Was Galileo Right and the Catholic Church Wrong?

2021 ◽  
pp. 36-49
Author(s):  
Steven L. Goldman
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Deductive Reasoning ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Catholic Church

Galileo is an iconic founder of modern science, but his career and his contributions were far more complex than his reputation. He, too, championed a scientific method, but his thinking differed greatly from Bacon’s and Descartes’. Galileo’s method was based on Archimedes’ combination of experiment, mathematics, and deduction. This method allowed Galileo to claim certain knowledge of reality derived from mathematical accounts of natural phenomena. But he also claimed certain knowledge of reality derived directly from observation, as in his assertion that the Earth moved around the sun. While Galileo’s predictions were sometimes correct, he had no criterion for distinguishing between correct and incorrect inferences or for connecting his mathematical deductive reasoning about phenomena to the way they really were.

Be Ye Therefore Perfect or The Ineradicability of Sin

1985 ◽  
Vol 21 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-19 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
The Sun ◽  
John Henry Newman ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Many ◽  
The Catholic Church

The Catholic Church holds it better for the sun and moon to drop from heaven, for the earth to fail, and for all the many millions on it to die in extreme agony, as far as temporal affliction goes, than that one soul, I will not say, shall be lost, but should commit one single venial sin, should will one venial untruth, or should steal one poor farthing without excuse (John Henry Newman, Apologia Pro Vita Sua)

scholarly journals Early Modern Jesuit Science. A Historiographical Essay

2014 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 88-104 ◽  
Author(s):  
Sheila J. Rabin
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Scientific Revolution ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Society Of Jesus ◽  
Early Modern Science ◽  
The Earth ◽  
New Instruments ◽  
Mathematics And Science ◽  
The Catholic Church

The traditional narrative of early modern science, or the scientific revolution, made the Catholic church appear anti-scientific. However, as scholars during the last three decades have reconstructed science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, they have found that members of the Catholic church and the Jesuits in particular, despite their rejection of Copernican astronomy, contributed significantly to the advancement of science in those centuries. Many members of the Society of Jesus were both practitioners of mathematics and science and teachers of these subjects. They were trained in mathematics and open to the use of new instruments. As a result they made improvements in mathematics, astronomy, and physics. They kept work alive on magnetism and electricity; they corrected the calendar; they improved maps both of the earth and the sky. As teachers they influenced others, and their method of argumentation encouraged rigorous logic and the use of experiment in the pursuit of science. They also used mathematics and science in their missions in Asia and the Americas, which aided their successes in these missions. Historians of science now realize that detailing the progress of science in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries requires the inclusion of Jesuit science.

Desafiando la sutileza de los donatistas: los cánones litúrgicos de Agustín y Aurelio en el Concilio de Hipona

Augustinus ◽  
2019 ◽  
Vol 64 (3) ◽  
pp. 359-375
Author(s):  
Jane Merdinger ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Lord's Supper ◽  
North African ◽  
The North ◽  
Hearts And Minds ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Catholic Church

My article investigates Catholic councils of the North African Church during the 390s, when it was struggling against its formidable rival, Donatism. I shall demonstrate that the delegates’ concern over the Donatist Church’s strength played a larger role in the formulation of canons during that decade than scholars have previously suspected. I shall argue that despite Augustine ‘s rudimentary grasp of Donatist theology ca. 391- 395, he recognized the significant threat posed by the dissident church and successfully maneuvered behind the scenes (together with Aurelius, primate of Carthage), crafting several canons that are not overtly anti-Donatist but in essence are directed against Donatist encroachment upon Catholic hearts and minds. My article will commence with a brief overview of the Council of 390, presided over by Genethlius, primate of Carthage. Historians have dismissed Genethlius as ineffective against the Donatists, but I shall argue that several canons enacted in 390 paved the way for Augustine’s and Aurelius’ reforms. I shall then examine canons from the Council of Hippo (393 CE), Augustine’s and Aurelíus’ inaugural conclave that ushered in their ambitious programme to rejuvenate the Catholic Church in Africa. Liturgical canons will receive special attention. I believe that they provide clues to heterodox behavior by Donatists during their celebration of the Lord’s Supper. Though the council fathers targeted Arianism as well in 393, Donatist practices spurred them lo promulgate canons forfending against questionable rites that might be adopted unwittingly by Catholic congregations.

scholarly journals Recalibrating through Remembrance

2016 ◽  
Vol 23 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 76-94
Author(s):  
Els Rose
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
Stained Glass ◽  
Christian Religion ◽  
Apocryphal Acts ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Catholic Church

The twelfth and thirteenth centuries witness a complex appeal to the “age of the apostles,” referring to the first centuries of Christianity as model and foundation. Both the Catholic Church and various apostolic movements claim to be true imitators of the vita apostolica. In early thirteenth-century centres of reform, the apostles as founding figures of the Christian religion are frequently visualized, most elaborately in stained glass windows where the apocryphal Acts or “Lives” of the apostles inspired the scenes distributed over the panes of each window dedicated in general to one apostle (or pair of apostles). The choice of scenes and the analysis of what in the apocryphal Acts is left out reveals the way the Catholic Church, in its endeavour to reform, applied the apostles as breaches and bridges in the development of its doctrine and self-definition, also in response to claims to apostolicity outside the mainstream Church.

scholarly journals A Historical Perspective on Measurements of Solar Irradiance

1994 ◽  
Vol 143 ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
V. Gaizauskas
Keyword(s):  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Radiant Energy ◽  
Modern Science ◽  
Past Century ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Solar Constant ◽  
Terrestrial Environment ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Wide Range

Recent measurements made from platforms in space prove beyond question that the radiant energy received from the Sun at the Earth, once called the ‘solar constant’, fluctuates over a wide range of amplitudes and time scales. The source of that variability and its impact on our terrestrial environment pose major challenges for modern science. We are confronted with a tangled web of facts which requires the combined ingenuity of solar, stellar, planetary and atmospheric scientists to unravel. This brief overview draws attention to key developments during the past century which shaped our concepts about sources of solar variability and their connection with solar activity.

scholarly journals The early history of the earth

1988 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 38-47
Author(s):  
C. P. Snyman
Keyword(s):  
Solar System ◽  
Laws Of Nature ◽  
Early History ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Natural Phenomena ◽  
The Earth ◽  
History Of ◽  
By Products

In view of the principle of actualism the early history of the earth must be explained on the basis of present-day natural phenomena and the basic Laws of Nature. The study of the solar system leads to the conclusion that the planets were formed as by-products when the sun developed from a rotating cloud of cosmic gas and dust. The protoplanets or planetesimals could have accreted as a result of mutual collisions, during which they could have become partly molten so that they could differentiate into a crust, a mantle and a core on the basis of differences in density.

✦ Superpower Saints ✦

2019 ◽  
pp. 125-164
Author(s):  
Kathleen Sprows Cummings
Keyword(s):  
World War Ii ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
World War ◽  
Post World War Ii ◽  
The World ◽  
Gender And Power ◽  
Fierce Competition ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Catholic Church ◽  
Daughters Of Charity

This chapter focuses on Elizabeth Ann Seton’s cause between papal conclave of 1939, when her cause leaped forward at the Roman Center, through Seton’s beatification in 1963. It analyzes gender and power in the Catholic church through the conflict between Seton’s Daughters of Charity and the Vincentian priest assigned to serve as Seton’s vice-postulator. It explains the fierce competition between Seton’s advocates and those of John Neumann, who was also beatified in 1963. The chapter argues that in the post-World War II era, saints became stand-ins for U.S. Catholics' new role in the nation and in the world--and harbingers of more transformations on the way, in sanctity and beyond.

Fire, Brimstone, and the War against the Heretics

2020 ◽  
pp. 163-198
Author(s):  
Erika Helgen
Keyword(s):  
Catholic Church ◽  
Religious Culture ◽  
Protestant Reformation ◽  
The Relationship ◽  
The Way ◽  
The Catholic Church

This chapter deals with the relationship between Protestants and santas missões populares. It explains that the missões were a key means by which anti-Protestantism became embedded within the Catholic religious culture of the Northeast. The chapter looks into the conflict between Capuchins and Protestants that had a long history in both Brazil and the wider world. It discusses the Capuchin Order the was founded in the midst of the Protestant Reformation, and one of the order's most important initial activities was seeking to reconvert individuals and families who had turned away from the Catholic Church. It also talks about the re-emergence of Italian Capuchins in the Northeast that paved the way for the ascension of one of the most famous Brazilian Capuchins of all time, Dom Frei Vital Maria Gonçalves de Oliveira.

Numbers and Shapes

2020 ◽  
pp. 36-53
Author(s):  
Demetris Nicolaides
Keyword(s):  
Mathematical Analysis ◽  
Scientific Method ◽  
Wave Functions ◽  
Quantum Mechanical ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Mechanical Wave ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Copernican Revolution ◽  
Modern Physics ◽  
Theory Of Forms

Pythagoras initiated the mathematical analysis of nature, a cornerstone practice in modern physics. “Things are numbers” is the most significant Pythagorean doctrine. It signifies that the phenomena of nature are describable by equations and numbers. Therefore, nature is quantifiable and potentially knowable through the scientific method. The Pythagoreans quantified pleasing sounds of music, right-angled triangles, even the motion of the heavenly bodies. The “Copernican revolution” (heliocentricity) is traced back to Pythagorean cosmology. But, finally, Einstein’s relativity clarifies a popular misconception related to it: that “the earth revolves around the sun (heliocentricity) is correct,” and that “the sun revolves around the earth (geocentricism) is incorrect.” Plato was inspired by Pythagorean mathematics, but he replaced “things are numbers” with things are shapes, forms, Forms, a noetic description of nature known as the theory of “Forms.” The quantum-mechanical wave-functions—mathematical forms that describe microscopic particles—are the Platonic Forms of quarks and leptons.

The magnetic Sun

2008 ◽  
Vol 366 (1871) ◽  
pp. 1735-1748 ◽  
Author(s):  
Richard A Harrison
Keyword(s):  
Magnetic Fields ◽  
Stellar Atmospheres ◽  
Magnetic Star ◽  
The Sun ◽  
Basic Principles ◽  
Fundamental Nature ◽  
James Clerk Maxwell ◽  
The Earth ◽  
Basic Equations ◽  
The Way

The nature of our star, the Sun, is dominated by its complex and variable magnetic fields. It is the purpose of this paper to review the fundamental nature of our magnetic Sun by outlining the most basic principles behind the way the Sun works and how its fields are generated, and to examine not only the historical observations of our magnetic star, but, in particular, to study the wonderful observations of the Sun being made from space today. However, lying behind all of this are the most basic equations derived by James Clerk Maxwell, describing how the magnetic fields and plasmas of our Sun's atmosphere, and indeed of all stellar atmospheres, work and how they influence the Earth.

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