Conflict on the Borders of Science in Medieval Europe

University Of California-Davis, Davis CA

Investigators

Abstract

Joan Cadden, University of California-Davis Conflict on the Borders of Science in Medieval Europe: Drawing Boundaries This project explores the processes by which a scientific community and society at large shape the understanding of what sorts of problems can properly be addressed by science and what sorts of problems cannot. The project takes the form of a historical case study, focusing on how scholars who undertook explanations of natural phenomena in the thirteenth through fifteenth centuries ("natural philosophers") addressed or declined to address the question of why some men experience homosexual desires. It considers not only the institutional forces, such as the Catholic Church and the universities, but also the reactions of individual natural philosophers to a subject that was widely regarded as pertaining to religion and ethics, as well as (or rather than) to the domain of scientific investigation. Although concerned with a specific society and a distant time, the study sheds light on the complex interaction of powerful institutions, prominent authorities, and ordinary scientists in adjudicating the borders of science. With NSF support, the Principal Investigator examines two aspects of this larger project. First, she undertakes an analysis of a group of medieval texts in Latin and French that treat a variety of sexual topics. She finds that medieval Christian authors sought to tame their controversial subject matter by applying well established scientific principles to it and, at the same time, made explicit or implicit attempts to justify it in various ways. Since much research and education in the Middle Ages centered on explicating and expanding upon authoritative texts inherited from the Greek and Arabic traditions, and since the subject of male homosexual desire appeared in a text attributed to Aristotle, the proposed research studies the reactions of individual authors who engaged in discussions of the subject -- or declined to do so. The sources are in manuscript form. The fact that, before the advent of printing, every book was made by hand provides the opportunity for the second aspect of the investigation: detecting the responses of individuals who made copies of the texts in question for themselves or others. By omitting or adding material --whether whole sections of a work or just a few words --and sometimes by making direct comments, copyists could express their views about what did and what did not count as proper scientific subjects. In addition, medieval manuscripts often contain marginalia and other interjections made by readers, and these too constitute evidence about how readily contemporaries accepted treating this volatile topic as a phenomenon of nature, subject to explanation in terms of natural causes. Much of the work to be done involves gathering and evaluating this fragmentary information, so that, taken together, it can provide insights into the broad participation of natural philosophers in negotiating, and perhaps expanding, the acceptable limits of the science of their day.