When the topic of persecution of scientists by religious authorities comes up, Galileo is typically mentioned most often, Giordano Bruno every once in a while, and Hypatia of Alexandria not at all. A longer list of figures who entered "warfare... with theology in Christendom" could be conjured up as well, even Linnaeus raising the hackles of the Vatican for grouping Homo sapiens in with primates. A more modern, though no less tragic, story involves the Jesuit priest and paleontologist Pierre Teilhard de Chardin, the main focus of Amir Aczel's new book The Jesuit and the Skull.
As my wife recently explained to a friend while I was engrossing myself in this volume, I seem to be drawn to books fraught with difficult consequences at the intersection of science and theology. I'll leave the modern apologetics of books like Francis Collins' The Language of God to those with a stronger constitution; I'm more interested in the biographies of "natural philosophers" who tried to be both theologians and scientists, their attempts usually causing a great amount of stress and personal suffering as they tried to learn more about natural history but were called heretics for doing so (for those who are interested, I highly recommend Alan Cutler's The Seashell on the Mountaintop about Nicolas Steno as a good starting point). The story of Teilhard de Chardin is a more modern one, however, taking place in the first half of the 20th century rather than during the days of the Spanish Inquisition, but his tale is a very tragic one. Compelled to study paleontology and evolution (and worst of all, human evolution), Teilhard was an embarrassment and a threat to the Vatican. Unable to defrock or excommunicate him, the Society of Jesus essentially exiled him in China for long periods of time, quashing all his efforts to write about evolution and his "unconventional" views about original sin. Even beyond such noble pursuits as the study of "Peking Man" (or a number of the remains of Homo erectus, which were eventually lost without a trace), Teilhard was very much enamored with a younger American sculptor named Lucile Swan (their letters to each other were recently published), but their relationship eventually cooled and died as he could not bring himself to fully "know her" because of his holy orders.
Indeed, Teilhard's story is as inspiring as it is frustrating; here is a man who had a talent for paleontology and a love that, because of his loyalty to the church that abused him, he could never fully requite. As much as the Vatican imposed limits on Teilhard, so too did he impose them on himself by remaining loyal to a group of scared theologians that he did not have much respect for to begin with. It's hard to know whether to admire Teilhard for his loyalty to his God regardless of what the church authorities did or whether to be frustrated that he never broke away from a suppressive group that kept him from contributing more to science and as well as being with his love. The story Aczel tells is a sad one indeed, brief interjections about the current state of paleoanthropology proving to be little more than brief distractions to the main story unfolding over the pages. What is troublesome about the book, then, is that we are told what happened to Teilhard but not very much about what he actually thought. Yes, he wrote about evolution and had "unconventional views," but his beliefs are never fully laid out. As far as I can recall, for instance, it is never mentioned that the view of evolution he accepted was an orthogenic one with man at the pinnacle and progressing towards God, a standpoint that has more to do with philosophy and theology than science. (Also, see Peter Bowler's Monkey Trials and Gorilla Sermons for a brief overview of evolution v. theology conflicts and a time when Teilhard wasn't so unusual in his beliefs about the mixing of the two.) I've ordered a copy of Teilhard's book The Phenomenon of Man (one of the several manuscripts that could only be published after his death) in order to better understand the views that got him into so much trouble as they are only briefly mentioned in Aczel's biography.
The other aspect of the book that bothered me was that Aczel opens up with a story about going to Rome to look at some of Teilhard's documents, and as he was doing so he stumbled across a document that the religious authorities did not want him to see (much about Teilhard, including a loyalty oath to the Society of Jesus he had to sign, is still kept under lock and key). I was hoping that the document would provide some new insight, that Aczel would reveal what he had found in a triumphant moment in the last pages, but nothing comes of this; the document is briefly mentioned but we are not told what it said. It was like discovering that the supply of fireworks you had hidden away for the 4th of July were soaked and would have no hope of creating the brilliant display you wished to see. My misgivings aside, the book moves quickly (I read it in two days) and is engaging, Teilhard's story being one that will ultimately leave some readers, like myself, with mixed feelings. He was both a victim of his church and his own loyalty to it, and who knows what his life would have been like had he chosen to leave the holy order to pursue his life free of the restrictions imposed upon it. It would be foolish to spend too much time pondering what might have been different, however; Teilhard made his choice and left his mark, and his story is one that is engagingly recounted in The Jesuit and the Skull.
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My father uysed to talk to me anput DeChardin, back when I was way too young to udnerstand what he was talking about, but when I run accross his name, I pay attention.
What, if anything does the book say about the theory that DeChardin was THE person behind the Piltdown Hoax? Semms to me that Lying For Jebus has a long and detailed history, and this could just be one more detail.
J; I've been trying to find out more information about that. Aczel mentions it only briefly, mainly that Gould says Teilhard was involved although Aczel says Teilhard was not and leaves it at that. I'm not entirely familiar with the details of the piltdown hoax so I'll have to do some more digging as I don't want to write anything before I've got the facts. Perhaps someone else here on the comments will illuminate us as to what the evidence is.
I actually was introduced to T de Ch. back in the early 60's at Boston College. He was to give a talk, and stayed where I was living, in the old Liggett mansion (the manse of the old drugy family, O'Connell Hall it became, if it still exists). All I could do was genuflect, so to speak---he was a hero even then.
Ask and ye shall receive!
Actually, I don't recall too much about the details of who's suspected of doing what with which bones, but somebody mentioned the aforelinked Stephen Jay Gould article in a Pharyngula discussion several months ago, so it wasn't too hard to find again.
I also recommend you look up Peter Medawar's review of The Phenomenon of Man.
I teach at a Jesuit University, and there is even a Jesuit priest who is an excellent insect taxonomist and systematist. He also teaches a course on the intersection between religion and science. Needless to say, he uses the case of de Chardin on how the relationship between the two magisteria can go wrong.
Which, it so happens, is available here. (The ScienceBlogs one-link-per-comment limit gets a little irritating for those among us who like to cite our sources.) By the way, thanks for getting my name on the SB front page! ;-)
The Phenomenon of Man is well worth a read, though I'd be a bit dubious about how much of it you can take seriously (unfortunately, it's been a few years since I read it, and I no longer own the copy I used to). As you've already heard, it's pretty heavily mired in a Scala Naturae viewpoint, with the usual assumption that humanity (or more specifically, Europeans) is the highest point on the Scala and ignorance that some of the "side-branches" on the Scala have actually done pretty damn well for themselves, thank you (ummm... protostomes, anyone?). Probably the most interesting thing about the book is the evolutionary argument for the existence of God, which basically goes like this:
As Europeans - I'm sorry, humans - get more and more advanced, we see a change in importance from physical advancement to mental advancement. Eventually, our species' mental evolution will progress so far that we will transcend our physical form and attain a state of purely mental existence (think the Overmind of Arthur C. Clarke's Childhood's End). Once that non-physical existence is achieved, then we will also transcend all physical limitations, including time. And because that future Godhead is not limited by time, while it comes into existence in the future, it also exists in the present.
Imaginative, but probably not what the Catholic Church had in mind.
My first introduction to Pierre Teilhard de Chardin was via "The Anthropic Cosmological Principle" by Barrow and Tipler - it painted an almost magical-mystical figure of the man (at least I thought so) which I read in the depth of winter tucked up in bed. Anyway, that got me hooked and since then I have read a great deal of his works and really enjoy doing so.
He is probably the only person whose works I love to read even though I disagree sooooo much with what he says most of the time. I find he has a unique style of writing that is a pleasure in itself - and is the primary reason I enjoy his works. Omega Points and Noosphere's and all that science-faith stuff I'm not at all convinced by.
Poor Hypatia! Being a female intellectual in a premodern society obviously was - and is - a dangerous job. This said, she was probably lynched because she was a pagan, not because of her scientific work (the same thing holds true for Bruno: he was executed for being a heretic, having some very calvinist ideas about transsubtantion, and being an antitrinitarian, not because his ideas about the movement of the planets). Ironically, neoplatonism and its relationship to science has declined since the days of Hypatia and Plotin. Modern theosophy and anthroposophy - wich are very popular among middle class Germans - have degenerated into new age esoteric crap, and are closely allied to all kinds of pseudoscience. Sadly, the alma mater of my younger brother, the Witzenhausen academy of agriculture, was the first statal German institution to officialy embrace anthroposophy, complete with reincarnation, six "core races" (guess who's the superior "core race"?) and ur-aryans coming from Atlantis - ouch!
BTW - is the Orestes in the Hypatia story the guy that later became the right hand man of Attila?
The ability of the English language to spawn such words is truly amazing. Glad to see somebody actually puts them to use (whatever their meaning). I'm googling them all right now - thanks for the education.
Antitrinitarians were obviously quite progressive by 16th and 17th century standards, and there were many notable scientists among them. Miguel Servet, who discovered blood circulation, was an antitrinitarian (and suffered martyrdom for his belief), and Newton was said to be an antitrinitarian,too. Their main stomping ground was, however, eastern Europe, and, being nice people in the Transsylvania of Erszebet Bathory and Vlad the Impaler, they did not last too long.