17th Century Archives - Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Astronomical Essays of Fr. G. V. Leahy: Cassini, Piazzi, Sechi, Denza, and Clerke

Book (sections) 20 pages Middle school level and above This volume of astronomical essays has been compiled from a series of articles originally published in the Boston Pilot over the pen-name of Catholicus. The series is here presented connectedly at the request of the Most Reverend Archbishop of Boston, who has graciously written the author, “I highly commend your articles on astronomy for publication in book form.” So begins the Astronomical Essays, published in 1910, of Rev. George V. Leahy, S.T.L., who was professor of astronomy at St. John’s seminary in Brighton. The Boston Pilot is a Catholic newspaper in Boston, Massachusetts. Parts of Essays are as dated as one might expect for a science book from 1910, but Leahy’s discussions of various Catholic scientists are generally easy to read, interesting, and still relevant. All of these sections are available courtesy of Google Books: Mr. D. Cassini and Saturn—click here to read Fr. Piazzi and the discovery of the first asteroid—click here to … Continue reading →

The Popular Creation Story of Astronomy Is Wrong

Article 3000 words General audiences In this May 2018 article in Nautilus, author C. M. Graney discusses Johannes Kepler’s view of the universe, a view that does not conform at all to modern ideas. Graney argues that understanding the views of scientists such as Kepler, even when they are unusual, is important to understanding science today, and important to countering anti-science attitudes. Graney writes: In the early years of the 17th century, Johannes Kepler argued that the universe contained thousands of mighty bodies, bodies so huge that they could be universes themselves. These giant bodies, said Kepler, testified to the immense power of, as well as the personal tastes of, an omnipotent Creator God. The giant bodies were the stars, and they were arrayed around the sun, the universe’s comparatively tiny central body, itself orbited by its retinue of still tinier planets. Click here to access this article from Nautilus. … Continue reading →

Telescopes: Through the Looking Glass

Book 234 pages General audiences This book by Marvin Bolt was published in 2009, the year of the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of the telescope. It provides a readable history of the telescope by way of highlighting items that are on exhibit in the “Telescopes: Through the Looking Glass” exhibit at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Scattered throughout this beautifully illustrated book can be found references to the works of various clerics, such as Bartholomaeus Anglicus (1203-1274), Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688), Francesco Bianchini (1662-1729), and others. Those planning a visit to the Adler might enjoy a look through this book in advance. From the publisher, Adler Planetarium: Through the Looking Glass celebrates the 400th anniversary of the telescope and the 2009 International Year of Astronomy. This exhibition catalogue focuses on ninety-nine artifacts from the Adler Planetarium’s world-class collection of historic telescopes. From the simple lenses of the world’s earliest telescopes 400 years ago to the complex computer-driven mirrors of current … Continue reading →

Priest of Nature – The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton

Book 522 pages University level It is often said that Isaac Newton, arguably the most prominent scientist in human history, wrote more about the Bible and religion than about science and math. However, his religious writings were generally unpublished, and have always been relatively inaccessible and little studied. Robert Iliffe, the author of the 2017 book Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton, tells us that this is due to a number of reasons: in part due to Newton’s own views on publishing; in part due to the anti-Trinitarian nature of Newton’s own Christian faith; in part due to how Enlightenment-era thinkers who were perplexed by these writings explained them away as something Newton produced only later in life, when he had gone senile or even mad; in part due to modern scholars rejecting them as bizarre, irrelevant to his more significant work, and unbecoming of his genius. However, in the 21st century these writings have all becoming … Continue reading →

Mathematical Disquisitions – The Booklet of Theses Immortalized by Galileo

Book 176 pages High school level and above This 2017 book by Christopher M. Graney is the first complete English translation of an astronomical text written by scientists who stood opposite Galileo in the debate on the question of Earth’s motion. Galileo painted a very unfavorable portrait of Mathematical Disquisitions and its Jesuit authors, but the book itself turns out to be a competent scientific work and not much like Galileo’s portrayal of it. From the publisher, the University of Notre Dame Press: Mathematical Disquisitions: The Booklet of Theses Immortalized by Galileo offers a new English translation of the 1614 Disquisitiones Mathematicae, which Johann Georg Locher wrote under the guidance of the German Jesuit astronomer Christoph Scheiner. The booklet, an anti-Copernican astronomical work, is of interest in large part because Galileo Galilei, who came into conflict with Scheiner over the discovery of sunspots, devoted numerous pages within his famous 1632 Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems—Ptolemaic and Copernican to ridiculing Disquisitiones. The brief text (the … Continue reading →

Teaching sunspots: Disciplinary identity and scholarly practice in the Collegio Romano

Article 24 pages University level This 2014 by Renee Raphael, published in the journal History of Science, discusses how the subject of sunspots was addressed by professors at the Jesuit Roman College during the seventeenth century, when the nature of sunspots was a matter of controversy: Abstract: This article examines how Jesuit Gabriele Beati (1607-1673) taught the subject of sunspots in two textbooks commemorating his teaching of natural philosophy and mathematics at the Collegio Romano. Whereas Beati defended the incorruptibility of the heavens in his natural philosophical course, he argued that sunspots were located on the face of the sun itself and generated and corrupted like terrestrial clouds in his mathematical one. While it may be tempting to attribute these different presentations to censorship practices within the Jesuit Order, they are best understood as the result of disciplinary distinctions and scholarly practices shared widely by scholars across Europe. Click here to access this article via Ebscohost (available through many libraries). … Continue reading →

Kepler and the Laws of Nature

Article 6 pages High school level and above Owen Gingerich, an astronomer and historian of science with Harvard University, discusses Johannes Kepler and the idea of “Laws of Nature” in this 2011 article published in the journal Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith: Kepler is famous for his three laws of planetary motion, but he never assigned a special status to them or called them laws. More than a century and a half passed before they were singled out and ordered in a group of three. Nevertheless, he believed in an underlying, God-given rationale to the universe, something akin to laws of nature, and as he matured he began to use the word archetype for this concept. Most physicists today have, quite independently of religious values, a feeling that deep down the universe is ultimately comprehensible and lawful. Such ultimate laws are here called ontological laws of nature. In contrast, what we have (including Kepler’s third law, for example) are … Continue reading →

The Seashell on the Mountaintop: A Story of Science, Sainthood, and the Humble Genius who Discovered a New History of the Earth

Book 228 pages High school level and above The Seashell on the Mountaintop is a 2003 book by Alan Cutler, published by Dutton/Penguin, about the seventeenth century scientist and bishop Nicholaus Steno. From the dust jacket: It was an ancient puzzle that stymied history’s greatest minds: How did the fossils of seashells find their way far inland, sometimes high up into the mountains? Fossils only made sense in a world old enough to form them, and in the seventeenth century, few people could imagine such a thing. Texts no less authoritative than the Old Testament laid out very clearly the timescale of Earth’s past; in fact one Anglican archbishop went so far as to calculate the exact date of Creation…October 23, 4004, B.C. A revolution was in the making, however, and it was started by the brilliant and enigmatic Nicholaus Steno, the man whom Stephen Jay Gould called “the founder of geology.” Steno explored beyond the pages of the Bible, … Continue reading →

How many great minds does it take to invent a telescope?

Article 1300 words General Audiences An article published in Aeon in 2017 by Thony Christie, discusses the people who contributed to the development of the reflecting telescope, including the Jesuit astronomer Niccolò Zucchi. Christie is the author of The Renaissance Mathematicus. Click here to access this article directly from Aeon. On 11 January 1672, the Fellows of the British Royal Society were treated to a demonstration of Isaac Newton’s reflecting telescope, which formed images with mirrors rather than with the lenses that had been used since the time of Galileo. Afterward, the fellows hailed Newton as the inventor of this marvellous new instrument, an attribution that sticks to the present. However, this linear historical account obscures a far more interesting, convoluted story. Newton’s claim was immediately challenged on behalf of two other contenders, James Gregory and Laurent Cassegrain. More confounding, the earliest known concept of using a curved mirror to focus light predated Newton by more than 1,500 years; the final … Continue reading →

Jesuits: Savants

Article (book chapter) 46 pages University level This article by Mordechai Feingold is the introductory chapter to the 2003 book Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters, edited by Feingold and published by The MIT Press. Feingold provides an overview of Jesuit scientists and of the advantages and disadvantages (from a scientific point of view) of doing science within the Jesuit order—an organization whose mission was not scientific but spiritual. Feingold writes: The aim of this introductory chapter is to get past the stereotypes that surrounded the Society of Jesus during the first 200 years of its existence and evaluate the scientific dimension of its intellectual contribution, independent of its religious mission. It is my contention that, by and large, the scholarly activities and aspirations of Jesuits were indistinguishable from those of other contemporary savants, secular or ordained, irrespective of denomination. True, constraints on the pursuit of secular learning were more stringent among Jesuits, as were the mechanisms regulating their … Continue reading →

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Category Archives: 17th Century