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Bernard Lewis, as quoted by Helen Rittelmeyer in "Bloodless moralism," First things, February 2014, 36.
But then, according to Brad S. Gregory, it was actually economics that, beginning in the late 13th century, gave rise to the mathematical precision of natural philosophy!
This mathematization of natural phenomena, which began in late thirteenth-century Paris and Oxford and was preoccupied with measurement, gradation, equilibrium, and the attempt to quantify qualities, derived significantly from the influences on natural philosophy of scholastic economic analysis that sought to comprehend an increasingly monetized world of exchange characterized by market practices
(The unintended Reformation: how a religious revolution secularized society (Cambridge, MA: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2012), 39, citing Joel Kaye, Economy and nature in the fourteenth century: money, market exchange, and the emergence of scientific thought (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998)).
In any case, back to Rittelmeyer: Only very rarely is First things anything even close to this funny:
"During the Cold War, especially its early stages, the books written in defense of the Soviet model fairly bristled with statistics. Wisely, the West's more effective defenders did not attempt to refute tractor-production figures from the Ukraine with tractor-production figures from Moline, Illinois. They made more fundamental points, like the difficulty of collecting accurate statistics in a police state, or the conclusiveness with which even accurate statistics are trumped by the brute fact of mass starvation.
"At a more Kirkian level of abstraction, there were such simple observations as: Our people are free, yours are not; we produce poetry, you produce propaganda; our cities are beautiful, yours are hideous. The equivalent arguments in the modern context might be (1) no amount of creative accounting will convince a sane person that you have made a money-saver out of a vast new entitlement like Obamacare; (2) no study could ever refute the fact that character is both a cause and a casualty of government-subsidized poverty; and (3) I will listen to econometricians as soon as you show me one that can write with more fluency than a high school sophomore" (38).
Article 18 of the Thirty-nine articles, as reproduced in Creeds and confessions of faith in the Christian tradition, vol. 2, part 4: Creeds and confessions of the Reformation era, ed. Pelikan & Hotchkiss (New Haven, CT: Yale Universitiy Press, 2003), p. 533. E. C. S. Gibson (1896-1897), vol. 2, p. 490, fingers the Anabaptists in general, and the somewhat later Matthew Hamant, who was burned at a Norwich stake in 1579, in particular.
"The same [elder] said: 'There are those who are wasting away their own days in negligence, who are seeking to be saved by thought and word but do not practise in deed. They are reading the Lives of the Fathers but not imitating [the Fathers'] humility, indifference to possessions, prayer, vigil, self-discipline, hêsychia, sleeping on the ground, kneeling down,—but are giving the lie to the Lives of the Fathers by their inactivity, saying that it is impossible for a person to tolerate such practices, never considering that, where God dwells through the grace of sacred baptism and performing the commandments, the [deeds] and the spiritual gifts exceed the natural ones."
Anonymous saying of the Desert Fathers no. 748. The anonymous sayings of the Desert Fathers: a select edition and complete English translation,ed. & trans. John Wortley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 605-605.
Οὐδὲν πτωκότερον διανοίας ἐκτὸς τοῦ θεοῦ φιλοσοφούσης τὰ τοῦ θεοῦ.
From anonymous saying of the Desert Fathers no. 738. The anonymous sayings of the Desert Fathers: a select edition and complete English translation,ed. & trans. John Wortley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 590-591.
"The same [elder] said: 'It is not good to keep company with the iniquitous [(Οὐ συμφέρει μετὰ παρανομούντων κολλᾶσθαι)], neither in church nor in the marketplace; neither in the council nor in court nor anywhere else at all. One should totally abstain from the company of the iniquitous [(Χρὴ γὰρ εἰς τὸ παντελὲς τῆς τῶν παρανομούντων κοινωνίας απέχεσθαι)] for every one of them deserves to be avoided and is a partaker of eternal punishment."
Anonymous saying of the Desert Fathers no. 737. The anonymous sayings of the Desert Fathers: a select edition and complete English translation,ed. & trans. John Wortley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 590-591.
Yes, there is this emphasis in the Desert Fathers, too (though it must be admitted that κολλᾶσθαι, for example, can be a much stronger word than simply "to keep company").
"Abba Pambo sent his disciple into the city of Alexandria to sell his handiwork. Spending sixteen days in the city, as he told us, he used to sleep at night in the narthex of the church of Saint Mark. Having witnessed the rite of the Catholic Church, he returned to the elder. He had learned the troparia too. So the elder said to him: 'My son, I see you troubled; perhaps some temptation befell you in the city?' The brother said to the elder: 'You know, abba, we are wasting our days in negligence in this desert and we are learning neither canons nor troparia. When I went away to Alexandria I saw the ranks of the church and how they sing and I became very sorrowful because we do not sing canons and troparia.' The elder said to him: 'Woe betide us, my son, for the days have arrived in which the monks will abandon the solid food spoken of by the Holy Spirit and go running after songs and tones. What kind of sorrow for sin, what tears are born of the troparia? What kind of sorrow for sin is there for a monk when, standing in church or cell, he raises his voice like the oxen? If we are standing before God, we ought to stand in great sorrow for sin, not being elated. For the monks did not come out into this desert to stand before God and be elated, to warble songs, shape tunes, wave their hands and prance around on their feet. Rather ought we to offer our prayers to God in great fear and trembling, with tears and sighs, with reverence, in a thoroughly repentant, moderate and humble voice, well disposed to sorrow for sin. See, I am telling you, my son, the days will come when Christians will destroy the books of the holy gospels and of the holy apostles and of the divine prophets, smoothing away the holy Scriptures and writing troparia and pagan poems; and their mind will be besotted with troparia and pagan poetry. . . ."
Anonymous saying of the Desert Fathers no. 758 BHG 2329b, apophthegma de cantu monachorum. The anonymous sayings of the Desert Fathers: a select edition and complete English translation, ed. & trans. John Wortley (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 616-619. Cf. no. 726 (pp. 576-579):
. . . The brother said: 'Father, ever since I became a monk I have been singing the sequence of the canon and the hours and the [contents] of the Oktoêchos', and the elder said: 'That is why sorrow for sin and lamenting flee from you. Think of the great fathers, how simple they were, knowing only a few psalms. They had no knowledge of tones or tropes and they shone like luminaries in the world—and witnesses to what I am saying are Abba Paul, Abba Anthony, Abba Paul the Simple, Abba Pambo, Abba Apollo and so forth, those who raised the dead and received power over demons, not by tunes and tropes and tones, but in prayer and fasting. It is not the elegance of the tune that saves the man but the fear of God and keeping the commandments of Christ. Singing has led many down into the lowest parts of earth and not only worldlings but priests too; it entrenched them in porneia and many passions. Singing is for worldlings, my son; that is why people congregate in churches. Just think how many ranks [of angels] there are in heaven, my boy, and it is not written of them that they sing with the eight tones but that one rank unceasingly sings: 'Alleluia', another rank: 'Holy, holy, holy Lord of Sabaoth', another rank: 'Blessed be the glory of the Lord from this place and from his house.' So do you, my son, love the humility of Christ and watch over yourself, keeping watch over your mind at the time of prayer and, wherever you go, do not display yourself as one of ready wit and a teacher but be humble and God will grant you sorrow for sin.
The sole question put by David Hilbert to John von Neumann during the latter's oral examination for the doctorate in mathematics, University of Budapest, 1926, as quoted by George Dyson in Turing's cathedral: the origins of the digital universe (New York: Pantheon Books, 2012), 50.
