The Church and Science

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXVI, Issue 22, 4 June 1908, Page 13

The Church and Science

- That bright intellect, Dr. Walsh (says " the New 7n +* T ma - 1S J ?, urnal '>•■ a timely papeT inhw? t ir tt nC^u c >,^ olic Quarterly Review ' on the subject of the Church's attitude towards scientific investigation teachings, and method. He was prompted (he tells us) to write for the reason that, as a result of the Encyclical ' Pascendi,' 'one of the most prominent notes that has been sounded .by those outside of the Church is the supposed opposition of the Church to science and scientific methods and scientific investigations.' ' . - Any one, he says, who knows anything of the his- . lory- of modern science, is aware that there -is absolutely no foundation for this prejudice. Most' of the men who did the great original- work in the last century in medicine were Catholics. The same is true of electricity, and men like Galvani, Volta, Ampere, Coulomb, and Ohm were not only members of the Church but were also devout Catholics. The modern method of scientific inquiry, known as the a posteriori, or inductive or analytical method Dr Walsh points out, is nearly always attributed to" Lord Bacon, who was thereby said to have overthrown the Aristotelian, or deductive, or synthetic mode of inquiry. <But as it is shown, the experimental method existed from the earliest ages, may be traced indeed back to the Miletian school, and was thriving in the thirteenth century in the days of Verulam's great namesake, Roger Bacon, a Catholic monk, who declared (what the genius of Aristotle could not certainly have overlooked) that ' nothing can be known without experiment '— nihil sine experientia sciri potest (opus Majus). Roger Bacon, says Doctor Walsh, laid down very distinctly the principle that only by careful observation and experimental demonstration could any real knowledge with regard to natural phenomena be obtained. He not only laid down the principle, however, but in this, quite a contrast to his later namesake, he followed the route himself very wonderfully. Friar Bacon, says Dr. Walsh, starts out with the principle that there are four grounds of human ignorance. First, trust in inadequate authority ; second, that force of custom which leads men to accept too unquestioningly what has been accepted before theirtime; third, the placing of confidence in the opinion- of the inexperienced ; and fourth, the hiding of one's own ignorance with the parade of superficial knowledge.' These reasons contain the very essence of the experimental method, and continue to be as important in the twentieth century as they were in the thirteenth. They could only have emanated from an eminently practical mind.^accustomed to test by observation and by careful searching^ of authorities every proposition that came to him. It is very evident that modern scientists would have more oi kinship and in — tellectual sympathy with -Friar Bacon than most of them are apt to think possible.. Simply put, the idea" of the- opponent of Catholicism is that if the scientific method of investigation were pushed to its" extreme, it must, if it does not prove that there is no God, at least _be to show that it has demonstrated more towards His nonexistence than^ the Catholic Church has proved in His favor. We at least have a series of co-ordinated facts,, the science party declare, which we know to be true by experience. We go as -far as we may, and stop short only of the first principle. ' The Catholic, on the contrary, they say, starts out with an" assumption, and makes his deduction therefrom, with the result that if his assumption (i.e., theexistence of a self-revealed God) is wrong, all his deductions count for nothing. Yet this great pioneer of science, Friar Bacon, urged the Pope of his day, Clement IV., to have the works of Aristotle burned in order to stop the propagation of error in the schools.

When it comes to the question of the principles of experimental science and the value they placed on them, these men of the medieval universities, says Dr. Walsh, when sympathetically studied, proved to have been quite as sensible as the scientists of our time. The great thinkers of the medieval period had not only reached the same conclusions as Lord Bacon had, but actually applied them three centuries before ; and the great medieval universities were occupied with problems, even in physical science, not very different from those which have given food for thought for subsequent generations, and their success in solving them was quite as ample as our own.