Following up on two posts on the achievements of modern anatomy (“The Knife Man” and “Anatomy and Philosophy”), here is St. Augustine (354-430) disapproving of the practice:
“With a cruel zeal for science, some medical men, who are called anatomists, have dissected the bodies of the dead, and sometimes even of sick persons who have died under their knives, and have inhumanly pried into the secrets of the human body to learn the nature of the disease and its exact seat, and how it might be cured … ”
(City of God, Book xxii, 24)
Those bad scientists are driven by an Intellectual sin: curiosity.
“There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity … It is this which drives us to try and discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and which man should not wish to learn.”
And the bad-scientist actors are motivated by an unethical goal — trying to improve life in this world.
“But such is the stupid pride of these men who suppose the supreme good is to be found in this life.”
(City of God, xix, 4)
Despite such natural philosophers/scientists’ sinful pride, St. Augustine prays to God that they can be reformed and redeemed:
“For with their understanding and wit, which Thou bestowedst on them, they search out these things; and much have they found out; and foretold, many years before, eclipses of those luminaries, the sun and moon, – what day and hour, and how many digits, — nor did their calculations fail; and it came to pass as they foretold; and they wrote down the rules they had found out … . At these things men, that know not this art, marvel and are astonished, and they that know it, exult, and are puffed up; and by an ungodly pride departing from Thee, and failing of Thy light, they foresee a failure of the sun’s light, which shall be, so long before, but see not their own, which is. For they search not religiously whence they have the wit, wherewith they search out this. Thou madest them, they give not themselves up to Thee, to preserve what Thou madest, nor sacrifice to Thee what they have made themselves; nor slay their own soaring imaginations, as fowls of the air, nor their own diving curiosities, nor their own luxuriousness, as beasts of the field, that Thou, Lord, a consuming fire, mayest burn up those dead cares of theirs, and re-create themselves immortally.”
(Confessions Book 5, pp. 77-8 of Pelican edition)
One more datum in the millennia-old religion-versus-science skirmishes and wars.
In my judgment, St. Augustine is one of the two most important Christian theologians of all time. (The other is Thomas Aquinas).
Related: Augustine on Why Babies Are Evil. Aso: St. Augustine on “Righteous Persecution.”
“There is another form of temptation, even more fraught with danger. This is the disease of curiosity. It is this which drives us to try to discover the secrets of nature, those secrets which are beyond our understanding, which can avail us nothing and man should not wish to learn.”
Isn’t this a somewhat terrifying perspective? It seems to be war against knowledge. It seems humanity, thanks to curiosity, has learned so much about how the world works since Augustine’s time. Medicine, physics, electronics, astronomy, engineering, microbiology, DNA, genetics, forensics, psychology, “central heating and the flush toilet.”
Isn’t Augustine exalting ignorance? Shouldn’t someone question religion? Shouldn’t normal people be suspicious? Claiming faith is the most important thing: believing without evidence.
Isn’t this what Abrahamic religion does, what rabbis, imams, priests, pastors do: “just have faith,” “trust in faith,” “work on your faith?” How does this differ from telling one to stay dumb?