Sixty years ago today Pope Pius XII issued the first and to date only papal encyclical treating a scientific theory. Humani Generis adopted the Catholic Church’s position that the evolutionary origin of the human body was a legitimate area of scientific study, provided one reserved a special status for the human soul, as directly created… Continue reading On This Day . . .
Thony Christie has a nice post on the 17th century genius: Pascal’s religious fervour deprived the world of his mathematical abilities but not of his astounding intellect. The main centre of Jansenism was the Port-Royal Cloister in Paris and it was from here that the Port-Royal Logic was issued, an important textbook in the history… Continue reading The Tragedy of Pascal
The Inimitable Thony C. on the new film Agora, which apparently is still looking for a US distributor: The NANAs* Larry Moran at Sandwalk and Murdo MacMeasly at Pharyngoogoo have got their collective knickers in a twist because they haven’t yet had the chance to see Agora the Spanish film, staring Rachel Weisz, about the… Continue reading Movies
The Darwin/Chicago Conference opened last night, featuring keynote presentations discussing current topics in evolution to mark (among other anniversaries) the 150th anniversary of Darwin’s Origin of Species. Coverage of the opening discussions was provided via this neat new tool, Cover-It Live.
Thony C. has a great post on whether it even makes sense to ask what role Christians of the Middle Ages had to play in the rise of science: As I wrote in my very first internet blog post on the ideas of Rodney Stark when every single member of society in supposedly a Christian… Continue reading
