David Wootton contra Thomas Kuhn

     "In these last two chapters we have been looking at the ways in which intellectual change has knock-on consequences.  The discovery of America killed off the two-spheres theory of the Earth.  Copernicanism led to the idea that the planets shine by reflected light, which was confirmed by the discovery of the phases of Venus; and this killed off the Ptolemaic system.  There was nothing arbitrary or contingent about these changes; they were as inevitable as the discovery of America once Columbus had set sail.  These were intellectual transformations of fundamental importance, yet historians of science barely discuss them.  They have become dark stars themselves—effectively invisible.
     "Why?  Since Kuhn's Structure history of science has focused on controversy between scientists, the assumption has been that every major new theory is contentious, and that there is nothing inevitable about the process by which one theory supplants another.  This approach has been extraordinarily illuminating.  But, in shining a light on controversy, it has left in the shadows all those changes which took place almost silently and were inevitable—indeed, could be seen to be inevitable at the time.  Nobody (or, rather, only a few confused and ill-informed individuals) sprang to the defence of the two-spheres system after 1511. . . . By 1624, eleven years after he had made public his discovery that Venus had a full set of phases, Galileo could take it for granted that no competent person would defend the Ptolemaic system. . . . The evidence is clear:  Ptolemaic astronomy was unaffected by Copernicus; it went into crisis with the new star of 1572, but by the end of the sixteenth century it had fully recovered.  The telescope, on the other hand, brought about its immediate and irreversible collapse.
     "Sometimes there are real, live, enduring controversies in science.  In the seventeenth century such conflicts took place between those who believed in the possibility of a vacuum and those who did not, between those who believed in the possibility of a moving Earth and those (after 1613, supporters of Brahe rather than Ptolemy) who did not.  Sometimes the outcome really does teeter and hang in the balance.  But, at other times, vast, well-constructed, apparently robust intellectual edifices are swept away with barely a murmur because, to paraphrase Vadianus, experience really can be demonstrative."

     David Wootton, The invention of science:  a new history of the scientific revolution (New York:  HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 245-247.

"you, O God, . . . alone are holy and wonderful in all your Saints. . . ."

"Mirabilem te, Deus, et unum Sanctum in omnibus Sanctis tuis. . . ."

     Post communion, Feast of All Saints, Roman missal, but before that the Missale Parisiense of 1738 and I think (though I haven't double-checked) 1706 (ed. Noailles).  See Corpus orationum 13, p. 55, no. 3798.  There, i.e. in the Introduction to the Missale Parisiense on p. 3, it is said that many of the prayers in the Missale Parisiense go back to ancient models, e.g. ancient prefaces and episcopal benedictions.  Thus, my guess would be that this post communion was constructed on the basis of the antiphon present from 935+ in the database Cantus (see, for example, the presence of that antiphon in this manuscript Missale Parisiense of 1497), itself a quotation of Ps 67:36 iuxta LXX ("mirabilis Deus in sanctis suis").

The Catholic Church has preoccupied the ground (preoccupies the ground)

"to do this [(give ‘our own people . . . what is better’)] effectually we must proceed on the plan of attacking Romanism, as the most convenient way of showing what our own views are.  It has pre-occupied the ground, and we cannot erect our own structure without partly breaking down, partly using what we find upon it."

     John Henry Newman, Lectures on the prophetical office of the church:  viewed relatively to Romanism and popular Protestantism (London:  J. G. & F. Rivington; Oxford:  J. H. Parker, 1837), 8.

The only good preacher is a dead preacher

"The preacher is like an ass.  So long as he lives, he produces a repulsive bray.  [But once] he is dead one can make out of what is left of him musical instruments that produce a beautiful sound.  Conclusion:  the preacher must be a mortified man!"

     Peter Damian, De sancta simplicitate scientiae inflanti anteponenda 4, [Quid in concionatore requiratur [in a preacher]], as translated into German by Otto Hermann Pesch, "Theologie des Wortes bei Thomas von Aquin," Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 66, no. 4 (1969):  447 (437-465).  De divina omnipotentia e altri opuscoli, ed. Paolo Brezzi, trans. Bruno Nardi, Edizione nazionale dei classici del pensiero italiano 5 (Firenze:  Vallecchi Editore, 1943), 174 (163-201):

Tu quoque, fili mi, ut praedicandi sortiaris officium, imitare vel asini, de quo dictum est, vel etiam ovis exemplum.  Quae nimirum cum vivit, turpiter beat, mortua vero in instrumentis musicis suaviter cantat; sic et qui carnaliter vivunt, balare cum ovibus inaniter possunt, naviter explere praedicatoris officium nequeunt.

You, too, my son, in order that you may be allotted/obtain the office of preaching, imitate the example of the ass, as they say [(de quo dictum est)], or even of the sheep.  Which, of course, while it lives, gapes [(beat < beo = Fr. avoir bouche ouverte, béer > bayer acc. to Blaise)] in an unsightly manner, [but once] dead, in [the form of] musical instruments sings very beautifully.  So also those who live carnally are able to bleat with sheep in vain [(inaniter)], [but] are wholly [(naviter)] unable to perform the office of preacher. 

Also  PL 145, col. 697.
     See also here.
     Although Peter speaks of instrumenta musica, he seems to have mainly those that can be made out of a corium (skin or hide), for example the tympanum (tambourine or kettle drum) and the stringed instruments supplied with chorda (cat gut).
     In sec. 3 he says that "God omnipotent does not need our philology [(grammatica)]", as evidenced by the fact that Samson converted (figuratively speaking, of course!) a thousand Philistines by flinging about (iacere can also mean to let fall in speaking or utter, though Peter does not draw attention to this) the jawbone of an ass.

"The word is something which 'batters the air [(aerem verberat)]; hence it is also called a word [(verbum)]'."

     Bernard of Clairvaux, In sollemnitate apostolorum Petri et Pauli sermo 2, as quoted by Otto Hermann Pesch, "Theologie des Wortes bei Thomas von Aquin," Zeitschrift für Theologie und Kirche 66, no. 4 (1969):  449-450 (437-465).  Cf. Bernhard von Clairvaux:  Sämtliche Werke lateinisch/deutsch, ed. Gerhard B. Winkler, vol. 8 (Insbruck:  Tyrolia-Verlag, 1997), p. 454, l. 2:  "Aerem verberat, unde et verbum dicitur".  According to Pesch, this was then a common etymological derivation.

Wootton on the 15th-century (i.e. post-1492) reevaluation of the theory of "'the terraqueous globe'"

"In the nineteenth century it was claimed, in all seriousness, that Columbus's contemporaries thought the world was flat and expected him to sail over the edge.  This story is balderdash.  But the fact that everyone (or at least every properly educated person) thought that you could in principle sail around the world (and in 1519-22 Magellan did just that) does not mean that they thought it was round."

     David Wootton, The invention of science:  a new history of the scientific revolution (New York:  HarperCollins Publishers, 2015), 111.  Wootton outlines the five available theories (111-117), of which only the fifth ("held by Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253), Andalo di Negro (1260-1334), Themo Judaei (mid fourteenth century) and Marsilius of Inghen (1340-96)") corresponds to the "the modern conception" of "'the terraqueous globe'" (117).  Yet "this last belief found no support in the fifteenth century", and was only rehabilitated in the wake of the Columbian discovery of 1492.  The first of the five, that of Sacrobosco (c. 1195-c. 1256), is represented by the illustration, taken from p. 119 of a 1585 printing of Christophorus Clavius' In sphaeram Ioannis de Sacro Bosco commentarius (Wootton reproduces this from the 2nd edition of 1581), where it is rejected (124).
     For an earlier critique of Wootton on this (who, however, seems to rise to it here), go here.

Mere nostalgia for the Good as "the root of despair"

Source

"It is the desire for Good that evil little by little destroys in us, but it is prevented from destroying with it the nostalgia for that Good of which we are no longer capable.  On the contrary it nourishes it and cultivates it, for it is already the root of despair—of that despair which alone is capable of completing our destruction by snatching us from God."

     Georges Bernanos, "Brother Martin," trans. Erwin W. Geissman, Cross currents 2, no. 4 (Summer 1952):  7 (1-9).  All of this appeared originally in Esprit 19, no. 10 =no. 183 (Octobre 1951):  (433-435).