Církev proti tmářství: polemika s jedním osvícenským konstruktem ; Church contra obscurantism: the polemic against an enlightened construction

At the turn of the 17lh century, European intellectuals had appropriated new approaches and methods that were classified by later historians as necessary condition for the advancement of modem, scientific, objective and non-ideological (pure) knowledge. These trends were stimulated not so much by the great theoretical discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo as by everyday experimenting of Protestant/ Puritan virtuosi interested in technical improvements and devices of immediate utility for the merchant and maritime enterprises. Historians that followed English Marxist Christopher Hill and his theory of scientific revolution of the early modem times explained the wave of natural and technical experiments in revolutionary England as an intellectual turmoil, motivated by the practical interests of the mighty rising bourgeoisie and its Puritan ethic. The progress of experimental, ''scientific'' methods, developed by the professors of the Gresham College, supported by revolutionary enthusiasts as Samuel Hartlib or John Wilkins and culminating in the chartering of the Royal Society of London, differed radically from the theoretical and abstract ways of continental thought and foreshadowed the coming Age of Reason. The article traces the other than social background of the „Protestant science'' - the network of alternative European thought rooted in Platonic-Pythagorean tradition that became influential through the Thirty Years War, particularly among the sympatizers of defeated Bohemian ''Winter King'' Friedrich, the Elector of Palatinate. Many religious thinkers, philosophers and scientists (virtuosi) from German Johann Valentin Andreae to Polish Johann Hevelius to English Robert Boyle to Moravian Jan Amos Comenius dreamed of a universal reform of the Christendom the part of which was new natural philosophy, in fact recovering lost knowledge of God, man and Nature. From this point of view, the so called scientific revolution, including experimental methods and orientation to the practical utility, reflected the ...