Relationship Archives - Vatican Observatory Foundation Faith and Science

Apocalyptic Themes in Isaac Newton’s Astronomical Physics

Article (book chapter) 9 pages Level: university This essay by Stephen D. Snobelen was published in the 2021 book Intersections of Religion and Astronomy. One of the editors of the book is Chris Corbally, an astronomer with the Vatican Observatory. Snobelen writes on how Newton recognized that the universe was subject to change and instability, and not eternal. Newton believed we ought to be thankful to God for our existence and sustenance. Snobelen writes: For Newton, the history and future of the cosmos are contained within the biblical time-frame of Genesis to Revelation: God created the earth, sustains it, renews it, and ultimately makes all things new…. [Newton] ultimately believed in the unity of all reality: all reality is God’s, created by his boundless power and sustained by his sovereign will. From the publisher (Routledge), regarding Intersections as a whole: This volume examines the way in which cultural ideas about “the heavens” shape religious ideas and are shaped by them … Continue reading →

Al-Ghazālī – from The Incoherence of the Philosophers

Article (book excerpt) 630 words Level: all audiences An excerpt on religion and science from the Tahāfut al-falāsifa (or The Incoherence of the Philosophers) of Abu Hāmid Muhammad Ibn Muhammad al-Tūsi al-Ghazālī. Al-Ghazālī, who lived in the eleventh century, is one of medieval Islam’s best-known religious intellectuals. [Click here to download PDF]

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Can Faith and Science Coexist?

Article (blog posts) 1700 words (in two article) Level: all audiences These are two 2015 blog posts from Scientific American, written by two authors who had a “debate” regarding Faith and Science. These posts are the top result returned by a “Bing” search for “faith and science”, and the third result returned by a “Google” search (as checked 9-5-2018). The two authors are John Horgan—who directs the Center for Science Writings at the Stevens Institute of Technology, who writes regularly for Scientific American, and who describes himself as “a lapsed Catholic turned psychedelic agnostic”—and John Lennox, an Oxford mathematician and a Christian, who has debated Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Michael Shermer and other prominent non-believers. Click here for Horgan’s post entitled “Can Faith and Science Coexist?”, courtesy of Scientific American. Click here for Horgan’s post courtesy of The Stute (the student newspaper of Stevens Institute). Click here for Lennox’s post entitled “Mathematician and Christian John Lennox Responds”, courtesy of Scientific American. … Continue reading →

Thomistic Evolution: A Catholic Approach to Understanding Evolution in the Light of Faith

Article collection Approximately 60 pages Level: high school and above The first page of the Thomistic Evolution website features the heading “Understanding Evolution with St. Thomas Aquinas”. Thomistic Evolution features a collection of sixty article written by a team of Dominicans with backgrounds in science, theology and philosophy. These are Fr. Nicanor Austriaco, O.P., who received his Ph.D. in Biology from M.I.T. and his S.T.D. in Moral Theology from the University of Fribourg; Fr. James Brent, O.P., who earned his Ph.D. in philosophy from St. Louis University; Bro. Thomas Davenport, O.P., who received his Ph.D. in physics from Stanford University; and Fr. John Baptist Ku, O.P., who earned his doctorate in sacred theology (S.T.D.) from the University of Fribourg. They write: Evolutionary theory has raised numerous disputed questions among the Catholic faithful and other Christian believers concerning the relationship between faith and reason and between religion and science. As a team of Dominican friars and scholars committed to the preaching … Continue reading →

The Penultimate Curiosity: How Science Swims in the Slipstream of Ultimate Questions

Book 468 pages Level: university This is a book by an artist and a scientist. The artist is Robert Wagner, who has produced several books of illustrated poems and translations of the Psalms, and created a stained glass window for St. Mary’s Iffley in Oxford. The scientist is Andrew Briggs, Professor of Nanomaterials at Oxford, who holds degrees in both physics and theology. The authors argue that over time, science and metaphysics have grown side by side as mankind has asked questions central to our existence. The book, published in 2016 by Oxford University Press, discusses a wide range of historical figures, from Anaxagoras to John Philoponus to Al-Ghazali to Kepler to Maxwell to the scientists working on the Large Hadron Collider. The use of illustrations is a prominent feature of the book. From the publisher, Oxford University Press: When young children first begin to ask ‘why?’ they embark on a journey with no final destination. The need to make sense of … Continue reading →

Letter of His Holiness John Paul II to Reverend George V. Coyne, S.J.

Article 3900 words Level: high school and above A 1988 letter from Pope John Paul II to Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., then Director of the Vatican Observatory, on the three hundredth anniversary of the publication of Newton’s Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica. Click here to access this text via the Vatican’s website. [Click here to download PDF]

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Pierre Duhem: Historian of the Christian origin of science

Article 2200 words Level: all audiences In this article for Contemporary Review, published in 1994, P. E. Hogsdon discusses the life and work of Pierre Duhem, French scientist and historian of science. Hogsdon writes: It is still possible to find histories of science that describe the achievements of the ancient Greeks and then pass immediately to the Renaissance, with perhaps a brief remark about the absence of any developments worth mentioning in the intervening period. That such slighting of the contributions of the medieval philosophers is no longer acceptable in any work with pretensions to scholarship is mainly due to the work of one man, the French physicist Pierre Duhem…. Duhem’s studies of medieval science showed him that there was a continuous development that led eventually to the great flowering in the Renaissance. Furthermore, that development was made possible by the Christian theology of the creation of all things out of nothing by God. This tells us that matter is … Continue reading →

Pierre Duhem, Entropy, and Christian Faith

Article 18 pages Level: university In this 2008 article published in the journal Physics in Perspective, historian of science Helge Kragh discusses Pierre Duhem and the status of science and religion in the second half of the nineteenth century, when developments in the science of thermodynamics challenged the idea of an eternal, unchanging or cyclic universe. Kragh writes: The French physicist and polymath Pierre Duhem was strongly devoted to Catholicism but insisted that science and religion were wholly independent. In an article of 1905 he reflected at length on the relationship between physics and Christian faith, using as an example the cosmological significance of the laws of thermodynamics. He held that it was unjustified to draw cosmological consequences from thermodynamics or any other science, and even more unjustified to draw consequences of a religious nature. I place Duhem’s thoughts on “the physics of a believer” in their proper contexts by relating them to the late-nineteenth-century discussion concerning the meaning and … Continue reading →

Kepler and the Laws of Nature

Article 6 pages Level: high school 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 Scientism Delusion? Ian Hutchinson Explores Science and Faith at Emory University

Video 45 minute talk (+ 45 minutes of questions and answers) Level: all audiences Ian Hutchinson is Professor of Nuclear Science and Engineering in the Department of Nuclear Science and Engineering and Plasma Science and Fusion Center at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This is a Veritas Forum talk Hutchinson gave at Emory University. From the Veritas Forum: Since its beginning, science has demonstrated its uncapped ability to uncover and explain our universe… or has it? MIT Professor and Christian Ian Hutchinson argues that the fairly recent view that science can explain everything, or scientism, makes unrealistic promises of the scientific method. Instead, Hutchinson opens up a world in which multiple ways of knowing, including science, are equally legitimate. Among them, Hutchinson argues, is faith. Join Dr. Hutchinson and the Emory audience for a discussion about science, faith, and how we come to know the world. Over the past two decades, The Veritas Forum has been hosting vibrant discussions on … Continue reading →

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