Collège, lycée, prépa
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Newton, the Bible and the age of the Earth
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Niveau terminale
Fiche professeur
La séance proposée s’inscrit dans un travail en interdisciplinarité et autour du thème de ce dossier. Elle suit les préconisations du programme d’anglais de terminale concernant la compréhension de l'écrit :
« Le programme du cycle terminal fait appel à des documents riches dans leur contenu, et complexes dans leur forme. Toutes les stratégies de découverte du sens sont mises à contribution pour construire une compréhension globale, affinée progressivement pour donner accès à l’implicite. La lecture analytique permet d’entrer dans la complexité d’un texte, d’en analyser et d’en interpréter les significations explicites et implicites. Elle est appliquée principalement à des textes courts, sans vouloir mobiliser toutes les ressources de l’explication littéraire, en se gardant d’une technicité excessive qui n’aurait pas sa place dans un cours de langue vivante étrangère, et en se gardant également de toute exploitation exhaustive ». (Programmes Anglais, classe terminale, CNDP, p. 14)
Elle est liée au thème du rapport au monde : « Les représentations de soi et de l'autre, avec les valeurs auxquelles elles sont associées, sont au cœur de la notion d’identité. Les identités linguistiques, ethniques, religieuses, littéraires, artistiques se combinent en des ensembles complexes régionaux, nationaux, voire continentaux. Dans ces ensembles en constante évolution, l’individu construit une identité singulière. » (Idem, p. 17)
Cette séance suppose peu de connaissances spécifiques préalables : les élèves devront juste savoir qui sont Newton et Moïse (au besoin, demander une recherche au cours précédent).
Objectif
Amener les élèves à percevoir que l’âge de la Terre a été l’objet de discussions au cours des siècles en fonction des avancées scientifiques et des rapports à la religion.
Les documents supports
L’extrait de la lettre de Newton
Isaac Newton (1643-1727) a consacré beaucoup de temps à des travaux sur la religion (et l'alchimie) qui, si on les compare à son immense œuvre de physicien (théorie de la gravitation universelle, travaux sur la lumière et invention du calcul intégral et différentiel), laisseront peu de traces. Très croyant, il va essayer de concilier la Bible et la physique. Dans le document présenté aux élèves, nous voyons comment il comprend la Genèse, qui stipule un Univers créé en six jours. Le document est extrait d’une lettre écrite à Thomas Burnet, théologien et géologue anglais (1635-1715).
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Pour en savoir plus :
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Thomas_Burnet/
www.reasons.org/
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L’extrait de la Genèse
Le choix qui a été fait de prendre la version NIV (New International Version) ici se justifie par un niveau de langue plus facile d’accès. Voici le même texte dans la version King James :
Genesis
13: And the evening and the morning were the third day.
14: And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years.
15: And let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so.
16: And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also.
17: And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth.
18: And to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good.
19: And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.
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L’illustration
 From a Babylonian seal cylinder in the British Museum |
Elle est tirée d’un ouvrage, qui figure dans Gutenberg project, intitulé The Babylonian legends of the Creation, d’E. A. Wallis Budge (1857-1934), où le texte complet de la légende est :
Shamash the Sun-god rising on the horizon, flames of fire ascending from his shoulder. The two portals of the dawn, each surmounted by a lion, are being drawn open by attendant gods.
www.gutenberg.org/
Propositions de réponses au questionnaire
First excerpt
1- What are the two lights mentioned here? How do you know?
The sun and the moon: they “separate the day from the night” and are set “in the expanse of the sky”.
2- The Bible says the world was created in six days. What is the day described here? How do you know?
It’s the third day, as the last verse says.
Second excerpt
The text
Who is “Moses”?
Moses was a prophet, known as the Hebrew leader who received from God the tablets of the Ten Commandments. Moses is also considered the transcriber of the Torah (the first five books of the Bible).
What is the modern equivalent of “ye”?
The
What can “vulgar” mean for Newton? Was it a noun, an adjective, an adverb or a verb? What is it now? What does it mean now?
Vulgar meant “ordinary people” or “common people” then (from the Latin “vulgus” - crowd). In the text it’s a noun. Nowadays it’s an adjective which means coarse, common, without refinement.
What does “wt” stand for?
What
What are “the whole series” mentioned in paragraph 2?
The steps of the creation.
What words does “terraqueous” come from? What does it mean?
It’s made up of “terra” and “aqua” and it means “composed of land and water”.
The ideas
In paragraph 1, two words are repeatedly opposed. Which words? What are the scientific data Newton already had which contradict the Bible?
“Real” is opposed to “apparent”. Newton knows the real size of the planets and knows the sun and the moon are in space, not in the “sky” (firmament).
Why can we say that “adapt” is one of the key words in the second paragraph? Who adapted what, and what for?
Moses adapted his level of speech to his audience for people to understand the situation. Newton justifies the text of the Bible by saying Moses (whom he presents as the author of the Bible) wanted to address ordinary people and wanted them to understand clearly the creation of the Earth.
Paragraph 3 explains the relation between the two stars and the age of the globe. What problem of calculation does it point out? What can we guess about Burnet’s point of view concerning the age of the Earth?
Since the separation between days and nights started at the end of the third day, it’s impossible to establish the length of the first two days and consequently to establish the age of the Earth thanks to these data. We can think Burnet said the Bible had to be read literally even though he also thought that ordinary physical laws could well be applied to the sequence of events. Newton obviously doesn’t agree.
Why did Newton try to interpret the text of the Bible?
Newton had discovered new laws of physics which didn’t coincide with the biblical texts. He had to explain how the Bible could still be interpreted as the truth.
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