THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXV, Issue 20, 16 May 1907, Page 15

THE CHURCH AND SCIENCE

CATHOLIC SCIENTISTS AND INVENTORS

It is a stock argument with certain narrow-minded antl ill-informed persons that the Church has always been opposed to "the progress of science. The absurdity of such a contention is apparent to all who have studied the history of the world s- progress in the arts and sciences during the past nineteen hundred years. Eiveri at the present day some of the. leading scientists are among the most devoted children 1 of the Church. The members of the Society of Jesus are to-day in the front rank as astronomers. The Jesuit Fathers of Georgetown University in the United States are noted for their astronomical observations and discoveries, and the Manila Observatory, conducted by members of the same distinguished Society, has over and over again saved shipping and property by its timely, and invariably, accurate weather warnings. Then again, a Bohemian priest in America has invented a system of wireless telegraphy, which is declared by experts to be a decided improvement on that now in vogue. Then again, to come nearer home, the first system of wireless telegraphy in Australia was established at St. Stanislaus College, Bathurst, by the Rector, the Very Rev. Father Slattery, CM. The Church has always encouraged science and progress instead of impeding them (says an able Catholic writer in an American magazine). The strongest proof of this is to be found in history. W-iio were the men who gave to the world those great inventions that made our modern civilisation possible ? Catholics, almost every one, as history shows. The means of successfully studying science were first afforded where the influence of th-3 Church was most potent. Italy has a reputation for science and discovery. She was the first country to establish museums of natural history, botanic gardens, and to organise scientific societies!— the forerunners of those learned scientific societies which are now found in every civilised country. The first museum of any consequence was that of the Vatican in Rome, which was noted at the time for the number and variety of its minerals and fossils. There were others in various universities of Italy, but they were established later. The first botanical garden established in Europe was at Padua, in 15-15 ; then the one in Florence, in 1556, and that of Bologna, in 156«. That of the Vatican 'dates from the same years. The first established north of the Alps* came several years later, while those of Upsala, Amsterdam, and Oxford were not thought of until the last quarter of the seventeenth century. The first scientific society was that founded by Porta, in Naples, in 1560, and called Academia dei Segreti. The Academia dei Lancei followed in Rome, in 1609. The celebrated Academia dei Cimento was founded in Florence in 1657, and ten years later it published its first collection of .experiments— a publication that served as a model of the reports published subsequently 'by similar scientific societies. A Few of the Great Inventions for. which the world- is indebted to Catholics may be cited :— Flavio di Gioja invented the mariner's compass early in the fourteenth century. Mercator's Projection— -so necessary to the nautical use of the compass— was- inviented by Gerard Mercator (Kaufman), a pupil of the University of Louvain. Clocks were the . joint production of three monVs. These monks were the illustrious Gerbert— afterwards Pope Sylvester 11. in the tenth century— Patcifico of Verona, and Abbot William of Herschani, Germany. VVattihes' wiere 'invented early in the fifteenth century. Spectacles were first constructed by SaMno, an Italian monk, in 1285. Schwartz, a monk of Cologne, first prepared gunpowder, in 1320. Firearms were- introduced in the' same century. The thermometer was invented by Santorio, early in the seventeenth century. A few years afterward the mercurial barometer was invented by an Italian, Evanpelisto Torricelli. The cameraobscura, that all-important instrument in photography, was invented by Giambattista della Porta, the founder of the first scientific society. The magic lantern that

has of late years proved of such value in the hands of scientists and . educators, wtis the invention of the learned JesiAt, Father Kircher. The gamut gave music a scientific basis. It was invented by a monk, Guido of Arezzo, in 1124. He was also the inventor of the- heptoehord, the precursor of the piano. Organs were invented in Italy in the eighthi century. The microscope was invented in Catholic Italy, and its discovery revolutionized science. The art of printing ■ was first given to the world in 1436 by Gutteniberg in Germany nearly 100 years before the so-called Reformation began. The first newspaper was published in 1562, in Venice. The First Printing Press introduced into England was set up by Caxton, in 14(77, in Westminster Abbey, over thirty years before the Reformation. The then ruling Afo'bot, John Estney,' read the first proof of the first English translation, of the Bible ever printed in Great Britain, and the first punster lived and died in the Abbey. The first printing press used in Amenc a was brought from Spain- aibout 1540 by the first Bishop of Mexico, Don Fray Juan Zumaraga .The first Viceroy of New Spain, Mondoza, helped the Bishop in his glorious work ; the celebrated editor, Cromiberger of S&ville, furnished the materials and the men. John Pahlos was the name of the typographer chosen to cross the Atlantic, and the abridgment of the Christian Doctrine, in the Spanish and Aztec languages, was the first book ever issued by the press in the New World. The dynamo-electric machines are frequently pointed to as examples of American skill and invention ; 'but nothing could be further from the truth. Nollet and Van M'olderan, of Belgium*, about thirty years ago, constructed the first magneto-electric machine for producing ' the electric light— a type of machine still in use. M. Gramme invented the electro-motor, and was the fi'ist to discover the reversibility of the armature of the dynamo on the passage through it of an electric current. This was pronounced by the eminent" physicist, Prof. Clarte Maxwell, the greatest 'discovery of the last half of the nineteenth century. The First Electric Lamp was invented by Leon Faucault, in 1848. The carbons used for electric lights are the invention of M. Carve. The first storage battery is due to Gaston, Plan'te. Benjamin Franklin is reputed the discoverer of the identity of electricity and lightning, and of the issuing of electricity from metallic points ; but the credit of both these discoveries belongs to Procopius Diwisch, a Bohemian monk. lie was also the inventor of the first lightning-rod, so constantly cradited to Franklin. Watt is usually credited with inventing the steam engine ; and yet patents were taken out for steam engines—and practical working engines, too— a full century before Watt commenced his experiments on the New<comen engine 1 - The Marquis of Worcester, a Catholic, received a patent from Parliament in 1663 — one hundred and nine years before Watt's so-called invention. Robert Fulton is famed as the inventor of the first steamboat. But he was not the inventor. In 1543 Blasco, a Spanish sea captain, exhibited, in the Harbor of Barcelona, in the presence of Charles V. and many of his court, a boat propelled by steam. That the Great Progress has been made under the patronage of the Church and in Catholic countries, it needs but an impartial study of history to prove. That the Church has not at once identified herself with every novel theory that has been put forth is true. That she has hindered the progress of true science is an assertion made only by those who are unacquainted with the facts of history. The great English scholar and statesman, William E. Gladstone, only voiced the conyiction of an impartial student of history when he said of her : ' Since the first three hundred years of persecution, the Roman Catholic Church has marched for fifteen hundred years at the head of human civilisation, and has driven, harnessed to its chariot, as the horses of a triumphal car, the chief intellectual and material forces of the world ; its art, the art of the world.; its greatness, glory, grandeur, and majesty have been, almost, though not absolutely, all that, in those respects, the world has had to boast of.'