Science and Catholicism
It has always puzzled me why science and religion are considered dichotomous. They both seek the very same thing: the truth. This is why they continually corroborate one another. Please see the "Issues" page for examples concerning Evolution, Stem Cell Research, and Human Life.
Be proud Catholic Scientists! You are part of a great tradition.
Modern science was largely developed in the context of "the university", a unique institution that was created in medieval Catholic Europe. Gatherings of scholars (largely Catholic clerics), first at Bologna, followed by Paris, Oxford, Salamanca, Cambridge and others, were given special Papal protection from secular authorities, giving rise to what we call "academic freedom". The universities allowed intellectual and scholastic development over generations, instead of just the lifetime of single scholars.
The first recorded formal scientific experiment using what we would recognize as the scientific method was performed by Theodoric of Freiberg, exploring the cause of rainbows. Theordoric was a Dominican monk, theologian and physicist living 1250-1310 A.D. Jean-Baptiste Carnoy (1836-1899), founder of Cell Biology, was a Belgium Catholic priest. He invented a wide range of biological fixatives, conducted pioneering studies of cell structure, and founded one of the first cytology journals "La Cellule". My personal favorite: Gregor Mendel: Father of Genetics, Augustinian monk. He trained in mathematics and physics at the University of Vienna, and served as an assistant to Doppler prior to returning to his abbey at Brno. Jerome Lejeune. French Catholic geneticist and pediatrician. Discoverer of "trisomy 21", cause of Down's Syndrome. Early pioneer of medical cytogenetics. Declared a "Servant of God", the cause for canonization of Lejeune was opened in 2007. For more information about these and other Catholic scientists, check out this Catholic Scientific Tradition Weblist. |
More Sources
Pontifical Academy of Sciences This is just the beginning of a list I am compiling of Nobel prize-winning Catholic Scientists: Bertram Brockhouse: Nobel prize in Physics 1994 John Polanyi: Nobel prize in Chemistry 1986 |