List of Roman Catholic cleric–scientists

God as Architect/Geometer, from the frontispiece of French Codex Vindobonensis 2554, ca. 1250.

Many Roman Catholic clerics throughout history have made significant contributions to science. These cleric-scientists include such illustrious names as Nicolaus Copernicus, Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaître, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Roger Joseph Boscovich, Marin Mersenne, Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan, Robert Grosseteste, Christopher Clavius, Nicolas Steno, Athanasius Kircher, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, William of Ockham, and many others. Hundreds of others have made important contributions to science from the Middle Ages through the present day.

The Church has also produced thousands of lay scientists and mathematicians, many of whom were the intellectual giants of their day. These scientists include Galileo Galilei, Rene Descartes, Louis Pasteur, Blaise Pascal, André-Marie Ampère, Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, Pierre de Fermat, Antoine Laurent Lavoisier, Alessandro Volta, Augustin-Louis Cauchy, Pierre Duhem, Jean-Baptiste Dumas, Georgius Agricola and countless others.

The Jesuits in particular have made numerous significant contributions to the development of science. For example, the Jesuits have dedicated significant study to earthquakes, and seismology has come to be known as "the Jesuit science."[1] This, however, is only one of many significant contributions. The Jesuits have been described as "the single most important contributor to experimental physics in the seventeenth century."[2] According to Jonathan Wright in his book God's Soldiers, by the eighteenth century the Jesuits had

contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter’s surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn’s rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon effected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light. Star maps of the southern hemisphere, symbolic logic, flood-control measures on the Po and Adige rivers, introducing plus and minus signs into Italian mathematics – all were typical Jesuit achievements, and scientists as influential as Fermat, Huygens, Leibniz and Newton were not alone in counting Jesuits among their most prized correspondents.[3]

The contributions of Roman Catholic clerics to the study of astronomy are also remarkable. J.L. Heilbron in his book The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories writes that "The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial aid and support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions."[4] The fact that thirty-five craters on the moon are named for Jesuit scientists and mathematicians[5] shows the Church's commitment to astronomy.

The Church's commitment to scientific studies continues to this day. The Pontifical Academy of Sciences was founded in 1936 by Pope Pius XI. Its aim is to promote the progress of the mathematical, physical and natural sciences and the study of related epistemological problems. The academy holds a membership roster of the most respected names in 20th century science, many of them Nobel laureates. Also worth noting is the Vatican Observatory, which is an astronomical research and educational institution supported by the Holy See.

The cleric-scientists

Nicolaus Copernicus
Roger Bacon's circular diagrams relating to the scientific study of optics
Monsignor Georges Lemaître, priest and scientist
Gregor Mendel, Augustinian monk and geneticist
Sacrobosco's De sphaera mundi
Marin Mersenne
Pierre Gassendi
William of Ockham
Illustration from Steno's 1667 paper comparing the teeth of a shark head with a fossil tooth
Nicole Oresme
Albertus Magnus
Christopher Clavius
First page of Boscovich's Theoria Philosophiæ Naturalis
Map of the Far East by Matteo Ricci in 1602
Nicolas of Cusa
Statue of Roger Bacon in the Oxford University Museum
Nicolas Steno
machina meteorologic invented by Václav Prokop Diviš worked like lightning rod
Athanasius Kircher
Medieval depiction of a spherical earth
Roger Boscovich
Robert Grosseteste

See also

References

  1. ^ Woods 2005, p. [page needed].
  2. ^ Lindberg & Numbers 1986, p. [page needed].
  3. ^ Wright 2004, p. [page needed].
  4. ^ Heilbron 1999, p. [page needed].
  5. ^ Woods 2005, p. [page needed].
  6. ^ Woods 2005, p. [page needed].
  7. ^ Woods 2005, p. [page needed].
  8. ^ Walsh 2007, p. [page needed].
Citations
  • Heilbron, J. L. (1999). The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. 
  • Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L., eds. (1986). God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science. Berkeley: University of California Press. 
  • Walsh, James J. (2007). Catholic Churchmen in Science: Sketches of the Lives of Catholic Ecclesiastics Who Were among the Great Founders in Science. Kessinger. ISBN 978-0-548-53218-8. 
  • Woods, Thomas E. (2005). How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Washington, DC: Regnery. 
  • Wright, Jonathan (2004). God's Soldiers: Adventure, Politics, intrigue and Power: A History of the Jesuits. London: HarperCollins. 

Further reading

  • Barr, Stephen M. Modern Physics and Ancient Faith. Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame, 2006.
  • Broad, William J. "How the Church aided 'Heretical' Astronomy," New York Times, October 19, 1999.
  • Feingold, Mordechai, ed. Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters. Cambridge: MIT Press, 2002.
  • Gilson, Etienne, Reason and Revelation in the Middle Ages. New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1970.
  • Grant, Edward. The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional, and Intellectual Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.
  • Grant, Edward. God and Reason in the Middle Ages. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001.
  • Hannam, James. The Genesis of Science: How the Christian Middle Ages Launched the Scientific Revolution. Washington, DC: Regnery, 2011.
  • Horn, Stephan Otto, ed. Creation and Evolution: A Conference with Pope Benedict XVI in Castel Gandolfo. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius, 2008.
  • Jaki, Stanley. The Savior of Science. Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 2000.
  • Jaki, Stanley. Science and Creation: From Eternal Cycles to an Oscillating University. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic Press, 1986.
  • Lindberg, David C. The Beginnings of Western Science. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992.
  • MacDonnell, Joseph E. Jesuit Geometers. St. Louis: Institute of Jesuit Sources, 1989.
  • Schönborn, Christoph Cardinal. Chance or Purpose?: Creation, Evolution, and a Rational Faith. San Francisco: Ignatius, 2007.
  • Spitzer, Robert J. New Proofs for the Existence of God: Contributions of Contemporary Physics and Philosophy. Grand Rapids: Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company, 2010.
  • Walsh, James J. The Popes and Science. New York: Fordham University Press, 1911.

External links