Religion always has to interact with the assumptions of the cultures with which it deals. To understand an ancient religion like Christianity (and Judaism, on which it is based) it is essential that we know the “ancient and medieval world views” that were prevailing when its sacred scriptures were written and its basic theology was developed.
The documents shown here help to explain the cosmology of those days, the things that may seem strange to us but which everyone assumed without question back then…
A Critique to Astrology from “De Civitate Dei”
Book excerpt- 4500 words
- High school level and above
An excerpt from Augustine of Hippo’s The City of God concerning the topic of astrology. Augustine uses the issues of twins to criticize astrology from a practical standpoint, but he also attacks astrology from a theological standpoint. This excerpt has been 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.
Click here for Augustine’s critique, from Inters.org.
Anselm of Canterbury and Nicholas of Cusa
- Source page with links to many articles
- More than 100 particles linked
- University level
A source page, with many links, prepared by the philosopher Jasper Hopkins, about two key philosophers of nature during the scholastic era:
Anselm of Canterbury (1033-1109), often called the Father of Scholasticism, was born in Aosta, in the Kingdom of Burgundy. Today Aosta belongs to Italy, specifically to the region of Val d’Aosta. Anselm later became prior (1063), and then abbot (1078), of the Monastery of Bec-Hellouin in Normandy, France. In 1093 he was consecrated Archbishop of Canterbury in England. As an intellectual, he is known above all for his three works the Monologion, the Proslogion, and the Cur Deus Homo.
Nicholas of Cusa (1401-1464), sometimes misleadingly referred to as the first “modern” philosopher, was born in Kues, Germany (today Bernkastel-Kues). He became a canon lawyer and a cardinal. His two best-known works are De Docta Ignorantia (On Learned Ignorance) and De Visione Dei (On the Vision of God).
Antecedents to Modern Science
- Article (PDF)
- 11 pages
- Secondary / Academic / University and higher level
Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, writes “From Plato to Newton the contest as to what part mathematics has had in coming to a scientific understanding of the universe took place in a religious framework. Today, after a period of what might be called ‘atheistic rationalism,’ we again hear the refrain of discovering ‘the mind of God’ coming from scientists.”
A version of this essay appear as part of Fr. Coyne’s essay “Evolution and Intelligent Design: Who Needs God” in Divine Action and Natural Selection: Science, Faith, and Evolution (World Scientific, 2009).
[Download PDF]
Antecedents_to_Mod_Sci
Book Review – Opportunities lost
Article- 800 words
- General audience
Fr. Paul Mueller, S. J., of the Vatican Observatory reviewed the book The Abacus and the Cross, The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages, by Nancy Marie Brown. The book concerns Gerbert of Aurillac, later Pope Sylvester II, a mathemetician at the end of the first millennium. Fr. Mueller’s review appeared in Physics World, Volume 24, Number 10:
The Abacus and the Cross is a book with a hero and a villain. The hero is Gerbert of Aurillac, the 10th century shepherd boy who became monk, schoolmaster, scientist, mathematician, and abbot, and then reigned at the turn of the first millennium as Pope Sylvester II. Gerbert was the first to introduce Arabic numerals to Europe, using them on his abacus; he wrote a leading textbook on geometry, which was supplanted only after 200 years when full translations of Euclid became available in the West; and he constructed and used astronomical instruments such as armillary spheres and astrolabes. Little remains of his own writings. Evidence for his genius can be inferred for the most part only indirectly, by examining how his knowledge spread to his students. His achievement is also complicated by his popular reputation as a “devil’s tool” and master of dark arts – which Brown insists is inaccurate and unfair.
The villain is Gerbert’s lifelong intellectual and political enemy, Abbo of Fleury. Like Gerbert, Abbo became monk, schoolmaster, scientist, mathematician, and abbot. Abbo was not a pope, but he has been named a saint. For Brown the most crucial difference between the two men is that Gerbert showed great creativity, introducing a whole new tradition in mathematics and science, in a manner distinctively modern and “experimental,” whereas Abbo was anything but creative: the copious written works he left behind are “disappointingly derivative,” involving merely “well-organized rearrangements of sources common used” to create a “fine and tidy summation.”
“Brown’s style is more Abbo than Gerbert. She capably synthesizes other scholars’ evaluations and translations of the primary source materials, but the ample notes at the end of the book do not give evidence of direct work with primary sources from Gerbert, Abbo, or their contemporaries.
Brown compensates for the lack of documentary evidence concerning Gerbert’s life by describing in substantial detail what life would have been like for someone like Gerbert. This includes detailed notes on the typical diet, style of life, and pattern of education of a monk; the manufacture and use of parchment, paper, and ink; the construction and use of books; and the processes and dangers involved in travel.
Her summary of Gerbert’s accomplishments in mathematics and science whets the appetite, but will not satisfy a reader with some scientific background. Brown describes what Gerbert could do with his abacus and other instruments, but she does not discuss in any detail how he could do these things.
Her outline of Gerbert’s political entanglements and his ascent to the papacy will be difficult to follow for a scientifically-minded reader without a background in turn-of-the-millenium history and intrigue. Brown’s account is more about what happened (with many names and dates) than about why. Most frustrating is Brown’s account in Chapter 9 of a “figurative poem” which was written by Gerbert. Brown communicates that this was an extraordinary accomplishment, marvelously complex and well worth exploring, but she does not help her reader to enter into the poem and its complexities in any serious way. Brown sets the table, but she does not serve the meal.
Three themes run through this book. First, Gerbert’s work in mathematics and science serves to show that the Dark Ages weren’t all that dark: creative things were happening, knowledge was advancing, and math and science were already rational and experimental. Second, science and religion are not (and were not) really at war; Gerbert himself is an important example of a religious person who also did first-rate work in mathematics and science. Only much later did Petrarch, Washington Irving, William Whewell, John Draper, and Andrew Dickson White construct the whiggish notion of an eternal war between science and religion, by circulating the charge that religious people persisted in the uncritical belief that the earth is flat, not round (a version of history that Brown goes to great lengths to refute). And finally: if only Gerbert’s hopes and ideals had been realized, history would be different: religion and science would be one, and science would bridge the tensions and differences that separate Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. But Brown displays a whiggish tendency of her own. She accepts and employs without critical comment the Enlightenment notion of science as an enterprise that is straightforwardly and simply rational and experimental.
This book represents an intellectually honest, good-faith effort to portray Gerbert and his accomplishments at a popular level. But both scientifically and theologically minded readers can only echo her own plaint of “what-if.” If only she had gotten inside the scientific issues. It would have been fun, for example, to hear in some technical detail how Gerbert’s Abacus actually worked, or for that matter how his “figurative poem” played out on multiple levels of meaning. Or if only she had gotten inside the theological issues. It seems strange for a book concerned with debunking the notion of a “war” between science and religion to take no account of theological issues. But Brown deals with religion only as an institutional and sociological force; in this book, the only place the Cross shows up is in the title.
Book: The Irrational Augustine
- Book
- 240 pages
- University level
A book suggested by our research team. This description is from the publisher, Oxford University Press:
The Irrational Augustine takes the notion of St Augustine as rigid and dogmatic Father of the Church and turns it on its head. Catherine Conybeare reads Augustine’s earliest works to discover the anti-dogmatic Augustine, who values changeability and human interconnectedness and deplores social exclusion. The novelty of her book lies in taking seriously the nature of these early works as performances, through which multiple questions can be raised and multiple options explored, both in words and through their dramatic framework. The theological consequences are considerable. A very human Augustine emerges, talking and playing with friends and family, including his mother – and a very sympathetic set of ideas is the result.
Click here for a preview, available from Google Books.
Copernicus and the “High Seas”
Article (blog post series)- 3600 words
- General audiences
In this series of posts, written for The Catholic Astronomer blog, Christopher Graney discusses “Two Spheres Theory” regarding the shape and composition of the Earth. The Two Spheres Theory was a medieval idea that came to be taken as scientific evidence for existence of, and direct action in the world of, God. However, the Two Spheres Theory was soundly disproven by, among other things, Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the lands now known as the Americas.
Click here to read Part II of this series.
Copernicus’s On the Revolutions—A Book That Continues to Challenge
Article (blog post)- 2000 words
- General audiences
In this post for The Catholic Astronomer blog, Christopher Graney writes about the groundbreaking 1543 book, De Revolutionibus Orbium Cœlestium, or On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres, written by Nicolas Copernicus, a cleric at the cathedral in Frombork, Poland. The post discusses Copernicus’s arguments for the counter-intuitive supposition that the Earth moves around the sun, over the more common-sense supposition that the sun moves around the Earth; it introduces objections to the Copernican system, and Copernicus’s invoking of the power of God to answer those objections; it also discusses how the Copernican system has implications for an evolving universe and life on other worlds. Graney concludes, “And so even five centuries after Nicolaus Copernicus wrote it, De Revolutionibus continues to challenge all who engage with its bold claims. It is a remarkable work. Few other books can match its boldness and its impact.”
Crowe: Theories of the World – from Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution
Book- 256 pages
- High school level and above
From the publisher, Dover:
This newly revised edition this accessible and enlightening book by Professor Michael J. Crowe of the University of Notre Dame (USA) recreates one of the most dramatic developments in the history of thought: the change from an earth-centered to a sun-centered conception of the solar system. Written in a clear and straightforward manner, the work is organized around a hypothetical debate: Given the evidence available in 1615, which planetary system (Ptolemaic, Copernican, Tychonic, etc.) was most deserving of support?
Beginning with an introductory chapter on celestial motions, Dr. Crowe proceeds to a discussion of Greek astronomy before Ptolemy, mathematical techniques used by ancient astronomers, the Ptolemaic system, the Copernican and Tychonic systems, and the contributions of Kepler and Galileo. In an epilogue, quotes from writers, philosophers, and scientists reveal the impact of Copernican thought on their work. Easily within the reach of anyone with a background in high school mathematics, this absorbing study offers a sound introduction to our solar system and an opportunity to relive one of the most momentous periods in intellectual history.
Click here for a preview from Google Books.
Click here for information from the publisher, Dover.
The mathematical world
Article 2500 words General Audiences An article published in Aeon in 2014 by James Franklin, professor of mathematics at the University of New South Wales in Sydney and author of the book An Aristotelian Realist Philosophy of Mathematics. Click here to access this article directly from Aeon. What is mathematics about? We know what biology is about; it’s about living things. Or more exactly, the living aspects of living things – the motion of a cat thrown out of a window is a matter for physics, but its physiology is a topic for biology. Oceanography is about oceans; sociology is about human behaviour in the mass long-term; and so on. When all the sciences and their subject matters are laid out, is there any aspect of reality left over for mathematics to be about? That is the basic question in the philosophy of mathematics. People care about the philosophy of mathematics in a way they do not care about, say, … Continue reading →
The nature of light according to Thomas Aquinas
- Book excerpt
- 2800 words
- University level
This discussion of light from the Summa Theologiae of Thomas Aquinas contrasts and compares in interesting ways with the modern understanding of light. For example, St. Thomas argues that light is not a body, which agrees with modern ideas. He also argues that light travels instantaneously, which does not agree with modern ideas. This excerpt has been 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. From Inters.org:
When speaking about light, faithful to his method, Thomas Aquinas’ starting point is terminology: he wants to clarify the use of the word “light” in all its different meanings, hoping to avoid misunderstanding, and this offering us a lesson in a scientific method which seems particularly valid even today (see a.1). Properly speaking, the original meaning of the word “light” is “something” that makes it possible to see, whereas in another, more analogical, sense, “light” can mean “something” that makes it possible for the other cognitive faculties to obtain the sort of knowledge that is proper to them. The first meaning goes back to the ambit of interaction with the senses, on a physical or material level; the second, on the other hand, analogy brings us into the immaterial ambit of knowledge. Thomas skillfully maintains our attention, for now, on the essential elements of the matter, avoiding getting into a physical theory of light which he deems unnecessary for this initial terminological clarification.
Click here for Thomas’s discussion, from Inters.org.
Click here for Thomas’s discussion, from a preview from Google Books of the Summa.
Copernicus and the “High Seas”
- Article (blog post series)
- 3600 words
- General audiences
In this series of posts, written for The Catholic Astronomer blog, Christopher Graney discusses “Two Spheres Theory” regarding the shape and composition of the Earth. The Two Spheres Theory was a medieval idea that came to be taken as scientific evidence for existence of, and direct action in the world of, God. However, the Two Spheres Theory was soundly disproven by, among other things, Christopher Columbus’s voyage to the lands now known as the Americas.
Click here to read Part II of this series.
Exploring Our Origins: C.S. Lewis and the Fight for Meaning in Genesis
- Article (blog post)
- 1000 words
- General Audience
A post by Fr. James Kurzynski on The Catholic Astronomer website: “…trying to impose a superficial understanding of creation upon the book Genesis is missing the central point the text is trying to communicate ”
Book Review – Opportunities lost
- Article
- 800 words
- General audience
Fr. Paul Mueller, S. J., of the Vatican Observatory reviewed the book The Abacus and the Cross, The Story of the Pope Who Brought the Light of Science to the Dark Ages, by Nancy Marie Brown. The book concerns Gerbert of Aurillac, later Pope Sylvester II, a mathemetician at the end of the first millennium. Fr. Mueller’s review appeared in Physics World, Volume 24, Number 10:
The Abacus and the Cross is a book with a hero and a villain. The hero is Gerbert of Aurillac, the 10th century shepherd boy who became monk, schoolmaster, scientist, mathematician, and abbot, and then reigned at the turn of the first millennium as Pope Sylvester II. Gerbert was the first to introduce Arabic numerals to Europe, using them on his abacus; he wrote a leading textbook on geometry, which was supplanted only after 200 years when full translations of Euclid became available in the West; and he constructed and used astronomical instruments such as armillary spheres and astrolabes. Little remains of his own writings. Evidence for his genius can be inferred for the most part only indirectly, by examining how his knowledge spread to his students. His achievement is also complicated by his popular reputation as a “devil’s tool” and master of dark arts – which Brown insists is inaccurate and unfair.
The villain is Gerbert’s lifelong intellectual and political enemy, Abbo of Fleury. Like Gerbert, Abbo became monk, schoolmaster, scientist, mathematician, and abbot. Abbo was not a pope, but he has been named a saint. For Brown the most crucial difference between the two men is that Gerbert showed great creativity, introducing a whole new tradition in mathematics and science, in a manner distinctively modern and “experimental,” whereas Abbo was anything but creative: the copious written works he left behind are “disappointingly derivative,” involving merely “well-organized rearrangements of sources common used” to create a “fine and tidy summation.”
“Brown’s style is more Abbo than Gerbert. She capably synthesizes other scholars’ evaluations and translations of the primary source materials, but the ample notes at the end of the book do not give evidence of direct work with primary sources from Gerbert, Abbo, or their contemporaries.
Brown compensates for the lack of documentary evidence concerning Gerbert’s life by describing in substantial detail what life would have been like for someone like Gerbert. This includes detailed notes on the typical diet, style of life, and pattern of education of a monk; the manufacture and use of parchment, paper, and ink; the construction and use of books; and the processes and dangers involved in travel.
Her summary of Gerbert’s accomplishments in mathematics and science whets the appetite, but will not satisfy a reader with some scientific background. Brown describes what Gerbert could do with his abacus and other instruments, but she does not discuss in any detail how he could do these things.
Her outline of Gerbert’s political entanglements and his ascent to the papacy will be difficult to follow for a scientifically-minded reader without a background in turn-of-the-millenium history and intrigue. Brown’s account is more about what happened (with many names and dates) than about why. Most frustrating is Brown’s account in Chapter 9 of a “figurative poem” which was written by Gerbert. Brown communicates that this was an extraordinary accomplishment, marvelously complex and well worth exploring, but she does not help her reader to enter into the poem and its complexities in any serious way. Brown sets the table, but she does not serve the meal.
Three themes run through this book. First, Gerbert’s work in mathematics and science serves to show that the Dark Ages weren’t all that dark: creative things were happening, knowledge was advancing, and math and science were already rational and experimental. Second, science and religion are not (and were not) really at war; Gerbert himself is an important example of a religious person who also did first-rate work in mathematics and science. Only much later did Petrarch, Washington Irving, William Whewell, John Draper, and Andrew Dickson White construct the whiggish notion of an eternal war between science and religion, by circulating the charge that religious people persisted in the uncritical belief that the earth is flat, not round (a version of history that Brown goes to great lengths to refute). And finally: if only Gerbert’s hopes and ideals had been realized, history would be different: religion and science would be one, and science would bridge the tensions and differences that separate Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. But Brown displays a whiggish tendency of her own. She accepts and employs without critical comment the Enlightenment notion of science as an enterprise that is straightforwardly and simply rational and experimental.
This book represents an intellectually honest, good-faith effort to portray Gerbert and his accomplishments at a popular level. But both scientifically and theologically minded readers can only echo her own plaint of “what-if.” If only she had gotten inside the scientific issues. It would have been fun, for example, to hear in some technical detail how Gerbert’s Abacus actually worked, or for that matter how his “figurative poem” played out on multiple levels of meaning. Or if only she had gotten inside the theological issues. It seems strange for a book concerned with debunking the notion of a “war” between science and religion to take no account of theological issues. But Brown deals with religion only as an institutional and sociological force; in this book, the only place the Cross shows up is in the title.
On the prudence and openness in interpreting sacred Scripture, when biblical passages deal with our knowledge of nature
- Book excerpt
- 750 words
- High school level and above
An excerpt on the book of Genesis, from Augustine of Hippo’s The Literal Meaning of Genesis. This excerpt has been 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. From Inters.org:
These passages from St. Augustine’s De Genesi ad litteram suggest how theologians should behave when different interpretations of sacred Scripture are possible in matter of our knowledge of nature. Prudence is recommended to avoid presenting specific readings, susceptible of further deepening, as if they were absolute and unquestionable. In so doing we keep away from the risk that scholars who are experts in natural knowledge deride Christians for their ingenuousness, and then underestimate the value of the whole Scripture. Galileo Galilei quoted these passages from Augustine in his famous Letter to Madame Christine of Lorraine (1615), he wrote to show that Bible should not be interpreted always in a literal and apodictic way, in order to back a specific cosmological system against another.
Click here for Augustine’s commentary, from Inters.org.
Science, Intelligibility, Creation: How the Doctrine of Creation Unites, Delineates, and Ennobles Modern Science
Article- 19 pages
- University level
This article (by Scott G. Hefelfinger, published in Logos: A Journal of Catholic Thought and Culture in 2011) provides an overview of ancient science, contrasts ancient science with modern science, and comments on philosophy and modern science while promoting the idea of Creation as a means of tying all these together in a meaningful manner. Hefelfinger writes:
If the province of modern science seems today to be all encompassing, a quick survey of the situation will prove otherwise. Science can often seem to have no room for philosophy, no time for the immaterial, and no patience with God. Through all of these factors it seems we are left with no hope for reconciliation between science and philosophy, science and theology, and ultimately, science and ordinary life.
If a “theological doctrine” were to come to the rescue and serve to make sense of the divide between ancient and modern science that would indeed be something. This is precisely what I would like to suggest. I hope to show that the doctrine of creation best accounts for and makes sense of the situation found today between departments of science and departments of philosophy and theology: a historically diverging but essentially complementary relationship between ancient and modern science.
St. Thomas Aquinas – The Knowledge of the Creatures is Useful to Avoid Errors Concerning God
- Book excerpt
- 1400 words
- University level
In this Summa contra Gentiles discussion on created things (that is, on the creatures or the works of God), Thomas Aquinas comments on the value for Faith inherent in understanding these things. This excerpt has been 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. St. Thomas gives a number of reasons for studying the works of God:
First, because meditation on His works enables us in some measure to admire and reflect upon His wisdom…. Secondly, this consideration [of God’s works] leads to admiration of God’s sublime power, and consequently inspires in men’s hearts reverence for God…. Thirdly, this consideration incites the souls of men to the love of God’s goodness…. Fourthly, this consideration endows men with a certain likeness to God’s perfection…. It is therefore evident that the consideration of creatures has its part to play in building the Christian faith. And for this reason it is said: “I will remember the works of the Lord, and I will declare the things I have seen: by the words of the Lord are His works” (Ecc 42:15)
St. Thomas also argues that knowledge of the the works of God serves to destroy errors concerning God:
First, because through ignorance of the nature of creatures men are sometimes so far perverted as to set up as the first cause and as God that which can only receive its being from something else…. Secondly, because they attribute to certain creatures that which belongs only to God…. Thirdly, because through ignorance of the creature’s nature something is subtracted from God’s power in its working upon creatures…. Fourthly, through ignorance of the nature of things, and, consequently, of his own place in the order of the universe, this rational creature, man, who by faith is led to God as his last end, believes that he is subject to other creatures [such as the stars] to which he is in fact superior…. It is, therefore, evident that the opinion is false of those who asserted that it made no difference to the truth of the faith what anyone holds about creatures, so long as one thinks rightly about God, as Augustine tells us in his book On the Origin of the Soul [IV, 4]. For error concerning creatures, by subjecting them to causes other than God, spills over into false opinion about God, and takes men’s minds away from Him, to whom faith seeks to lead them.
Click here for Thomas’s discussion, from Inters.org.
Was the Bible Meant to be Taken Literally?
- Video
- 4 minutes
- General audience
This excerpt from a longer interview in 2008 features Br. Guy Consolmagno, S. J. of the Vatican Observatory discussing the question of taking the Bible or other texts “literally”. Click here for information on the full interview.
We Saw His Star in the East: BBC Radio Sunday Worship for Epiphany
- Audio program
- 40 minutes
- General Audience
From the BBC Radio 4:
“We saw his star in the east”. On the feast of Epiphany, Fr James Hanvey SJ travels to the Pope’s summer palace outside Rome, home to the Vatican Space Observatory, to explore how God can speak through space and science. Preacher: Dr Guy Consolmagno SJ, Chair of the Division for Planetary Sciences of the American Astronomical Society and planetary scientist at the Vatican Observatory.
First heard in 2008
This program first aired on BBC Radio’s Sunday religious program for Epiphany. This program, hosted by Fr. James Hanvey, explores the meaning of Epiphany, with readings and music as well as a visit to the Vatican Observatory.
Click here to see the original BBC web site: http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01946pc.
John Philoponus – Impetus
- Article excerpt (PDF)
- 850 words
- High school level and above
One of the first people to develop something like the modern (Newtonian) scientific theory of motion was John Philoponus of Alexandria, who lived in the sixth century. This brief excerpt from the on-line Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy introduces Philoponus and his ideas about impetus in physics.
Click here to access this article directly from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
Translations of Philoponus’s work on physics and Aristotle are available from Bloomsbury Publishing. Click here for information from Bloomsbury. Click here for information from Google Books.
[Download PDF]Impetus-Philoponus
St. Macrina the Younger on Science and Technology
- Article (book excerpt)
- 3100 words
- High school level and above
A fourth-century discourse by St. Macrina the Younger on how human beings use observation, calculation, and reasoning to study the natural world and to develop technology—and what these things tell us about both God and the human soul and mind. (St. Macrina’s discourse is taken from a much larger dialogue between her and her brother, St. Gregory of Nyssa, recorded in his On the Soul and the Resurrection. Click here for On the Soul and the Resurrection, courtesy of Google Books. Click here to access it courtesy of New Advent.)
[Download PDF]
Macrina-Sci-Tech
Antecedents to Modern Science
- Article (PDF)
- 11 pages
- Secondary / Academic / University and higher level
Fr. George V. Coyne, S. J., Director of the Vatican Observatory from 1978 to 2006, writes “From Plato to Newton the contest as to what part mathematics has had in coming to a scientific understanding of the universe took place in a religious framework. Today, after a period of what might be called ‘atheistic rationalism,’ we again hear the refrain of discovering ‘the mind of God’ coming from scientists.”
A version of this essay appear as part of Fr. Coyne’s essay “Evolution and Intelligent Design: Who Needs God” in Divine Action and Natural Selection: Science, Faith, and Evolution (World Scientific, 2009).
[Download PDF]
Antecedents_to_Mod_Sci
Book: The Irrational Augustine
- Book
- 240 pages
- University level
A book suggested by our research team. This description is from the publisher, Oxford University Press:
The Irrational Augustine takes the notion of St Augustine as rigid and dogmatic Father of the Church and turns it on its head. Catherine Conybeare reads Augustine’s earliest works to discover the anti-dogmatic Augustine, who values changeability and human interconnectedness and deplores social exclusion. The novelty of her book lies in taking seriously the nature of these early works as performances, through which multiple questions can be raised and multiple options explored, both in words and through their dramatic framework. The theological consequences are considerable. A very human Augustine emerges, talking and playing with friends and family, including his mother – and a very sympathetic set of ideas is the result.
Click here for a preview, available from Google Books.
Crowe: Theories of the World – from Antiquity to the Copernican Revolution
- Book
- 256 pages
- High school level and above
From the publisher, Dover:
This newly revised edition this accessible and enlightening book by Professor Michael J. Crowe of the University of Notre Dame (USA) recreates one of the most dramatic developments in the history of thought: the change from an earth-centered to a sun-centered conception of the solar system. Written in a clear and straightforward manner, the work is organized around a hypothetical debate: Given the evidence available in 1615, which planetary system (Ptolemaic, Copernican, Tychonic, etc.) was most deserving of support?
Beginning with an introductory chapter on celestial motions, Dr. Crowe proceeds to a discussion of Greek astronomy before Ptolemy, mathematical techniques used by ancient astronomers, the Ptolemaic system, the Copernican and Tychonic systems, and the contributions of Kepler and Galileo. In an epilogue, quotes from writers, philosophers, and scientists reveal the impact of Copernican thought on their work. Easily within the reach of anyone with a background in high school mathematics, this absorbing study offers a sound introduction to our solar system and an opportunity to relive one of the most momentous periods in intellectual history.
Click here for a preview from Google Books.
Click here for information from the publisher, Dover.
Nicolaus Copernicus – Making the Earth a Planet
Book- 128 pages
- High school level
This book by Owen Gingerich and James MacLachlan is part of the Oxford Portraits in Science series for young adults. The general editor of this series is Gingerich, a historian of science with Harvard University, and an astronomer with the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. This book discusses both the astronomical work of Nicolaus Copernicus (including some technical detail) and his life as a canon in the Cathedral of Frombork, Poland.
Click here for a preview from Google Books.
From the publisher, Oxford University Press:
Born in Poland in 1473, Nicolaus Copernicus launched a quiet revolution. No scientist so radically transformed our understanding of our place in the universe as this curious bishop’s doctor and church official. In his quest to discover a beautiful and coherent system to describe the motions of the planets, Copernicus placed the sun in the center of the system and made the earth a planet traveling around the sun. Today it is hard to imagine our solar system any other way, but for his time Copernicus’s idea was earthshaking. In 1616 the church banned his book Revolutions because it contradicted the accepted notion that God placed Earth in the center of the universe. Even though those who knew of his work considered his idea dangerous, Revolutions remained of interest only to other scientists for many years. It took almost two hundred years for his concept of a sun-centered system to reach the general public. None the less, what Copernicus set out in his remarkable text truly revolutionized science. For this, Copernicus, a quiet doctor who made a tremendous leap of imagination, is considered the father of the Scientific Revolution.
Oxford Portraits in Science is an on-going series of scientific biographies for young adults. Written by top scholars and writers, each biography examines the personality of its subject as well as the thought process leading to his or her discoveries. These illustrated biographies combine accessible technical information with compelling personal stories to portray the scientists whose work has shaped our understanding of the natural world.
Telescopes: Through the Looking Glass
Book- 234 pages
- General audiences
This book by Marvin Bolt was published in 2009, the year of the 400th anniversary of Galileo’s use of the telescope. It provides a readable history of the telescope by way of highlighting items that are on exhibit in the “Telescopes: Through the Looking Glass” exhibit at the Adler Planetarium in Chicago. Scattered throughout this beautifully illustrated book can be found references to the works of various clerics, such as Bartholomaeus Anglicus (1203-1274), Ferdinand Verbiest (1623-1688), Francesco Bianchini (1662-1729), and others. Those planning a visit to the Adler might enjoy a look through this book in advance.
From the publisher, Adler Planetarium:
Through the Looking Glass celebrates the 400th anniversary of the telescope and the 2009 International Year of Astronomy. This exhibition catalogue focuses on ninety-nine artifacts from the Adler Planetarium’s world-class collection of historic telescopes. From the simple lenses of the world’s earliest telescopes 400 years ago to the complex computer-driven mirrors of current telescopes, these tools have gathered information about our nearest astronomical neighbors and the most distant objects in the universe. Through the Looking Glass examines this story through select rare books, works on paper, telescopes, and other instruments from the Adler Planetarium’s collection. Introductory paragraphs provide background information for each of four time periods, with each section featuring artifact entries that describe each object’s place in the fascinating history of the telescope. Telescope-makers intended for their work to be looked at as well as looked through. With this catalogue, readers can enjoy the craftsmanship of telescope-making over the centuries, and catch a glimpse of their importance and of the significant discoveries they enabled.
Click here for a preview of Telescopes: Through the Looking Glass.
Adler Planetarium website for the exhibit entitled “Telescopes: Through the Looking Glass”—click here.
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.
Saint Ephrem the Syrian: Commentary on Genesis, Commentary on Exodus, Homily on Our Lord, and Letter to Publius
St. Ephraim the Syrian
- Book
- 393 Pages
- University level
Click here for a preview of this book, Selected Prose Works: Saint Ephrem the Syrian, from Google Books. The book’s publisher, Catholic University of American Press, writes:
This volume presents for the first time in the Fathers of the Church series the work of an early Christian writer who did not write in either Greek or Latin. It offers new English translations of selected prose works by St. Ephrem the Syrian (c. A.D. 309-373). The volume contains St. Ephrem’s Commentary on Genesis, Commentary on Exodus, Homily on Our Lord, and Letter to Publius. The translators have enhanced the volume with a general introduction, extensive bibliography, and specific introductions to each of the works. Together these features provide an overview of the major scholarship on St. Ephrem and Syriac Christianity.
St. Ephrem, the “Harp of the Spirit,” composed prose commentaries and sermons of skillfull charmand grace, in addition to beautiful hymns, during the time he spent teaching at his native Nisibis and at Edessa in Syria. In the two commentaries presented here, Ephrem focuses only on portions of the sacred text that had a particular theological significance for him, or whose orthodox interpretation needed to be reasserted in the face of contemporary heterodox ideas. He does not provide a continuous, verse by verse exposition. The elaborate rhetorical figures and stylistic devices of the Homily on Or Lord andLetter to Publius succeed in creating language and imagery nearly as striking as Ephrem’s poetry.
St. Ephrem marshaled his considerable theological and rhetorical talent to challenge the appeal that the doctrines of the Arians, Manicheans, Marcionites, and the followers of Bardaisan might have had to the minds and hearts of Syrian Christians. In the face of their rational systems, his was the voice that insisted on the incomprehensibility of the divine nature.
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.
God’s Planet
Book- 192 pages
- High school level and above
This short book was published in 2014 by Harvard University Press. It is by Harvard astronomer and historian of science Owen Gingerich. From the publisher:
With exoplanets being discovered daily, Earth is still the only planet we know of that is home to creatures who seek a coherent explanation for the structure, origins, and fate of the universe, and of humanity’s place within it. Today, science and religion are the two major cultural entities on our planet that share this goal of coherent understanding, though their interpretation of evidence differs dramatically. Many scientists look at the known universe and conclude we are here by chance. The renowned astronomer and historian of science Owen Gingerich looks at the same evidence—along with the fact that the universe is comprehensible to our minds—and sees it as proof for the planning and intentions of a Creator-God. He believes that the idea of a universe without God is an oxymoron, a self-contradiction. God’s Planet exposes the fallacy in thinking that science and religion can be kept apart.
Gingerich frames his argument around three questions: Was Copernicus right, in dethroning Earth from its place at the center of the universe? Was Darwin right, in placing humans securely in an evolving animal kingdom? And was Hoyle right, in identifying physical constants in nature that seem singularly tuned to allow the existence of intelligent life on planet Earth? Using these episodes from the history of science, Gingerich demonstrates that cultural attitudes, including religious or antireligious beliefs, play a significant role in what passes as scientific understanding. The more rigorous science becomes over time, the more clearly God’s handiwork can be comprehended.
Click here for additional information from the publisher, Harvard University Press
Click here for a preview from Google Books.