Richard Dean Smith, MD

The novels of Herman Melville reveal the conditions and events of the mid-nineteenth century, reflecting the enormous changes wrought by science, especially man's perception of himself, and the influence that discoveries in science would have on religious faith. Along with an ability to assimilate dry, uninteresting scientific reports, he makes literary use of contemporary scientific theories and trends in science. The interrelationship of science and religion is a prominent, if not the dominant, theme in Melville's literary art. The relationship between science and religion is one of the most basic, persistent problems in philosophy, critical to an understanding of the human experience. The faith-imbued medieval and Renaissance world view persisted into the mid-nineteenth century, a view that is now virtually unknown.
The early nineteenth century saw the culmination of centuries of investigation of the natural world and its conflict with theology. Medieval Christian scholars debated how the image of man differed from the design of God and how the rift with God after the Fall of man might be repaired. Aristotelian philosophy, brought to a central position in theology by Saint Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274), held that nature could be studied logically. As a result, in the Condemnation of 1277, some of Aristotelian science was forbidden by the Roman church. Fourteenth-century scholastics circumvented this restriction by contending that God, with absolute power, could do all things. God had produced the world, a world which could not be moved in a straight line, abhorred vacuums, and was centered around a stationary earth. At the same time, by keeping to accepted views, philosophers were able to discuss other possibilities in a conceptual way without offending the church. The compromise, according to modern study, may have contributed to the development of the scientific revolution.
A new sense of human dignity developed: Man, able to train his intellect, could add to the knowledge of himself and the natural world. A new awareness of the nobility of God's world led to the notion that man, as part of nature, must also be noble. The ability to appreciate the grandeur and beauty of nature became a human quality. Man took his place in nature, and human society was a part of the grand complex of the natural order, bound together by rational laws. The entire universe appeared intelligible and accessible to human reason; nature was seen as an orderly system instead of a mysterious, necessarily obscure phenomenon; and man, capable of understanding natural laws, saw himself as the center of the natural world, an awareness that gave twelfth century man confidence in human powers implicit in the humanistic and scientific movements to follow. Thierry of Chartres (d. ca 1150) said, "The world would seem to have causes for its existence, and also to have come into existence in a predictable sequence in time. This existence and this order can be shown to be rational. If nature could be understood, nature could be manipulated and controlled to the benefit of man.
The twelfth century scientist, or cosmologist, urged scientific investigation of the natural world as the duty of a Christian, undertaken in gratitude for the magnificent gift of the cosmos. Reason could be a source of pleasure and happiness, and a means of celebrating the glory of God's work. Stiefel says the ultimate purpose of reason was not the acquisition of scientific knowledge for its own sake, but to help man achieve a higher understanding of the Creator. Man, in the egocentric view of medieval Christianity, was the supreme accomplishment of God; man existed in both material and spirit. In the thirteenth century, the aim of natural science was not simply to accept the statement of authority, but to investigate causes at work in nature. The beauty and the design of nature were accepted by theologians and scientists alike (then called natural philosophers). This precept was restated in the seventeenth century by Sir Thomas Browne, "for nature is the Art of God." From the second half of the seventeenth century into the nineteenth century, Isaac Newton's (1642-1737) studies of motion dominated science. Newton's laws of physical movement, unrelated to spiritual order, made science useful in everyday, practical application.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the pre-eminent scientists were the naturalists and biologists whose work was eagerly received by the public. Increased education and literacy made it possible for the average person to follow the developments of scientific discovery. At the end of the eighteenth century, the Renaissance theological doctrine of the 'Great Chain of Being' or 'Scale of Nature,' a fixed, rigid scheme, prevailed in natural philosophy. The Scale of Nature ran from minerals by degrees to man, and beyond man to spiritual existences. Religious dogma forbade any implication of phylogenetic relationship or transformation and denied the possibility of extinction of species. Ape placed next to man in the Scale of Nature was of no consequence because of belief in the immutability of species and the special nature of man. The world was assumed by scientists and theologians to be static and unchanging according to God's design. The age of the earth was established according to Biblical generations as only a few thousand years, hence allowing little time for change in the physical world or transformation of living creatures. The idea of design was stated by William Paley (1743-1805), English theologian, philosopher, and clergyman, in Natural Theology, or Evidences of the Existence and Attributes of the Deity collected from the Appearances of Nature (1802), "The marks of design are too strong to be gotten over. Design must have had a designer. That designer must have been a person. That person is God."
During the first half of the nineteenth century, science produced many famous names, and many remarkable discoveries claimed the attention of the public. The natural sciences of geology, astronomy, zoology and physics challenged old ideas and threatened religious tenets. Gradually, evidence of extinct forms of life were found; however, man had traveled little about the world—supposedly extinct species surely existed elsewhere on some distant continent. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, however, extinction of species could no longer be doubted.
The term 'scientist' was coined in 1840 by William Whewell: "We need very much a name to describe the cultivator of science in general. I should incline to call him a scientist." Prior to Whewell's definition, science was pursued by natural philosophers using "philosophical instruments" such as test-tubes, retorts, etc. By the beginning of the nineteenth century, metaphysical speculation was replaced by experiment and observation of natural events, or positivism. Positivism is confined to the data of experience and excludes a priori or metaphysical speculation, a philosophy particularly attributed to French philosopher, August Comte (1798-1857), who said human thought had passed from a theological to a metaphysical stage into a positive or scientific stage. Comte contended religious faith would withstand scientific examination of the natural world, claiming an intellectual progression of ideas from the times of Sir Francis Bacon (1561-1626) to the philosophy of Immanuel Kant (1724-1804). Historians have maintained that the biblical view of the goodness of the created order, coupled with the Greek view of the rationality of the cosmos, contributed to the rise of science in the West; and the belief in the dependability of nature had to precede the attempt to study its regularities. The application of science to technology made the nineteenth century the "century of hope" because it invented invention.
The revelations of the new science reached their stunning culmination during the lifetime of Herman Melville, placing the revolutionary concepts of natural science in epic conflict with theology, a conflict prominent in most of his works. Mumford observed that as much as Melville was enriched by Elizabethan writers, it is science that separates him completely from the poets of that day. Melville interweaves science, medicine, philosophy, religion, the classics, and much more into a complex intellectual and literary fabric.
Herman Melville was born in New York City, August 1, 1819, the second son and third child of Allan and Maria Gansevoort Melvill (the 'e' was added later). Both of his parents came from prominent New England families. His principal writings were during the decade of the 1850s, a period of great turmoil in science, religion and their interrelationship. This turmoil shaped his literary art as well as the general attitude of the people towards the study of nature and religion, and determined nearly every aspect of twentieth century Western culture. His references to science are often concise, containing the essence of theories and their significance, but requiring some elaboration.

Contents

Preface: Nature: the Art of God
Introduction: fides quaerens intellectum
Chapter 1. Typee and Omoo: Belzoni's Egyptian catacombs
Chapter 2. Mardi: a fire in the brine
Chapter 3. Redburn and White-Jacket: a Scientific professor
Chapter 4. Moby-Dick: gospel cetology
Chapter 5. Pierre: nature's cunning alphabet
Chapter 6. Short Stories: man, the true God
Chapter 7. The Confidence-Man: by chance or design
Chapter 8. The Poetry and Clarel: the years about 1859
Chapter 9. Billy Budd: according to Nature
Chapter 10. Melville and Science: this strange mixed affair