Mendel and the Church

[billcu1]

But genetics and molecular biology is a relatively young science. So it sounds like Mendel didn’t give the church any reason for heresy or disagreements. He didn’t question scripture. Galileo did.

 

[HelenRose]

A) Evolution is a disallowed topic, so tread lightly.

B). The Catholic Church never involved itself in the anti-evolution debate anyhow.

ICXC NIKA

 

[billcu1]

I admittedly know little about Mendel, other than what I have read in passing, but FWIW, here’s a short summary by Mike Flynn:

People sometimes wonder where Mendel found the time to do all this, considering his monastic responsiblities. I have even seen it alleged that the abbot shut him down, a nice example of “model-based history”*. But the answer is easy. His research was one of his monastic responsibilities. The monastery had been conducting hybridization research even before Mendel arrived. The Augustinians freed up his time for the research, allocated large plots of land for his research, and built a greenhouse where he could establish a control group for his studies. The Order did not sorta kinda “give Mendel a research grant” to pursue his personal hobby as some historically ill-informed have grudgingly allowed: The research was part and parcel of the Order’s program. Mendel himself had trained as a physicist, not a biologist, so this would not likely have been his own personal choice. Mendel was simply doing the scientific research that his Order asked him to do.**

Mendel’s results were published in the* Proceedings of the Natural History Society of Brünn* in 1866. No-one noticed. Over the next 35 years, his work was cited… three times! Oh well. In the early 1900s, Mendel’s work was rediscovered by Correns, deVries, and others, and developed into an entirely new discipline within biology – genetics.

*model-based history. This is where one starts with an idee fixe and deduces “what must have happened” in the light of that prior assumption. This dispenses with the laborious requirement for actual empirical evidence.

** Oddly, Mendel’s work and the support from his Order are seldom mentioned during debates about church-science relationships. See first note (*).

tofspot.blogspot.com/2011/10/de-evolutione-evolutionis.html

As for Galileo, from the same author quoted above:

The Great Ptolemaic Smackdown

I’m glad the work was done. In hindsight much has been contributed to science. I remember Mendelian inheritance and punnet squares and it’s logical and makes sense. But ths might have became “Eugenics” before genetics.

 

[1ke]

I have in reading genetics always wondered if Gregor Mendel was considered a heretic or in any way advised by the church to repent.

No.

In his day and even earlier science was of course the work of the devil as was any thinking seen independent of the church.

This is categorically false.

I think research on the history of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and its predecessor institutions dating back to the 1600s (200 years before Mendel) is in order.

I know there was a **ishop [sic] that was an alchemist. **

Do you have a name of this alleged alchemist?
billcu1;14086998:

And of course the name “Basil Valentine” was probably a pen name for a believed monk.

A) That is not in any way substantiated
B) If it was, then so what?

Would anyone hapene to know anything about Mendel and the church ?

Nothing to know. I don’t know where you get your information, but you need to seriously rethink the credibility of your sources and what you “know” to be true.

 

[billcu1]

No.

This is categorically false.

I think research on the history of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, and its predecessor institutions dating back to the 1600s (200 years before Mendel) is in order.

Do you have a name of this alleged alchemist?

A) That is not in any way substantiated
B) If it was, then so what?

Nothing to know. I don’t know where you get your information, but you need to seriously rethink the credibility of your sources and what you “know” to be true.

Well it’s not really a secret. One good science deserves another I guess.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Albertus_Magnus

I personally don’t like the “Magnus” because it reminds of “Simony”. Which is of course sin.

 

[1ke]

Well it’s not really a secret. One good science deserves another I guess.

Stories and facts are two different things. You have not presented facts. Even this article you link to indicates that stories fabricated after his death attributed things to him that have no basis in facts contemporary to him. It does not substantiate your claim.

So, no, you have no basis for the statement you made. You do not “know” there was a “bishop who was an alchemist”.

 

[1ke]

I suggest the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Maybe you are confused because the ancient word from which the English word “chemistry” is derived (alchimia) is similar to the word “alchemy”. Chemistry and alchemy are not the same thing.

newadvent.org/cathen/01264a.htm

 

[billcu1]

I suggest the Catholic Encyclopedia.

Maybe you are confused because the ancient word from which the English word “chemistry” is derived (alchimia) is similar to the word “alchemy”. Chemistry and alchemy are not the same thing.

newadvent.org/cathen/01264a.htm

No, not by a long shot And what your quoted article says about alchemy is by no means, what alchemy is really about.