Devout Catholics who revolutionized science

[Moscati]

Here are a few more that I don’t believe were mentioned:

Henri Becquerel - physicist, co-discoverer of radioactivity
Erwin Schroedinger - physicist, quantum mechanics, wave equation
Pierre de Chardin - Jesuit priest and paleontologist (Peking Man)
Antoine Lavoisier - father of modern chemistry
Agustin Fresnel - optics, the fresnel lens
Agustinde Coulomb - physicist, coulomb’s law

Yppop

I wouldn’t put Schrodinger on a list of devout Catholics. His father was Catholic, true, but he had a lifelong fascination with Hindu spirituality, and an open marriage. He invited someone to be his assistant because he was in love the other man’s wife, and had a child with her, all with the full knowledge and consent of his own wife.

 

[Abu]

yppop
Here are a few more that I don’t believe were mentioned:
Pierre de Chardin - Jesuit priest and paleontologist (Peking Man)

In no sense a scientist much less a great one, the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, are under a Monitum from Rome. Nobel prize winner Sir Peter Medawar wrote: “Teilhard practised an intellectually unexacting kind of science, in which he achieved a moderate proficiency. He has no grasp of what makes a logical argument or what makes for proof. He does not even preserve the common decencies of scientific writing, though his book is professedly a scientific treatise.” [Review of *The Phenomenon of Man , MInd, Vol 70 (1961), p 105].

 

[yppop]

In no sense a scientist much less a great one, the works of Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, are under a Monitum from Rome. Nobel prize winner Sir Peter Medawar wrote: “Teilhard practised an intellectually unexacting kind of science, in which he achieved a moderate proficiency. He has no grasp of what makes a logical argument or what makes for proof. He does not even preserve the common decencies of scientific writing, though his book is professedly a scientific treatise.” [Review of *The Phenomenon of Man

, MInd, Vol 70 (1961), p 105].

Abu

The Phenomenon of Man is not a scientific treatise, never was, never will be. I can’t believe anyone would quote a non-believing rationalist like Peter Medawar in order to down play Teilhard’s reputation as a scientist. If Medawar’s quote was referring to the * Phenomenon of Man *, he certainly didn’t read the book I read. I read it as a philosophy that addressed the ground of reality; it transcends science.

Here is why I put him on the list of Catholic scientists: Teilhard was a reputable paleontologist. In addition, he lectured in science at the Jesuit College in Cairo, became professor of geology at the Catholic Institute in Paris, and studied at the Institute of Human Paleontology at the Museum of Natural History in Paris. In 1922 he obtained his doctorate and a year later left France on a paleontological expedition to China, where he stayed until 1946 and was instrumental in the discovery of the Peking Man. Okay so, Medawar won a Nobel Prize, but then again so did Al Gore. So much for the value of that award. There is no denying that Teilhard was a scientist.

As for being devout:Teilhard had his detractors in the hierarchy especially in his own Jesuit order, but I would match his devotion and devoutness as a Catholic with any of those that were responsible for the Monitum. Pope Benedict has mentioned Teilhard in a positive way on several occasions. The criticism of Teilhard rested on personal interpretations; I have never found a specific reason given for the Monitum. But at any rate whatever the beef was it surely pales in respect to what is being currently taught in many “Catholic” Universities. Consequently, even though Rome issued a Monetum warning about possible deviation from Catholic teaching, Teilhard never published his work. It was published posthumously after he died. So you cannot say he wasn’t devout; he was scrupulously obedient.

Here is one of my favorite Teilhardian quotes:

“It is impossible to deny that, deep within ourselves, an ‘interior’ appears at the heart of beings, as it were seen through a rent. This is enough to ensure that, in one degree or another, this ‘interior’ should obtrude itself as existing everywhere in nature from all time. Since, the stuff of the universe has an inner aspect at one point of itself, there is neccessarily a double aspect to its structure, that is to say in every region of space and time–in the same way, for instance, as it is granular: co-extensive with their Without, there is a Within to things".

What do you think he means?

Yppop

 

[yppop]

I wouldn’t put Schrodinger on a list of devout Catholics. His father was Catholic, true, but he had a lifelong fascination with Hindu spirituality, and an open marriage. He invited someone to be his assistant because he was in love the other man’s wife, and had a child with her, all with the full knowledge and consent of his own wife.

And which of his transgressions denies his Catholicisms. Ever hear of the icons of the Catholic Church named Kennedy?

Judge not that you may be judged.

But you want to take him off the silly list go right ahead.

Yppop

 

[Abu]

Moscati
You are right. We are commanded to judge everything against truth, actions, writing, speech – by Jesus and His apostles in the NT. The evidence of Christ’s Church being a lynchpin of scientific progress should not be muddied by those portrayed as Catholic scientists but who are anything but.

On Teilhard de Chardin and science:
“Science, philosophy, and theology were called in to make the truth of what he had “seen” credible to other people. But they were not the path to it.” (The Catholic Church And The Counter-Faith, Philip Trower, Family Publications, 2006, p 144). This is Teilhard’s fetish: to use everything to make his own “truth” – the new religion – based on his conjectures.

Based on further peer assessments Teilhard was found to have grave errors in his religious writings by prominent theologian Fr Philip of the Trinty O.D.C., one of the consultors of Vatican II, and Professors Bounoure and Vernet of France “have shown that he has no claim to be called a great scientist, or even to be called a scientist at all, but that he should rather be classified among the theosophists.” [Fr Patrick OÇonnell, B.D., *Original Sin in the Light of Modern Science, 1973, p 46].

Teilhard dreamed up two “energies” he called tangential and radial – the latter he conjectured has consciousness for its evolutionary course which supposedly caused the formation of more complex molecules – his mechanism for evolution. Teilhard’s God has existence only in matter without which He could not exist. Rubbish? Yes, but his fantasy.

In Human Energy he wrote: “One is inseparable from the other; one is never without the other;…No spirit (not even God within the limits of our expedience) exists, nor could structurally exist without an associated multiple, any more than a centre without its circle or circumference. In a concrete sense there is not matter and spirit. All that exists is matter becoming spirit.
So much matter is needed for so much spirit.” (1969, p 57, 162).

If we follow his religion we won’t know anything – about the Son of God and His Church, nor about real science. It’s so much easier to say, as many do, “we don’t really know”, it could be this or it could be that, and keep going around in circles.

Dietrich von Hildebrand, arguably one of the greatest Catholic philosophers of the twentieth century. In “Teilhard de Chardin: A False Prophet” (an appendix to his book, Trojan Horse in the City of God) 5 he wrote: “For one thing, every careful thinker knows that a reconciliation of science and the Christian faith has never been needed, because true science (in contradistinction to false philosophies disguised in scientific garments) can never be incompatible with the Christian faith.”
[See: LT79 - POSITIVISM: THE FATHER OF NATURALISM ]

Dr Dietrich von Hildebrand wrote also: “I do not know of another thinker who so artfully jumps from one position to a contradictory one, without being disturbed by the jump or even noticing it.” (Op. cit. p 229)

 

[Moscati]

And which of his transgressions denies his Catholicisms. Ever hear of the icons of the Catholic Church named Kennedy?

Judge not that you may be judged.

But you want to take him off the silly list go right ahead.

Yppop

I didn’t say he wasn’t a Catholic. He was, by virtue of his baptism, assuming he was given one.

But he wasn’t a devout Catholic. “Devout” generally means one who is committed to one’s faith. Schroedinger wasn’t at all committed to Catholicism. That was my point.