• Article (book chapter)
• 20 pages
• University level

“The Pope and the Englishwoman: Benedict XIV, Jane Squire, the Bologna Academy, and the Problem of Longitude”, by Paula Findlen of Stanford University, is a chapter in Benedict XIV and the Enlightenment: Art, Science, and Spirituality, a collection of essays concerning the mid-eighteenth-century papacy of Benedict XIV (Prospero Lorenzo Lambertini), published by the University of Toronto Press. Findlen tells the story of Jane Squire, an English Catholic who had worked out a new system of celestial navigation and who was determined that her ideas be heard by the establishment. As she was unable to get a hearing in England, in 1743 Squire wrote to Pope Benedict XIV, who was open to the scientific work of women. From the article:

Squire argued: “my being a Woman, excludes me not from the Blessing of being a Christian; a Character that determines the Business of the reasonable Creature; by a Determination made by its Creator”… Squire characterized herself as someone naturally drawn to mathematical problems as a pleasing pastime: “to study the Law of God Day and Night, is my proper Business; Philosophy, my Amusement; and Mathematicks, my Play-things… I see not therefore, why I should confine myself to Needles, Cards, and Dice.”

Benedict took notice of Squire’s letter and had her work reviewed by Italian scholars. Unfortunately, Squire died shortly after sending her letter, and her system of navigation was not practical.

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• Article and book chapter
• Approximately 10 pages each
• High school level and above

Roger Joseph Boscovich (Ruđer Josip Bošković) was a Jesuit scientist with a wide range of interests and accomplishments, ranging from developing better lenses for telescopes, to designing a system to reinforce the dome of St. Peter’s for Pope Benedict XIV, to creating what today might be called a “Theory of Everything” that would explain all physical interactions in the universe. These two articles provide concise overviews of his life and work:

• “Roger Joseph Boscovich: Forerunner of Modern Atomic Theory” by Sr. Mary Mercy Fitzpatrick and Sr. Antonietta Fitzparick (Incarnate Word College, San Antonio, Texas) in The Mathematics Teacher, February 1968, pgs. 167-175. Click here to read this article via JSTOR (many libraries provide complete JSTOR access):

Who was this individual who, almost two hundred years after his death, has aroused such interest among scientists and mathematicians? Roger Joseph Boscovich was a Serbo-Coation Jesuit and a renowned mathematician, astronomer, and natural philosopher, whose molecular theory of matter antedates by more than a hundred years the birth of modern atomic theory.

• “Roger Joseph Boscovich” in Remarkable Physicists: From Galileo to Yukawa by Ioan James, published by Cambridge University Press, 2004. Click here for a preview from Google Books.

The year 1740 was when Benedict XIV succeeded to the papacy. His reign recalled the best years of the Renaissance. Benedict XIV was a profound scholar and a vivid personality, magnanimous and virtuous in his private life, who surrounded himself with the leading intellectuals of Rome. The Papal Secretary of State, the able and versatile Cardinal Valenti Gonzaga, shared Dubrovnik connections with Boscovich, who naturally came to his attention, and Valenti’s residence soon became like a second home to him. During this period of his life he was entrusted with several practical and diplomatic commissions for lay and ecclesiastical authorities, as was not unusual among qualified clergymen of his time.

In 1735 there had been a resurgence of rumours that the long-standing cracks in the dome of St Peter’s basilica – which had been completed in 1590 – presaged an imminent collapse. The new Pope consulted various experts, one of whom recommended demolishing the huge structure and rebuilding it. Others reported that no danger threatened the dome. However, for further reassurance a commission consisting of Boscovich and two French scientists was appointed to investigate the causes and make recommendations. Boscovich drafted the report, which, by analysing the problem in theoretical terms, achieved – despite certain errors – the reputation of a minor classic in architectural statics. He undertook further such work for the Pope later.

• 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 teachings, publications, and contacts with outsiders. But this cannot be automatically construed to mean that the Jesuits harbored a greater number of reactionary, prejudiced, or bigoted scholars than did other Catholic orders (or, for that matter, the various Protestant churches). Indeed, my research indicates that while scholarship often served partisan goals in the charged religious atmosphere of the early modern period, Jesuit scientific practitioners as a group seem to have resisted the temptation to yoke science to other ends as well as did practitioners of any other religious denomination….

It may seem surprising that, notwithstanding [the constraints, and disciplinary measures associated with them] (which must have been applied to hundreds of Jesuit philosophers and mathematicians in the course of the early modern period), only a few Jesuits left or were expelled from the Society as a consequence of such measures. In part, this is a testimony to the gravity with which Jesuit practitioners took their vows. But it is also clear that for most members—who never doubted the primacy of the religious mission of the Society even when they differed on the extent of the dangers that the new philosophies posed to the traditional relations between philosophy and theology—the constraints were a burden to be contended with from within the Order. Many continued to preach the benefit of at least a modicum of philosophical freedom, even in print.

Click here for an excerpt, courtesy of Google Books.

From the publisher, MIT Press:

Founded in 1540, the Society of Jesus was viewed for centuries as an impediment to the development of modern science. The Jesuit educational system was deemed conservative and antithetical to creative thought, while the Order and its members were blamed by Galileo, Descartes, and their disciples for virtually every proceeding against the new science. No wonder a consensus emerged that little reason existed for historians to take Jesuit science seriously. Only during the past two decades have scholars begun to question this received view of the Jesuit role in the Scientific Revolution, and this book contributes significantly to that reassessment. Focusing on the institutional setting of Jesuit science, the contributors take a new and broader look at the overall intellectual environment of the Collegio Romano and other Jesuit colleges to see how Jesuit scholars taught and worked, to examine the context of the Jesuit response to the new philosophies, and to chart the Jesuits’ scientific contributions. Their conclusions indicate that Jesuit practitioners were indeed instrumental in elevating the status of mathematics and in stressing the importance of experimental science; yet, at the same time, the Jesuits were members of a religious order with a clearly defined apostolic mission. Understanding both the contributions of Jesuit practitioners and the constraints under which they worked helps us to gain a clearer and more complete perspective on the emergence of the scientific worldview.

• Article
• 10 pages
• University specialist level

A 1995 Journal for the History of Astronomy article by F. R. Stephenson and L. J. Fatoohi:

Abstract: During the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Jesuit astronomers at the Chinese court in Beijing observed many eclipses of the Sun and Moon. For most of these events the times of beginning, middle and end were measured and the magnitudes estimated. Summaries of virtually all of the observation made between A.D. 1644 and 1785 are still preserved. In this paper, that various solar eclipse measurements that the Jesuits made during the period are compared with computation based on modern solar and lunar ephemerides.

Click here to access this article via NASA ADS.

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Article 1000 words General Audiences An article published in Aeon in 2017 by Blake Smith, a PhD candidate in history at Northwestern University in Illinois and the School for Advanced Studies in the Social Sciences in Paris. Click here to access this article directly from Aeon. The Madras Observatory offers little to the visitor’s eye. Stone slabs and broken pillars lie ignored in a fenced-off section of a local weather centre in the southern Indian city of Chennai. Few tourists venture out to see the ruins of the 18th-century complex. On the other side of the subcontinent, in northern Indian cities such as New Delhi, Varanasi and Jaipur, remains of the Jantar Mantars, vast astronomical stations, are far more popular attractions. Built in the same century as the Madras Observatory, their stark geometric structures, with looming proportions and vibrant colours, make for mandatory stops on travellers’ itineraries. Yet it is the Madras Observatory, and not the spectacular Jantar Mantars, that … Continue reading →

• Article (PDF)
• 23 pages
• University level

Fr. Michael Buckley, S. J., examines two questions in this scholarly paper: With what legitimacy does the theological question emerge in Newtonian mechanics? How does Newton move methodologically to its resolution?

From Newton and the New Direction in Science (Vatican: Vatican Obs. Publ. 1988), ed: George Coyne, Michael Heller, Jozef Zycinski

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Buckley God in Newtonian Physics