The end of the 19th century had seen the beginning of the misconception of a war between Science and Religion, and much of the effort of the Church in the 20th century (including papal essays and the development of the Vatican Observatory) was dedicated to countering that idea. The strongest counterargument, of course, was the continued work of Catholics (including those in religious orders) in the field of science. Place of honor for this century, of course, goes to Fr. Georges Lemaire who devised what we now call the Big Bang theory.
30 Years of Papal Blessing for VATT
Article- 200 Words
- General audience
A post by Fr. Paul Gabor on the Catholic Astronomer website, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Pope’s approval to build the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope
A History of the Vatican Observatory
- Article (PDF)
- 35 pages (5 MB)
- General Audience
This is chapter from the book The Heavens Proclaim: Astronomy and the Vatican. This chapter was written by Fr. Sabino Maffeo, a physicist with the Vatican Observatory since 1985, and is a condensed version of his book In the Service of Nine Popes.
Click here to download the chapter.
History of the Vatican Observatory
Across the Universe: A Thousand Stars are Born
Article (blog post)- 1200 words
- General audiences
A post by Vatican Observatory astronomer Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J., on The Catholic Astronomer blog. Br. Consolgmagno discusses two conferences on star formation that were hosted by the Vatican Observatory: one in 1957, the other in 2013. The 1957 conference was attended by luminaries such as Fr. George Lemaitre and Fred Hoyle, who respectively invented, and named, the Big Bang; Jan Oort, for whom the cometary Oort cloud is named; and Martin Schwarzschild, of black hole “Schwartzchild radius” fame. The 2013 conference was, however, a much more diverse gathering.
Click here to read the full article on The Catholic Astronomer – the blog of the Vatican Observatory Foundation.
Book: The Cambridge Concise History of Astronomy
Book- 380 pages
- High school students 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.
Crowe: Modern Theories of the Universe – from Herschel to Hubble
Book- 435 pages
- University level
This book, by Michael J. Crowe of the University of Notre Dame (USA) is an introduction to the fundamentals of stellar astronomy, a history of astronomy, and an account of how the science of astronomy challenged traditional philosophical and theological beliefs with readings from the writings of scientists who contributed most significantly to the development of astronomy. The book is currently out of print but should be available in most academic libraries.
Click here for a preview of the book from Google Books.
Deep-dish astronomy: First light for VATT
- Article
- 150 words
- General audiences
Below is the text of a “News Notes” article from Sky & Telescope Magazine, July 1995, announcing the first use of the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope, or VATT:
Click here to access this article via Ebscohost (available in many libraries).
Click here to access this article via Archive.org.
Deep-dish astronomy: First light for VATT
Observing is now under way at the new Mount Graham International Observatory in Arizona. At the end of January, Richard P. Boyle, S.J. (Vatican Observatory) and Austin B. Tomaney (Columbia University) took the first visible-light images with the 1.8-meter Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT). First among the $3-million instrument’s noteworthy attributes is its deep, “salad-bowl” f/1.0 primary mirror (S&T: March 1994, page 12). It was one of the first to be formed by spin-casting techniques developed at the University of Arizona. Such a fast primary requires the secondary to be positioned with micron precision to achieve proper focus. These inaugural images of the Crab Nebula in Taurus (top) and globular cluster M3 in Canes Venatici (bottom) are 300-second and 100-second exposures, respectively. Each has an 11-arcminute field of view. Vatican astronomers hope to achieve subarcsecond resolution by tilting the secondary mirror to compensate for atmospheric turbulence. Courtesy Richard P. Boyle, S.J.
Evolution: A Case History in Faith-Science Dialogue
- Article (PDF)
- 9 pages
- Academic / University / University and higher level
Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, writes 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.
[Download PDF]
Peters_Sci-Faith
Farewell to the Mach Three Priest: Theodore M. Hesburgh (1917-2015)
Article (blog post)- 1000 words
- General Audience
A post by Bill Higgins on The Catholic Astronomer website, reflecting on the life of Fr. Theodore Hesburgh and his connections to science and technology.
Stanley Jaki, OSB: The Priest Who Questioned the Plausibility of a Theory of Everything (TOE)
Article (blog post)- 500 words plus 24 minute video
- General audience
A post by Fr. James Kurzynski on The Catholic Astronomer about Fr. Stanley Jaki, with links to videos by Jaki. Arguing that the proper relationship between faith and science is that each discipline should strictly adhere to their own principles, Fr. Jaki strongly emphasized that the unique focus science has upon the material world makes it impossible to create a “theology-science” or “philosophy-science.”
30 Years of Papal Blessing for VATT
- Article
- 200 Words
- General audience
A post by Fr. Paul Gabor on the Catholic Astronomer website, celebrating the 30th anniversary of the Pope’s approval to build the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope
Star-mapping Sisters
Article (blog post)- 1000 words
- General Audience
A post by Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory, on The Catholic Astronomer website. Br. Guy writes about four religious sisters in the early 20th century who played an essential role in producing the first photographic atlas of the stars.
What Maria Montessori Knew
Article- 3000 words
- General audiences
In this article in the July 9, 2018 issue of America: The Jesuit Review of Faith and Culture, Pascal-Emmanuel Gobry discusses Maria Montessori and her education method. Gobry writes that Montessori was the first woman doctor in Italy, a polymath who studied everything from mathematics to anthropology to philosophy at advanced levels, a scientist by training, and a devout Catholic and daily communicant. Gobry writes:
The most important thing about Maria Montessori is that she never used the term “Montessori Method.” She always referred to her “method” as “scientific education” or “scientific pedagogy.”
Why is this important? Every pedagogical method, whether “alternative” or “mainstream,” “progressive” or “traditional,” starts with an abstract theory (sometimes only implicit) of what a child is, how her mind works, how she learns. And it is starting from that theory that it deduces a practical method. Dr. Montessori, who was a scientist by training and never claimed to be anything more, worked the other way around. She started tinkering with materials, first in a hospital setting with patients and then in her first school, whose original iteration had a rigid class schedule and almost none of the distinctive attributes of today’s Montessori schools, like child-size furniture and free access to activities. Those aspects were introduced over time and tested, and they worked.
The same was true with the activities. From her findings, Dr. Montessori developed theories, of course, but then put the implications from her theories to practical tests. That is, in a word, the scientific method. The Montessori Method is the only pedagogical method that was completely developed and refined through the scientific method….
Maria Montessori was a deeply devout Catholic and a daily communicant. She believed her method was firmly grounded in the Gospel even as it was based on science, since indeed the two could never contradict each other, as St. Thomas Aquinas taught.
Click here to access an on-line version of this article from America: The Jesuit Review of Faith and Culture.
Studying the Earth’s movements
Article- 1300 words
- General audiences
This article by John Walsh was published in the John Carroll University Alumni Magazine in 2016. It discusses the work of two Jesuit seismologists who worked at JCU: Fr. Frederick Odenbach, S.J., and Fr. Henry Birkenhauer, S.J.
Click here to access this article directly from JCU Alumni Magazine.
Click here to download a PDF of this article.
Over 400 Astronomers See Vatican Observatory
- Article
- 175 words
- General audiences
A brief report from 1952 on astronomers visiting the Vatican Observatory.
ASTRONOMY
Over 400 Astronomers See Vatican Observatory
VATICAN OBSERVATORY, one of the best-equipped astronomical institutions in Europe, was recently visited by over 400 astronomers from all over the world. They were members of the International Astronomical Union meeting in Rome, and journeyed to the Pope’s summer residence, Castel Gandolfo, where the observatory is located. Of particular interest were the spectroscopic laboratories, with equipment of advanced and modern design.
New director of the observatory is Father Daniel J. O’Connell, who for many years has been director of Riverview Observatory in Sydney, Australia. Father O’Connell, whose astronomical education is international, spent a year once at Harvard College Observatory specializing in variable star research. Thus he was particularly glad to welcome Dr. Harlow Shapley, director of Harvard College Observatory, and others from Harvard to his new observatory.
Highly important atlases of the spectra of the chemical elements have been produced at the Vatican Observatory. With the addition of much valuable equipment within recent years, and a Schmidt telescope in the making, significant research will undoubtedly continue to come from the Vatican Observatory.
Science News Letter, September 20, 1952
Click here to access this article via JSTOR (available in many libraries).
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).
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.”
Robert Scherrer – Georges Lemaitre’s Contributions to Cosmology
- Video
- 27 minutes
- High school level and above
Cosmologist Robert Scherrer of Vanderbilt University discusses Albert Einstein, Vesto Slipher, Alexander Friedmann, Fr. Georges Lemaitre, and how the idea of the expansion of the universe came into being. The focus of the talk, given at the inaugural conference of the Society of Catholic Scientists, is the ideas and work of Fr. Lemaitre. Scherrer argues that Fr. Lemaitre was ahead of his time in a number of ways.
Click here for an article from Our Sunday Visitor entitled “Catholic scientists discuss faith’s role in work”, on the first conference of the Society of Catholic Scientists—“Origins”—held April 21-23, 2017 in Chicago.
Click here for the Society of Catholic Scientists “Origins” conference page.
Pope Paul VI at the Vatican Observatory for Apollo 11
- Video
- 5 minutes
- General audiences
Good-quality color video from 1969 of Pope Paul VI at the Vatican Observatory at Castel Gandolfo during the Apollo 11 lunar landing. The pope is seen viewing the moon through an auxiliary telescope attached to the V.O.’s 1.0 meter Schmidt telescope, and then speaking publicly on the landing from that telescope. Most of the video is in Italian, but the last portion features the Pope offering a statement in English.
The Vatican Observatory
- Video
- 5 minutes
- General audience
A short video from the Vatican Observatory Foundation about the history and work of the Vatican Observatory, featuring interviews with members of the Observatory and views of their telescopes in Arizona and Rome.
Priest Is A Member Of The Team Working At Nancay Research Centre (1959)
- Video
- 1 minute
- General audiences
Film titled “La Voix du Soleil” (“The Voice of the Sun”) from British Pathé features a priest at work at an early radio telescope in Nancay, France (the Station de Radioastronomie de Nançay). The film concerns radio observations of the sun.
Click here to access this video via British Pathé.
The Vatican Observatory – Rome (1929)
- Video (silent)
- 2.5 minutes
- General audiences
A silent newsreel of the Vatican Observatory, this was an item in Pathe Pictorial issue number 577. It features telescopes, Vatican Observatory personnel, and photos taken through Vatican Observatory telescopes.
Click here to access this video via the British Pathé website.
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.”
Lemaître: Science and Religion
- Article (PDF)
- 9 pages
- Academic / University / University and higher level
Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, writes that to appreciate the contribution which Georges Lemaître made to the relationship between religion and science it is necessary to understand how the Catholic Church passed from a position of conflict to one of compatible openness and dialogue; 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.
A version of this essay appeared in Georges Lemaître: Life, Science and Legacy (Springer, 2012).
[Download PDF]
Lemaitre_Coyne_style
Evolution: A Case History in Faith-Science Dialogue
- Article (PDF)
- 9 pages
- Academic / University / University and higher level
Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, writes 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.
[Download PDF]
Peters_Sci-Faith
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Commemorative Volume Jesuit Seismological Association 1925-1950
- Book
- 357 pages
- University level
The entire contents of this volume documenting the work of the Jesuit Seismological Association is available from the Saint Louis University Earthquake Center (SLUEQC). The book was written by Fr. James Bernard Macelwane, S. J.
The first chapter is shown below. Click here for the entire book, courtesy of SLUEQC.
Google Books features a partially-searchable “snippet view” preview of this book (click here).
[Download PDF]Contents-Foreword-JSA-25
Large-Scale Motions in the Universe
- Book (PDF)
- 600 pages
- Academic specialist level
A proceedings of a Study Week on Cosmology held at the Vatican Observatory in 1987, edited by Vera Rubin (an American astronomer who pioneered work on galaxy rotation and dark matter) and Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J. (Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006). This academic book, published by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, is primarily an example of the scientific work in cosmology sponsored by the Vatican. The authors include many of the most outstanding astronomers of the day, but the work itself is now some 30 years old and is mostly of historic interest. No explicit discussions of faith/science aspects to the question are discussed.
Click here to access directly from the Pontifical Academy of Sciences “Scripta Varia”.
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.
[Download PDF]
Sci-Rel_4_epochs
How to Search for the Truth
- Article
- 800 words
- General audiences
An essay by George Washington Carver on science, nature, God, and truth. Carver interprets in a scientific sense the verse from John that reads: “And ye shall know the truth and the truth shall make you free”.
[Download PDF]How to Search for the Truth
Studying the Earth’s movements
- Article
- 1300 words
- General audiences
This article by John Walsh was published in the John Carroll University Alumni Magazine in 2016. It discusses the work of two Jesuit seismologists who worked at JCU: Fr. Frederick Odenbach, S.J., and Fr. Henry Birkenhauer, S.J.
Click here to access this article directly from JCU Alumni Magazine.
Click here to download a PDF of this article.
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
J.G. Hagen S.I. – Astronomo e Direttore Spirituale Della Beata E. Hesselblad
- Book
- 112 pages
- General audiences (Italian)
A book by Fr. Sabino Maffeo, S. J., a physicist with the Vatican Observatory, about Fr. Johann Georg Hagen, Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1906 to 1930. From the publisher:
Il volume viene pubblicato in occasione del centenario della nomina del p. Hagen come direttore della Specola Vaticana (1906-2006) econtiene la fitta e interessante corrispondenza epistolare fra p. Hagen e la Beata Elisabetta dell’Ordine del SS. Salvatore di S. Brigida.
Click here for further information from the publisher, Apostolato della Preghiera.
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.
The Day Without Yesterday: Lemaître, Einstein and the Birth of Modern Cosmology
Book- 262 pages
- University level
This 2005 book by John Farrell (published by Thunder’s Mouth Press/Avalon Publishing Group) provides an in-depth and at at times technical discussion of the life and work of Fr. Georges Lemaître, the Belgian priest who used the ideas of Albert Einstein to developed what is now known as the “Big Bang Theory”—the scientific idea that the universe had a beginning on a “day without yesterday”. Among his other accomplishments, Fr. Lemaître served as president of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences from 1960 until his death in 1966.
Click here for a preview from Google Books.
From the dust jacket of The Day Without Yesterday:
Sometimes our understanding of our universe is given a huge boost by one insightful thinker. Such a boost came in the first half of the twentieth century, when an obscure Belgian priest put his mind to deciphering the nature of the cosmos. Is the universe evolving to some unforeseen end, or is it static, as the Greeks believed? The debate has preoccupied thinkers from Heraclitus to the author of the Upanishads, from the Mayans to Einstein. The Day Without Yesterday covers the modern history of an evolving universe, and how Georges Lemaître convinced a generation of thinkers to embrace the notion of cosmic expansion and the theory that this expansion could be traced backward to the cosmic origins, a starting point for space and time that Lemaître called “the day without yesterday.” Lemaître’s skill with mathematics and the equations of relativity enabled him to think much more broadly about cosmology than anyone else at the time, including Einstein. Lemaître proposed the expanding model of the universe to Einstein, who rejected it. Had Einstein followed Lemaître’s thinking, he could have predicted the expansion of the universe more than a decade before it was actually discovered.
Also from The Day Without Yesterday:
[B]y the time Lemaitre had come to the fore with his expanding model of the universe, the opposition between science and religion had become fodder for journalists. And it’s interesting, for this reason, to go back to the early interviews with Lemaitre when he returned to California in 1933 and how he responded to the already typical question – just how did a priest-physicist reconcile his faith with his science?
The writers of the Bible were illuminated more or less – some more than others – on the question of salvation. On other questions they were as wise or as ignorant as their generation. Hence it is utterly unimportant that errors of historic or scientific fact should be found in the Bible, especially if errors relate to events that were not directly observed by those who wrote about them.
The idea that because they were right in their doctrine of immortality and salvation they must also be right on all other subjects is simply the fallacy of people who have an incomplete understanding of why the Bible was given to us at all.
You can already detect a note of impatience with Lemaitre’s answer, as in, Why should this be a question? But it was.
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.
George Washington Carver: In His Own Words
Book- 208 pages
- High school level and above
This book is a collection of letters by George Washington Carver, edited by Gary Kremer and published in 1987 by the University of Missouri Press. One chapter of the book is focused on “The Scientist as Mystic: Reading God out of Nature’s Great Book”. Kremer writes that Carver—
[N]ever separated the worlds of science and religion; he saw them as mutually acceptable and compatible tools for arriving at truth…. [He was] a deeply religious man who treasured the world of nature and saw himself as a vehicle by which the secrets of nature could be understood and harnessed for the good of mankind.
From the publisher:
George Washington Carver (1864-1943), best known for his work as a scientist and a botanist, was an anomaly in his own time—a black man praised by white America.
This selection of his letters and other writings reveals both the human side of Carver and the forces that shaped his creative genius. They show us a Carver who was both manipulated and manipulative who had inner tensions and anxieties. But perhaps more than anything else, these letters allow us to see Carver’s deep love for his fellow man, whether manifested in his efforts to treat polio victims in the 1930s or in his incredibly intense and emotionally charged friendships that lasted a lifetime.
The editor has furnished commentary between letters to set them in context.
Click here for a preview, courtesy of from Google Books.
Twenty-Fifth Anniversary Commemorative Volume Jesuit Seismological Association 1925-1950
- Book
- 357 pages
- University level
The entire contents of this volume documenting the work of the Jesuit Seismological Association is available from the Saint Louis University Earthquake Center (SLUEQC). The book was written by Fr. James Bernard Macelwane, S. J.
The first chapter is shown below. Click here for the entire book, courtesy of SLUEQC.
Google Books features a partially-searchable “snippet view” preview of this book (click here).
[Download PDF]Contents-Foreword-JSA-25
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.
Click here for additional information from the publisher.
Click here for a preview from Google Books.
George Washington Carver – An Innovative Life
Book- 32 pages
- Grade school level and above
This 2007 book by Elizabeth MacLeod is for younger readers, and tells about the life and work of agricultural scientists and biochemical engineer George Washington Carver. Henry Ford described Carver as the greatest scientist living at the time. Then-senator Harry S Truman stated that “The scientific discoveries and experiments of Dr. Carver have done more to alleviate the one-crop agricultural system in the South than any other thing that has been done in the history of the United States.” Carver was a Christian who taught his students Bible classes as well as science classes, and who did not pursue profits from his discoveries because believed them to be a free gift from God.
Click here to download a preview of this book.
From the publisher, Kids Can Press:
This title … introduces readers to the scientist, inventor and professor who became a symbol of African American success and interracial harmony. George Washington Carver was the orphan son of slaves, but he went on to become the world-famous “Peanut Scientist.”
George invented more than 325 products from peanuts — including gasoline, shampoo, ice cream and chili sauce. Even when George was a child he was known as the “Plant Doctor” because he could make almost any plant grow. It was through his groundbreaking research in agriculture that George radically improved the lives of countless African American farmers in the southern United States.