On one hand, there are marvelous discourses in institutions of higher learning about the ways theology illuminates scientific ideas and, likewise, how science deepens faith. Theologians, philosophers, and scientists come together and talk, even if everyone is not a person of faith. On the other hand, the public presentation of faith and science, mostly on the internet, is a tale of incessant conflict because anyone can pose as an expert on religion or science, despite being nonreligious or never having worked as a scientist.

The following ten imperatives were originally written for a Christian audience to bridge this gap between public pessimism and optimism among scholars. I have replaced some text with commentary for atheist readers at Strange Notions. The original is at National Catholic Register.

1. Profess the Creed in confidence.

To Christians: If you pray “I believe in one God, the Father almighty, maker of heaven and earth, of all things visible and invisible,” then your faith comes first. For you, Christianity is not a hypothesis or a theory; it is everything, a pervasive worldview. We do not call some things intelligently designed and declare other things mere random chances of nature, as if nature were not the handiwork of God, but we see everything as a consistently interacting totality, a Creation, including every last particle and force governed by the laws of physics.

To atheists: Of course you do not pray the Creed, but hopefully you can appreciate the logical consistency of an all-or-none Christian worldview. Anything less falls short of a belief in a Creator of all things. If you point that deficiency out to Christians who make distinctions between “random, chance nature” and “intelligent design,” you have a valid point.

2. Know your faith, and let it guide your reasoning.

To Christians: “Dogmas are lights along the path of faith; they illuminate it and make it secure” (Catechism of the Catholic Church 89). You cannot navigate science in the light of faith if you do not have the lights on, so to speak. There are a number of sources for finding Church teaching. Besides the Catechism, Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma and Heinrich Denzinger’s Sources of Catholic Dogma are trusted resources.

Be aware of the hierarchy of truths (CCC 90). Distinguish between infallible dogmas and theological opinions. Most of the discussion happens where theological opinions are proposed and science can increase comprehension. How do we talk about the emergence and evolution of life? How do we describe the unity of body and mind? How do we think about the human person compared to other creatures?

To atheists: The difference in dogma and doctrine is poorly understood. There are certain dogmas that Christians truly cannot deny, for that would logically lead to a denial of other doctrines. Everything derives from the Holy Trinity and the Incarnation. We do not hold true to the existence of the soul, the beginning of Creation, and the miracles of Christ blindly in faith, but rather as a reasoned assent in faith, not unlike the reasoned assent students make when they are taught about atoms.

For me, it came down to a moment of decision where I either chose to take the leap of faith and believe in Christ, or not. The experience has been much like the leap I took to become a scientist, albeit a much more significant one. I entered the laboratory of Catholic faith, so to speak, and tested the teachings of the Church in my life to see what I could learn. I learned to have stronger faith because I learned that the teachings are true, good, and beautiful. But it would not have made sense just watching from the outside. I had to “taste and see” for myself, to gather my empirical evidence to arrive at a sound conclusion. I understand that the lives of the faithful may seem strange to you, as strange as the work of a researcher may appear to a visitor peeking through the door to a busy laboratory.

3. Respect the experts.

To Christians: We are all encouraged to learn about the development of doctrine, but do not to play armchair theologian and promote your novel opinions as accepted teaching. Forego speculation, as that causes confusion. Instead, read the writings of theologians and communicate their work because the modern dialogue needs communicators.

Likewise, respect the scientists. I know; many scientists today are not people of faith, but if you have not designed experiments, agonized over the data, and placed your reputation behind conclusions, it is hard to appreciate what it takes to add new knowledge to scientific fields. Be confident in your faith and read scientific papers, so you will be able to figure out what to accept or reject for yourself. Strive to become an expert and lead others.

To atheists: Christians can learn a lot from atheists who are scientists. I think they should be heard and their points considered. We will not all agree. I hope you can show the same respect for theologians. A confident person can listen to other ideas without fear.

4. Do not be anxious until you find the one final answer.

To Christians: Think of the process of navigating science in the light of faith as a dive into complementary mysteries. Faith and science are two different manifestations of the same reality. When they seem to have conflicting conclusions, it is because our knowledge is not complete. There are many questions that will not have clear answers, which is why they are debated. How much were Neanderthals like humans? In what ways can brain chemistry influence our behavior? What do we make of quantum entanglement?

Just like doctrinal understanding develops, scientific models are provisional. A “provision” is something that supplies a temporary commodity. Scientific theories and models supply explanations until better ones are discovered with more research. As you enter the story of ongoing research, try to understand a variety of opinions. Do not articulate an opinion until you are ready. It is okay to say: “I don’t know. Could you explain what you think?”

To atheists: Ditto, but you probably only deal with the science side of things. Understand that Catholics deal with both reason and faith because we need both to continue our assent in faith, like eagles need both wings to fly.

5. Clarify the kind of proof science provides.

To Both: Inductive proofs widen from details to broad conclusions; they affirm. Scientific evidence can only provide inductive proofs of faith. For example, the Big Bang affirms a beginning in time; it does not absolutely prove the ultimate t=0. On the contrary, deductive proofs narrow from broad statements to conclusions; that is, they confirm. These are, in general, the proofs provided by philosophy and theology. One may argue metaphysically that past time is either finite or infinite. If it can be reasoned that infinite time is highly unlikely, then by default finite time is highly likely.

To Christians: Do not invoke science as any kind of absolute proof of a theological conclusion. The Big Bang, fine-tuning in nature, design in living things, and order in the periodic table are all inductive proofs of the opening lines of the Christian Creed, but only in the same way rainbows, sunsets, and yellow Labrador puppies are proofs of God. Science should inspire awe and wonder because we see it as the study of Creation.

To atheists: We realize that proofs can go both ways. You can invoke science as inductive proof to support a claim that there is no God. You can generate deductive proofs that say it is unlikely that God exists. Christians see those proofs as weak, obviously. People on both sides tend to forget that proofs are like glasses of water. You can set down all the water you want in the fanciest crystal, but you cannot force a person to drink it in. That is why I inject personal perception. Proofs helped me think things through, but granting assent to conclusions was the work of the intellect and the will.

6. Ponder Mars.

To Christians: St. Thomas Aquinas explains in the Summa Theologiæ that there is an order in nature of causes and effects (ST I.105.6). God creates everything and holds all things visible and invisible in existence; He is the first cause, the Creator, not subject to secondary causes such as change and motion in the physical realm. God’s law is the “supreme law.” If there were no other created being with any kind of will and intellect, then the material realm would follow, to the elementary unit, the laws of physics as God designed them—like on Mars.

Physical scientists think within this strictly physical realm. In his 1947 book Miracles, C.S. Lewis refers to nature as a “hostess” (94). If a tomato sauce is invaded with basil, for example, nature rushes to accommodate the newcomer. If the sauce is stirred, heated, or spread on a crust and topped with cheese, physical laws follow suit. If you (like me) prefer not to think of nature as a female serving up munchies, think of matter and energy as the physical medium in which we live. This medium, nature, accommodates the actions of our free will, which is why human life has rendered Earth vastly different than it would have been left to its own devices.

To atheists: You probably view Earth the same as Mars, all a physical reality, or you may think it is real because we think it is real in our minds, a trick of the brain.

7. Assert that humans are body and soul.

To Christians: Beyond the realm of physical matter is the realm of beings with wills, such as angels, humans, and possibly other animals. These beings are movers too. God can move particles, and if it is outside the order of nature known to us, we call it a miracle (ST I.105.7).

In his treatise on the angels in the Summa Theologiæ, St. Thomas Aquinas, referencing (Pseudo-) Dionysius, says that angels are purely intellectual beings or “heavenly minds” (ST I.58.3). Intellect for angels is perfect at once; they instantly know all they are created to know. The good angels choose to will good, so they always do God’s will (ST I.59.2).

We are body and soul. With free will, we can move matter in limited ways. We pursue knowledge by “discursive intellectual operation” by advancing from one thing to another rationally, as we do using the scientific method (ST I.58.3). Actually, the scientific method is a perfect example of how body and soul unite. We take in data with our senses. We process it abstractly with our intellects. We desire to learn more, so we design experiments for further observation.

To atheists: You do not believe in angels. You do not believe in the existence of the soul, so to you we are all bodies with consciousness arising from matter and energy.

8. Be assured that physics cannot explain free will.

To Christians: Determinism is a philosophical idea that all events are determined by strict laws of nature, such that every motion of every particle is preset by an initial state of matter. If you scratch your arm, so the argument goes, you did it because that was the next event your matter and energy were destined to do. If there were nothing except the created physical realm, like on Mars, strict physical determinism would apply. But as Christians we understand that the total system of reality includes both the natural and the supernatural.

To atheists: You are stuck with the problem of free will and how it would break the laws of physics to declare that they think they freely proclaim there is no free will. Christians accept the existence of the soul and, you could say, move on with life. We define free will as a spiritual power, and use our intellects to grow in the theological virtues of faith, hope, and love and the cardinal virtues of prudence, justice, fortitude, and temperance so that we may strive to reach our fullest potential as human persons. Undoubtedly you see the value in virtue too, even if you do not have the same language for it.

9. Fear not evolution.

To Both: Atoms constitute the matter that makes us up, and every atom in our bodies came from the Earth, whose particles seem to have come from supernovas, whose matter and energy probably came from the earliest moments after the Big Bang. Did you ever wonder what path the ever-fluctuating particles of your body traversed in the last 4.5 billion years on Earth and the 13.8 billion years in the universe? We evolved from the beginning.

Biologically, we see a single evolutionary step every time we see a baby. Evolution is the progression of a series of events by which living organisms accumulate changes over successive generations due to genetic inheritance and adaptive variation. Every child is genetically like its parents but also genetically unique as an individual. As such, every child responds to his or her environment in unique ways, however slight the differences may be. Environments change over time, further affecting genetic expression.

To Christians: Evolutionary science cannot identify a first man, first woman, or original sin committed in a moment, because evolution deals with populations over thousands and millions of years. Expecting evolution to find our first parents is like expecting a bulldozer to find the first two grains of sand on a beach. Not only is it the wrong tool, it is the wrong scientific concept. We do not think of beaches forming one grain of sand at a time. A Catholic can both explore what evolutionary science has to reveal and, simultaneously, believe in the reality of Adam and Eve. What a Catholic, or anyone else, cannot do is expect evolutionary science to find them any more than chemistry or physics can find the exact location of two electrons on your nose.

To atheists: Undoubtedly you do not accept any reality of Adam and Eve and the Do Not Touch Tree, and you have no way to even begin to verify such a story. We know. The fall and original sin are truths of faith that we do not deny, but speaking for myself, I realize that those dogmas are unprovable by empirical methods—unless you count all the mean and evil things people do to each other as empirical proof, in which case those dogmas have quite a lot of evidence.

10. Realize that science was born of Christianity.

To Christians: This is not a claim for bravado; it is meant to inspire a bigger view. The belief that the universe was created by God with an absolute beginning in time and a faithful order is an ancient Judeo-Christian belief forming an unbroken thread all the way back to Genesis. The Old Testament people held a belief in Creation in time. The early Christians defended that belief against the pantheistic ideas of ancient Greek philosophy, even to martyrdom. Today, we need to be absolutely clear about the limits of science. Nothing a scientist says should shake our faith. If a scientist claims we are nothing but atoms, have no free will, or the world is eternally cycling (as all the other ancient cultures did), then we simply do not agree.

If the biblical cultures and early Christianity are taken as the womb that nurtured and protected this fundamental belief about Creation, then the Christian West can be taken as the culture that gave birth to science—upon the works of scholars such as Adelard of Bath, Thierry of Chartres, Robert Grosseteste, William of Auvergne, St. Albert the Great, St. Thomas Aquinas, Roger Bacon, Siger of Brabant, Étienne Tempier, and Fr. Jean Buridan who postulated the impetus theory, which was the precursor to Newtonian mechanics.

The revelation of the birth, life, death, and resurrection of Christ taught us the reality of the nature of God and the divinity of Christ. No other religion has ever come close to such a Trinitarian and Incarnational worldview. God is one God and three Persons, the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit. Christ is the Second Person of the Holy Trinity, the Son who became man. Christ is the Word, the Logos, the reason. And science relies on order. Without faith in Christ, science does not make sense. The beginning of St. John’s gospel has a striking scientific significance: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. The same was in the beginning with God. All things were made by him: and without him was made nothing that was made. In him was life, and the life was the light of men.” (John 1:1-4)

To atheists: It would be wrong for Christians to use this claim to deny the contributions of other cultures and religions to the growth of science. The claim is complex, but for now, suffice it to say that “birth” does not happen in an instant removed from the rest of the world. Mothers do not say: “Boom! There is a baby. I did it by myself.” When I first read about this claim from the late Fr. Stanley L. Jaki’s books, I was not sure what to make of it. Rather than assuming, I tried to find out what he meant by “science” and “was born.” He had a theory that pantheism and a belief in eternal cycles stifled the development of science as the study of physical law and systems of laws. He searched for data and found it abundantly in the historical record. Historians can be biased, which is why Fr. Jaki wrote extensively on this topic and insisted on original sources as much as possible. Please do not argue against the claim until you understand it.

NOTE: Today we wrap up our weekly series of essays by Dr. Stacy Trasancos on the "stillbirths" of science. They're based on Fr. Stanley L. Jaki's research into the theological history of science in the ancient cultures of Egypt, China, India, Babylon, Greece, and Arabia. See past articles here.

 
The last culture to be examined is that of the Muslims. Although theirs was a monotheistic view, it was not a Christological or Trinitarian view, which left it vulnerable to a monotheism that approached pantheism. What happened in the Muslim world seems to be the result of a mixture of mindsets. The Arabian philosophers adopted the works of the Greeks, along with the organismic, eternal cosmic treadmill worldview. This meant that the philosophers’ worldview was in conflict with the Muslim religion since the Koran taught that God the Creator created the world and held it in existence. The stillbirth of Muslim science could be credited with a separation of science and religion that ought to have been reconciled, a point that would no doubt surprise many people today.

As Athens and Rome lost cultural significance around the early seventh century A.D., there was less communication between the two. Greek scholars moved toward the East and organized at Jundishapur in Southwest Persia. In 641 A.D., when Persia was conquered by the Muslims, the Middle East and North Africa came under one rule. By 711 A.D., the Arabs took Spain and twenty-one years later they stormed France. One hundred years after Muhammed’s death, a political unification of land that spanned three continents emerged. As the new religion codified in the Koran was imposed, a giant empire formed “steeped in the conviction that everything in life and in the cosmos depended on the sovereign will of a personal God, the Creator and Lord of all.” (Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 193)

The continual study of the Koran inspired intellectual curiosity among faithful Muslims, as did the meticulous scholarship of the Greek philosophical and scientific body of knowledge. So serious was the promotion of knowledge that “Houses of Wisdom” were erected, notably in Baghdad (813–833), Cairo (966), and Cordova (961–976). Cordova amassed over 300,000 volumes for the library and immediately attracted scholars from the Christian West, who were welcomed with hospitality.

A paper mill, learned from the Chinese art of paper-making, was constructed in Baghdad in 794, and extensive translation and reproduction of Greek literature flourished. The works of Galen, who was considered second only to Hippocrates in the medical hagiography of the Western World, were translated, some 130 of them, and dominated medical practice in the medieval East and the West well into the Renaissance. (Plinio, A History of Medicine: Roman Medicine, p. 315) The greatest figure of Arab medicine was produced from this school, al Razi (865–925), the author of A Treatise on the Small-Pox and Measles. His work has been reprinted more than forty times in the last four hundred years. Islamic medicine in general was outstanding, a field in which Islamic science demonstrated its most sustained vitality. The Muslims had a realistic sense for facts of observation.

The Islamic ophthalmologist, Ibn-Rushd (1126–1198), otherwise known as Averroes, provides a “priceless insight” into the ultimate failure of Islamic science. (Jaki, Science and Creation, p. 195) He was a resolute advocate and student of Aristotle’s philosophy and science, and as such broke new grounds with ophthalmology. The practice of medicine could flourish under Aristotelian teaching because it did not require any questioning of Aristotle’s view of the physics.

Likewise Ibn-Sina (980–1037), also known as Avicenna, the famed philosopher provides the same insight. His textbook served as the standard in Arab medical teaching, a fine collection of observation and systematic pathology. Muslim science made notable contributions in areas that had nothing to do with physical laws. When it came to a study of physical laws of the world, there was a certain inertia owed to the unwillingness to question the Aristotelian animistic worldview, which is why the study of biology advanced but without an underlying increase in the understanding of the physical world.

This lack of understanding of physics is evidenced by Arab alchemy, which came to stand for the study of materials and compounds. This field of investigation was a combination of mystical and astrological proclivities, fundamentally the result of mixing the organismic, eternal cycles of pantheism with the belief that a Creator created the universe. It was an attempt to reconcile the conflicting views of Aristotelian philosophy and Muslim theology.

The same paradox occurred in astrology. The astrologers, working with assumptions in conflict with their religion, gave credence to the pagan doctrine of the Great Year, even to the point of believing it could predict the succession of rulers, religions, reigns, and physical catastrophes. Yet devout Muslims could not accept these ideas that were in conflict with Muslim orthodoxy, which revealed that the universe had an absolute beginning with creation. As attempts were made to reconcile these beliefs, something ambiguous resulted, as evidenced in the writing of al-Biruni, a Muslim who refuted the contradictions among scholars and religious men in his famous work The Chronology of Ancient Nations:

"It is quite possible that the (celestial) bodies were scattered, not united at the time when the Creator designed and created them, they having these motions, by which–as calculation shows–they must meet each other in one point in such a time. It would be the same, as if we, e.g. supposed a circle, in different separate places of which we put living beings, of whom some move fast, others slowly, each of them, however, being carried on in equal motions–of its peculiar sort of motion–in equal times; further, suppose that we knew their distances and places at a certain time, and the measure of the distance over which each of them travels in one Nychthemoreon." (Athar-ul-Bakiya of Albiruni, The Chronology of Ancient Nations, p. 30)

He goes on in the work to give credit to the mathematical computations of the cycles to explain the appearances, an incongruity between mathematics and reality and a failure to go beyond the Aristotelian and Neoplatonian positions regarding the physical world. As far as the Muslim scholars advanced, they still did not provide the psychology that could give birth to modern science because they did not effectively refute the pantheism of the Greek scientific corpus (body).

That reconciliation would come from Christian scholars who, in adherence to the Christian Creed, rejected the teachings of the Greek scientific corpus which contradicted Christian dogma, particularly pantheism and the eternal cosmic cycle. Indeed, the birth of science can be credited as a successful reconciliation of the Christian religion and science.

"There had to come a birth, the birth of the only begotten Son of the Father as a man, to allow science to have its first viable birth." (Jaki, A Late Awakening, p.60)

This series of essays is adapted from the book Science Was Born of Christianity: The Teaching of Fr. Stanley L. Jaki (available on Amazon). In the book, this series is in the chapter "Was Born," which is preceded by an introduction to Fr. Jaki and a discussion about how he defined "science." This series is followed by a series of essays about "The Biblical Womb" and the attitudes towards Greek and Roman science in "Early Christianity." The birth of science in "The Christian West" is covered by a brief review of the following Christian scholars' contributions, in chronological order: Adelard of Bath, Thierry of Chartres, Robert Grosseteste, William of Auvergne, St. Albertus Magnus, St. Thomas Aquinas , Roger Bacon , Siger of Brabant , Étienne Tempier, and Jean Buridan.

Sources:

• Stanley L. Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, Ltd, 1986), 192-200.
• Stanley L. Jaki, A Late Awakening and Other Essays (Port Huron, MI: Real View Books, 2004), 22-25.
• Prioresch Plinio, A History of Medicine: Roman Medicine (Omaha, NE: Horatius Press, 1998), 315.
• Athar-ul-Bakiya of Albiruni, The Chronology of Ancient Nations: An English Version of the Arabic Text “Vestiges of the Past,” translated by D. Edward Sachau (London: W. H. Allen & Co., 1879), 30.

 
 
(Image credit: Wikimedia)

NOTE: Today we continue our weekly series of essays by Dr. Stacy Trasancos on the "stillbirths" of science. They're based on Fr. Stanley L. Jaki's research into the theological history of science in the ancient cultures of Egypt, China, India, Babylon, Greece, and Arabia. See past articles here.

 
In The Savior of Science, Jaki mentioned the history of science among cultures that communicated and developed in succession–Babylon, Greece, and Arabia. Knowledge was transmitted to the Sumerians from the Egyptians and then on to Babylonians, Assyrians, and Persians (c. 2900 B.C.– mid 7^th century A.D.). From there knowledge was transmitted to the Greeks and then to the Arabs, and this history is recorded in detail. Just as in other ancient cultures, there was obvious skill.

Jaki devoted the first few pages of the chapter “The Omen of Ziggurats” in Science and Creation to those massive structures built by the Sumerians and Babylonians as an example of their technological ability. “The planning, building, and decorating of the ziggurats,” Jaki wrote, “implied craftsmanship and practical geometry and is application on a grand scale, especially if one considers the temple complex and city surrounding the ziggurat.” Towns were planned around these temples, with defense walls, palaces, and quarters of the cities. The temples were made of mud bricks laid in a herring-bone pattern with mud mortar overlaid with bitumen or lime plaster, which could be smoothed and polished to a high-quality finish, to waterproof them. (Crawford, Sumer and the Sumerians, 60-67)

According to Herodotus, an ancient Greek historian (c. 484–425 B.C.), the ziggurat of Babylon was exceeded by no other city:

“[Babylon] lies in a great plain, and is in shape a square, each side fifteen miles in length; thus sixty miles make the complete circuit of the city. Such is the size of the city of Babylon; and it was planned like no other city of which we know.” (The Histories, Book 1, Chapter 178, section 3)

Jaki credited the Babylonian discovery of “mathematical puzzles equivalent to second-degree equations, lists of hundreds of plants and chemical compounds, together with their astonishingly accurate medicinal properties, and even longer lists of planetary positions” as extraordinary items of learning. The lists of planetary positions were the factual proof that Hipparchus, a second-century B.C. Greek astronomer and mathematician who discovered the precession of the equinoxes, relied on Babylonian astronomical data to reach his conclusions, another “one of the greatest scientific discoveries of all times.” The Babylonians had the skills necessary to apply mathematics to nature, but they did not take this step.

It may seem contradictory for Jaki to have claimed that science was “born” of Christianity and “stillborn” in other cultures while he also credited those cultures with great scientific discoveries. This point is often missed, so it is useful to pause here to point out something in Jaki’s use of the word “stillbirth” of science. He acknowledged cultural wombs that were capable of developing science even to the point of viability as a sustained discipline. His choice of the word “birth” was to show that the final step from isolated dependence to universal independence was not taken in any culture before the Scientific Revolution in the Middle Ages.

Historians have argued that “all subsequent varieties of scientific astronomy, in the Hellenistic world, in India, in Islam, and in the West–if not indeed all subsequent endeavors in the exact sciences–depend upon Babylonian astronomy in decisive and fundamental ways.” (Aaboe, “Scientific Astronomy in Antiquity, 21-42) Jaki would not have agreed with this argument, and the reason has to do with how he defined “exact science” and how he considered the theological implications of ancient cultures as well. All subsequent varieties of science may have depended in some way on Babylonian astronomy, but not in decisive and fundamental ways.

The Babylonians may have mathematically modeled astronomical appearances, but their cosmology is evidence they believed a very different reality behind the appearances. The Enuma elish was a portrayal of personified forces engaged in bloody battles; the mother goddess, Tiamat, is dismembered to form the sky, earth, waters, and air. Jaki explained, “Such a cosmogony was certainly not a pointer toward that kind of understanding of the cosmos which amounts to science.”

The Babylonians observed celestial phenomenon as a service to a religious worldview steeped in magic, and the calculations were abstracted from physical objects. Jaki held that it was absolutely necessary for a true science, the “quantitative study of the quantitative aspects of physical objects in motion,” for calculations not to be abstracted from objects.

A viable birth of science could not have been made in such an environment where the mathematical formality was cut off from the physical reality. The failure was neither geophysical nor socio-economical, but rather an intellectual inertia that prevented a systematic investigation of the world and its lawfulness. There was no confidence in the reasonability of such an enterprise under the belief that people were part of a huge, animistic, cosmic struggle between chaos and order.

Next week, Greece.

Sources:

• Stanley L. Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, Ltd, 1986), 85-99.
• Stanley L. Jaki, The Savior of Science (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000), 38-39.
• Harriet Crawford, Sumer and the Sumerians, Second Edition (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 60-67.
• Herodotus, The Histories, with an English translation by A.D. Godley (Cambridge, UK: Harvard University Press, 1920), Book 1, Chapter 178, section 3.
• A. Aaboe, “Scientific Astronomy in Antiquity,” Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series A, Mathematical and Physical Sciences, A. 276 (1974), 21-42.

Adapted from Science Was Born of Christianity: The Teaching of Fr. Stanley L. Jaki.
 
 
(Image credit: Wikimedia)

NOTE: Today we continue our weekly series of essays by Dr. Stacy Trasancos on the "stillbirths" of science. They're based on Fr. Stanley L. Jaki's research into the theological history of science in the ancient cultures of Egypt, China, India, Babylon, Greece, and Arabia. See past articles here.

 
The decimal system and notation developed in ancient India between the fourth and seventh centuries represents “the most noteworthy single contribution of ancient India to science and its importance cannot be overstated.” (Science and Creation, 13-14) Without the decimal system in the Late Middle Ages, the more cumbersome Roman numeral system would have been used and it would have delayed the birth of science in the seventeenth century Christian West. The ancient Indians also built houses out of brick and constructed drainage facilities. There is evidence that they used copper and bronze and made glass.

Advanced technological skill dating back to the third century B.C. and “still unexplained today” is evidenced in the non-rusting pillars erected by King Ashoka during his reign. They certainly remain a monument to progress in metallurgy, stone-cutting, and transportation engineering. (Savior of Science, 27) The world-famous monuments of the Iron Pillar of Delhi and Sultanganj and copper colossus of Buddha also provide evidence of advanced metallurgy. There was also a lively interest in industrial arts from the third century B.C. in the writing of Kantilya’s Arthasastra, which articulates the business of government and legislation, the construction of ships, buildings, and roads, and the development of husbandry, agriculture, land surveying, mining, and medicine.

Jaki noted that “practicality, craftsmanship, and organizational talent do not, however, qualify as science.” (Science and Creation, 14) There was no theoretical generalization leading to the formulation of physical laws and systems of laws. The claim that science originated in India is also difficult for anyone to make because there are so many doubts about historical sources. This lack of chronology was noted by Needham, a leading historian of not just Chinese, but all Oriental science. He warned that reliable dating of ancient records was necessary for objective analysis of history, and he admitted “the extreme uncertainties in the dating of the most important texts and even of actual objects which have survived” among what is known of Indian history.

Much debate still wages over Needham’s infamous question regarding “the failure of China and India to give rise to distinctively modern science while being ahead of Europe for fourteen previous centuries.” (Joseph Needham, Science and the Crossroads, Foreword) While acknowledging that the Scientific Revolution was “part of a European miracle,” Indian scholars have offered explanations that perhaps India experienced a “mathematical revolution” called “computational positivism” instead. The Indian approach, according to this theory, showed a “deep and studied distrust of axioms and physical models,” while Europe “achieved unreasonably and unexpectedly spectacular successes in science.” (Roddam Narasimha, “The Indian half of Needham’s question")

Other theories have suggested the ability to grasp logical contradictions and “contempt for mundane reality” as a cause for the lack of science in India, while others suggest the cultural stability of agricultural societies with no new challenges to create new knowledge to solve problems. Yet others have alleged that Indian culture was “otherworldly” and perceived the physical world as an illusion and the liberation of the soul more important than the study of the external world. Still others have claimed that since there was no conflict between religion and science in India, and since atheists were not persecuted, this lack of tension is at fault for complacency about science in India; while others have faulted instead the colonialism of the West, and speculated that the “European miracle” would not have happened if it were not for the mathematical contributions of India. (Agrawal and Kendra, “The Needham Question: Some Answers")

Roddam Narasimha, Indian aerospace scientist and Director of the National Institute of Advanced Studies from 1997 to 2004, where he pursued his interests in the history of science and technology and the philosophy underlying Indic rationalism, referred to the Scientific Revolution as part of a “European miracle” triggered by developments in China and India just as Needham also labeled it. (Narasimha, 3) He wrote that the “long Dark Ages of Europe were broken with the help of technical and mathematical inventions imported from the East.” This reference was in response to Needham’s question regarding the failure of China and India to give rise to modern science while being ahead of Europe for fourteen centuries prior. He called the “birth of modern science” a European rather than a scientific miracle because technologies from China and India triggered it, allowing Europe to escape the Dark Ages, by which he meant the “period immediately preceding the birth of modern science” during the two centuries 1500–1700.

So, there has been a lot of speculation about why science was not born in India, but the fact remains, it was not. It is true that European science benefited from the technical and mathematical inventions of the East, but it seems impossible to conclude that these inventions were responsible for the birth of modern science, i.e. the “mathematization of science.” Modern science is the application, as said, of quantities to natural processes. Both the East and the West had access to nature, but one culture applied mathematics and experimentation to seek an understanding of it and the other cultures did not. If mathematical inventions were responsible for a miracle, then why didn’t the culture that invented them experience the so-called miracle first? It seems unsatisfactory to claim that mathematics and technology triggered the birth of modern science in Europe when the real difference in the cultures was a mindset, a psychology, a fundamental way of viewing the universe and existence. Narasimha’s argument actually gives support to Jaki’s, that science was stillborn in other cultures and born from a Christian mindset.

The Hindus of old also had an animistic view of existence. The doctrine of the Atman represented, and still does represent, a perception of an eternal unity which underlies the phenomenon of nature called the Brahman. Atman is the Indian expression for “first principle,” that the individual self of man is found by laying hold of this ultimate self of the universe, the ultimate essences of all things. The Indians viewed the universe as an organism, an eternal Pantheistic Being, as did the Egyptians and Chinese.(Deussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, 85-86)

Indian writings defined the Brahman as a deep sleeper whose vital breath remains dormant, but issues forth on waking, and with his breaths all worlds, gods, and living creatures also awake and are called collectively the Atman. The pranâs (speech, eye, ear, touch) proceeded from the Atman. He was the “Soul of the Universe” which bred himself. His mouth, nostrils, eyes, and ears became distinct of his own doing. His skin and hair became the plants and trees, and his heart the moon. His semen became water and his navel exuded corruption. This world-soul is understood as an endless cycle of births and decays with no starting or ending points. Jaki compares it to an eternal “cosmic treadmill.” (Deussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, 85-86)

The Kaliyuga from Indian scripture measured four cycles of human history which were taken to be four ages of the demons characterized by ignorance, poverty, and disease. They should have ended around 300 B.C., but when a golden age did not come, the age of the yugas was recalculated to be 360 years so that, as Jaki interpreted it, their “credibility might be saved.” (The Savior of Science, 27) The longer scale meant a never-ending resignation to the age of evil.

Jaki also noted that, in stark contrast to the ancient skill in metallurgy and construction, it was reported by the World Bank in the year A.D. 2000 that only around forty percent of the 825,000 villages in India possessed paved roads to access essential services. For some reason, technology did not continue even though talent and social stability were not lacking and decimal counting, “possibly the greatest scientific discovery ever made,” was invented in ancient India. (The Savior of Science, 28)

As Jaki also showed in other cultures, where there was a pervading resignation to the “cosmic treadmill” or the eternal rebirth of the universe, there was no motivation to try to escape from it. Referencing the Hymns of the Rig-Veda, the Hymns of the Atharva-Veda, and Thirteen Principle Upanishads in Science and Creation and The Savior of Science, Jaki points out the prose of the eternal cosmic cycle. The Upanishads form the core of Indian philosophy and spiritual teaching, were composed between 800–500 B.C., and are still in use today. From the Svetasvatara Upanishad in the First Prapathaka, in the last few lines this resignation is evident:

"In this sort of cycle of existence what is the good of enjoyment of desires, when a man has fed on them there is seen repeatedly his return to earth? Be pleased to deliver me. In this cycle of existence I am like a frog in a waterless well." (Maitri Upanishad, Sanskrit Text with English Translation)

Jaki also quoted a twentieth-century explanation from Gandhi in 1938 about the absolute superiority of life with no technology. In this statement Gandhi echoed the philosophy and teaching of the Upanishad of ancient times:

"I believe that the civilization that India evolved is not to be beaten in the world. . . . India remains immovable and that is her glory. . . . Our ancestors dissuaded us from luxuries and pleasure. We have managed with the same kind of plough as existed thousands of years ago. . . We have had no system of life-corroding competition. . . . It was not that we did not know how to invent machinery, but our forefathers knew that, if we set our hearts after such things, we would become slaves and lose our moral fibre. They, therefore, after due deliberation decided that we should only do what we could with our hands and feet. . . . They were, therefore, satisfied with small villages. . . . They held the sovereigns of the earth to be inferior to the Rishis and the Fakirs. A nation with a constitution like this is fitter to teach others than to learn from others." (M. K. Gandhi, "What is True Civilization")

This is not to imply that there is nothing beautiful in labor and toil for the needs of life, but the implications of these ancient teachings for Indian science are also indisputable. There was a psychology not conducive to the birth of modern science even though the skill was apparent long ago. “Science,” Jaki wrote, “cannot arise, let alone gain sustained momentum, without an articulated longing for truth which in turn presupposes a confident approach to reality.” (Science and Creation, 19)

Sources:

• Stanley L. Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe(Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, Ltd, 1986), 7-19.
• Stanley L. Jaki, The Savior of Science (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000).
• Indian History: With Objective Questions and Historical Map, A-437 and A-117.
• Kantilya, Arthasastra (250 B.C.) online at Fordham University.
• S. L. Hora, “History of Science and Technology in India and South-East Asia,” Nature, 168 (1951), 64-65.
• Joseph Needham, Science and the Crossroads, Papers presented to the 2^nd International Congress of the History of Science and Technology (London: 1931), Foreword.
• Roddam Narasimha, “The Indian half of Needham’s question: some thoughts on axioms, models, algorithms, and computational positivism,” Interdisciplinary Science Reviews, Vol. 28, No. 1 (2003), 1-13.
• D. P. Agrawal and Lok Vigyan Kendra, “The Needham Question: Some Answers,” Indian Science.
• Paul Deussen, The Philosophy of the Upanishads, translated by Rev. A. S. Geden, M.A. (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1906, 1908), 85.
• “Rural Roads: A Lifeline for Villages in India,” The World Bank (New Delhi) World Bank website.
• Maitri Upanishad, Sanskrit Text with English Translation, edited and translated by Robert Ernest Hume (London: Oxford University Press, 1921), 413-414.
• M. K. Gandhi, A Dialogue between an Editor and a Reader, Hind Swaraj, or Indian Home Rule (1938) M. K. Gandhi website, "What is True Civilization."

 
 
(Image credit: Wikimedia)

NOTE: Today we're continuing our weekly series of essays by Dr. Stacy Trasancos on the "stillbirths" of science. They're based on Fr. Stanley L. Jaki's research into the theological history of science in the ancient cultures of Egypt, China, India, Babylon, Greece, and Arabia. See past articles here.

 
There is so much written about China’s rich and illustrious past that no case could ever be made—from the Shang Dynasty (1523–1028 B.C.) to the Ch’ing Dynasty (A.D. 1644–1912)—that there was no progress in civilization, art, or literature. Likewise, volumes have been written on the question of the history of science and Chinese civilization. In Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe and The Savior of Science (pages 46 and 35 respectively), Jaki referred to the extensive research of British biochemist Joseph Needham. In seven volumes comprised of twenty-seven books, Needham and his team of international collaborators reviewed the history of science and technology in China. The massive work was eventually published by the Cambridge University Press under the title Science and Civilisation in China; and the project, which began in 1954, continues to the present day.

A brief overview of the content of these volumes will demonstrate the extent of cultural development in China and the futility of ignoring such a rich history. Needham’s first volume (1954) is an introduction to the rest of the work. Volume Two (1956) covers the history of scientific thought in China, including the organic naturalism of the great Taoist school, the scientific philosophy of the Mohists and Logicians, and the quantitative materialism of the Legalists. Volume Three and the three-part Volume Four (1959–1971) addresses mathematics and the sciences of the heavens and earth, physics, mechanical engineering, civil engineering, and nautics. Volume Five (1985–1999) has thirteen parts: the first on paper and printing; the second through the fifth on spagyrical discovery and inventions including gold and immortality, cinnabar elixirs, synthetic insulin, apparatus, and physiological alchemy; the sixth and seventh on military technology from missiles and sieges to the “gunpowder epic;” the ninth on the textile industry while the eighth and tenth are still works in progress; the eleventh on ferrous metallurgy; the twelfth on ceramic technology; and the thirteenth on mining. Volume Six (1986–2000) deals with botany, agriculture, agroindustry, and forestry in the first three parts and fermentations, food science, and medicine in the fifth and sixth parts, while the fourth part of Volume Six is still in progress. Finally, Volume Seven (1998–2004) covers language and logic, and then gives the general conclusions and reflections. (See full list here.) The purpose of listing these volumes published over a span of six decades is to demonstrate that intensive work has been devoted to the history of science in China, and Jaki was aware of this. He acknowledged it in the development of the “stillbirths” argument.

In Science and Creation (pages 30-32) Jaki discussed how around 350 B.C., the astronomer Shih Shen drew up a catalogue of around 800 stars and how the manuscripts were stored in the Imperial Library. The ability to catalogue and store documents displayed great sophistication. Technological improvements were made in water works and the extension of the Great Wall, a massive achievement. During the three and a half centuries known as the age of the Warring States (480–220 B.C.), cultural growth continued. The Chinese invented the waterwheel, the wheelbarrow, and other devices that demonstrated continued technological development. Around the middle of the fourth century, Hu Hsi made observations that led him to discover the precession of equinoxes, although the Greek scholar Hipparchus is credited with discovering it centuries earlier.

The peak periods of Chinese culture spanned the Han, Sung, Thang, Yuan, and Ming periods (collectively 202 B.C.– A.D. 1644) and represented a length of time when scientific endeavor could have “received a decisive spark.” There were technological feats in which the Chinese were the “sole inventors” for a number of centuries. They invented the effective use of horses, the foot-stirrup and breast-strap harness. They discovered magnetic ore. They invented the revolutionary skill of paper-making, which led to the production of printed books. They invented the process of making gunpowder, the production of porcelain, and the development of water-driven mechanical clocks. They used magnets for travel and moveable clay types for printing.

The Chinese also, Jaki noted, developed algebra at a level compatible with the best in Europe around A.D. 1250. According to Francis Bacon, printing, gunpowder, and magnets were the factors that ushered in the age of science more than anything, but Jaki challenged Bacon’s assertion by noting that even with these developments the Chinese “remained hopelessly removed from the stage of sustained, systematic scientific research.”

The Chinese had rockets for centuries but did not investigate trajectories or free fall. Their ability to print books did not lead to a “major intellectual ferment.” Magnets were installed on their ships and they were the best navy in the world for the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, but they never circumnavigated the globe.

Historians have also noted that the “Industrial Revolution” did not originate in China, and that is of great significance for Jaki’s argument that science was “stillborn” in Chinese culture. Jaki cited a 1922 article in The International Journal of Ethics entitled “Why China Has No Science: An Interpretation of the History and Consequences of Chinese Philosophy." The author, Yu-Lan Fung, who contributed to Needham’s volumes, noted that the history of Europe and the history of China before the Renaissance are “on the same level,” by which he meant that they both progressed at about the same pace, albeit in different ways. After that time the pace differed: “China is still old while the Western countries are already new.” Fung asked, “What keeps China back?” He answered that it is because “she has no science . . . because according to her own standard of value she does not need any . . . China has not discovered the scientific method, because Chinese thought started from mind, and from one’s own mind.” If truth and knowledge are in the mind, separated from the external world, there is no need for scientific investigation beyond practical skill.

Fung contrasted the three major powers which competed to conquer the entire empire of China from 570 B.C. to about 275 B.C–Taoism, Moism, and Confucianism. Taoism taught a “return to nature” with nature being the natural state of all things, including the natural tendency of man toward vice. According to Taoism, “every kind of human virtue and social regulation is to them against nature.” Knowledge was considered to be of no use because the Tao is inside man, as the god of the pantheistic philosophy. Taoism did not require any questioning of a beginning and an end, about final purposes and goals, or about the controlling of the forces and patterns in the workings of the Yin and Yang. The cosmological passage from the Chuang Tzu demonstrated this mindset:

"Men who study the Tao do not follow on when these operations [properties belonging to things] end, nor try to search out how they began: - with this all discussion of them stops." Texts of Taoism, translated by J. Legge (New York: Julian Press, 1959), Book XXV, par. 11, 568-69; quoted in Jaki, Science and Creation, 30.

The key to success in Taoism was to merge into the rhythm of cosmic cycles.

The fundamental idea of Moism was “utility,” and virtue was seen as useful. Universal love was taught as a doctrine for the benefit of the country and people, and progress was the ideal of mutual help; anything that was incompatible with the increase of wealth and population was to be fought against. Confucius stood between the two, emphasizing discrimination in different situations. He taught that human nature is essentially good although men are not born perfect. To become perfect, the innate reason must be developed and lower desires “wholly taken away.” His concerns were ethical, not metaphysical. Therefore, Confucius taught that the individual should seek what is in himself and leave external things to their natural destiny.

In these competing theories of existence, the power that governs the universe is the omnipotent Tao for Taoism, the personified self-god in Moism, and Heavenly Reason according to Confucianism. Moism did have a notion of Heaven as personal and caring for humans, a monotheism of sorts, but its ethics were severed from this idea. As these powers competed over time, to put it far too concisely to do the history enough justice, they actually merged and philosophical investigation of “things” gave rise to two forms of Neo-Confucianism, one school that sought “things” externally and another that sought “things” as phenomena in the mind. In Medieval Europe the same ideas about “things” more or less existed too, but from there on, China and Europe diverged:

"In other words, Medieval Europe under Christianity tried to know God and prayed for His help; Greece tried, and Modern Europe is trying to know nature and to conquer, to control it; but China tried to know what is within ourselves, and to find there perpetual peace." (Fung, "Why China Has No Science")

So China did not have use for the scientific method because the religions sought what is in the mind separate from the external world. Fung concluded his paper with a call for mankind to become wiser and to find peace and happiness by turning attention to Chinese wisdom so that the “mind energy of the Chinese people of four thousand years will yet not have been spent in vain.” Even if modern science was not born in China, there were other aspects of the culture that were worthy of admiration.

In concluding this consideration of China’s history, it needs to be noted that other scholars concurred with Fung. In 1995, Justin Yifu Lin of Peking University published an essay titled “The Needham Puzzle: Why the Industrial Revolution Did Not Originate in China.” Lin noted from evidence documented in Needham’s work that “except for the past two or three centuries, China had a considerable lead over the Western world in most of the major areas of science and technology.” From an economic and social perspective, he considers why, despite early advances in science, technology, and institutions, China did not take the next step in the seventeenth century as Western Europe did.

Ultimately that answer depends on how the Chinese viewed the external world and whether it was created by God or was God itself. In believing that the world was God and was eternal, there was no need to question a beginning and an end or how everything came to be. Needham also acknowledged that it is a theological orientation of Chinese thought that can be singled out as the decisive factor that blocked the attitude conducive to developing a systematic, scientific investigation. (Science and Civilisation in China, 580-582) “There, according to Needham’s admission, all the early cultivators of science drew courage for their pioneering efforts from a belief in a personal and rational Creator.” (Jaki, Science and Creation, 40.)

For the purposes of Jaki’s argument, the similarity of the Egyptian and Chinese cultures bears emphasizing. Both were pantheistic, with some degree of monotheism but still a monotheism that held that the world was God, which is basically pantheism. Neither had a loving Creator who “ordered all things in measure, and number, and weight,” who made man in His image with intellect and free will, or who became Incarnate to redeem mankind. “In a universe without the voice of God there remains no persistent and compelling reason for man to search within nature for distinct voices of law and truth.” (Jaki, Science and Creation, 41.)

Sources:

• Stanley L. Jaki, Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating Universe (Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, Ltd, 1986).
• Stanley L. Jaki, The Savior of Science (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2000).
• Joseph Needham, Science and Civilisation in China: Volume 2, History of Scientific Thought (Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1956).
• Yu-Lan Fung, “Why China Has No Science: An Interpretation of the History and Consequences of Chinese Philosophy,” The International Journal of Ethics, 32 (1922), 237-263.
• Texts of Taoism, translated by J. Legge (New York: Julian Press, 1959).
• Justin Yifu Lin, “The Needham Puzzle: Why the Industrial Revolution Did Not Originate in China,” Economic Development and Cultural Change (University of Chicago Press, 1995), 269-292.

 
 
(Image credit: Wikimedia)

On March 12, 2008, the John Templeton Foundation made the announcement of the winner of its annual Templeton Prize, which honors achievements engaging the great questions of life and the universe. The $1.6 million prize for 2008 went to Michał Heller, a Polish cosmologist and professor in the faculty of philosophy at the Pontifical Academy of Theology in Cracow, Poland. What makes Heller additionally remarkable is that he is a Catholic priest.

The 72-year-old planned to spend the prize money to establish a research institute—named in honor of Nicholas Copernicus—that will seek to reconcile science and theology. Fr. Heller said:

"If we ask about the cause of the universe we should ask about the cause of mathematical laws. By doing so we are back in the great blueprint of God's thinking about the universe; the question on ultimate causality: Why is there something rather than nothing? When asking this question, we are not asking about a cause like all other causes. We are asking about the root of all possible causes. Science is but a collective effort of the human mind to read the mind of God from question marks out of which we and the world around us seem to be made."

As a priest-scientist, Fr. Heller is not unique. Rather, he stands in a long and great tradition of learned priests who were both scientists and men of faith. Some are well-known to history, such as Roger Bacon, the 13th-century Franciscan who stressed the concept of "laws of nature" and contributed to the development of mechanics, geography, and especially optics. Others are obscure. All, however, left a lasting legacy on their eras in learning, science, mathematics, and practical progress.

These priest-scientists affirm what Fr. Georges Lemaître, discoverer of the "Big Bang", robustly proclaimed in 1933: "There is no conflict between religion and science." What follows is a survey of a few of the many priests and scientists who have bettered our world over the centuries. The list does not pretend to be exhaustive, but it serves to undermine the long-perceived conflict between science and religion, evolution, and cosmology.

Fr. Robert Grosseteste (c. 1175-1253)

 
The Suffolk-born Englishman, Robert Grosseteste of Lincoln, grew up in a poor family but became arguably the most learned figure in England because of his unquenchable desire for knowledge, a deep faith, and personal humility. He was educated in theology and began teaching at Oxford, where he enjoyed an association with the recently arrived Franciscans and where he perhaps served as chancellor. Elected bishop of Lincoln in 1235, he was deeply concerned with reforming the Church in England. He renounced corrupt or unsuitable abbots, reduced ecclesiastical benefices, and authored a series of statutes to provide specific guidelines for the behavior of the clergy and the administration of dioceses.

His achievements as a Church leader, however, were eclipsed by his reputation as one of the most learned men of his age. He was a master of mathematics, optics, and science, foreshadowing the experimental methods of his pupil Roger Bacon. Historians of science claim that Robert was the founder of the scientific movement at Oxford University and so sparked a pursuit of excellence that has continued to today. Among a few of his achievements was a commentary on the Physics of Aristotle, a critique of the Julian calendar that anticipated the reform of the calendar under Pope Gregory XIII 300 years later, and treatises on optics, music, and mathematics. Such was his reputation for genius and knowledge of the natural world that he was also reputed in some unlearned circles to be a wizard and sorcerer.

Fr. Ignazio Danti (1536-1586)

 
One of the inheritors of the tradition of learning encouraged by Grosseteste was a relatively unknown Italian bishop, Ignazio Danti. The son of an artisan, he was born in Perugia and studied perhaps at the university there before joining the Dominicans in 1555. He went on to earn the patronage of the leading figures of his era, including Cosimo de'Medici in Florence and Popes St. Pius V and Gregory XIII. The latter pope named him bishop of Alatri, where he displayed great zeal for advancing the reform of the Church.

Much like Grosseteste, Danti enjoyed a wide-ranging set of interests, including astronomy, mathematics, optics, architecture, civil engineering, hydraulics, and cartography. He was especially renowned for his skills as an astronomer. In 1574, he made a set of important observations that found the equinox to be 11 days earlier than the calendar. He consequently played a role in the reform of the Julian Calendar under Gregory XIII.

But Danti left his real mark as a cartographer. Cosimo de'Medici commissioned him to prepare maps and a large terrestrial globe for his own collection. He had commissions from Pius V to map Perugia and from Gregory XIII to map the Papal States. His maps can still be seen today in massive murals in the Palazzo Vecchio in Florence and on the walls of La Galleria delle Carte Geografiche of the Belvedere Palace in the Vatican.

Finally, Danti perfected the rado latino, a surveying instrument, and he crafted designs for a canal across Italy that would link the Adriatic and Mediterranean through Florence.

Fr. Marin Mersenne (1588-1648)

 
The French priest Marin Mersenne began his long career at the recently established Jesuit School in La Flèche—the only school he could find that allowed poor students to attend. Among his fellow students was the eight-year-old René Descartes, who would become a friend. Mersenne entered the Order of the Minims in 1611 and was ordained a priest the next year. After theological studies, he became known in philosophical and theological circles for his fiery works against atheism and deism. History remembers him most, however, for his work in mathematics, especially the so-called Mersenne primes and his effort to find a formula that would represent all prime numbers.

In La vérité des sciences (Truth of the Sciences), he argued for the value of human reason. He corresponded with the foremost figures of his age, including Pierre Gassendi, René Descartes, Pierre de Fermat, Thomas Hobbes, and Blaise Pascal. He organized colloquia of scientists from around Europe to read their papers and exchange ideas. The gatherings became known as the Académie Parisiensis but were also nicknamed the Académie Mersenne, and the number of scientists whose careers were given direction by the colloquia is impossible to underestimate. In keeping with his commitment to science, he left instructions that his body be used for research.

Fr. Jean-Felix Picard (1620-1682)

 
A contemporary of Mersenne, the French Jesuit Jean-Felix Picard earned the title of founder of modern astronomy in France even as he labored as a priest. Born in La Flèche, where he studied at the Jesuit Collège Royal Henry-Le-Grand, he was fascinated from an early age with the heavens, and he gave his intellectual life to the cause of astronomy. Picard introduced new methods for watching the stars and improved and developed new scientific instruments.

Picard was the first person in the Enlightenment to provide an accurate measure of the size of the Earth through a survey conducted 1669-1670. His calculation of a terrestrial radius of 6328.9 km is off by only 0.44 percent, and his continued progress in instruments proved essential in the drafting of Isaac Newton's theory of universal gravitation. Picard also worked and corresponded with a vast number of scientists of the time, including Isaac Newton, Christian Huygens, and a great rival, Giovanni Cassini.

Deeply respected by his contemporaries but overshadowed by Galileo, Newton, and Cassini, Picard was a founding member of the French Academy in 1666. He was honored in 1935 by having a moon crater named after him. (A less-elevated honor was bestowed in 1987, when his name was used for the character Captain Jean-Luc Picard on the television show Star Trek: The Next Generation.)

Fr. Gregor Mendel (1822-1884)

 
Far better known than Picard, of course, is the Augustinian abbot Gregor Mendel, the father of modern genetics. Born in Austria to a peasant farmer family, he entered the Augustinian Order in 1843 and was ordained a priest four years later. Mendel was largely unheralded during his life and accomplished his phenomenal work in considerable obscurity while teaching natural science in a boy's high school in Austria. Only in his last years, in fact, was he named an abbot.

Mendel earned his place in science by working with simple pea pod plants. He loved to take walks around the monastery and noticed that some plants were radically different in their traits and growth patterns. As any high school student today can attest, Mendel spent years examining seven characteristics of the pea pod plants and determined the basic laws that govern the passage of traits within a species. Especially crucial was the discovery of dominant or recessive genes, a key to modern genetics and the study of dominant and recessive traits, genotype and phenotype, and the concept of heterozygous and homozygous. Sadly, Mendel was so ahead of his time that science did not recognize his contribution until early in the 20th century. Today, he is world-famous—and often resented by students who must do their own experiments based on his work.

Fr. Armand David (1826-1900)

 
Around the same time that Mendel was taking his walks around the monastery, the missionary Lazarist priest, zoologist, and botanist Armand David was at work halfway around the world, in China. A native of Bayonne, France, he entered the Congregation of the Mission in 1848 and was ordained a priest in 1862. Sent to the missions in Beijing, he served with distinction in the community. He found China a remarkable opportunity for exploring the natural sciences. Such were his finds in the areas of zoology, botany, geology, and paleontology that the French government asked him to send specimens of his finds back to Paris for further study. These samples, seen for the first time in the West, aroused such a great interest that Fr. David was commissioned by French scientists to explore China in the search for other new discoveries.

Upon his return to France in 1888, he gave a celebrated address in Paris at the International Scientific Congress of Catholics in which he documented his study of more than 60 species of animals and more than 60 species of birds, all of which had been previously unknown. Of particular interest were his "discovery" of the Giant Panda (unknown in Europe) and the Milu Deer, a species of deer subsequently called Père David's Deer (Elaphurus davidianus) in his honor.

Fr. Julius Nieuwland (1878-1936)

 
The Holy Cross priest Julius Nieuwland was concerned with practical solutions in his field of chemistry. The son of Belgian immigrants, Nieuwland grew up in South Bend, Indiana, and studied at the University of Notre Dame. Ordained a priest in 1903, he went on to graduate studies at The Catholic University of America, where he specialized in botany and chemistry.

Returning to Notre Dame in 1904, he served as a professor in botany and then chemistry, a post he held until his retirement in 1936. In the quiet halls of scientific study, he successfully polymerized acetylene into divinylacetylene. Elmer Bolton, the director of research at DuPont, used this basic research to achieve the development of neoprene. In effect, this humble priest was the inventor of the first synthetic rubber.

Embraced by the DuPont Company, the invention had a major impact on many industries and our daily lives. For example, neoprene is used for electrical cable insulation, telephone wiring, rug backings, and roofing. Fr. Nieuwland also nearly had a major impact on the history of college football when he tried, unsuccessfully, to convince the future coaching legend of Notre Dame, Knute Rockne, to be a chemist instead of a football coach. Not to neglect his botany, Nieuwland roamed throughout swamps and woods looking for suitable specimens for study, and he was famed for using a pistol to shoot them down from high branches. For his work in chemistry, not marksmanship, he was given the Morehead Medal for research in acetylene, the American Institute Medal, and the Nichols Medal, the highest honor of the American Chemical Society.

Fr. Georges Lemaître (1894-1966)

 
Fr. Georges Lemaître, a Belgian priest, physicist, and mathematician, first proposed the Big Bang Theory for the birth of the universe. Born in Charleroi, Belgium, he studied math and science at Cambridge University after ordination in 1923 and specialized in the then-most-current studies in astronomy and cosmology, especially Einstein's general theory of relativity.

The accepted idea in physics at the time was that the universe was essentially in a changeless state—a "Steady State." Where Einstein saw that the universe was actually moving—either shrinking or expanding—and devised the cosmological constant that maintained the stability of universe, Lemaître concluded that the universe was expanding. Not only that, Lemaître proposed that from this it could be concluded that all matter and energy were concentrated at one point. Hence: The universe had a beginning.

This theory, at first met with great skepticism, was termed rather sarcastically the "Big Bang." For his part, Lemaître elegantly described this beginning as "a day without yesterday." He presented his theory in January 1933 to a gathering of scientists in California, and at the end of his presentation, Einstein applauded and declared, "This is the most beautiful and satisfactory explanation of creation to which I have ever listened." Lemaître's ideas subsequently gained ground. Today, astrophysicists readily accept the Big Bang and the continuing expansion of the universe. For his labors, Lemaître was made a member of the Royal Academy of Belgium and a canon of the cathedral of Malines. In 1936, Pope Pius XI inducted him into the Pontifical Academy of Science.

Fr. Stanley Jaki (b. 1924)

 
Fathers Nieuwland and Lemaître made manifest that faith and science are not incompatible. The Benedictine priest Stanley Jaki has argued with great eloquence that science itself could develop only in a Christian culture. For his work, he earned the Templeton Prize and in 1990 was named to the Pontifical Academy of Science by Pope John Paul II. Born in Hungary, he earned doctorates in Systematic Theology and Nuclear Physics, is fluent in five languages, and has authored 30 books. A Distinguished Professor at Seton Hall University, Jaki's work in the history and philosophy of science has brought him a wide audience around the world. In a modern scientific world so steeped in Enlightenment philosophy and so opposed to a relationship with religion, Fr. Jaki's assertion that science and religion are consistent and that scientific analysis can shed light on both scientific and theological propositions is a bold one.

As Jaki contends, discoveries of nuclear physics and astronomy have given confirmation of an essential order within the universe. While it is true that our understanding of both fields is incomplete, the Christian perspective demonstrates that the order of the cosmos is entirely consistent with the biblical view of Creation.

Traveling in the footsteps of Lemaître, Jaki has tackled one of the greatest questions in science, cosmology, and has concluded that science permits us to gain insights into the events that followed the instant of creation but offers nothing about what happened before it, when matter itself was created from nothing. He thus boldly challenges the assertions of cosmologists and astrophysicists such as Stephen Hawking that the origins of the universe offer proof for the non-existence of God; rather, the very proposition cannot be proved scientifically because there is nothing to observe. At the same time, God's created order reflects a Creator who is totally rational and infinitely superior to our own way of thinking. Little wonder, then, that such a balanced and positive approach to the natural world that is found in authentic Christian teaching and culture permitted science to flourish.

Fr. Michal Heller (b. 1936)

 
The great cosmological questions are also the personal field of the Polish priest and physicist Michal Kazimierz Heller, a professor in Cracow, Poland, and a member also of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences since 1990. Fr. Heller is engaged in the highest regions of mathematics and astronomy. Currently, he is researching the singularity problem in general relativity and the use of non-commutative geometry in seeking the unification of general relativity and quantum mechanics. He also concerns himself with philosophy and the history of science and science and theology. In Heller's view, all of these different facets of science point to something truly important about the "blueprint" of Creation.

Other Notable Catholic Scientists

 
St. Bede, the Venerable (d. 735) An Anglo-Saxon priest, historian, biblical scholar, and one of the greatest of all chroniclers of the Middle Ages. Aside from his historical writings, he was the author of On Time and On the Reckoning of Time.

Pope Sylvester II (d. 1003) A pontiff and scientist who promoted mathematics and astronomy in the Church’s schools.

Hermannus Contractus (d. 1054) A monk and author of works on geometry, mathematics, and the astrolabe.

Pope John XXI (d. 1277) A pontiff and author of an influential work on medicine prior to his election.

St. Albertus Magnus (d. 1280) One of the greatest theologians in the history of the Church and the patron saint of scientists. He is called Universal Doctor.

Roger Bacon (d. 1294) An English Franciscan who helped to establish the laws of nature and wrote on geography, mechanics, and optics. He is honored as the "Amazing Doctor".

Theodoric of Freiberg (d. c. 1310) A member of the Dominicans best known for explaining the rainbow in On the Rainbow.

Thomas Bradwardine (d. 1349) English archbishop who helped advance the principles of mechanics. He is honored as the Profound Doctor.

Nicole Oresme (d. 1382) French philosopher, bishop of Lisieux, and mathematician. He wrote on economics, mathematics, and the natural sciences, and his studies with Jean Buridan of moving bodies foreshadowed the work of Leonardo da Vinci and Copernicus.

Nicholas of Cusa (d. 1464) A German theologian, humanist, mystic, expert in canon law, and a cardinal, he also made contributions to the field of mathematics by developing the concepts of the infinitesimal and of relative motion. His philosophical speculations also anticipated Copernicus’ heliocentric worldview.

Bl. Nicolas Steno (d. 1686) A convert from Lutheranism, he was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1987. He brought advances in the areas of anatomy, geology, and paleontology.

Bl. Francesco Faà di Bruno (d. 1888) An Italian priest and spiritual writer who made immense contributions to mathematics, including a famous formula. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1988.

 
 
Originally posted at Catholic Answers. Used with permission.
(Image credit: Evolution News)

Did you watch the big debate last night between Ken Ham and Bill Nye? It was an excellent exchange with good points made on both sides, but decidedly missing from the debate was the fuller and traditional Catholic view. Thus for the purpose of our dialogue here at Strange Notions, I'd like to explore the "third way" absent from last night's event.

How are Catholics taught to view the world? To quote the apologist Frank Sheed, in the very beginning of his book Theology and Sanity: “There is the intellect: its work is to know, to understand, to see: to see what? To see what’s there.” Ken Ham represented the young earth creationist view, arguing that historical science should be interpreted literally according to the English translation of the Bible. Bill Nye represented the “science guy” view, arguing that historical science should be interpreted according to the laws of nature that can be observed. Yet the Catholic view could summarily be described as natural realism.

The question under debate last night was, “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?” Let's compare the positions.

Ken Ham, Biblical Creationist

 
Ken Ham argued that terms must be defined correctly. He defined “science” as either observational or historical. The science that develops spacecraft, smoke detectors, and antibodies, for instance, is observational, based on experiments in the present. The science that deals with origins is historical. “Molecules to man” he said, is not about technology. No one was there to observe it.

He accused the secularists of imposing the “religion of naturalism” on kids when textbooks teach that “molecules to man” is scientific fact. But since the Bible teaches something else, evolution and creation are two opposing world views. His strongest point was that “observational science confirms creationism,” because if Biblical creation is true then we should expect to find evidence of intelligence, we should expect to find that animals produce offspring after their own kind, we should expect the human race to be one race, we should expect from the Tower of Babel for different groups to have different languages, and we should expect to find evidence of a young earth, and he furthered, we do. We do find that the world is ordered by laws of logic and laws of nature, we find that finches beget finches and dogs beget dogs, we find that the human race is one and that people have different languages, and he believes we find scientific evidence of a young earth. If kids were taught this, then they would accept the moral laws of the Bible too, such as those regarding marriage, abortion, euthanasia. The teaching of the “religion of naturalism” is responsible for moral decay in our culture. Ham wants children to be taught the right foundation, namely that they are special and made in the image of God.

Bill Nye, the Science Guy

 
Bill Nye, on the other hand, argued that scientists do not make the distinctions Ham makes, and that even most of the billions of people who are religious do not believe in a 6,000 year old earth. He mentioned the limestone and the fossils everywhere, millions of layers of ancient life. “How could those animals have lived their lives and formed these layers in only 6,000 years?” he asked.

He mentioned the snow-ice rods found in Greenland that contain 680,000 layers of packed ice, trapping ancient pockets of air, and the California bristlecone pines that are over 6,000 years old. Old Tjikko in Sweden? That tree is 9,550 years old. How could that be? Even more, the Grand Canyon features layers upon layers of ancient rock containing fossils of sea animals, trilobites, clams, oysters, and mammals, but without any of the “higher” animals mixed in with the “lower” ones. Nye challenged Ham to find one example anywhere in the world where all forms of animals were mixed together in the layers of rock. He argued that observational experience does not support the creation account.

“Here’s the thing,” Nye said, “what we want in science is an ability to predict, a natural law that is so obvious and well-understood that we can make predictions.” In the fossil record, we find a sequence of animals. Historically, when there were missing links and people wondered if there was a fossil that filled that gap. For example, after finding reptiles and amphibians people wondered if there was some animal in between that had characteristics of both. But then that which was predicted was indeed found.

Nye later argued that, “Ken Ham’s model doesn’t have prediction capability!” He claimed that kids were not being taught to appreciate observational science, but instead to believe an account in a book that could not be observed. Therefore, he argued, such teaching hinders education and produces future adults who cannot innovate new technology. He pointed out that scientists now can use a drug based on Rubidium to do heart imaging without having to cut open a patient. “There’s no place like that in Kentucky [where Ham’s Creation Museum is located] to get a degree to do this kind of medicine. I hope you Kentuckians find that troubling. You have to go out of state for that.” This, I think, was rhetorically powerful but probably his weakest point.

The Traditional Catholic View

 
There is another way to view this whole discussion, though, and it is how Catholic scholars have traditionally viewed the order in nature. I described it earlier as natural realism. It is a Biblical worldview, the same worldview of the early Christians and the same worldview of the Christian scholars in the Middle Ages when modern science was born.

Throughout the Old Testament, the naturalness of the universe, the predictability and order, the power of God as Creator and Lawmaker are emphasized: “The Lord...the God of hosts, the same who brightens day with the sun’s rays, night with the ordered service of moon and star, who can stir up the sea and set its waves a-roaring.” (Jeremiah 31:35) The prophets spoke of God as the Creator of the universe, the one who “measured out the waters in his open hand, heaven balanced on his palm, earth’s mass poised on three of his fingers” (Isaiah 40:12). This naturalness, by which I mean the rationality in reality, is densely featured in the Wisdom literature, in the references to God’s wisdom in the created world and its stability:
 

"The Lord made me [wisdom] his when first he went about his work, at the birth of time, before his creation began. Long, long ago, before earth was fashioned, I held my course.
 
Already I lay in the womb, when the depths were not yet in being, when no springs of water had yet broken; when I was born, the mountains had not yet sunk on their firm foundations, and there were no hills; not yet had he made the earth, or the rivers, or the solid framework of the world." (Proverbs 8:22-26)

 
The Old Testament is the story of the unity between cosmic and human history, describing how the Maker of the World is also the Shepherd of His People.
 

"Sure knowledge he has imparted to me of all that is;
how the world is ordered, what influence have the elements,
how the months have their beginning, their middle, and their ending,
how the sun’s course alters and the seasons revolve,
how the years have their cycles, the stars their places.
 
To every living thing its own breed, to every beast its own moods;
the winds rage, and men think deep thoughts;
the plants keep their several kinds, and each root has its own virtue;
all the mysteries and all the surprises of nature were made known to me;
wisdom herself taught me, that is the designer of them all." (Wisdom 7:17-21)

 
This naturalistic mindset was present in the Old Testament, as well as in the New, and it thrived among the early Christians. For instance, Athenagoras in the second century noted that “neither is...it reasonable that matter should be older than God; for the efficient cause must of necessity exist before the things that are made.” Irenaeus, also in the second century, emphasized that faith in the Creator of all was the basis of Christian belief. Clement urged in his Exhortation to the Greeks a confident attitude toward nature, a view of the world created by a rational Creator:
 

"How great is the power of God! His mere will is creation; for God alone created, since He alone is truly God. By a bare wish His work is done, and the world’s existence follows upon a single act of His will."

 
St. Augustine in the fourth century showed an appreciation for quantitative relationships. His view was that knowledge of the quantitative exactness of the natural world, including the cosmos, could not help much in understanding the biblical message. Augustine also rejected any biblical interpretation which denied or ignored the established conclusions of natural studies. He was explicit on this point. Read this with the Ham and Nye debate in mind:
 

"It is often the case that a non-Christian happens to know something with absolute certainty and through experimental evidence about the earth, sky, and other elements of this world, about the motion, rotation, and even about the size and distances of stars, about certain defects [eclipses] of the sun and moon, about the cycles of years and epochs, about the nature of animals, fruits, stones, and the like. It is, therefore, very deplorable and harmful, and to be avoided at any cost that he should hear a Christian to give, so to speak, a “Christian account” of these topics in such a way that he could hardly hold his laughter on seeing, as the saying goes, the error rise sky-high." (Sancti Aureli Augustini De Genesi ad litteram libri duodecim, in Corpus Scriptorum Ecclesiasticorum Latinoram, Volume XXVIII, Section III, Part 1.)

 
Augustine realized that when statements of the Bible conflicted with hypotheses of the workings of nature, and when reason and observation provided no clear solution and decisive evidence, nor did Scripture seem to be explicitly literal, then the matter was open to further inquiry. Whenever scientific reasoning seemed to settle a matter, however, he urged that Scripture would have to be reinterpreted. When it could not be settled, he said that questions which “require much subtle and laborious reasoning to perceive which the actual case” he had no time for because “it is not needed by those whom [he wished] to instruct for their own salvation and for the benefit of the Church.” In other words, he knew that salvation did not come from knowledge of the natural world.

This is to show that, traditionally, Christians have not rejected reason and observation in favor of a literal Biblical interpretation. They had a natural view of the cosmos and sought to understand it as far as reason could go. It seems, in other words, they would have rejected Ken Ham’s view.

The Catholic scholars in the Middle Ages, when modern science was born, continued this worldview, guided by faith in a rational Creator. They rejected conclusions drawn beyond observations that contradicted the Christian Creed, such as pantheism and animism, but whatever they observed and measured, they viewed it all as a work of Creation and asked questions about how these created things worked. This is covered in much more detail in my book, Science Was Born of Christianity: The Teaching of Fr. Stanley L. Jaki. Jaki's writings, of course, cover this in even more detail. So rather than belabor the point, I will move on.

Even into the twentieth century, this view has been maintained. In 1909, the Pontifical Biblical Commission issued a document, Concerning the historical nature of the first three chapters of Genesis. The decisions are summarized below, taken and highlighted from Ludwig Ott’s Fundamentals of Catholic Dogma.
 

"a) The first three Chapters of Genesis contain narratives of real events, no myths, no mere allegories or symbols of religious truths, no legends.
 
b) In regard to those facts, which touch the foundations of the Christian religion, the literal historical sense is to be adhered to. Such facts are, inter alia, the creation of all things by God in the beginning of time, and the special creation of humanity.
 
c) It is not necessary to understand all individual words and sentences in the literal sense. Passages which are variously interpreted by the Fathers and by theologians, may be interpreted according to one’s own judgment with the reservation, however, that one submits one’s judgment to the decision of the Church, and to the dictates of the Faith.
 
d) As the Sacred Writer had not the intention of representing with scientific accuracy the intrinsic constitution of things, and the sequence of the works of creation but of communicating knowledge in a popular way suitable to the idiom and to the pre-scientific development of his time, the account is not to be regarded or measured as if it were couched in language which is strictly scientific.
 
e) The word “day” need not be taken in the literal sense of a natural day of 24 hours, but can also be understood in the improper sense of a longer space of time."

How Does "Natural Realism" Fit Into the Debate?

 
The Catholic view is, as Frank Sheed said, to see “what’s there.” It is an open-minded, curious, and confident view that science, the application of mathematics to objects, can reveal the laws of nature—and it is a humble view that admits those laws are profound and not fully known. The goal is to reconcile faith and science, but as long as our knowledge is incomplete, then it is acceptable to clarify where the incongruities seem to be with an attitude toward reconciliation.

If there is an apparent conflict, it is the result of partial knowledge, not actual conflict. We must keep searching.

So what's the answer to the debate question, “Is creation a viable model of origins in today’s modern scientific era?” The answer is yes, if creation is taken to be "creation of all things by God" as understood by the Old Testament and Christian authors. Also, the answer is yes so long as it is understood that man, as a rational creature made in the image of God, is capable of discovery, but is also a discursive creature who learns in steps, and therefore does not possess omniscience.

This attitude seems to be missing in both Ken Ham’s and Bill Nye’s arguments. Perhaps there is some truth to both of their arguments, and perhaps some error. The fuller and balanced Catholic view admits this and says:

“Keep going, keep studying, keep researching, keep debating. Teach kids science in science class and religion in religion class. Instruct kids in the virtues, to will to do good an to avoid vice. Encourage kids to use their intellects, to think and learn, to discover and innovate because they were made for it. Teach them to pervade all willing and learning with a confidence in a Creator who ‘ordered all things by measure, number, and weight’ (Wisdom 11:20), a God who holds everything in existence and interacts in the history of mankind in the same manner as He rules the cosmos. For that is your origin.”
 
 
(Image credit: Chicago Now)