed the significance of
Keplers planetary laws but still used his notion of inertia to explain the movement of the celestial body but could
not explain Keplers ellipses. This still made the Copernican universe to be plagued by a fundamental enigma.
The influx of ancient Greek philosophy of the atomist was now used and applied to explain the notion of motion.
The implication arising from this was that the atomist notion of the universe replaced the Aristotelian cosmology
and this was championed by Bruno and enunciated by Nicholas of Cusa. Atomism contributed in no fewer quotas
to the development of cosmology as it was its principles that influenced Galileo and later adopted by Descartes to
provide a systematic physical explanation for the Copernican universe.
Descartes succeeded in stating that the random movement of atoms was still subject to a law that they did not just
move out of purpose but to achieve a purpose. He then sets out to establish this through inductive deduction.
Descartes applied the theories of inertia and corpuscular collision to explain motion thereby clearing away the
residue of Aristotelian physics from the heavens but still could not explain why the planetary bodies still moved in
a continuous closed curve around the sun which inadvertently became the dilemma of the new cosmology. Thus
two new questions emerged: why did the Earth and other planets continually fall towards the sun? And given a
moving non-centralist Earth, why did terrestrial objects fall to the earth at all? Robert Hooke answered by saying
that a single attractive force governed both planetary motions and falling bodies but it was to Isaac Newton the
final stage of the Copernican revolution would be complete.
Newton synthesized Descartes mechanistic philosophy, Keplers law of planetary motion and Galileos laws of
terrestrial motion into one comprehensive theory. Newtons theories were the laws of motion and the universal
theory of gravity. His work and method now became the paradigm of scientific practice. The Newtonian-Cartesian
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cosmology was now established as the foundation for a new world view and it also seemed reasonable to assume
that after God created this intricate and orderly universe, He further removed Himself and allowed it to run on its
own according these perfect and immutable laws. Thus the Scientific Revolution and, the birth of modern era
was now complete.
The philosophical Revolution
Philosophy acquired a new identity and structure as it entered into its third great epoch in the history of western
mind. It finally transferred its allegiance from religion to science.
Bacon
Francis Bacon saw in the natural sciences that it could bring the human person a material redemption to
accompany his spiritual progress towards the Christian millennium. For Bacon, since there was a new world
discovered by global explorers, there also has to be a new way and pattern of thinking i.e. a new way of acquiring
knowledge. He suggested that the acquisition of knowledge had to be devoid of prejudices and that empirical
methods be used. Bacon was neither a systematic philosopher nor a rigorous practicing scientist. He was rather, a
potent intermediary whose rhetorical power and visionary ideal persuaded future generations to fulfill his
revolutionary program: the scientific conquest of nature for mans welfare and Gods glory.
Descartes
Descartes it was who established a philosophical foundation for the new science. There was also a growing
skepticism as there was a collapse of fundamental institutions and cultural traditions which made the possibility of
certain knowledge to gain a relative status among European intelligentsia and the French essayist Montaigne added
his voice to the ongoing discourse. If knowledge becomes relative then nothing can be known for certain.
Descartes task therefore was a search for an irrefutable knowledge and to do this, he sought to begin by doubting
previously held beliefs and then began a painstaking task of sorting them. Descartes by using this method ushered
person into a new era of practical knowledge, wisdom and well-being.
Skepticism and mathematics thus combined to produce the Cartesian revolution in philosophy. The realization that
the I is conscious of doubt shows the thinking subject exist leading to his famous aphorism cogito, ergo sum
I think, therefore I am. The implication of this is that there is the self and there is the object res cogitan and res
extensa. This then leads us to Descartes dualism, soul is understood as the mind and the human awareness that of
the thinker. All this in a way shows the existence of a perfect being that causes all things which he considers as
God.
For Descartes, mathematics was the most powerful tool for understanding the universe as it was also available to
the natural light of human reason. Here then, reason coupled with the methods of science became the practical tool
for philosophy, for man can now have a direct understanding of the forces of nature so they could be turned to the
human persons purpose. Human reason establishes its own existence out of experiential necessity then Gods
existence out of logical necessity and thence the God guaranteed reality of the objective world and its rational
order. Thus Descartes enthroned human reason as the supreme authority in the matters of knowledge. Descartes
succeeded therefore in emancipating the material world from its long association with religious belief freeing
science to develop its analysis of that world in terms uncontaminated by spiritual and human qualities and
unconstrained by theological dogma. It was therefore upon Descartes synthesis that paradigmatic character of the
modern mind was founded.

Thus Bacon and Descartes proclaimed the twin epistemological basis of the modern mind which is empiricism and
rationalism. After Newton, science reigned as the authoritative definer of the universe and philosophy defined itself
in relation to science predominantly supportive, occasionally critical and provocative, sometimes.

Foundations of the Modern World View

The world is said to have been built on ideas, that which has so far shaped our conception of it. The Western mode
of thinking and doing things has evolved through the ages bringing it to where it now stands. The book Passion of
the Western Mind: Understanding the Ideas that have Shaped our World by Richard Tarnas aims at producing a
chronological narrative of how ideas and thought have evolved in the Western world through time especially in the
history of philosophy and how also these thought and ideas have changed the world and its still undergoing some
transformation. Tarnas approaches this history from a chronological dimension beginning with the ancient Greek
period down to contemporary time. He believes it is the task of every generation to examine the ideas that have
helped shaped its understanding of it.
V. THE MODERN WORLD VIEW
The modern world view is made up of a complex and intermingled cultural interpretation namely; the Renaissance,
the Reformation and the Scientific Revolution.

The modern worldview developed in stages, beginning with the remarkable

change that transformed Europe during the Renaissance. From an other-worldly
perspective of the Middle Ages, focus was shifted to matters of this world in all
areas of life as the ideal shifted from reflection on the after-life to extraverted
action and the formation of the protean personality. The response to the corrupt
shadow side of the Renaissance within the Church led to the Reformation and
religious change and the Protestant Revolution, initially inspired by Luther. The
individual spirit, initially championed in the Renaissance, continued with the
Reformation. It eventually evolved into secularism through the Protestant
tradition, and intellectual pluralism and socio-cultural skepticism sparked by the
Catholic Counter-Reformation. Following the Reformation, there was a
philosophical revolution that was thoroughly materialistic and supportive of
science, while defining the modern, scientific worldview. A corresponding
scientific revolution recognized a heliocentric universe, which challenged
Christian cosmology, consequently its theology and moral order.

The modern world had it bases in the three distinct and dialectically related forms of the Renaissance, the
Reformation and the Scientific Revolution which also ended the hegemony of the Catholic Church in Europe and
established a more secular world where science became the Wests new faith.
When the battle for supremacy amongst the religions failed to resolve itself, science suddenly became the human
persons liberator. At this point, there was a shift from religion and myth to the empirically verifiable facts of
science which now happened to be the new world outlook as human reason gained the day. The human person now
perceived the cosmos of entirely new proportion, structure and existential meaning.
The triumph of science was not only relevant to its realm but also had an influence on the society as a new form
based on self-evident principles of liberty and rationality came into play. The method of science became applicable
to society and there arose the need for a reform. This in turn led to a political revolution; John Locke and the
French philosophes of the Enlightenment after took the lesson of Newton and extended them to human realm.

The following are the major tenets of the modern world view;
1. The notion of a God who created and governed the universe the universe shifted to one that was governed
and regulated by physical and mathematical terms. Religion in a sense was replaced by science.
2. The tension between subjective and personal human consciousness versus an objective and impersonal
world.
3. Human reason and empirical observation replaced theological doctrine and scriptural revelation as the
principal means for comprehending the universe.
4. The modern outlook of the universe was one in which the human mind could participate in and also
possessed intrinsic order as against the Greek outlook.
5. The modern cosmos was comprehensible through the use of human rational and empirical faculties alone.
Knowledge the universe was now primarily a matter of scientific method whose result is not for spiritual
liberation but in intellectual mastery and material improvement.
6. The classical era had a geocentric, finite and hierarchical understanding of cosmology which was
Christianized in the medieval era but in the modern era there was a shift to the heliocentric understanding
which in essence severed astronomy from astrology. All divine attributes were similarly recognized as the
primitive superstition and wishful thinking were removed from scientific discourse.
7. The scientific methodology permeated all sphere of human endeavor and somewhat became the standard
for measurement.
8. Human reason and intellectual ability became the order of the day while the purpose of knowledge for the
medieval Christian was to better obey Gods will, its purpose for the modern man was to better align
nature to mans will. Religion was shelved and the human person explored without the censorship of any
institutionally hierarchical power.

It would be necessary to examine more precisely the extra-ordinary dialectic that took place as the dominant
modern world view just described formed itself out of its major predecessor.

Ancients and Moderns

Classical Greek thought had provided Renaissance Europe with most of the theoretical equipment it required to
produce the Scientific Revolution. Yet the character and direction of the modern mind were such that the modern
mind increasingly disavowed the ancient as scientific or philosophical authorities and depreciated their world view
as primitive and unworthy of serious consideration. The intellectual dynamics provoking this discontinuity were
complex and often contradictory.
The heated debate between the orthodox scholastic Aristotelian physics and the heterodox revival of Pythagorean
platonic mathematical mysticism was the impelling motive for the sixteenth and seventeenth century European
scientist to engage in detailed observation and measurement of natural phenomenon. Even though at a point in
time, Aristotles works were disposed in effigy but maintained in spirit, Plato was vindicated but negated in spirit;
his works and those of others ancients were the foundation on which the new era was built.
The power of mathematics was vindicated by the natural science but created some puzzlement amongst thoughtful
philosophers of science as to why it always worked. It was noticed that mathematical pattern was simply in the
nature of things. The laws of nature, although perhaps timeless, now stood on their own material foundation,
dissociated from any divine cause. Thus the irony of fate built the mechanical philosophy of the eighteenth
century and the materialistic philosophy of the nineteenth out of the mystical mathematical theory of the
seventeenth.
A further irony lay in the modern defeat of classical giants Aristotle and Plato at the hands of the ancient
minority traditions from Leucippus to Sextus Empiricus that were almost trampled, overshadowed and
extinguished by the philosophical triumvirate of Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle and by the dominant Aristotelian
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Ptolemaic cosmology. The modern mind after extracting what it considered to be valuable from the ancient
classical era still felt it was intellectually superior to it, still saw their woks as nave and scientifically erroneous.
Astrology was instrumental to the scientific revolution even though it was at this time that its ties with astronomy
were severed. Astronomy enjoyed its most rapid development precisely during that period when astrology was
most widely accepted and it therefore becomes difficult for modern historians of science to look for a demarcation
between the scientific and esoteric as astrology inspired many Renaissance thinkers.
Scientific Revolution was collaboration between science and esoteric traditions which was the norm of the
Renaissance and in turn gave birth to the modern science. The modernity of the scientific Revolution can then be
considered ambiguous but the new universe that emerged from this period was not so ambiguous though it left
room for the reality of other esoteric principles, it in turn created new problems for astrology as it became apparent
to others. Astrology after been the classical queen of the sciences and the guide of Emperors and kings for the
better part of the millennia was no longer credible.
Modern mind gradually out grew the Renaissances fascination with ancient myth as an autonomous dimension of
existence. For modern science had cleansed the universe of all human and spiritual properties previously projected
upon it. Only the impersonal employment of mans critical and empirically based rational intellect could attain an
objective understanding of nature.
The modern mind would always be indebted to the classical culture as it continues to draw inspiration from this
period even when it seems to have surpassed that era. Yet the ancient Greek mind still pervaded the modern in his
often unconscious assumption concerning the rational intelligibility of the world and mans capacity to reveal it.
Greece lived on.

The Triumph of Secularism

Science and Religion: The Early Concord
The Catholic Church did support the growth of intellectuality from the beginning of the Middle Ages because it
provided in its monasteries the only refuge in the West within which the achievement of classical culture could be
preserved and their spirit continued. If the Church had not been supportive in this regard probably modern
intellectuality might never have arisen.
Emerging there in was the increasing recognition of the physical world in the high middle ages there arose a
corresponding recognition of the positive role a scientific understanding could play in the appreciation of Gods
wondrous creation. It was the contributions of the scholastics in their exhaustive examination and criticism of
Greek ideas that allowed modern science from Copernicus and Galileo onward to begin forging its new paradigm.
Modern rationalism, naturalism, and empiricism all had scholastic roots but the scholasticism encountered by the
sixteenth and seventeenth century natural philosophers was a senescent structure of pedagogical dogmatism that no
longer appealed to the new spirit of the age and had to be overthrown lest the brave infant science be fatally
smothered. From then on science and philosophy was rid of religion.
Despite the unambiguous secular character of the modern science that crystallized out of the Scientific Revolution,
the original scientific revolutionaries themselves continued their work in relation to religious illumination as they
perceived their intellectual breakthrough as foundational contributions to a sacred mission. As their scientific
discoveries were considered as triumphant spiritual awakening as we find in their exclamations or works;

Newton: O God, I think thy thought after thee; Copernicus in the De Revolutionibus: science more divine
than human; Kepler wrote: priest of the Most High God with respect to the book of nature is what he called
astronomers and saw his role as the honor of guarding, with my discovery, the door of Gods temple; Galileo in
the Siderus Nuncius spoke of his telescopic discoveries as made possible by Gods grace of enlightening his
mind.
And with Newtons achievements, the divine birth was considered complete. The major pioneers of the Scientific
Revolution Newton, Galileo, Descartes still believed God was relevant as He was for them a source of
illumination no matter the direction their work took them, they were a religious people.
Compromise and Conflict
Tensions were already beginning to be displayed between modern science and Christianity because the creationist
ontology that underpinned the new paradigm was not totally congruent with traditional Christian conceptions of
the cosmos. Natural phenomenon, miracles and arbitrary interventions into human affairs now lost significance and
import. Yet Christian belief and principles could scarcely be negated altogether thus reason and faith came to be
seen as pertaining to different realms and was thus used by scientist and philosophers either together or separately
to suit their own purpose.
Science and religion were simultaneously vital yet discrepant as there was now division in the cultural view at this
time. The reason for this was the subjection of sacred scriptures to an intense investigation and academic
scholarship, also the subjection of some phenomena that were narrated in the sacred scripture had its similarities to
some archaic mythical legendary concoctions. So under the spotlight of the modern demand for public, empirical
scientific corroboration of all stamen of belief, the essence of Christianity withered. What now concerned the
scientist was not the why of any phenomena but the how which could then be measured and tested.
Since teleological and spiritual causes could not be subjected to test, the character and modus operandi of the
Judeo-Christian deity ill fitted the real world discovered by science as the process of salvation was now seen as a
matter of personal relationship between God and man. The leap of faith not the self-evidence of the created
world or the objective authority of the scriptures, constituted the principal base for religious belief.
Even though Christianity now assumed a new and far less encompassing intellectual role, the Christian moral
teaching and ethical precepts was quite relevant and was closely been followed still and upheld even by agnostics
and atheist but the Christian revelation as a whole could not be taken seriously as there was an increasing doubt
about her metaphysical and religious claims.
In the eyes of some scientist and philosophers, science contained some religious meaning or was open to some
religious interpretations or could serve as an opening to a religious appreciation of the universe while for some, the
entire scenario of cosmic evolution seemed explicable as a direct consequence of chance and necessity the random
interplay of natural laws. In the light of this, any apparent religious implications had to be judged as poetic but
scientifically unjustifiable extrapolations from available evidence. God was an unnecessary hypothesis.
Philosophy, Politics, Psychology
Philosophy underwent some development during these centuries and gradually took on the cloak of secularization.
Religion continued to hold its own amongst philosophers but was already being transformed by the character of the
scientific mind. Voltaire argued in favor of rational religion or a natural religion as against the traditional
biblical Christianity since what was been sought was the requirement for a universal cause.
The need to affirm Gods existence now took a rational course as most philosophers of the Scientific Revolution
and Enlightenment believed that the knowledge of God could be got through reason and not faith as in the case of
Descartes and Locke while Hume and Kant said reason could not be definitely sustained. The inevitable and proper
outcome of both empiricism and critical philosophy was to eliminate any theological substrate from modern

philosophy since no justifiable assertions about God, the souls immortality and freedom could transcend concrete
experience.
At the same time, the bolder thinkers of French Enlightenment increasingly tended towards skepticism and
atheistic materialism as the most intellectually justifiable consequence of the scientific discoveries. Such thinkers
include Diderot, chief editor of the encyclopedia; La Mattrie, the physician; Baron d Holbach, the physicist.
Atheism was necessary to destroy the chimeras of religious fantasy that endangered the human race. Man needed
to be brought back to nature, experience and reason.
The secular progression of the Enlightenment reached its logical conclusion in the nineteenth century as Comte,
Mill, Feuerbach, Marx, Haeckel, Spencer, Huxley, and in somewhat different spirit, Nietzsche all sounded the
death knell of traditional religion. For them, God was mans own creation which in turn necessarily dwindled with
mans modern maturation. By the late nineteenth century, the philosophical relationship between Christian belief
and human rationality had grown ever more attenuated with few exceptions, that relation was effectively absent.
The following non-epistemological factors political, social, economic, psychological were also pressing
towards the secularization of the modern mind and its disintegration from religious belief. In the area of politics,
power was centered on the Feudal Lords and the Churchs hierarchical structure and by the eighteenth century, that
association had become mutually disadvantageous. The French philosophes Voltaire, Diderot Condorcet and
their successor among the French revolutionaries viewed the Church as an obstacle to the process of civilization
because of its vast wealth and allegiance to the regime.
Yet the Swiss born Jean-Jacque Rousseau saw things differently. For him, the celebration of reason also negates the
actual nature of the human person because embodied in a person is the ability to feel, intuition and spiritual hunger
which transcends all abstract formulae. Though he does not believe in the organized churches and clergy because
even Christianity notoriously disagrees on what was the exclusively correct form of worship. He therefore
advocates theism of the heart reverent awe before the cosmos, the joy of meditative solitude, the direct intuition
of the moral conscience, and the natural spontaneity of human compassion. Rousseau used the combination of the
religiosity of the orthodox Christians and the rationality of the reformist to arrive at his conclusion but he
inadvertently gave a new impulse and dimension to how religion came to be viewed in the Enlightenment era
which initiated a spiritual current in Western culture that would first lead to Romanticism and eventually to the
existentialism of later age.
Karl Marx in the nineteenth century subjected organized religion and religious impulse to a socio-political critique.
He believes religion serves only the needs of the ruling class and does not aid the poor in its plight. He then
advocates that for the society to develop, the human person must rid itself of religious delusions. Liberalist
advocated that organized religions influence on political and intellectual life be reduced and argued for a pluralism
accommodating the broadest freedom of belief consonant in with social order. Religion became tolerated but
metamorphosed into religious indifference as it was no longer mandatory in Western society to be a Christian, and
coincidentally with this new freedom, few persons found Christian belief system intrinsically compelling or
satisfying and the contemporary age seemed to be offered more cogent programs and activity than the traditional
religions.
The Christian churches also contributed to their own decline; for the Roman Catholic Church, its counterreformation response to protestant heresy and its unresponsiveness to any changes necessitated by the evolution of
the modern era. The protestant churches sole reliability on the literal interpretation of the scriptures also left its
members susceptible to the scientific discoveries that were antithetical to the sacred scriptures and the influence of
the modern age.
Christianity now experienced itself not only as a divided church but as a shrinking one, dwindling away before the
ever-widening and ever-deepening onslaught of secularism. All religions seemed to have one thing in common, a
fading precious truth than dispute. Nevertheless, the Judeo-Christian tradition sustained itself as many families still
continued to nurture their children in the tenets and images of their inherited faith. The Catholic Church began to

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open itself to modernity and churches in general moved to embrace wider congregations by making their structures
and doctrines more relevant to the challenges of modern existence.
Friedrich Nietzsche pronounced the death of God because for him, the death of God signified not just the
recognition of a religious illusion but that of an entire civilizations world view that for too long had held man back
from daring, liberating embrace of lifes totality. With Freud, religion became evaluated by the psychological
disposition of the human person. In the light of this, Judeo-Christian God came to be seen as a psychological
projection based on the childs nave view of its libidinal restrictive and seemingly omnipotent parents. But
psychologically mature individual could recognize the projection for what it was, and dispense with it. Sexual
experience played a role in the devaluation of traditional religion, while some try to subdue or restrain their
passions; some taught abstinence which did not go down well with many and further alienated them from the
Church.
The unwholesome practices of the Church brought about its complete demise in the Western mind as not even its
long schooling of Western mind in Christian values could save it.
The Modern Character
The movement from Christianity to the secular world view did not lie solely on the combination of factors hitherto
discussed for they could have been negotiated as some still remained devout Christians. Secularism rather reflected
a more general shift of character in the western psyche, a shift visible in the various specific factors but
transcending and subsuming them in its own global logic. By the nineteenth century, this new impulse had
achieved maturity. Thus Christianity no longer suited the prevailing mood of the time. Science gave man a new
faith and it was this particularly psychological climate that made progressive sequence of philosophical and
scientific advances undercut religions role in the modern world view.
The modern world view was one that looked into its present and future while the ancient and medieval looked into
its past. This was what placed the modern culture in a class beyond its predecessors. Where the past authority was
typically associated with a transcendent principle, the modern awareness was becoming that authority, subsuming
that power, making the transcendent manifest in itself. Medieval theism and ancient cosmism had given way to
modern humanism.

Hidden Continuities
The West had lost its faith and found a new one in science and man, there still exist the subtle traces and element
of Christianity in the modern world view even though it is less conscious of this Christian ethical values,
scholastic developed faith in human reason, the command in Genesis that man exercise dominion over nature
and other elements. The most pervasive and specifically Judeo-Christian component tacitly returned in the modern
world was the belief in mans linear historical progress towards fulfillment. That is the human person had a
teleological existence. The original Judeo-Christian eschatological expectation has here been transformed into a
secular faith.
A social utopia advanced and merged into futurology as the Christian element in and rational for the coming utopia
(second coming of Christ and the kingdom of heaven) dwindled and disappeared, though the expectation and
striving still remained. Planning replaced hoping as human reason and technology demonstrated their
miraculous efficacy. Human progress was so central to the modern world view that biblical faith in humanitys
spiritual evolution and future consummation was notably in the decline while secularism attained its fulfillment.
But regardless of how Christianity was viewed, the modern man believed it was inevitably approaching the
entrance into a better world and that man was being progressively improved and perfected through his own efforts.
Mans will not Gods will, was the acknowledged source of the worlds betterment and humanitys advancing
liberation.

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