In the world we live in, scientists are increasingly heard. They not only asks for an explanation of recent findings, but also a response scenarios on future of our planet, social trends, strategic choices to be made. It is not uncommon in interviews with a Nobel Prize for physics or chemistry, the person is called to answer questions of bioethics, sociology, religion. The white coat and a blackboard full of formulas seem the most appropriate background for consistently reliable and authoritative answers. No matter what your field of study and research is sometimes far from the hottest topics discussed today: are scientists, and this provides them to see farther, to guide such new philosophers, the choices of mankind. At least that's the common sentiment. So the role of the scientist is now perceived by the majority. And if scientists talk about religion? Then it gets interesting and you are willing, even in this important field, to listen to their conclusions.
Twenty years ago, the Agnelli Foundation in Turin fund a major research, published under the title "Values, Science, Transcendence" by Italian researchers to have their say on issues of political, ethical and religious. Over the past decades have followed a lot of research of this kind, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, resulted in books published by prestigious publishing houses or presented in international scientific journals. The result is more or less similar in all polls: the impact of religion in anyone involved in scientific research is not so different from the rest of the population mortality.
The view that the general public has about the religiosity of scientists is sometimes contradictory, because they are not documented. In the case of an emblematic character as Albert Einstein For example, I happened to listen to different opinions. Who was firmly convinced that his "theory of relativity had been confirmed the need to maintain a relativist, not dogmatic in matters of ethical or moral, to those who employed phrases and aphorisms to show his sincere faith and Jewish sometimes even Christian, who called for comments from as an example of a scientist who had been ousted any reference to God from the description of the universe to readers who wanted to illustrate a pantheism without discounts. Apart from the character in question (who was really interested to know what Einstein thought of God can read the same name on the voice of Thomas Torrance Dictionary Interdisciplinary Science and Faith), is a fact that most people have of the scientists' Image of little men accustomed to things spiritual, accustomed as they are to study what you touch and measure. We have also recently heard the bizarre view that a declaration of atheism would be a prerequisite for doing good research. The large media given a few personality acts as an amplifier, and that's it: scientists are atheists and who really wants to approach scientific research must refrain from any religious belief, because irrational (some, kind, perhaps it will indicate the precise location in a lobe brain, but only to assert its inferiority compared to the much larger areas dedicated to rational argument, and therefore scientific).
If this is indeed the question arises as to which community, if not a scientific one, belonged characters like Pierre Duhem , James Clerk Maxwell , Augustin Cauchy, Max Planck , Angelo Secchi, Gregor Mendel, Antonio Stoppani, Henri Poincaré, Guglielmo Marconi, George Lemaître , Florenskij , Jerome Lejeune, Wernher von Braun , Louis Pasteur , Theodosius Dobzhanski , Abdus Salam , Charles Babbage, or to be close to the Italian context recently, scientists such as Enrico Medi , Luigi Fantappié, Ennio de Giorgi or Giovanni Prodi, a short list only representative concerns that people no longer living, and the not too distant. Go back in time, we note in passing, does not make sense, since atheism is a recent phenomenon and as the religious context very familiar to almost all men of science who lived before the nineteenth century. Indeed, inspection the monumental Dictionary of Scientific Biographies (less than 16 volumes), shows that until the end of 1700 one third of the scientists was represented by ordained ministers of Christian Churches. Although the figures of the twenty-first century are no longer such, a researcher claimed today that religious faith is incompatible with the scientific work should deal with 50% of his colleagues who, according to the study published a few months ago in Oxford by Elaine Ecklund , Is belonging to a religion, which should be added perhaps even 20% of researchers who qualify believers in the Absolute, certainly as a whole far greater than 30% of those who qualify agnostics or atheists (the two attributes that also deserve to be differentiated).
Even a character like Charles Robert Darwin , which many mistakenly consider one of the founding fathers of materialism, did not want to ever qualify as an atheist. In his autobiography (the one edited by his granddaughter Nora Barlow, restores the excised references to God from an early autobiography, published after the death of naturalist) or in the last year sent letters to friends and journalists who questioned him about his faith, the discoverer of natural selection is considered theist, believing in a First Cause (deist would say more precisely) and when it applies to himself the title of agnostic agnosticism refers to a science ("we can never know the source of ' universe, "he says) and not philosophical.
To purchase a more faithful to reality, scientists in the field of faith there is no better way to approach to their products (often auto-biography, as in the case of Planck) or their rates of philosophical reflection on science and philosophy or science and society, usually written toward the end of their career, usually present in all "Large", by Ludwig Boltzmann to Henri Poincaré, Max Planck Institute for to Werner Heisenberg, Richard Feynman by to John Eccles. When we're not in front of a church membership, expressed in numerous cases, all of them there is at least the clear perception that the scientific method does not exhaust the knowledge of reality and life of the spirit, an openness to a transcendent dimension, have a right to citizenship in the lives of men and scientists alike that the differential equations and empirical formulations. If the richness of these experiences REACHED also in our schools and our universities, there would be of real surprises. Who would have thought that Clerk Maxwell, the electromagnetic equations, wrote poems to the Eucharist, or Augustin Cauchy, that of the solution to the problem of integral calculus, was very active member of the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul, and gave life to many philanthropic companies in the Paris of the nineteenth century? Who would imagine that Alessandro Volta, inventor of the battery, it gave a regular catechism to poor children in his parish of St. Donnino in Como, or Jerome Lejeune, discoverer of the genetic anomaly that causes Down syndrome, was Catholic High level of commitment social, to the point that, after his death, John Paul II wanted an encore "during his visit to France to go to pray at his tomb? Pierre Duhem due to his Catholic faith interest in the history of science and philosophical studies, whose consistency in the life of a scientist defends his work in physics of a believer. Von Braun , convinced Lutheran, the return of astronauts from the mission that had brought them to the moon recited an Our Father, thank you. Guglielmo Marconi personally wanted to introduce in 1931 the first radio broadcast of a pope, Pius XI, announcing to the microphone: "With the help of God, that so many mysterious forces of nature provides humanity, I have prepared this tool that will bring the faithful around the world the consolation of hearing the voice of the Holy Father. "
would not make sense to comment on the faith of scientists worldwide who were also priests, that they would like to make it rain in the wet. Yet, only limited to the last 150 years, the first glimpse of the Big Bang was Monsignor George Lemaître , a cosmologist who worked with Einstein in the formulation of equations describing the dynamics of the universe. One of the founders of modern geology was Antonio Stoppani, a priest the late nineteenth century by the flowing hair, the first author of the Geology of the Italian treaty, called The Beautiful Country , who deserved to be immortalized for decades on the labels of an eponymous Italian cheese! It was still a Catholic priest, Angelo Secchi, the initiator of stellar spectroscopy and founder in 1871 of the Society of Spectroscopy, hours Italian Astronomical Society. of Blessed Francis Bruno Faa , Father Agostino Gemelli or Orthodox priest Florenskij , the public has already heard about. The most represented discipline among priests is no doubt scientists in astronomy, immediately followed by mathematics, and then the botany.
examples could be multiplied. It is therefore worth at least not to omit a reference to some Italian scientists close to us. Many will remember Enrico Medi , internationally renowned geophysicist and politician, Vice President of Euratom and television adviser, father of six children. Died in 1974, was introduced in 1996, his cause of beatification. I remember having seen some of his live conferences. In one of them, to show the beauty and harmony of human physiology, a creature of God, in which physics, chemistry and biology will contribute to smooth running of the movements, after carefully placed a full glass of water on the table, it concluded that there was more physical in that gesture inherent in the technology of the LEM, the lunar module that a few months later he would be resting gently on the lunar surface. Ennio de Giorgi, the great Italian mathematician who died in 1996, discovered the solution to the 19th problem of Hilbert, one of the famous list of 23 problems that Hilbert believed they committed all mathematicians in the twentieth century. To him we owe the discovery of the nature of the analytical solutions of some problems of calculus of variations, a result proved independently also by John Nash (the protagonist of the film A Beautiful Mind , now known as the theorem De Giorgi-Nash, which represents a milestone in the study of many nonlinear problems. Believes human rights defender, was sensitive commentator on the Bible, particularly the Biblical Wisdom. He believed that every student, in the invitation to take part in the feast that Wisdom addresses people in the Book of Proverbs , should see a reminder of the great dignity and responsibility of their work, and that the sharing and transmission of knowledge was one of the highest forms of charity. He wrote of Antonio Ambrosetti, a professor at the Scuola Normale di Pisa like him: "Some poor, De Giorgi was trying to help with attendance, had learned his times and did find when he arrived in Piazza dei Cavalieri at the foot of the stairs leading to the entrance of the Scuola Normale. He always had something to give them, without ever weighing it, without ever having a gesture of impatience or, even less discomfort. And I was shocked by these outbursts of generosity and it seemed very goodness of God manifests itself in him so sublime. "
Giovanni Prodi, also a mathematician, the Italian scientific community has lost in January this year one of its most illustrious members. Author of one of the most widely used calculus textbooks by students of science, witnessed Christian loved by everyone. A Prodi was responsible for the creation of discussion groups on "Science and Faith" in which university professors from various Italian offices and gathered together today to reflect and deepen, in the light of its scientific expertise, the sense of science in relation to applications authorities that the man asks. These meetings, initiated by Prodi thanks to the impulse of Bishop Carlo Colombo, took start in May 1977 over the decades we have witnessed hundreds of teachers and researchers from across Italy, thus contributing to the maturation of active dialogue between science and philosophical and theological thought, whose fruits are now visible in several locations over time cultural and academic.
God and scientists: two forces that attract or repel? There is no doubt that as soon as you surrender to stereotypes and seeks to explore some more of the story, we discover among the many personalities of great scientists humanistic, philosophical and even religious. Not cost much to convey at least part of this story at all. Or just broaden our vision to show that those who consider the profession of atheism a prerequisite for doing good science would be required, much of the history of science, riscriversela all by himself. Perhaps he's still right Louis Pasteur when he said that little science away from God, but much science leads to Him
Tanzella-Joseph Nitti, Co-Director of DISF ( www.disf.org ), Interdisciplinary Documentation on Religion and Science
Twenty years ago, the Agnelli Foundation in Turin fund a major research, published under the title "Values, Science, Transcendence" by Italian researchers to have their say on issues of political, ethical and religious. Over the past decades have followed a lot of research of this kind, especially in the Anglo-Saxon world, resulted in books published by prestigious publishing houses or presented in international scientific journals. The result is more or less similar in all polls: the impact of religion in anyone involved in scientific research is not so different from the rest of the population mortality.
The view that the general public has about the religiosity of scientists is sometimes contradictory, because they are not documented. In the case of an emblematic character as Albert Einstein For example, I happened to listen to different opinions. Who was firmly convinced that his "theory of relativity had been confirmed the need to maintain a relativist, not dogmatic in matters of ethical or moral, to those who employed phrases and aphorisms to show his sincere faith and Jewish sometimes even Christian, who called for comments from as an example of a scientist who had been ousted any reference to God from the description of the universe to readers who wanted to illustrate a pantheism without discounts. Apart from the character in question (who was really interested to know what Einstein thought of God can read the same name on the voice of Thomas Torrance Dictionary Interdisciplinary Science and Faith), is a fact that most people have of the scientists' Image of little men accustomed to things spiritual, accustomed as they are to study what you touch and measure. We have also recently heard the bizarre view that a declaration of atheism would be a prerequisite for doing good research. The large media given a few personality acts as an amplifier, and that's it: scientists are atheists and who really wants to approach scientific research must refrain from any religious belief, because irrational (some, kind, perhaps it will indicate the precise location in a lobe brain, but only to assert its inferiority compared to the much larger areas dedicated to rational argument, and therefore scientific).
If this is indeed the question arises as to which community, if not a scientific one, belonged characters like Pierre Duhem , James Clerk Maxwell , Augustin Cauchy, Max Planck , Angelo Secchi, Gregor Mendel, Antonio Stoppani, Henri Poincaré, Guglielmo Marconi, George Lemaître , Florenskij , Jerome Lejeune, Wernher von Braun , Louis Pasteur , Theodosius Dobzhanski , Abdus Salam , Charles Babbage, or to be close to the Italian context recently, scientists such as Enrico Medi , Luigi Fantappié, Ennio de Giorgi or Giovanni Prodi, a short list only representative concerns that people no longer living, and the not too distant. Go back in time, we note in passing, does not make sense, since atheism is a recent phenomenon and as the religious context very familiar to almost all men of science who lived before the nineteenth century. Indeed, inspection the monumental Dictionary of Scientific Biographies (less than 16 volumes), shows that until the end of 1700 one third of the scientists was represented by ordained ministers of Christian Churches. Although the figures of the twenty-first century are no longer such, a researcher claimed today that religious faith is incompatible with the scientific work should deal with 50% of his colleagues who, according to the study published a few months ago in Oxford by Elaine Ecklund , Is belonging to a religion, which should be added perhaps even 20% of researchers who qualify believers in the Absolute, certainly as a whole far greater than 30% of those who qualify agnostics or atheists (the two attributes that also deserve to be differentiated).
Even a character like Charles Robert Darwin , which many mistakenly consider one of the founding fathers of materialism, did not want to ever qualify as an atheist. In his autobiography (the one edited by his granddaughter Nora Barlow, restores the excised references to God from an early autobiography, published after the death of naturalist) or in the last year sent letters to friends and journalists who questioned him about his faith, the discoverer of natural selection is considered theist, believing in a First Cause (deist would say more precisely) and when it applies to himself the title of agnostic agnosticism refers to a science ("we can never know the source of ' universe, "he says) and not philosophical.
To purchase a more faithful to reality, scientists in the field of faith there is no better way to approach to their products (often auto-biography, as in the case of Planck) or their rates of philosophical reflection on science and philosophy or science and society, usually written toward the end of their career, usually present in all "Large", by Ludwig Boltzmann to Henri Poincaré, Max Planck Institute for to Werner Heisenberg, Richard Feynman by to John Eccles. When we're not in front of a church membership, expressed in numerous cases, all of them there is at least the clear perception that the scientific method does not exhaust the knowledge of reality and life of the spirit, an openness to a transcendent dimension, have a right to citizenship in the lives of men and scientists alike that the differential equations and empirical formulations. If the richness of these experiences REACHED also in our schools and our universities, there would be of real surprises. Who would have thought that Clerk Maxwell, the electromagnetic equations, wrote poems to the Eucharist, or Augustin Cauchy, that of the solution to the problem of integral calculus, was very active member of the Conference of St. Vincent de Paul, and gave life to many philanthropic companies in the Paris of the nineteenth century? Who would imagine that Alessandro Volta, inventor of the battery, it gave a regular catechism to poor children in his parish of St. Donnino in Como, or Jerome Lejeune, discoverer of the genetic anomaly that causes Down syndrome, was Catholic High level of commitment social, to the point that, after his death, John Paul II wanted an encore "during his visit to France to go to pray at his tomb? Pierre Duhem due to his Catholic faith interest in the history of science and philosophical studies, whose consistency in the life of a scientist defends his work in physics of a believer. Von Braun , convinced Lutheran, the return of astronauts from the mission that had brought them to the moon recited an Our Father, thank you. Guglielmo Marconi personally wanted to introduce in 1931 the first radio broadcast of a pope, Pius XI, announcing to the microphone: "With the help of God, that so many mysterious forces of nature provides humanity, I have prepared this tool that will bring the faithful around the world the consolation of hearing the voice of the Holy Father. "
would not make sense to comment on the faith of scientists worldwide who were also priests, that they would like to make it rain in the wet. Yet, only limited to the last 150 years, the first glimpse of the Big Bang was Monsignor George Lemaître , a cosmologist who worked with Einstein in the formulation of equations describing the dynamics of the universe. One of the founders of modern geology was Antonio Stoppani, a priest the late nineteenth century by the flowing hair, the first author of the Geology of the Italian treaty, called The Beautiful Country , who deserved to be immortalized for decades on the labels of an eponymous Italian cheese! It was still a Catholic priest, Angelo Secchi, the initiator of stellar spectroscopy and founder in 1871 of the Society of Spectroscopy, hours Italian Astronomical Society. of Blessed Francis Bruno Faa , Father Agostino Gemelli or Orthodox priest Florenskij , the public has already heard about. The most represented discipline among priests is no doubt scientists in astronomy, immediately followed by mathematics, and then the botany.
examples could be multiplied. It is therefore worth at least not to omit a reference to some Italian scientists close to us. Many will remember Enrico Medi , internationally renowned geophysicist and politician, Vice President of Euratom and television adviser, father of six children. Died in 1974, was introduced in 1996, his cause of beatification. I remember having seen some of his live conferences. In one of them, to show the beauty and harmony of human physiology, a creature of God, in which physics, chemistry and biology will contribute to smooth running of the movements, after carefully placed a full glass of water on the table, it concluded that there was more physical in that gesture inherent in the technology of the LEM, the lunar module that a few months later he would be resting gently on the lunar surface. Ennio de Giorgi, the great Italian mathematician who died in 1996, discovered the solution to the 19th problem of Hilbert, one of the famous list of 23 problems that Hilbert believed they committed all mathematicians in the twentieth century. To him we owe the discovery of the nature of the analytical solutions of some problems of calculus of variations, a result proved independently also by John Nash (the protagonist of the film A Beautiful Mind , now known as the theorem De Giorgi-Nash, which represents a milestone in the study of many nonlinear problems. Believes human rights defender, was sensitive commentator on the Bible, particularly the Biblical Wisdom. He believed that every student, in the invitation to take part in the feast that Wisdom addresses people in the Book of Proverbs , should see a reminder of the great dignity and responsibility of their work, and that the sharing and transmission of knowledge was one of the highest forms of charity. He wrote of Antonio Ambrosetti, a professor at the Scuola Normale di Pisa like him: "Some poor, De Giorgi was trying to help with attendance, had learned his times and did find when he arrived in Piazza dei Cavalieri at the foot of the stairs leading to the entrance of the Scuola Normale. He always had something to give them, without ever weighing it, without ever having a gesture of impatience or, even less discomfort. And I was shocked by these outbursts of generosity and it seemed very goodness of God manifests itself in him so sublime. "
Giovanni Prodi, also a mathematician, the Italian scientific community has lost in January this year one of its most illustrious members. Author of one of the most widely used calculus textbooks by students of science, witnessed Christian loved by everyone. A Prodi was responsible for the creation of discussion groups on "Science and Faith" in which university professors from various Italian offices and gathered together today to reflect and deepen, in the light of its scientific expertise, the sense of science in relation to applications authorities that the man asks. These meetings, initiated by Prodi thanks to the impulse of Bishop Carlo Colombo, took start in May 1977 over the decades we have witnessed hundreds of teachers and researchers from across Italy, thus contributing to the maturation of active dialogue between science and philosophical and theological thought, whose fruits are now visible in several locations over time cultural and academic.
God and scientists: two forces that attract or repel? There is no doubt that as soon as you surrender to stereotypes and seeks to explore some more of the story, we discover among the many personalities of great scientists humanistic, philosophical and even religious. Not cost much to convey at least part of this story at all. Or just broaden our vision to show that those who consider the profession of atheism a prerequisite for doing good science would be required, much of the history of science, riscriversela all by himself. Perhaps he's still right Louis Pasteur when he said that little science away from God, but much science leads to Him
Tanzella-Joseph Nitti, Co-Director of DISF ( www.disf.org ), Interdisciplinary Documentation on Religion and Science
Tanzella-Joseph Nitti
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