THE CHURCH AND SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION

New Zealand Tablet, 17 September 1908, Page 11

THE CHURCH AND SCIENTIFIC EDUCATION

WHAT THE POPES HAVE DONE

et. v c f lebrahons in connection with the jubil-e of his Holiness Pope Pius X. call to mind what the lopes in all ages have done for education, and especially for its higher branches, in founding and fostering universities in all parts of the world. The Semin Ylu Sl'S 1 ' A P°!!?. nare > in Rome, where the priesthood of the Eternal City are trained, contains one of the finest collections of scientific apparatus that are to be found in any college, and these (as the present writer can testify from personal knowledge) are put to constant and skilled use by learned professors and by the students. The present- Pope is an earnest advocate of scientific education. As stated elsewhere in this issue, one of the measures which will probably mark his reign will be the establishment of an. international commission of -Catholics for the promotion -of science. Professor James T Walsh, writing in a recent issue of Extension an American magazine, calls attention to the attitude of the_ Popes to higher education and scientific research lLl\£ Xt rT I £ ommon to see asserted (he says) that the Church has always been opposed to the teaching of science, and that whenever she has permitted it, it has always been because the advance of truth was so compelling that she could not hang back without being absurd, and that, except under such compulsion, she has never done anything for scientific education Many of those whose attention & tfc claims of Catholics with regard to our educational insitutions might be called would declare tha^Ca holies could not -possibly educate^pr our day, since ; they we not interested in the evolution of Science Vanee 0 " 7"? ° PP ° Sed tO S vance. How many of those who thought this wav know that at the same time the Pope isfued the IS Encyclical, he also made arrangements for the or^anf sation of a series of scientific institutions by whTh The real crux of the matter, they would be act to declare, however, lies not in pur day, but in the pasf Now the Church is compelled by that modern progress which she commends to take up, with science Soffi her real reason for doing so, th e P y would ay^is douf l

id SueS uca b don UU oo e r "tht hhh ° PcS 1 thUS ?O? O COntrol the scie »tific Sn" fifth PP r e °P^' and P revent science from sterilizing faith. This is one of those curious scientific expressions that, to some people, carry the wefcht of an argument. How many o f these people know o? y he n nf iSI th / hiSt ° r y °" Sdence H- -ny w .v re * h * e > f° r instance, that for six centuries &c& c * e J*« inni «& of the nineteenth, Itaty was "the he world - 6 It 6 ?' P ost :^ a d U ate work in scilnce ol graduate sudv ? A ET* bCCanie the home of P°*- * the place of France A ""^ Sg °' Ger ™ny took now PP t a aSn° f tL: a pL ccce cc of G^any^ f £& 'S\ * | . The Most Surprising Fact mmwwm anoVprobably suggest that it is a pious exaggeration - sl-mss in? s&fsb r e #i3 whom they will consider beyond civ?l ' • TWs is So of the humankind. He objected very much to SI modern- devotion to the daisies and/languWes so exclusively, and to him, almost more than aSSf^else •is due the very general introduction of the sciences ISVST rr fCe-nf Ce - n - educ : ation - The reason why HuX liked training given by the .medieval -UniversSra was exactly, because it was a scientific training The nn y H° VaSSICS)V aSSICS) 3S the basis of Vniversit/education, did not come 4n until after the Renaissance. .•' Professor Huxley's Opinion was given in his inaugural address as the Rector of Aberdeen University, in 1874. Here is MxTey°s opinion with regard to the curriculum of the University of Pans, at the beginning of the thirteenth century, on the model of which the University of Aberdeen had been founded : ' The scholars seem to have studied Grammar Logic, and Rhetoric; Arithmetic and Geometry; Astronomy; 'Theology and Music. Thus, their work, however imperfect and faulty, judged by modern lights, . it may have been, brought them

face to face with all the leading aspects of the many sided .mind of man. For these studies did really contain, at any rate in embryo — sometimes, it may be, in caricature — what we now call Philosophy, Mathe= matical and Physical Science, and Art. And I doubt if the curriculum of any modern university shows so clear and generous a comprehension ok what is meant by culture, as this old Trivium and Quadrivium does.' The curricula in the Italian universities were practically identical with this. The universities exchanged professors, which we are only just beginning to do again ; students often made portions of their course in one university, and. were given credit for it in another; and the Popes, when they made their regulations with regard to university teaching, always insisted that the new universities- which their decrees were bringing into existence should have standards as high, and should not. give permission to teach — the equivalent ot the Doctors degree in our day — unless after the completion of a course and the_passing of an examination equal to that given at Paris or Bologna, these two universities being specifically named. These Popefounded universities, ruled over by ecclesiastical chancellors, taught by scholarly members of the Mendicant Orders (for the greatest teachers of the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries were Dominicans and Franciscans), were teaching science. Professor Huxley says ' that the mental training they were giving men by - means of the science they taught was better than was being given at our universities of the modern time in 1874. ' How. ignorant then, of the real history of education, and, above all, of the history of science and scientific education, are those who talk of opposition between Church and science, or Church and education. Scientific Education in the Papal States. ' " Very probably the most impudent and utterly shameless misuse of educational history has been made with regard to the supposed attitude of the Popes "and the ecclesiastical authorities to medicine and scientific teaching. If the Church was opposed to science then it is clear that the universities in the Papal States' where the Popes were not only the ecclesiastical, but the political, rulers, would have had nothing to do with science, v The contrary is just what is true. Since 1512 Bologna has been in the Papal States; that is, until Napoleon's time. Bologna had for many centuries the greatest medical school in the world. All forms of physical science were taught there with eminent success. Students from all over the world-flocked to Bologna for the opportunities that it presented for original work in science. The names of the Professors of B ( ologna are' of world-wide reputation Berengar of Carpi was there, Achillirif was there, Vesalius was there, Varolius was there, Aranzi was there. Later, Malpighi and Morgagni were both there ; and so the scientific tradition which originated with Mondino, the Father of dissection, continued through Vesalius, the Father of modern Anatomy; Malpighi, the Father of Comparative, and Morgagni, x the Father of Pathological Anatomy. s After Bologna, in the importance of its medical' school, came Padua and Rome. At .certaia periods Padua surpassed Bologna. For a full century, from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of the seventeenth, the Roman Medical School was ahead of either of them, and had as its professors the greatest names in medicine in their time. The faculty" included such men -as Columbus, the discoverer of the pulmonary circulation; Eustachius, who taught, us much about the anatomy of the head-, and after whom the Eustauhian tube is named; Varolius, whose work in brain anatomy is commemorated by the Pons Varioli : Caesalpinus, to whom the Italians refer, and most modern historians of medicine think rightly, the discovery of the circulation of the blood before Harvey: Malriiehi who was invited from Bologn^ to >take the chair of Anatomy at Rome ; Piccolomini, and many others of lesser note, though the greatest scientific physicians of their time. JFor three centuries, two out of the three ■ most important medical schools in the world, at a time when the medical faculty taught most of the science that there was to be taught, were in the Papal States

With this- of definite historical detail before us, what nonsense do we not have to listen to from thosewho talk of the opposition of the Popes to science.^ There were two other universities in the Papal States, one at Ferrara, at least for a time, and the other at Perugia. Both of these had medical' schools, whose standards were maintained on a high plane, and that of Ferrara, at least for a time, the rival of most of the other universities of Italy-in this respect. The Popes have always, .since the fifteenth century, helped the development of astronomy, and since the sixteenth have maintained, whenever their pecuniary circumstances would permit, an astronomical observatory in Rome.>- The first "museum, in the modern sense of that word, -was founded by Father Kircher r the Jesuit, at Rome, under the patronage~~and with the liberal assistance of the Popes, and is still in existence. Father Kircher wrote, at Rome, the text books . in Physics which were most commonly used for several centuries. Four of them were important in the history of science : one on light (he is the inventor of the magic lantern) • one on electricity, or rather magnetism, in which he suggested the possibility of the use of magnetism for the development of energy ; one on sound, and one on geology and mineralogy, besides many other books on science," and these text books went through many editions with the constant approbation of the Popes When supposedly educated men— men who are intelligent enough not to have an opinion without' a reason for it— talk about the opposition of>the Popes to science. and education, I, for one, cannot understand what they mean. Have they ever for a moment looked up the realities of the history of science and of education? Are they accepting expressions of this kind from others without looking them up. Our histories of education, it is true,, are full of generalities with regard- to the supposed opposition of the Popes to science ; but we know that they are written mainly by superficial students of history, who are interested in education in our time, but 'know little about it in the past. In the February number of Extension, in this Department, I quoted a sentence from a recent address of President Woodrow Wilson, of Princeton, in which he said: One of the principal objects of educati m should be enlightenment, or the unloading from the minds of the pupils of the -misinformation that they have received.' There is much need for enlightenment and the unloading from the minds not alone of the ■ pupils, but of the teachers, and; above all, the teachers' of the history of education and of science in this country of the misinformation that they now hold for Gospel truth with regard to the attitude of the Church at ?£ * ne "°P e to science and education. Their selfsufficient ignorance would be amusing, if it were not so amazing, and perhaps there is nothing that shows more clearly the superficiality of our university education here in America than the" fact that the ideas usually entertained on this subject in university circlfes and by university professors still continue to be maintained, n spite of the development of documentary historical knowledge which in the past twenty-five years has so' completely wiped out such views in Europe, and, above all, in Germany where they go back to the original documents and do not repeat the foolish .statements 6i s their predecessors without looking them up. - New Zealand's meat and butter ha*e_made a name for themselves, in the English markets, but the DoTaZT ST° .^? lod1 od \ have a f ar more extended repu- « »' a "d especially the manufactures of the Moseiel Woollen Mills, which have a world-wide reputation g A Mosgiel rug is < a thing^f beauty and a joy for ever > These rugs are made^f the finest wool, aid aYe finished ma manner which leaves nothin/ to be desired. For quality and artistic color combinations m design they have no equal, and are therefore a -luxury, a pleasure, and a comfort".... rea

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