Research Seminar March 19th: Efthymios Nicolaidis - Science and Orthodox Christianity: A Complicated Historical Relationship?

The talk offers an overview of the history of the relations between science and Eastern Christianity. We will present this history in the Byzantine Empire and the Christian Orthodox communities of the Ottoman Empire. Beginning with the Greek Church Fathers, we investigate the ideas of theologians and scholars on nature. Neoplatonism, the theological debates of Iconoclasm and Hesychasm, the relations between Byzantium and the West and the complex relations of Orthodox Christianity with the Hellenic past all had notable impacts on the conception of science held by the Orthodox Christians. From the sixteenth through the eighteenth centuries, the Christian Orthodox world had to deal with the assimilation of scientific ideas produced by Western Christianity, and its main concern was the “legitimacy” of knowledge that did not originate directly from its own spiritual tradition.