Today in History: The Earth is Round

From the Ministry and Math department:

Wired Magazine carries the story: today is the anniversary of Eratosthenes’s discovery that the world is round. How Wired concluded that he did this on July 19, 240 B.C. is beyond me, but I’ll use it.

Most computer scientists know that Eratosthenes had a method for finding prime numbers, as pessimal as his algorithm was. He and Euclid could both qualify for the computer-scientist-before-computers award. They invented algorithms (in the West) and performed calculations on the Earth’s roundness and axial tilt with not-bad accuracy.

Of course, after the collapse of the Roman Empire, much of their knowledge was lost. It took Pope Sylvester II to revive classical learning in the Christian world, learning that has been preserved only in the Islamic world. Tellingly, Sylvester was accused as being in league with Satan for his friendly attitudes toward science and Islam. Plus ça change?

Modern mythology continues to inform us that it was into the A.D. 15th century that the West continued to believe in a flat earth. The false belief is routinely attributed to Christian interpretations of the Bible trumping empirical science. Unfortunately, the grade-school tale is simply not true. Columbus made no such proof in 1492, as Eratosthenes gave it to the West over 1700 years earlier.

The wider Christian world would do well to counter this myth-making with the history of Christian openness to scientific truth and emulate that history themselves.

Ministry and Math: Making it add up

This post at the Ship of Fools site has my attention. The original poster is studying for ordination. Before heading to seminary, she needs to complete her bachelor’s degree and she is struggling with the required algebra courses. She asks to the Ship a new form of Tertullian’s old question, “What has Alexandria (i.e., Euclid) to do with Jerusalem (i.e., Jesus)?”

To summarize the conversation, most replies state that math is unimportant for the clergy and should be done away with. Others state that math is of minor importance, only to serve the practical duties of parish accounting and bookkeeping. (Some posts are of the “grin and bear it” variety, suggesting tutors and guidebooks to help her way through.)

Being a clergyperson with a bachelor’s degree in mathematics, I have to disagree with this assessment of clerical training. It’s too long for a post at the Ship, but this is still just a sketch of a few ideas. Generally, however, the overall point is that education is always more than job training.

So, here are just a few thoughts on the place of math in clerical training:

1. Mathematics is always a part of liberal education. Building on classical foundations, medieval Christians developed the university system. University education in the liberal (not manual) arts was broken into two segments: the trivium and quadrivium. The upper portion, the quadrivium, included arithmetic and geometry as core components of an educated Christian’s competency. Having mastered these arts, a student is prepared for education in philosophy and theology.

2. Mathematical competency is needed for basic conversation with the sciences. Few people would argue that Christianity is guilty of too much conversation with science. Poor popular understanding of astronomy, evolution and statistics have been at the root of clashes with science for a long time. As a result, many in scientific and engineering professions want nothing to do with the Church (“What has Jerusalem to do with Alexandria?”) and the Church has generally returned hostile feelings. Mathematical literacy opens up this conversation. Being able to speak and listen with integrity are the seeds of evangelism.

3. Good math makes for good theology. Even at the secondary-school level, algebra and geometry impress students with methods of proofs, rules for argumentation and clear-headed rigor. Each of these skills is intrinsic to math and serves theologians well. There’s no sense in proving that the shortest distance between two points is a straight line; every ass knows the quickest way to the barn. However, being able to demonstrate truths from basic principles keeps our theology, our preaching and our practice well-trained, open-minded and clear-headed.

4. Mathematics includes the movement from abstract concepts to practical application. Moving from the abstract to the concrete is necessity in mathematics. Having techniques for solving differential equations later helps you design and build air conditioners. Similarly, going from principles to actions is the basic act of preaching and pastoral care. It’s no coincidence that one preaching method closely mirrors Laplace transform solutions for differential equations. Without training in moving from the abstract and ineffable to something practical and useful, what good is a preacher on Trinity Sunday?

Again, these are just a few thoughts that bubbled up over the weekend after reading the linked post above. Hopefully more will come up later.

More on Pope Benedict XVI and Sapienza Univesity

This post follows up on the previous “Pope Benedict XVI postpones speech at Sapienza University.”

Reuters carries a story on Pope Benedict the XVI’s remarks on the “seductive” power of science. The news agency spins the story as the Pope”reviving the science-versus-religion debate” and certainly not as continuing the science-and-religion-together inquiry. The Pope supports a wholistic view of the inter-relatedness not only of the sciences but also of theological inquiry. From the article:

Scientific investigation should be accompanied by “research into anthropology, philosophy and theology” to give insight into “man’s own mystery, because no science can say who man is, where he comes from or where he is going”, the Pope said.

This editoral blogger at the Guardian paid attention to an overlooked fact of the Galileo affair. An all-too-human Galileo unfairly satirized the Pope’s beliefs in the words of Simplicius. An all-too-human Pope unfairly got over-offended and responded in kind:

In fact one of [Galileo's] closest allies was a pope – Urban VIII – who supported the publication of his classic work Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems. It was only when the scientist – renowned for his acerbic style – put the Pope’s thoughts into the mouth of a character called Simplicius that the offended pope withdrew his support and turned Galileo over to the inquisition.

Largely unreported the astronomical observatory moving out of Castel Gandolfo this month (Independent, Register, Times). Happily Catholic News Service reports that they are moving on to more up-to-date facilities in a renovated convent at the papal gardens.

(Via TitusOneNine.)

Pope Benedict XVI postpones speech at Sapienza University

(Update: The Wall Street Journal picked this story up as well, and Touchstone Magazine has a blog entry on it.)

Earlier this week, protests from students and faculty at Sapienza University convinced the Vatican to reschedule a visit and speech from Pope Benedict XVI. They protested in reaction to a 1990 speech that he (then Cardinal Joseph Ratzinger) gave in which he, the view of some students and faculty, endorsed the actions of the Church against Galileo in 1633.

There’s plenty of news coverage of the event. Even the January 15 episode of Off the Wall began with Emmanuel Goldstein’s rant on the same topic. Conversely, the La Sapienza website reports it with significantly less hysteria (in English).

(Note that Sapienza University was founded in 1303 by Pope Boniface VIII, who is not generally considered a nice guy. In Dante’s Inferno, he appears in hell for simony. However, he was committed enough to the study of the natural world, science and wisdom (Italian: sapienza, Latin: sapientia) to create a new university to support it.)

Read the sources for yourself: Here is the 1990 speech that the University is protesting. Here is the speech that Pope Benedict indented to give.

His original 1990 talk doesn’t seem as hysterical as the 2008 reaction to it. He does bring up some historical perspective in saying, “This episode, which was little considered in the 18th century, was elevated to a myth of the Enlightenment in the century that followed.” The Galileo case is often turned into a “myth of the Enlightenment” with him as the scientific proto-martyr, but other interpretations of history tell a different story.

Diogenes Allen’s Christian Belief in a Postmodern World brings other historical evidence into play. The Church doesn’t come off terribly well, but it hardly comes off as the cruel oppressor of free thought.

Giorgio Israel, a Jewish mathematician and professor at Sapienza, was quoted as saying:

[This attitude] is particularly surprising since Italian universities are supposed to be places open to any kind of position, and it makes no sense that only the Pope is denied access,” he said. “[It] has been explained by Marcello Cini – one of the intellectuals opposing the Pope’s visit – in his letter to the University’s Dean. What Cini regards as ‘dangerous,’ is the fact that the Pope may try to open a dialogue between faith and reason, to reestablish a connection between the Judeo-Christian and the Greek tradition, and that science and faith may not be separated by an impenetrable wall.

Israel’s remarks are very much in line with what Benedict’s proposed speech had to say:

The university could, indeed had to be born within the Christian world and the Christian faith. We must take another step. Man wants to know; he wants the truth. Truth pertains first and foremost to seeing and understanding theoria as it is called in the Greek tradition. But truth is not only theoretic.

And later,

If however reason, concerned about its supposed purity, fails to hear the great message that comes from the Christian faith and the understanding it brings, it will dry up like a tree with roots cut off from the water that gives it life. It will lose the courage needed to find the truth and thus become small rather than great.

And, in its closing,

And so let me go back to the initial point. What does the Pope have to do or say in a university? He certainly should not try to impose in an authoritarian manner his faith on others, which can only be freely offered. Beyond his ministry as Pastor of the Church and on the basis of the intrinsic nature of this pastoral ministry, it is his task to keep alive man’s responsiveness to the truth.

Similarly he must again and always invite reason to seek out truth, goodness and God, and on this path urge it to see the useful lights that emerged during the history of the Christian faith and perceive Jesus Christ as the light that illuminates history and helps find the way towards the future.

The fruitful relation of Christianity to science is echoed in today’s Office of Readings selection from Athanasius who wrote in the fourth century on the orderliness of nature:

This (Jesus Christ) is the Word that created this whole world and enlightens it by his loving wisdom (Latin: sapientia). He who is the good Word of the good Father produced the order in all creation, joining opposites together, and forming them into one harmonious sound. He is God, one and only-begotten, who proceeds in goodness from the Father as from the fountain of goodness, and gives order, direction and unity to creation.