September 13, 2016 Tuesday
Bedtime Story
Scientific Revolutions have also been made by religious men
(Like it or not)
Humans are fascinating apes.
The most intriguing aspect of the hairless apes is their internal mental cognitive inconsistencies (contradictory irreconcilable views/ideas) that they hold with absolute ease and comfort without any visible cognitive dissonance.
Out of this trait can emerge contributions to knowledge from the least expected of the peoples.
It is often said that religion and science never go hand in hand.
Yet it has never been proclaimed that religious men cannot be good scientists.
I can name at least 2 priests who have made seminal contributions to the understanding of nature; that which eventually contradicted their sacred scriptures.
In fact, most great European scientists right from Newton in 1600s until Darwin in mid 1850s were generally believers of some kind of creating god.
Darwin of course scarred and desecrated this notion for good.
One of these priests is Gregor Mendel of Austrian Empire.
His pioneering work later went on to establish that life is essentially a digitally coded DNA--transmitting mechanism that instead of binary is quaternary.
The other is very little known and it is about him I wish to talk about.
Father Georges Lemaitre was born in 1894 in Charleroi, Belgium.
He got his basic pedagogy from a Jesuit school after which he was pursuing a course in civil engineering when the first world war broke out in 1914.
So at the age of 20 he was made an artillery officer and despatched to the battle front.
Lucky for us that he survived those 4 years of insane human butchery.
When the wretched war ended on November 11, 1918 Lemaitre returned to study mathematics and physics and at the same time preparing for the priesthood.
Now look at this interesting character.
At the age of 26 he gets his doctorate with the publication of thesis:
"Approximation of functions of several real variables"
under the guidance of Belgian mathematician Charles de la Valee-Poussin.
Then 3 years later at the age of 29 he gets ordained as a priest.
Mercifully he did not waste his life preaching gospels at some Catholic church.
Instead, very wisely, he chose to become a lecturer at the Catholic University of Leuven.
In the next episode of bed-time storytelling we shall delve into the scientific contributions of this remarkable priest.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
The Monk who Experimented with Pisum sativum
Bedtime Story
Scientific Revolutions have also been made by religious men
(Like it or not)
Humans are fascinating apes.
The most intriguing aspect of the hairless apes is their internal mental cognitive inconsistencies (contradictory irreconcilable views/ideas) that they hold with absolute ease and comfort without any visible cognitive dissonance.
Out of this trait can emerge contributions to knowledge from the least expected of the peoples.
It is often said that religion and science never go hand in hand.
Yet it has never been proclaimed that religious men cannot be good scientists.
I can name at least 2 priests who have made seminal contributions to the understanding of nature; that which eventually contradicted their sacred scriptures.
In fact, most great European scientists right from Newton in 1600s until Darwin in mid 1850s were generally believers of some kind of creating god.
Darwin of course scarred and desecrated this notion for good.
One of these priests is Gregor Mendel of Austrian Empire.
His pioneering work later went on to establish that life is essentially a digitally coded DNA--transmitting mechanism that instead of binary is quaternary.
The other is very little known and it is about him I wish to talk about.
Father Georges Lemaitre was born in 1894 in Charleroi, Belgium.
He got his basic pedagogy from a Jesuit school after which he was pursuing a course in civil engineering when the first world war broke out in 1914.
So at the age of 20 he was made an artillery officer and despatched to the battle front.
Lucky for us that he survived those 4 years of insane human butchery.
When the wretched war ended on November 11, 1918 Lemaitre returned to study mathematics and physics and at the same time preparing for the priesthood.
Now look at this interesting character.
At the age of 26 he gets his doctorate with the publication of thesis:
"Approximation of functions of several real variables"
under the guidance of Belgian mathematician Charles de la Valee-Poussin.
Then 3 years later at the age of 29 he gets ordained as a priest.
Mercifully he did not waste his life preaching gospels at some Catholic church.
Instead, very wisely, he chose to become a lecturer at the Catholic University of Leuven.
In the next episode of bed-time storytelling we shall delve into the scientific contributions of this remarkable priest.
Stay tuned to the voice of an average storytelling chimpanzee or login at http://panarrans.blogspot.in/
Good night mon ami and my fellow cousin ape.
The Monk who Experimented with Pisum sativum
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