The 19th century saw the culmination of what we now call Classical physics and the high water mark of the mechanistic view of the universe. Clergy remained important contributors of science, even as the field (now called, for the first time, “science”) was becoming a viable way for laypeople to make a living. Two giants of this era were Gregor Mendel, the father of genetics (and a priest), and Angelo Secchi, the father of astrophysics (and also a priest).
Astronomy on the Frontier
Article (blog post)- 1200 words
- General audiences
Christopher Graney writes on The Catholic Astronomer blog about the first bishop of Vincennes, Indiana, Simon Guillaume Gabriel Bruté de Rémur (1779-1839), and his library. The library contained a significant collection of works on science, which Bishop Bruté hauled all the way to the American frontier from France. Graney writes:
It turns out Bruté had been a top-notch student of science—one of the best students in his class at the medical school in Paris. So of course his library would include quite a bit of material on a variety of sciences, including astronomy. Still, Indiana was being settled at the time, and was pretty rough country: the land of Abraham Lincoln’s youth…; a land that had only become a state twenty years earlier; a land from which the Potowatami Indians were being forcibly evicted while Bruté was bishop, passing only a hundred miles to the north on a “Trail of Death.” Was it really worth the trouble and cost to haul crates of science books to this country, all for a church library? especially for a guy who apparently owned so little other stuff of worth that a decent set of clothes had to be borrowed for his burial! Obviously, in the opinion of the first bishop of Vincennes, it was indeed worth it (and worth it to have some up-to-date astronomy books, too)…. It is worth knowing that Bishop Simon Guillaume Gabriel Bruté de Rémur cared about having science books, including astronomy books, in the rough-and-tumble country of 1830’s Indiana. In the U.S.A., at least, we tend to value a little more those things our forebears valued.
Monsignor Bouchet’s Telescope
Article (blog post)- 850 words
- General audiences
In this post on The Catholic Astronomer blog, Christopher Graney writes about a telescope that belonged to Monsignor Michael Bouchet (1827 to 1903), former vicar-general of the Diocese of Louisville, Kentucky, and that is now housed in the Archdiocesan History Center of Louisville’s Cathedral of the Assumption. Bouchet was, among other things, an inventor (he constructed and patented a mechanical adding machine, which is on display in the History Center) and a science fiction writer (he wrote a story about a trip to the Moon). Graney writes that “Bouchet’s combination of interests—technology, astronomy, science fiction—is a combination found in many astronomers today, be they amateurs or professionals.”
Jesuit Science
- Article and Video
- 750 words (article), 1 hour (video)
- General audiences
Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J., an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory, discusses Jesuits and their many contributions to science in an article and in a talk (on video). Br. Consolmagno notes:
A Jesuit scientist, supported by the order, is often not tied to a three-year funding cycle or six-year tenure review. Thus we have the time – it may take decades – to catalogue double stars, seismic velocities, or patterns in climate or terrestrial magnetic fields. Jesuits, for instance, invented the basic taxonomy of the plants of India. But this sort of science often meant that their work was unappreciated by their immediate peers. Famously in the 19th century the Whig historian and politician Thomas Macaulay sneered that the Jesuits “appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation” and that being a Jesuit “has a tendency to suffocate, rather than to develop, original genius.”
Twelve Lectures on the Connection Between Science and Revealed Religion – Nicholas Wiseman
Book (and book excerpt)- 448 pages (excerpt is 3200 words)
- High school level and above
Nicolás Patricio Esteban Wiseman was Cardinal and first Archbishop of Westminster upon the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850. His discussions of religion and science in the early nineteenth century became well-known.
The complete text of Wiseman’s lectures is available from Google Books (click here).
Click here for an excerpt selected by the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research, operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and directed by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti. In this excerpt Wiseman defends Rome as a center of learning and writes of various early figures in the church who promoted the study of mathematics or the natural world, including Clement of Alexandria:
Clement of Alexandria … devoted several chapters of his learned Stromata to the vindication of his favorite studies. He observes very justly, that “varied and abundant learning recommends him who proposes the great dogmas of faith, to the credit of his hearers, inspiring his disciples with admiration, and drawing them towards the truth which is in like manner the opinion of Cicero, when he says, “magna est enim vis ad persuadendum scientiae.” Clement then illustrates his argument by many quotations from the Holy Scriptures, and from profane authors. I will read you one remarkable passage.
“Some persons, having a high opinion of their good dispositions, will not apply to philosophy or dialectics, nor even to natural philosophy, but wish to possess faith alone and unadorned: as reasonably as though they expected to gather grapes from a vine which they have left uncultivated. Our Lord is called, allegorically, a vine, from which we gather fruit, by a careful cultivation, according to the eternal Word. We must prune, and dig, and bind, and perform all other necessary labor. And, as in agriculture and in medicine, he is considered the best educated who has applied to the greatest variety of sciences, useful for tilling or for curing, so must we consider him most properly educated, who makes all things bear upon the truth; who from geometry, and music, and grammar and philosophy itself, gathers whatever is useful for the defence of faith. But the champion who has not trained himself well, will surely be despised.”
These words, I must own, afford me no small encouragement. For if, instead of geometry and music we say geology, and ethnography, and history, we may consider ourselves as having, in this passage, a formal confirmation of the views which we have taken in these Lectures, and an approbation of the principles on which they have been conducted.
James Clerk Maxwell – Science and Faith
Article (two letter excerpts)- 350 words
- All audiences
James Clerk Maxwell is one of the most important figures in the history of science. Students in physics courses everywhere study “Maxwell’s Equations” that mathematically describe electromagnetic waves. These waves include light, radio, x-rays, etc. They are how astronomers learn about the universe and they are the basis of all wireless communication technology, including smart phones.
Maxwell was a devout Christian who spoke of his faith in many of his letters. Below are two excerpts from letters which contain direct references to both his scientific work and his faith.
The first is from a draft of a letter in 1875 regarding membership in “The Victoria Institute”:
I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable of. But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonise his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society….
The second is from a letter of response to the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, who had written to Maxwell wondering whether the creation of the sun after the creation of light in Genesis 1 can be explained through the newly-developed physics of light. Maxwell replies by noting, in part, that what is new physics now may be discarded wrong ideas later:
If it were necessary to provide an interpretation of the text in accordance with the science of 1876 (which may not agree with that of 1896), it would be very tempting to say that the light of the first day means the all-embracing aether… But I cannot suppose that this was the very idea meant to be conveyed by the original author to those for whom he was writing.
But I should be very sorry if an interpretation founded on a most conjectural scientific hypothesis were to get fastened to the text in Genesis … The rate of change of scientific hypothesis is naturally much more rapid than that of Biblical interpretations, so that if an interpretation is founded on such an hypothesis, it may help to keep the hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried and forgotten.
At the same time I think that each individual man should do all he can to impress his own mind with the extent, the order, and the unity of the universe, and should carry these ideas with him as he reads such passages as the 1st Chap. of the Ep. to Colossians (see Lightfoot on Colossians, p.182), just as enlarged conceptions of the extent and unity of the world of life may be of service to us in reading Psalm viii.; Heb. ii 6, etc.
James Clerk Maxwell – A Student’s Evening Hymn
- Article (poem, PDF)
- 460 words
- All audiences
James Clerk Maxwell is one of the most important figures in the history of science. Students in physics courses everywhere study “Maxwell’s Equations” that mathematically describe electromagnetic waves. These waves include light, radio, x-rays, etc. They are how astronomers learn about the universe and they are the basis of all wireless communication technology, including smart phones. Maxwell was a devout Christian, and a poet. Here we see both his interest in science and his faith reflected in one of his poems.
John Henry Newman – on Darwin’s Theory of Evolution
Article (letter)- 500 words
- High school level and above
John Henry Newman writes about Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution, and asks what people find atheistic about it. Newman writes:
It does not seem to me to follow that creation is denied because the Creator, millions of years ago, gave laws to matter. He first created matter and then he created laws for it — laws which should construct it into its present wonderful beauty, and accurate adjustment and harmony of parts gradually. We do not deny or circumscribe the Creator, because we hold he has created the self acting originating human mind, which has almost a creative gift; much less then do we deny or circumscribe His power, if we hold that He gave matter such laws as by their blind instrumentality moulded and constructed through innumerable ages the world as we see it.
Click here for an excerpt selected by the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research, operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and directed by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti. The excerpt is from The Letters and Diaries of John Henry Newman, published by Oxford University press in 1961.
Giuseppe Settele and the final annulment of the decree of 1616 against Copernicanism
Pope Pius VII
- Article (PDF)
- 3500 words
- University level and above
In 1820 Fr. Giuseppe Settele requested an imprimatur on his book Elementi di ottica e di astronomia (Elements of Optics and Astronomy), which referenced Earth’s motion. The request was denied; Settele appealed to Pope Pius VII. This article by Fr. Juan Casanovas, an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory, provides a brief historical background on and summary of the actions surrounding this event. Casanovas writes:
It is a merit of Settele that he insisted on obtaining the imprimatur. If he had just rewritten his textbook to say: supposing or in the case the earth moves around the sun… there would have been no difficulty. However he insisted and his insistence earned freedom for all subsequent writers of astronomy. Settele didn’t give in to the requests of the Pope’s palace “maggiordomo”.
[Download PDF]
Casanovas-Settele
Giuseppe Settele and the final annulment of the decree of 1616 against Copernicanism
Pope Pius VII
- Article (PDF)
- 3500 words
- University level and above
In 1820 Fr. Giuseppe Settele requested an imprimatur on his book Elementi di ottica e di astronomia (Elements of Optics and Astronomy), which referenced Earth’s motion. The request was denied; Settele appealed to Pope Pius VII. This article by Fr. Juan Casanovas, an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory, provides a brief historical background on and summary of the actions surrounding this event. Casanovas writes:
It is a merit of Settele that he insisted on obtaining the imprimatur. If he had just rewritten his textbook to say: supposing or in the case the earth moves around the sun… there would have been no difficulty. However he insisted and his insistence earned freedom for all subsequent writers of astronomy. Settele didn’t give in to the requests of the Pope’s palace “maggiordomo”.
[Download PDF]
Casanovas-Settele
Pope Leo XIII – De Vaticana Specula Astronomica Restituenda Et Amplificanda
Papal document- 1600 words
- University level
De Vaticana Specula Astronomica Restituenda Et Amplificanda, issued by Pope Leo XIII (1810-1903; elected Pope, 1878) in 1891, is the founding document of the Vatican Observatory. Pope Leo writes:
Among all of these [natural] studies astronomy holds a preeminent position. It proposes to investigate those inanimate creatures which more than all others proclaim the glory of God and which gave marvelous delight to the wisest of beings, the one who exulted in his divinely inspired knowledge, especially of the yearly cycles and of the positions of the heavenly bodies (Wisdom VII.19).
Click here for the original Latin text, published in 1894 (from Google Books).
Click here for English translation from the Vatican Observatory web site.
[Download PDF]
De Vaticana Specula Astronomica Restituenda Et Amplificanda
Fr. Giuseppe Lais, Astronomer
- Article
- 800 words
- General Audiences (Italian)
Fr. Sabino Maffeo, a physicist with the Vatican Observatory since 1985, writes about Fr. Giuseppe Lais, who worked with Angelo Secchi and the early Vatican Observatory.
The full text of this article, which was published in the Dizionario biografico degli italiani, Vol. 63 (2004), p. 93-94, is available here.
Oratorian Father Giuseppe Lais (1845-1921), was the astronomer who did most of the photography for a collaborative project the Vatican participated in from 1894 into the 1950s to create a photographic map of the heavens and to catalogue the stars. Father Lais is pictured in this undated photo using the Carte du Ciel (Celestial Map) telescope in the Leonine Tower at the Vatican. (CNS photo/courtesy Vatican Observatory). See CNS: “Mapping with the stars“, 4/28/2016.
L’impresa della Carte du ciel e la fondazione della Specola vaticana.
- Book Chapter
- University (Italian)
By Fr. Sabino Maffeo, a physicist with the Vatican Observatory since 1985. Published in Cento anni di astronomia in Italia, 1860- 1960: convegno organizzato d’intesa con l’Istituto nazionale di astrofisica e il Comitato nazionale per il IV centenario della fondazione dell’Accademia dei Lincei Lincei.
Abstract:
La Specola Vaticana, dopo essere stata riaperta, nel 1889, nell’antica sede della Torre dei Venti, fu, in quello stesso anno, ammessa a partecipare all’impresa della Carte du Ciel.
Questa partecipazione a un’iniziativa di carattere internazionale offrì a Leone XIII l’occasione di fare della Specola Vaticana un istituto di ricerca in grado di continuare degnamente la tradizione dei due osservatori romani, già pontifici: Collegio Romano e Campidoglio. Per questo, nel 1891, già nel motuproprio di fondazione del nuovo osservatorio, egli dichiarò come principale impegno istituzionale della Specola quello della Carte du Ciel.
La Specola Vaticana adempì con successo il lavoro che le era stato assegnato portando a termine, nel 1928, i dieci volumi della parte riguardante il Catalogo astrografico e, nel 1955, quella delle 540 tavole della Carta.
Nella relazione si espongono le varie tappe di questo lavoro, le difficoltà incontrate, i collaboratori di cui la Specola si avvalse, l’importanza che il successo di questa impresa ebbe per la Specola Vaticana quanto alla sua immagine nel campo scientifico internazionale, l’utilizzazione dei risultati e le iniziative in corso per la conservazione e l’utilizzazione dei dati in forma digitale.
The Modern Solar System, the Diversity of Worlds, and William Whewell
- Articles (blog posts)
- 1000 words each
- General Audience
A pair of posts by Chris Graney on The Catholic Astronomer website. Graney discusses work by Michael J. Crowe, the Rev. John Cavanaugh, C.S.C., Professor Emeritus in the Program of Liberal Studies and the Graduate Program in History and Philosophy of Science at the University of Notre Dame, and one of a relatively small number of scholars who study the history of human thought concerning intelligent life on other worlds. Crowe suggests that William Whewell (1794–1866), Master of Trinity College of Cambridge University, was the first person to envision the modern solar system. From Copernicus up through the early nineteenth century astronomers assumed that intelligent life was abundant outside of Earth—and in particular, abundant within the solar system. To use the language of the times, they believed in a “Plurality of Worlds” like Earth. Of course today we know that the solar system is not full of worlds like Earth. We have so far found no extraterrestrial life at all within the solar system. We do not expect to find any intelligent life here, and it is possible we will never find any extraterrestrial life of any sort within the solar system.
Astronomy on the Frontier
- Article (blog post)
- 1200 words
- General audiences
Christopher Graney writes on The Catholic Astronomer blog about the first bishop of Vincennes, Indiana, Simon Guillaume Gabriel Bruté de Rémur (1779-1839), and his library. The library contained a significant collection of works on science, which Bishop Bruté hauled all the way to the American frontier from France. Graney writes:
It turns out Bruté had been a top-notch student of science—one of the best students in his class at the medical school in Paris. So of course his library would include quite a bit of material on a variety of sciences, including astronomy. Still, Indiana was being settled at the time, and was pretty rough country: the land of Abraham Lincoln’s youth…; a land that had only become a state twenty years earlier; a land from which the Potowatami Indians were being forcibly evicted while Bruté was bishop, passing only a hundred miles to the north on a “Trail of Death.” Was it really worth the trouble and cost to haul crates of science books to this country, all for a church library? especially for a guy who apparently owned so little other stuff of worth that a decent set of clothes had to be borrowed for his burial! Obviously, in the opinion of the first bishop of Vincennes, it was indeed worth it (and worth it to have some up-to-date astronomy books, too)…. It is worth knowing that Bishop Simon Guillaume Gabriel Bruté de Rémur cared about having science books, including astronomy books, in the rough-and-tumble country of 1830’s Indiana. In the U.S.A., at least, we tend to value a little more those things our forebears valued.
Searching the Heavens and the Earth: The History of Jesuit Observatories [with book reviews]
Book- 369 pages
- University level
Searching the Heavens and the Earth: The History of Jesuit Observatories, is a 2003 book by Agustín Udías, S. J. of the Department of Geophysics and Meteorology, Universidad Complutenese (Madrid, Spain). From the publisher:
Jesuits established a large number of astronomical, geophysical and meteorological observatories during the 17th and 18th centuries and again during the 19th and 20th centuries throughout the world. The history of these observatories has never been published in a complete form. Many early European astronomical observatories were established in Jesuit colleges.
During the 17th and 18th centuries Jesuits were the first western scientists to enter into contact with China and India. It was through them that western astronomy was first introduced in these countries. They made early astronomical observations in India and China and they directed for 150 years the Imperial Observatory of Beijing.
In the 19th and 20th centuries a new set of observatories were established. Besides astronomy these now included meteorology and geophysics. Jesuits established some of the earliest observatories in Africa, South America and the Far East.
Jesuit observatories constitute an often forgotten chapter of the history of these sciences.
Click here for more information, including a brief preview, from the publisher (Springer).
Click here for a substantial preview from Google Books.
Below are two reviews of this book by astronomers with the Vatican Observatory:
- Book review by Fr. Sabinao Maffeo, S. J., in the Journal for the History of Astronomy, 2005 (PDF, courtesy of NASA ADS).
- Book review by Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J., in the Archivum Historicum Societatis Iesu, 2007 (PDF).
James Clerk Maxwell – Science and Faith
- Article (two letter excerpts)
- 350 words
- All audiences
James Clerk Maxwell is one of the most important figures in the history of science. Students in physics courses everywhere study “Maxwell’s Equations” that mathematically describe electromagnetic waves. These waves include light, radio, x-rays, etc. They are how astronomers learn about the universe and they are the basis of all wireless communication technology, including smart phones.
Maxwell was a devout Christian who spoke of his faith in many of his letters. Below are two excerpts from letters which contain direct references to both his scientific work and his faith.
The first is from a draft of a letter in 1875 regarding membership in “The Victoria Institute”:
I think men of science as well as other men need to learn from Christ, and I think Christians whose minds are scientific are bound to study science that their view of the glory of God may be as extensive as their being is capable of. But I think that the results which each man arrives at in his attempts to harmonise his science with his Christianity ought not to be regarded as having any significance except to the man himself, and to him only for a time, and should not receive the stamp of a society….
The second is from a letter of response to the Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol, who had written to Maxwell wondering whether the creation of the sun after the creation of light in Genesis 1 can be explained through the newly-developed physics of light. Maxwell replies by noting, in part, that what is new physics now may be discarded wrong ideas later:
If it were necessary to provide an interpretation of the text in accordance with the science of 1876 (which may not agree with that of 1896), it would be very tempting to say that the light of the first day means the all-embracing aether… But I cannot suppose that this was the very idea meant to be conveyed by the original author to those for whom he was writing.
But I should be very sorry if an interpretation founded on a most conjectural scientific hypothesis were to get fastened to the text in Genesis … The rate of change of scientific hypothesis is naturally much more rapid than that of Biblical interpretations, so that if an interpretation is founded on such an hypothesis, it may help to keep the hypothesis above ground long after it ought to be buried and forgotten.
At the same time I think that each individual man should do all he can to impress his own mind with the extent, the order, and the unity of the universe, and should carry these ideas with him as he reads such passages as the 1st Chap. of the Ep. to Colossians (see Lightfoot on Colossians, p.182), just as enlarged conceptions of the extent and unity of the world of life may be of service to us in reading Psalm viii.; Heb. ii 6, etc.
Jesuit Science
- Article and Video
- 750 words (article), 1 hour (video)
- General audiences
Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J., an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory, discusses Jesuits and their many contributions to science in an article and in a talk (on video). Br. Consolmagno notes:
A Jesuit scientist, supported by the order, is often not tied to a three-year funding cycle or six-year tenure review. Thus we have the time – it may take decades – to catalogue double stars, seismic velocities, or patterns in climate or terrestrial magnetic fields. Jesuits, for instance, invented the basic taxonomy of the plants of India. But this sort of science often meant that their work was unappreciated by their immediate peers. Famously in the 19th century the Whig historian and politician Thomas Macaulay sneered that the Jesuits “appear to have discovered the precise point to which intellectual culture can be carried without risk of intellectual emancipation” and that being a Jesuit “has a tendency to suffocate, rather than to develop, original genius.”
James Clerk Maxwell – A Student’s Evening Hymn
- Article (poem, PDF)
- 460 words
- All audiences
James Clerk Maxwell is one of the most important figures in the history of science. Students in physics courses everywhere study “Maxwell’s Equations” that mathematically describe electromagnetic waves. These waves include light, radio, x-rays, etc. They are how astronomers learn about the universe and they are the basis of all wireless communication technology, including smart phones. Maxwell was a devout Christian, and a poet. Here we see both his interest in science and his faith reflected in one of his poems.
Tradition and Today: Religion and Science
- Article (PDF)
- 12 pages
- University and higher level
Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, presents four case histories which indicate that the relationship between religion and science has, in the course of three centuries, passed from one of conflict to one of compatible openness and dialogue, to show that the natural sciences have played a significant role in helping to establish the kind of dialogue that is absolutely necessary for the enrichment of the multifaceted aspects of human culture, whether traditional or modern. He argues that the approach of science to religion in each of these periods can be characterized respectively as: (l) temptress, (2) antagonist, (3) enlightened teacher, (4) partner in dialogue.
Giuseppe Settele and the final annulment of the decree of 1616 against Copernicanism
Pope Pius VII
- Article (PDF)
- 3500 words
- University level and above
In 1820 Fr. Giuseppe Settele requested an imprimatur on his book Elementi di ottica e di astronomia (Elements of Optics and Astronomy), which referenced Earth’s motion. The request was denied; Settele appealed to Pope Pius VII. This article by Fr. Juan Casanovas, an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory, provides a brief historical background on and summary of the actions surrounding this event. Casanovas writes:
It is a merit of Settele that he insisted on obtaining the imprimatur. If he had just rewritten his textbook to say: supposing or in the case the earth moves around the sun… there would have been no difficulty. However he insisted and his insistence earned freedom for all subsequent writers of astronomy. Settele didn’t give in to the requests of the Pope’s palace “maggiordomo”.
[Download PDF]
Casanovas-Settele
Stars And The Milky Way
Book chapter (PDF)- 8 pages
- High school level and above
A chapter by Fr. Christopher Corbally, S.J., an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory, for the book The Heavens Proclaim: Astronomy and the Vatican. Fr. Corbally writes “the really interesting details contained within a [spectrum] are revealed when light from a star is focused onto a narrow slit, which from there passes through a prism, and then gets focused again onto your eye or a camera.” Topics include ‘A History of Stellar Spectra’; ‘Spectra and Brightness’; ‘Classifying Stars’; ‘Getting to Know Our Neighbors’; and ‘The Simple Picture Gives Way to Surprises’.
[Download PDF]
Stars-and-the-Milky-Way
Nove papi, una missione: Cento anni della Specola Vaticana.
Book- General Audience (Italian)
Nove papi, una missione: Cento anni della Specola Vaticana, by Fr. Sabino Maffeo, a physicist with the Vatican Observatory since 1985, was published in 1991, on the occassion of the 100th anniversary of the Vatican Observatory. It is also available in English translation as In the Service of Nine Popes.
Click here for libraries that carry this book.
Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion
- Book
- 320 pages
- High school level and above
This 2009 book, edited by Ronald Numbers, contains much that will be of interest to many readers. From the publisher, Harvard University Press:
If we want nonscientists and opinion-makers in the press, the lab, and the pulpit to take a fresh look at the relationship between science and religion, Ronald L. Numbers suggests that we must first dispense with the hoary myths that have masqueraded too long as historical truths. Until about the 1970s, the dominant narrative in the history of science had long been that of science triumphant, and science at war with religion. But a new generation of historians both of science and of the church began to examine episodes in the history of science and religion through the values and knowledge of the actors themselves. Now Ronald Numbers has recruited the leading scholars in this new history of science to puncture the myths, from Galileo’s incarceration to Darwin’s deathbed conversion to Einstein’s belief in a personal God who “didn’t play dice with the universe.” The picture of science and religion at each other’s throats persists in mainstream media and scholarly journals, but each chapter in Galileo Goes to Jail shows how much we have to gain by seeing beyond the myths.
Click here for more information from the publisher.
Click here for a preview from Google Books.
Twelve Lectures on the Connection Between Science and Revealed Religion – Nicholas Wiseman
- Book (and book excerpt)
- 448 pages (excerpt is 3200 words)
- High school level and above
Nicolás Patricio Esteban Wiseman was Cardinal and first Archbishop of Westminster upon the re-establishment of the Catholic hierarchy in England and Wales in 1850. His discussions of religion and science in the early nineteenth century became well-known.
The complete text of Wiseman’s lectures is available from Google Books (click here).
Click here for an excerpt selected by the Interdisciplinary Encyclopedia of Religion and Science (Inters.org), which is edited by the Advanced School for Interdisciplinary Research, operating at the Pontifical University of the Holy Cross, Rome, and directed by Giuseppe Tanzella-Nitti. In this excerpt Wiseman defends Rome as a center of learning and writes of various early figures in the church who promoted the study of mathematics or the natural world, including Clement of Alexandria:
Clement of Alexandria … devoted several chapters of his learned Stromata to the vindication of his favorite studies. He observes very justly, that “varied and abundant learning recommends him who proposes the great dogmas of faith, to the credit of his hearers, inspiring his disciples with admiration, and drawing them towards the truth which is in like manner the opinion of Cicero, when he says, “magna est enim vis ad persuadendum scientiae.” Clement then illustrates his argument by many quotations from the Holy Scriptures, and from profane authors. I will read you one remarkable passage.
“Some persons, having a high opinion of their good dispositions, will not apply to philosophy or dialectics, nor even to natural philosophy, but wish to possess faith alone and unadorned: as reasonably as though they expected to gather grapes from a vine which they have left uncultivated. Our Lord is called, allegorically, a vine, from which we gather fruit, by a careful cultivation, according to the eternal Word. We must prune, and dig, and bind, and perform all other necessary labor. And, as in agriculture and in medicine, he is considered the best educated who has applied to the greatest variety of sciences, useful for tilling or for curing, so must we consider him most properly educated, who makes all things bear upon the truth; who from geometry, and music, and grammar and philosophy itself, gathers whatever is useful for the defence of faith. But the champion who has not trained himself well, will surely be despised.”
These words, I must own, afford me no small encouragement. For if, instead of geometry and music we say geology, and ethnography, and history, we may consider ourselves as having, in this passage, a formal confirmation of the views which we have taken in these Lectures, and an approbation of the principles on which they have been conducted.
Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science
- Book
- 304 pages
- High school level and above
This 2015 book, published by Harvard University Press (HUP) and edited in part by Ronald Numbers, is a follow-up to the 2009 book Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion which was also published by HUP and edited by Numbers. From HUP:
A falling apple inspired Isaac Newton’s insight into the law of gravity—or so the story goes. Is it true? Perhaps not. But the more intriguing question is why such stories endure as explanations of how science happens. Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science brushes away popular misconceptions to provide a clearer picture of great scientific breakthroughs from ancient times to the present. Among the myths refuted in this volume is the idea that no science was done in the Dark Ages, that alchemy and astrology were purely superstitious pursuits, that fear of public reaction alone led Darwin to delay publishing his theory of evolution, and that Gregor Mendel was far ahead of his time as a pioneer of genetics. Several twentieth-century myths about particle physics, Einstein’s theory of relativity, and more are discredited here as well. In addition, a number of broad generalizations about science go under the microscope of history: the notion that religion impeded science, that scientists typically adhere to a codified “scientific method,” and that a bright line can be drawn between legitimate science and pseudoscience. Edited by Ronald Numbers and Kostas Kampourakis, Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science debunks the widespread belief that science advances when individual geniuses experience “Eureka!” moments and suddenly comprehend what those around them could never imagine. Science has always been a cooperative enterprise of dedicated, fallible human beings, for whom context, collaboration, and sheer good luck are the essential elements of discovery.
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Angelo Secchi: L’avventura scientifica del Collegio Romano
- Book
Fr. Angelo Secchi
- 326 pages
- High school students and above (Italian)
This 2012 book on the nineteenth-century Italian astronomer Fr. Angelo Secchi, a pioneer in the use of spectroscopy, is by Fr. Sabino Maffeo, a physicist with the Vatican Observatory since 1985, and Aldo Altamore, an adjunct scholar with the Vatican Observatory.
Angelo Secchi: L’avventura scientifica del Collegio Romano
Per la sua storia secolare il Collegio Romano ha la duplice peculiarità di essere stato teatro nel XVII secolo della vicenda di Galileo e poi nella seconda metà del XIX, grazie all’instancabile attività di Pietro Angelo Secchi, della nascita dell’Astrofisica. A partire dall’epoca di Galileo, al Collegio Romano si sono svolti avvenimenti importanti nella storia delle scienze a cui hanno contribuito personaggi particolarmente significativi per l’Astronomia, la Fisica e le Scienze Naturali, quali: Christophorus Clavius, matematico amico di Galileo, principale divulgatore del Calendario Gregoriano; Christoph Scheiner uno dei fondatori dell’astronomia solare; Athanasius Kircher, enciclopedico fondatore del museo ricordato col suo nome, che è fu il nucleo iniziale di numerose collezioni, scientifiche, antropologiche e archeologiche oggi custodite nei musei di Roma; Francesco Grimaldi, scopritore della diffrazione della luce e iniziatore dell’ottica moderna; Ruggero Boscovich geniale matematico fisico e geodeta e lo stesso Angelo Secchi, universalmente considerato tra i fondatori dell’Astrofisica.
Dalla stretta collaborazione tra gli autori del volume è scaturito un testo che può essere letto secondo diversi approcci e con diversi livelli di approfondimento: quello dello studioso di storia della scienza, alla ricerca di fonti documentarie rigorose e attendibili; quello dell’educatore nel campo delle discipline scientifiche, che potrà trovarvi utili spunti per l’insegnamento dell’Astronomia, della Fisica e delle Scienze naturali; quello del cultore dell’Astronomia, o dell’appassionato interessato alla storia della Città di Roma.
Il primo capitolo del libro, intitolato Lo Scienziato ed il contesto, è dedicato alla figura umana e scientifica di Angelo Secchi e vi viene presentata la secolare storia dei gesuiti scienziati al Collegio Romano. Tra ’altro vengono discusse le relazioni di Secchi con i suoi contemporanei, che come è noto si svolsero n un contesto di grandi cambiamenti politici e sociali, come quello del Risorgimento Italiano, e in n omento di intenso sviluppo della ricerca scientifica e della tecnologia che preparò la rivoluzione cientifica del XX secolo.
Il capitolo Un triplice osservatorio è dedicato al Complesso Scientifico del ollegio Romano, una struttura di ricerca d’avanguardia, sviluppata dopo il 1849 sotto la direzione di ngelo Secchi. Sul tetto della Chiesa di Sant’Ignazio furono realizzati, infatti, il Nuovo Osservatorio stronomico e l’Osservatorio Geomagnetico (il primo in Italia) che si affiancarono all’antico sservatorio Meteorologico, anch’esso rinnovato con l’invenzione di quella straordinaria macchina he fu il Meteorografo. Oltre alla descrizione dei locali del Nuovo Osservatorio, viene illustrata la isione scientifica di Secchi e particolare enfasi è data alla rivisitazione di quelle sue ricerche che ontribuirono alla nascita e allo sviluppo dell’Astrofisica.
Il terzo capitolo riguarda la Scienza applicata, tema molto caro ad Angelo Secchi, il quale era convinto che i ricercatori non si dovessero ccupare solo di scienza fondamentale o delle sue pur importanti applicazioni tecnologiche, ma nche ssere attenti al contributo che gli scienziati con il loro impegno civile potevano (e possono) dare al iglioramento della vita dei concittadini. Nella prima parte del capitolo sono presentati i lavori di ecchi che poi furono alla base della realizzazione della rete geodetica del nuovo stato unitario italiano e permisero la definizione del Primo Meridiano d’Italia. Segue poi la presentazione di un spetto poco conosciuto dell’attività dello scienziato: quello che riguarda il disco di Secchi, trumento da lui inventato, che è ancora oggi utilizzato per la valutazione della trasparenza delle acque marine o lacustri.
L’ultimo contributo di questo capitolo conduce il lettore alla scoperta degli orologi solari progettati da Secchi, ancora oggi presenti in diverse località italiane. Quest’argomento offre l’occasione di ricordare come Angelo Secchi fosse molto attento agli aspetti educativi e alla iffusione dei saperi, non solo in ambito colto o accademico, come testimoniano le sue umerosissime pubblicazioni, ma anche nel campo della formazione scientifica di base. Ogni ontributo è corredato di una ricca bibliografia, inoltre una specifica sezione intitolata Per una bibliografia secchiana sviluppa un’attenta rivisitazione delle fonti bibliografiche. Alla documentazione bibliografica si aggiunge quella iconografica, in gran parte inedita, costituita dalle avole a colori collocate al centro del volume e dalle altre numerose immagini in bianco e nero. Tra le immagini presentate a colori ricordiamo: la serie completa dei disegni delle protuberanze solari ttenuti da Secchi e Tacchini, che furono pubblicati nel volume Le Soleil; nonché le incisioni inedite he illustrano il Meteorografo, prodotte dal cortruttore dello strumento, Ermanno Brassart, che sono ustodite nel Museo Astronomico e Copernicano dell’Osservatorio Astronomico di Roma (INAF)
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