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).
A brief portion of an Easter sermon by Gregor Mendel
- Article (PDF)
- 1 page
- Level: all audiences
Gregor Mendel, who served as the Abbot of the Augustinian monastery in Brno in what is now the Czech Republic, is recognized today as the founder of the modern science of genetics, on account of of his experiments with the breeding of plants. This is a brief portion of an Easter sermon by Mendel (from notes written in his own hand) that makes reference to gardening and plants.
[Click here to download PDF]Mendel-Easter-Sermon-JHG
Accuracy of Solar Eclipse Observations Made by Jesuit Astronomers in China
- Article
- 10 pages
- Level: university
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.
Click here to download a PDF of this article from NASA ADS.
Agnes Mary Clerke
Articles (several) Various page lengths Level: all audiences Agnes Mary Clerke was an influential nineteenth-century writer whose primary subject of interest was astronomy. Below is the Catholic Encyclopedia entry for her (1913), followed by links to other articles about her. Agnes Mary Clerke Astronomer, born at Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland, 10 February, 1842; died in London, 20 January 1907. At the very beginning of her study she showed a marked interest in astronomy, and before she was fifteen years old she had begun to write a history of that science. In 1861 the family moved to Dublin, and in 1863 to Queenstown. Several years later she went to Italy where she stayed until 1877, chiefly at Florence, studying at the public library and preparing for literary work. In 1877 she settled in London. Her first important article, “Copernicus in Italy”, was published in the “Edinburgh Review” (October, 1877). She achieved a world-wide reputation in 1885, on the appearance of her … Continue reading →
André-Marie Ampère on evidence from Science for the Existence of God
- Article (excerpt)
- 150 words (French and English)
- Level: all audiences
André-Marie Ampère was a French physicist and mathematician who did much work in the field of electricity. The unit of electrical current, the Amp is named for him.
Click here for the text of Ampère’s statement and a discussion of Ampère, from Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science, courtesy of Google Books.
Click here for the original text, from Ampere’s Essai sur la Philosophie des Sciences of 1843.
[Click here to download PDF]Ampere
André-Marie Ampère: Enlightenment and Electrodynamics
Book- 406 pages
- Level: university
This 1995 biography of André-Marie Ampère is written by James R. Hofmann and published by Cambridge University Press. Ampère conducted pioneering studies of electricity, among other things (the unit of electrical current, the “Ampere” or “Amp” is named in his honor). This biography treats his scientific work in considerable detail. Ampère was Catholic, and he both valued his faith and also struggled with it at times. From a journal entry by Ampère after his final conversion (or reversion) to Catholicism:
God has revealed to me what my eternal salvation depends upon. Could I ever forget it? Great Saint Joseph, to whose intercession above all I owe this grace, Saint Mary, mother of God, whose name I received at my baptism and to whom I also have this inexpressible gift, always intercede before God that he may conserve it for me and that I might make myself worthy of it!
From the publisher:
In this authoritative biography, James Hofmann examines the extraordinary life of André-Marie Ampère, who made original, significant contributions to mathematics and chemistry and is renowned for his new branch of physics – electrodynamics. A member of the Académie des Sciences, and professor at the École Polytechnique, his accomplishments are remarkable in view of his tragic personal life. One of the elite of early nineteenth-century Parisian science, yet having no formal education, he embraced the scientific optimism of the Enlightenment, and the Catholic faith. This combination of intellectual expectation and emotional spirituality made Ampère’s genius both destructive and extraordinarily creative. This, the only biography available in the English language, illuminates the scientific contributions of an individual and his epoch, and provides a fascinating insight into the workings of the scientific mind.
Click here for more information from the publisher, Cambridge University Press.
Click here for a preview, courtesy of Google Books.
Angelo Secchi, the Jesuit father of astrophysics
Article- 2000 words
- Level: all audiences
An article about the 19th-century Jesuit astrophysicist Angelo Secchi, published in August 2018 in the magazine America: The Jesuit Review. The author of the article is Adam Hincks, who is also an astrophysicist and a Jesuit. Secchi was a pioneer in the use of spectroscopy to study the stars and planets. Hincks writes:
It is a mark of genius to come up with questions that are obvious in retrospect but that nobody had ever thought of asking before. The Jesuit astronomer Angelo Secchi (pronounced “sekki”), whose 200th anniversary of birth is being celebrated this year, had that talent.
Before Secchi, astronomers were mainly interested in figuring out exactly where stars and planets were. This was important for navigation, and therefore commerce, and intricate mathematical systems were developed to track the motions of the heavens above in order to guide the motions of ships below. But Secchi asked a new question: What are stars and planets? With this question, the brand-new disciplines of astrophysics and planetary sciences were launched.
This may be Secchi’s most famous legacy; but taken in isolation, it does not do justice to his many talents and to a life full of discovery, invention, public service—and even political intrigue.
Click here to access this article from America magazine.
Angelo Secchi: L’avventura scientifica del Collegio Romano
In Italian. A source book concerning Fr. Angelo Secchi and the history of science pursued at the Roman College
Continue reading →Astronomical Essays of Fr. G. V. Leahy: Cassini, Piazzi, Sechi, Denza, and Clerke
- Book (sections)
- 20 pages
- Level: all audiences
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 read
Fr. A. Secchi and the spectra—click here to read
Fr. Denza and the Vatican Observatory—click here to read
Ms. Agnes M. Clerke, science writer—click here to read
A brief portion of an Easter sermon by Gregor Mendel
- Article (PDF)
- 1 page
- Level: all audiences
Gregor Mendel, who served as the Abbot of the Augustinian monastery in Brno in what is now the Czech Republic, is recognized today as the founder of the modern science of genetics, on account of of his experiments with the breeding of plants. This is a brief portion of an Easter sermon by Mendel (from notes written in his own hand) that makes reference to gardening and plants.
[Click here to download PDF]Mendel-Easter-Sermon-JHG
Giuseppe Piazzi and the Discovery of the Proper Motion of 61-Cygni
Fr. Giuseppe Piazzi
- Article
- 8 pages
- Level: university
Fr. Giuseppe Piazza discovered the proper motion of the star 61 Cygni at the end of the eighteenth century. A star’s proper motion is its motion across the sky compared to other stars. The position of 61 Cygni, a star that is faint but visible to the naked eye, changes measurably over the course of a year. A star whose position changes like this must be a relatively nearby star. In this 1990 article in the Journal for the History of Astronomy, Georgia Fodera Serio of the Palermo Observatory discusses the story of Fr. Piazzi and his “flying star”, and writes on the importance of Piazzi’s discovery. Serio notes that Piazzi “abandoned the old paradigm that ‘brightness implies nearness'”. This was an important step for astronomers, who previously had supposed that those stars that appear brighter in our night sky are nearer to us. In the 1830s the German astronomer Friedrich Wilhelm Bessel would measure the distance to 61 Cygni using annual parallax, finding that it is about 10 light years away. This was the first direct measurement of the distance of any star other than the sun.
Click here to access this article courtesy of NASA ADS.
Twelve Lectures on the Connection Between Science and Revealed Religion – Nicholas Wiseman
Book (and book excerpt)- 448 pages (excerpt is 3200 words)
- Level: high school 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.
Agnes Mary Clerke
Articles (several) Various page lengths Level: all audiences Agnes Mary Clerke was an influential nineteenth-century writer whose primary subject of interest was astronomy. Below is the Catholic Encyclopedia entry for her (1913), followed by links to other articles about her. Agnes Mary Clerke Astronomer, born at Skibbereen, County Cork, Ireland, 10 February, 1842; died in London, 20 January 1907. At the very beginning of her study she showed a marked interest in astronomy, and before she was fifteen years old she had begun to write a history of that science. In 1861 the family moved to Dublin, and in 1863 to Queenstown. Several years later she went to Italy where she stayed until 1877, chiefly at Florence, studying at the public library and preparing for literary work. In 1877 she settled in London. Her first important article, “Copernicus in Italy”, was published in the “Edinburgh Review” (October, 1877). She achieved a world-wide reputation in 1885, on the appearance of her … Continue reading →
Statement regarding faith, by Alessandro Volta to Giacomo Ciceri
- Article (letter)
- 350 words (Italian and English)
- Level: all audiences
Alessandro Volta made a number of contributions to science, but he is perhaps best known as the inventor of the Voltaic pile, that is, the electrical battery. Batteries, which produce electrical energy from chemical energy, are a key part of electrical technology. The electrical unit of the Volt (as in a 12 Volt battery) is named for him.
Click here for the text of Volta’s statement and a discussion of it, from Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science, courtesy of Google Books.
[Click here to download PDF]Volta-1815
Accuracy of Solar Eclipse Observations Made by Jesuit Astronomers in China
- Article
- 10 pages
- Level: university
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.
Click here to download a PDF of this article from NASA ADS.
Monsignor Bouchet’s Telescope
Article (blog post)- 850 words
- Level: all 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.”
Serving God and science
Article- 2 pages
- Level: all audiences
A 2001 article by Agustín Udías, published in the journal Astronomy & Geophysics. Udías reflects on the Jesuit scientific tradition in astronomy and geophysics, by considering those who were also Fellows of the Royal Astronomical Society (Udías counts 31 Jesuit Fellows):
Abstract: The Society of Jesus has a venerable tradition of scientific observation and enquiry, as has the Royal Astronomical Society. Their paths have frequently crossed over the years and this tradition of shared enquiry continues to this day.
Click here to access this article via NASA ADS.
Click here to access it via Astronomy & Geophysics.
Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics
Book, web site, video- 176 pages (book), 3 minutes (video)
- Level: high school and above
Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian friar who founded the science of genetics. This book by Simon Mawer discusses Mendel’s life, life at his abbey, and the science and history of genetics. It was produced in association with the Field Museum in Chicago, which had an exhibit by the same name in 2006-2007. The web site associated with the book and exhibit is still available, as is a video from the Field Museum. (A Faith and Science entry for a related book on Mendel written for younger people is also available—click here).
Click here for a Google Books entry for Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics. From the Google entry:
Considered one of the greatest scientists in history, Gregor Mendel was the first person to map the characteristics of a living things successive generations, thus forming the foundation of modern genetic science. In Gregor Mendel, distinguished novelist and biologist Simon Mawer outlines Mendel’s groundbreaking research and traces his intellectual legacy from his discoveries in the mid-19th century to the present.
In an engaging narrative enhanced by beautiful illustrations, Mawer details Mendels life and work, from his experimentation with garden peas through his subsequent findings about heredity and genetic traits. Mawer also highlights the scientific work built on Mendels breakthroughs, including the discovery of the DNA molecule by scientists Watson and Crick in the 1950s, the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, and the advances in genetics that continue today.
Click here for the Field Museum website for the Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics exhibit. From the website:
In an abbey garden, Mendel planted the seeds for the science of heredity.
Born to poor tenant farmers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gregor Mendel joined the Abbey of St. Thomas in 1843, at age 21. The Abbey was a dream come true for a budding scientist. A vibrant center of research, its friars were active in the sciences, linguistics, literature and philosophy. The Abbey made it possible for Mendel to attend the University of Vienna and to read widely in a library that contained 30,000 books.
Mendel had diverse interests—astronomy, meteorology, physics, botany, and mathematics. He was one of the first scientists to use rigorous experiments and mathematical analysis as a means to study biology.
In 1856, Mendel launched an ambitious series of experiments with Pisum sativum—the garden pea. Eight years and approximately 28,000 pea plants later, Mendel published the results of his grand experiment. His methods were so advanced and his results so groundbreaking that no one realized how his discovery would eventually revolutionize science.
After being elected Abbot in 1868, Mendel had little time for science. He may have been disheartened by the lack of reaction to his pea paper, but he knew that his discovery was important. Not long before his death in 1884 he told a scientific colleague, “My time will come.”
Mendel was right. In 1900 three European botanists rediscovered his work and set off a scientific explosion. The field of genetics was born and Mendel is considered its founding father.
Click here for a Field Museum video for Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics.
Jesuit Science
- Article and Video
- 750 words (article), 1 hour (video)
- Level: all 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.”
Fr. Angelo Secchi S.J., Jesuit Astrophysicist
- Video
- 17 minutes
- Level: all audiences
Fr. Angelo Secchi, S.J., father of astrophysics, is one of the greatest astronomers you have never heard of. Discover why, and find out about his contributions to stellar spectroscopy, solar physics, terrestrial magnetism, meteorology, and oceanography. This video features contributions from Ileana Chinnici, Aldo Altamore, Fr. Matteo Galaverni, and Vatican Observatory Director Br. Guy Consolmagno. It was produced by Br. Bob Macke, S.J. of the Vatican Observatory.
Tradition and Today: Religion and Science
- Article (PDF)
- 12 pages
- Level: university
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.
[Click here to download PDF]
Sci-Rel_4_epochs
Giuseppe Piazzi and the Discovery of Ceres
Fr. Giuseppe Piazzi
- Article (book chapter)
- 8 pages
- Level: university
The first asteroid was discovered by Fr. Giuseppe Piazza, who gave it the name Ceres. Fr. Piazzi believed that in fact he had discovered a planet, but was hesitant to say so directly, and often referred to Ceres as a “comet”. Today Ceres is classified as a “dwarf planet”. This article on Piazzi is from the book Asteroids III, published in 2002 by the University of Arizona Press and the Lunar and Planetary Institute of the Universities Space Research Association (USRA). From the chapter abstract:
In this chapter we focus on the circumstances that led Giuseppe Piazzi (1746–1826) to discover the first asteroid, Ceres, on January 1, 1801. Through the examination of published and archival documentation, we shed light on the reaction of the astronomical community at the announcement of the discovery and on Piazzi’s puzzling behavior. In the end, we briefly discuss the discoveries of Pallas, Juno, and Vesta and the theories put forward to explain their nature.
Click here to download a PDF of this article from USRA.
Click here to access this article via Google Books.
Statement regarding faith, by Alessandro Volta to Giacomo Ciceri
- Article (letter)
- 350 words (Italian and English)
- Level: all audiences
Alessandro Volta made a number of contributions to science, but he is perhaps best known as the inventor of the Voltaic pile, that is, the electrical battery. Batteries, which produce electrical energy from chemical energy, are a key part of electrical technology. The electrical unit of the Volt (as in a 12 Volt battery) is named for him.
Click here for the text of Volta’s statement and a discussion of it, from Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science, courtesy of Google Books.
[Click here to download PDF]Volta-1815
James Clerk Maxwell – A Student’s Evening Hymn
Article (poem, PDF)- 460 words
- Level: 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.
[Click here to download PDF]
JCMaxwell-Poem
Johann von Lamont (1805-1879): A pioneer in geomagnetism
- Article
- 5 pages
- Level: all audiences
In 2005 the Institute for Rock Magnetism Quarterly published this article in commemoration of the birthday of Johann Von Lamont, who was also a prominent astronomer. The article provides an interesting look at the life and work of a Catholic scientist who today is not so well-known among the general public, but who is well-regarded in his field. The article does not focus on Lamont’s Catholic faith specifically, but the church-science connection is apparent.
There is also an entry on Lamont in the 1910 Catholic Encyclopedia and an obituary published in an 1879 issue of the Ave Maria Journal of the University of Notre Dame.
[Click here to download PDF]irmq14-4
A brief portion of an Easter sermon by Gregor Mendel
- Article (PDF)
- 1 page
- Level: all audiences
Gregor Mendel, who served as the Abbot of the Augustinian monastery in Brno in what is now the Czech Republic, is recognized today as the founder of the modern science of genetics, on account of of his experiments with the breeding of plants. This is a brief portion of an Easter sermon by Mendel (from notes written in his own hand) that makes reference to gardening and plants.
[Click here to download PDF]Mendel-Easter-Sermon-JHG
Stars And The Milky Way
Book chapter (PDF)- 8 pages
- Level: high school 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’.
[Click here to download PDF]
Stars-and-the-Milky-Way
André-Marie Ampère on evidence from Science for the Existence of God
- Article (excerpt)
- 150 words (French and English)
- Level: all audiences
André-Marie Ampère was a French physicist and mathematician who did much work in the field of electricity. The unit of electrical current, the Amp is named for him.
Click here for the text of Ampère’s statement and a discussion of Ampère, from Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science, courtesy of Google Books.
Click here for the original text, from Ampere’s Essai sur la Philosophie des Sciences of 1843.
[Click here to download PDF]Ampere
Astronomical Essays of Fr. G. V. Leahy: Cassini, Piazzi, Sechi, Denza, and Clerke
- Book (sections)
- 20 pages
- Level: all audiences
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 read
Fr. A. Secchi and the spectra—click here to read
Fr. Denza and the Vatican Observatory—click here to read
Ms. Agnes M. Clerke, science writer—click here to read
Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science
- Book
- 304 pages
- Level: high school 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.
Click here for additional information from the publisher.
Click here for a preview from Google Books.
Gregor Mendel: The Friar Who Grew Peas
Book- 32 pages
- Level: all audiences
This colorful book by Cheryl Bardoe was produced in partnership with the Field Museum in Chicago. It tells about the life of Gregor Mendel and about his work. The book provides a fairly detailed discussion of both his life as a monk and of his experiments, even though it is only 32 pages long and is a “picture book” written to be accessible to grade school students. (A Faith and Science entry for a related book on Mendel written for a more advanced audience is also available—click here).
Click here to download a brief excerpt.
From the publisher, Abrams Books:
The only picture book available about the father of genetics and his pea plants!
How do mothers and fathers—whether they are apple trees, sheep, or humans—pass down traits to their children? This question fascinated Gregor Mendel throughout his life. Regarded as the world’s first geneticist, Mendel overcame poverty and obscurity to discover one of the fundamental aspects of genetic science: animals, plants, and people all inherit and pass down traits through the same process, following the same rules.
Living the slow-paced, contemplative life of a friar, Gregor Mendel was able to conceive and put into practice his great experiment: growing multiple generations of peas. From observing yellow peas, green peas, smooth peas, and wrinkled peas, Mendel crafted his theory of heredity—years before scientists had any notion of genes.
Children will be inspired by Gregor’s neverending search for knowledge, and his famous experiments are easy to understand as an introduction to genetics.
F&P level: Q [Lexile level: AD1030L (click here)]
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Cheryl Bardoe is Senior Project Manager of Exhibitions at the Field Museum of Chicago. She lives in Chicago, Illinois.
Jos. A. Smith s the well-known illustrator of numerous books for children. He is a professor of fine arts at Pratt Institute in Brooklyn, New York, where he has taught drawing, painting, and figure sculpture. Smith has illustrated for a number of magazines, including Time and Newsweek. His work has been exhibited in galleries throughout the United States. He lives near Westchester, New York.
Gregor Mendel explains to children the theory of heredity in simple-to-understand language and examples. Regarded as the world’s first geneticist, Gregor Mendel discovered one of the fundamental aspects of genetic science: animals, plants, and people all inherit and pass down traits through the same process. Living the slow-paced, contemplative life of a friar, Gregor Mendel was able to conceive and put into practice his great experiment—observing yellow peas, green peas, smooth peas, and wrinkled peas to craft his theory—years before scientists had any notion of genes. Includes an author’s note and bibliography.
Awards for Gregor Mendel
Orbis Pictus Honor Book
ALA-ALSC Notable Book
IRA Notable Book
AAAS/Subaru SB&F Excellence in Science Book Finalist
Book: The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy
Book- 380 pages
- Level: high school and above
As suggested by our research team. This description is from the publisher:
Astronomy is one of the oldest sciences, and one which has repeatedly led to fundamental changes in our view of the world. This book covers the history of our study of the cosmos from prehistory through to a survey of modern astronomy and astrophysics (sure to be of interest to future historians of twentieth-century astronomy). It does not attempt to cover everything, but deliberately concentrates on the important themes and topics. These include stellar astronomy in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, at the time subordinate to the study of the solar system, but the source of many important concepts in modern astronomy, and the Copernican revolution, which led to the challenge of ancient authorities in many areas, not just astronomy. This is an essential text for students of the history of science and for students of astronomy who require a historical background to their studies.
Click here for Table of Contents from Cambridge University Press.
Click here for an excerpt from Cambridge University Press.
Click here for a preview from Google Books.
Christianity and the Leaders of Modern Science
- Book
- 403 pages
- Level: high school and above
This book was written by Karl Alois Kneller, S. J., with an introduction by T. A. Findlay, S. J., and published in 1911 with approval from the bishop of Freiburg. The aim of the book is to illustrate the religious belief of various scientists. Kneller writes:
Scientific discoveries, we are assured, have undermined the very foundations of religion — belief in the existence of God, and in the presence of a spiritual soul in man — and in short we must either renounce religion altogether or cast about for a new form of it, more in harmony with the results of the modern interpretation of nature. Assertions of this kind are to be met with everywhere. Newspapers and brochures are full of them; popular works on science treat them as self-evident, and seize every opportunity of insinuating that no one of any scientific standing any longer troubles about religion. Nor does it need any deep knowledge of human nature to understand how greatly representations of this kind contribute to the spread of Materialism. It is not only in matters of dress and outer things that fashion rules, and that society takes its tone from certain ‘circles’. Those who by wealth, nobility of birth, or erudition stand out from the common mass, exercise, by word and example, the most far-reaching influence in graver questions also, questions in which least of all their influence ought to be felt. How then could the average man fail to be startled when, following an exposition of the brilliant discoveries of modern research, he is assured, or at least given to understand, that every eminent mind that has contributed to such marvels has rejected Christianity and welcomed in Materialism and Atheism the light and the salvation of the future?…
We call in question not the inference from the alleged enmity between science and religion, but the fact of this enmity itself. From the writers who represent themselves as the champions of science we wish to turn to those who are recognized as such in the largest sense of the word, those to whom the advance of science is due, the veritable pioneers. These, before all, we desire to question concerning this conflict between scientific research and religious belief. If it exists, it will naturally be found most patent to minds of the first order. And if on the other hand we find among the great investigators, the very pioneers of science, many firm and fervent believers, and many others who admit the fundamental truths on which Christianity is founded, we shall not set a very high value on this pretended antagonism between knowledge and belief….
Click here to access this work courtesy of Archive.org.
Click here to access this work, courtesy of Google Books.
Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics
- Book, web site, video
- 176 pages (book), 3 minutes (video)
- Level: high school and above
Gregor Mendel was an Augustinian friar who founded the science of genetics. This book by Simon Mawer discusses Mendel’s life, life at his abbey, and the science and history of genetics. It was produced in association with the Field Museum in Chicago, which had an exhibit by the same name in 2006-2007. The web site associated with the book and exhibit is still available, as is a video from the Field Museum. (A Faith and Science entry for a related book on Mendel written for younger people is also available—click here).
Click here for a Google Books entry for Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics. From the Google entry:
Considered one of the greatest scientists in history, Gregor Mendel was the first person to map the characteristics of a living things successive generations, thus forming the foundation of modern genetic science. In Gregor Mendel, distinguished novelist and biologist Simon Mawer outlines Mendel’s groundbreaking research and traces his intellectual legacy from his discoveries in the mid-19th century to the present.
In an engaging narrative enhanced by beautiful illustrations, Mawer details Mendels life and work, from his experimentation with garden peas through his subsequent findings about heredity and genetic traits. Mawer also highlights the scientific work built on Mendels breakthroughs, including the discovery of the DNA molecule by scientists Watson and Crick in the 1950s, the completion of the Human Genome Project in 2003, and the advances in genetics that continue today.
Click here for the Field Museum website for the Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics exhibit. From the website:
In an abbey garden, Mendel planted the seeds for the science of heredity.
Born to poor tenant farmers in the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Gregor Mendel joined the Abbey of St. Thomas in 1843, at age 21. The Abbey was a dream come true for a budding scientist. A vibrant center of research, its friars were active in the sciences, linguistics, literature and philosophy. The Abbey made it possible for Mendel to attend the University of Vienna and to read widely in a library that contained 30,000 books.
Mendel had diverse interests—astronomy, meteorology, physics, botany, and mathematics. He was one of the first scientists to use rigorous experiments and mathematical analysis as a means to study biology.
In 1856, Mendel launched an ambitious series of experiments with Pisum sativum—the garden pea. Eight years and approximately 28,000 pea plants later, Mendel published the results of his grand experiment. His methods were so advanced and his results so groundbreaking that no one realized how his discovery would eventually revolutionize science.
After being elected Abbot in 1868, Mendel had little time for science. He may have been disheartened by the lack of reaction to his pea paper, but he knew that his discovery was important. Not long before his death in 1884 he told a scientific colleague, “My time will come.”
Mendel was right. In 1900 three European botanists rediscovered his work and set off a scientific explosion. The field of genetics was born and Mendel is considered its founding father.
Click here for a Field Museum video for Gregor Mendel: Planting the Seeds of Genetics.
Pioneer Work in Opening the Medical Profession to Women – Autobiographical Sketches by Dr. Elizabeth Blackwell
Book- 264 pages
- Level: high school and above
This 1895 autobiography of Elizabeth Blackwell, the first woman to receive a medical degree in the United States. Blackwell concludes her autobiography with the following:
It has become clear to me that our medical profession has not yet fully realised the special and weighty responsibility which rests upon it to watch over the cradle of the race; to see that human beings are well born, well nourished, and well educated. The onward impulse to this great work would seem to be especially incumbent upon women physicians, who for the first time are beginning to realise the all-important character of parentage in its influence upon the adult as well as on the child — i.e. on the race.
To every woman, as well as to every man, the responsible function of parentage is delegated. Our nature is dwarfed or degraded if the growth which should be attained by the exercise of parentage, directly or potentially, be either avoided or perverted.
The physician knows that the natural family group is the first essential element of a progressive society. The degeneration of that element by the degradation of either of its two essential factors, the man or the woman, begins the ruin of a State.
It is a source of deep gratitude in a long medical life to have been enabled by physiological knowledge, as well as experience, to perceive the true point of view from which the special nature of man and woman must be regarded. It is well worth the efforts of a lifetime to have attained knowledge which justifies an attack on the root of all evil — viz. the deadly atheism which asserts that because forms of evil have always existed in society, therefore they must always exist; and that the attainment of a high ideal is a hopeless chimera.
The study of human nature by women as well as men commences that new and hopeful era of the intelligent co-operation of the sexes through which alone real progress can be attained and secured. We may look forward with hope to the future influence of Christian women physicians, when with sympathy and reverence guiding intellectual activity they learn to apply the vital principles of their Great Master to every method and practice of the healing art.
Though a Christian, and though she worked with Catholics on various occasions, Blackwell “blessed Heaven for the fact” that she was a Protestant, an view which shows forth periodically within the book.
Click here to access this book, courtesy of Google Books.
Click here to access this book, courtesy of Archive.org.
Nove papi, una missione: Cento anni della Specola Vaticana.
Book- Level: all audiences (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.
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