Church and Science

3 Credits · Level: Undergraduate

The overwhelming majority of people today appreciate science and what it brought to mankind from both practical and intellectual points of view. The almost endless stream of amazing scientific discoveries during the last few centuries created the perception of an ongoing upward progression of scientific knowledge since the beginning of historical times. However, the science (as we know it today) is a recent development with historians pointing to the seventeenth century Scientific Revolution in Western Europe as the starting point. This raises a number of interesting questions: why did it happen at that time and place? What factors contributed to it? It turns out that theological and natural philosophy developments within the Catholic Church since the thirteen-century had a significant contribution. This course explores the history of sciences and the relationship with Church theology from the High Middle Ages through modern times. We will review historical developments, which are disproving the myth that Middle Ages were a period of stagnation and lack of scientific progress; quite the contrary it was a time of significant advances including the birth of the scientific methodology, which paved the way for the “Scientific Revolution” of the seventeenth century. Beginning with philosophical foundations and the development of new institutions like the universities and the scientific societies, we move on to study methods in practice across the different fields of mechanical philosophy, and the physical sciences. Students will be introduced first to the works of bishop Grossetese, Roger Bacon and Albertus Magnus who early on were the first ones to develop the basis of the scientific method, emphasizing experimental methods and the role of mathematics in natural philosophy thus starting the intellectual process which eventually lead to the remarkable achievements of Galileo Galilei, Kepler and Isaac Newton. Later on, in the successful march of science, we will analyse how key discoveries/developments of Albert Einstein (relativity theory and cosmology), Niels Bohr and Werner Heisenberg (Quantum Mechanics) will bring to question the limits of understanding, and how changing views of nature have delivered new perspectives on the relationship with church teachings and on what it means to be human. This course will help students grasp fundamental scientific concepts developed over more than eight hundred years; these concepts are essential in the understanding of our contemporary world. The students will also have an opportunity to understand how and when the so-called “conflict between science and religion” originated and its evolution through the Galileo conflict until present times. We will address the complex evolution of arguments at every step of discoveries of scientific concepts about our world and Church’s interpretation of them and in the process we will review and gain appreciation of one of the most exciting intellectual endeavors ever. This extraordinary display of substantive and original ideas which this debate generated for centuries continues today and allows us to enrich the understanding of our present universe from the smallest subatomic particle to the Big Bang expansion of the cosmos and challenges us to make our own judgment about the meaning of it all.