faith of a scientist

8/10/2019 Faith of a Scientist

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The Faith of a Scientist

Remarks for the Taize Youth W orkshop, December 30

Brother Guy Consolmagno SJ, Vatican Observatory

I speak to you today as a religious B rother in the Jesuit order; I have taken vows

of poverty, chastity, and obedience to live in a community o f priests and brothers doing

the work the Church asks us t o do. But I am also a scientist, a astronomer, a planetary

geologist who speciali

MIT and Arizona; a few years a go I was e lected the chair of the American Astronomical

Societys Division for Planetary Scientists, the largest organization of planetary

scientists i n the world, and I have also served in a number of positions w ith the

International Astronomical Union. I was e ven part of that group who demoted P luto from

planet status!

I tell you these things about myself, not to brag or at least, not only to brag

but also to show that by m y v ery e xistence you have living proof in front of you that it is

possible to be, a

science; I love it, it is w hat I do. (And I am something of a nerd about my C hurch.)

We all learned in school that the world is r ound. But, day t o day, each of us l ives

in a much narrower universe. Our own d ay t o day h orizon is a t the edge of a at

expanse, marked by a few buildings or trees, with ourselves a t the center of it all. It


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seems t hat the most important locations i n our personal universe are where we sleep

and eat, where we work, or where we entertain ourselves. We mostly live our lives

without ever experiencing that were walking on the surface of a sphere much less,

that this g lobe which seems so big to us i s b ut an insignicant speck orbiting an average

star in an average galaxy, one of billions o f such stars a nd billions o f such galaxies.

And, indeed, you might ask: do we need to know that? The writer of the opening

chapter in G enesis de scribed the u niverse a s a d isk cove red by a dome; he knew

nothing of modern astrophysics. But he knew God, and he lived a good and holy life.

Isnt that enough for us?

I would argue, it is not. To be self-satised with our ignorance is to limit both

ourselves and our relationship to God. Consider the Book o f Job. When Job, in his

crisis, complains t o G od a bout the injustices h e h as e ndured, God responds in a

fascinating way. Starting in Chapter 38, God asks Job if he knows a ll the wonders o f the

universe; wonders t hat Job had never thought about before. Do you know the way to

the dwelling of light? Do you know the laws o f the sky?

God asks this n ot to show off His g reatness, nor even just to put Jobs

problems i n perspective. Rather, there is i mplied an invitation: come with Him, to

discover the way to the dwelling of light! Join with the morning stars who, we are told,

sang in chorus w hile all the sons o f God shouted for joy at the foundation of the Earth!


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For those of us w ho are called to be scientists, the exploration of Gods creation

is a response to an invitation to spend time with the Creator. We get to play w ith Him, so

to speak, uncovering the delightful puzzles H e sets f or us a nd marveling at the way the

laws o f the universe t together with a logic t hat is b oth harmonious a nd elegant. In this

way we learn to see a side of Gods p ersonality. Even if we are not professional

scientists, we can still be fascinated by the workings o f the universe that the

professionals ca n share with us, and take part in the game at least as sp ectators.

In any e vent, it is c lear that the one attitude we can never take toward science is

fear, as i f it were a threat to God. Speaking about science, Pope John Paul II put it most

bluntly: Truth does n ot contradict truth. Science does not replace God. Rather, it

reveals t hat God is m ore amazing than we could ever have realized.

The writer of Genesis i nsisted that God made everything; everything that could

be seen: the at Earth, the dome above it, even the waters a bove a nd below the dome.

If today we recognize that the universe includes a ll the stars a nd galaxies, extending for

13.8 billion light years ( and thats o nly the part we can see), how much bigger we must

recognize G od to be!

Speaking of domes this i ncredible Church of St. Ignatius i s a perfect place to

speak a bout the faith of a scientist. It turns o ut that there are a number of very important

gures i n the history o f science and faith who are associated with this c hurch.


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The building itself was d esigned in the 1600s b y F ather Orazio Grassi, a Jesuit

priest who was n ot only a n architect but also a mathematician and quite a good

astronomer. In 1618 three comets vi sible to the naked eye blazed across t he skies a nd

he arranged with other Jesuit colleagues i n Europe to observe them and their positions

simultaneously, using telescopes. Now, Galileo had only just introduced the telescope to

the world of astronomy less t han ten years e arlier; and n o o ne had ever seen a comet

through a telescope before. Certainly G alileo had not.

The results o f Grassis o bservations w ere published in a small booklet in 1619.

He showed that the comet appeared in exactly the same position relative to stars,

whether observed in Rome or the north of Europe. This p roved that comets w ere quite

far away; they really did orbit in space, beyond the orbit of the Moon. Since their motions

were ve ry odd compared to the planets, coming closer to the Sun and Earth and then

moving m uch farther away, this p osed great challenges t o everybodys t heories for how

the planets m oved, Ptolemy o r Brahe or Copernicus.

Galileo himself refused to believe the evidence. He couldnt see how comet

orbits l ike the ones G rassi inferred could be possible in the Sun-centered Copernicus

system remember, he didnt understand Keplers i dea of elliptical orbits and so he

concluded that comets m ust merely b e optical illusions i n the Earths a tmosphere, like

rainbows o r Sun dogs.


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Instead of accepting G rassis e vidence, Galileo m ade fun o f Grassi and the w ay

he had written up his r esults. Grassi wrote in the orid style of the times, tying his

observations t o the ideas o f the ancient Greeks a nd Babylonians. Galileo w rote a book

against Grassi, called The Assayer , where he insisted that one must rely o nly o n the

evidence of observation and experiment, not on the authority of the ancients o r any

other authority gure. Today t his b ook b y G alileo is c onsidered the foundation of the

scientic method, and rightly so. Of course, in it, Galileo asserted his point of view only

on the basis o f his o wn authority; and he refused to accept the observations t hat Grassi

and his companions had made when it came to comets!

That was a shame. Among other things, it turned the Jesuits a gainst Galileo.

Before then, they had been among his st rongest supporters. Father Clavius, the Jesuit

priest who took p art in Pope Gregorys r eform of the Calendar in 1582 and taught

mathematics at the Roman College just one street over from here, had written letters o f

recommendation for Galileo when he was rst looking for a job, and late in his l ife he

even looked through Galileos t elescope a t Jupiter and its m oons.

And when Galileo was r st called in to be questioned about his t heories, it was

under the care of the Jesuit Cardinal Robert Bellarmine, the greatest theologian of his

time. After Bellarmine interviewed Galileo he gave him a document certifying that

Galileo was n o h eretic. Bellarmine wasnt convinced of Galileos sc ience, however. The


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heliocentric system was a radical change, it would be like overthrowing Einstein today,

and Bellarmine felt Galileo hadnt proved his p oint. (And in fact, Galileo hadnt proved

his p oint. It would take another fty ye ars b efore Newtons t heories s howed how Keplers

version of the Copernican system actually worked, and centuries b efore the motions o f

the Earth were nally d irectly o bserved.)

But Bellarmine did say so mething very interesting about Galileo and his i deas.

About the time of his i nterview with Galileo, Bellarmine wrote: If there were a true

demonstration that the Sun was i n the center of the universe and the earth in the third

sphere, and that the Sun did not travel around the earth but the earth circled the Sun,

then it would be necessary to proceed with great caution in explaining the passages o f

Scripture which seemed contrary, and we would rather have to say t hat we did not

understand them than to say t hat something was false which has be en demonstrated.

But I do not believe that there is a ny such demonstration; none has b een shown to me.

Here we see Bellarmines o penness t o new ideas, and his r ealization that his

understanding of Scripture might not be the last word. And we also see the sort of

scientic skepticism that we honor among scientists. Clever ideas a rent enough: show

me the evidence! The fact that, in the long run, Galileo was p roved right and Bellarmine

wrong was n o fault of either, given the state of the evidence at the time.


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Father Bellarmine is b uried right over there, beneath that altar on the right hand

side of the church.

Theres a nother notable astronomer associated with this ch urch. You may have

noticed the very o dd dome here. In fact, as b y n ow you must have realized, its a fake.

Its n ot a real dome. They ran out of money; instead of building a dome, they put in a at

roof and then a few years l ater a Jesuit brother, Andrea Pozzo, painted the ceiling and

the dome in this m arvelous f orced perspective so that it looks just like a real dome

from certain points o f view, anyway.

Well, the fact that there are these massive pillars d esigned to hold the weight of

a dome, but no dome itself, led Father Angelo Secchi in the 1850s t o construct four

telescopes, one on each pillar, on the roof of this c hurch. One of the telescopes m arked

the time each day when the Sun crossed the meridian; this w as used to signal a cannon

that would be red so that everyone in town knew it was n oontime. But the biggest

telescope was u sed for some of the most important astronomical observations o f the

19th century. Father Secchi observed the planets, especially J upiter and Mars, and he

was t he rst person to describe them not as d ots o f light in the sky b ut as a ctual places,

with clouds a nd weather and surface features. He used the term canali to describe

some of the features o n Mars; later other astronomers m isinterpreted this w ord to imply

that there were actual canals o n Mars, and Martians w ho had built them. Secchi also did


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pioneering work on observing the S un. Today t heres a N ASA spacecraft observing the

Sun that gives S ecchi the u ltimate h onor of using h is n ame a s a n a cronym for the S un

Earth C onnection C oronal and Heliospheric Investigation p ackage.

But the most remarkable work that Secchi did from the roof of this ve ry ch urch

was t o put a prism in the light path of his t elescope and turn every d ot of starlight into a

rainbow of colors. He saw how different stars h ad d ifferent spectra, and he classied

more than ve thousand stars t his w ay. And he knew how to interpret those spectra in

terms o f the elements p resent in those stars; for example, he discovered that some rare

stars w ere rich in the element Carbon. Suddenly, astronomy was no longer measuring

the mere position of the stars a nd planets; it became the study o f what those stars a nd

planets w ere made o f, and how they g ot to be the way t hey a re today. Father Secchi,

from the roof of this c hurch, became the father of astrophysics.

This c onuence of church thinkers a nd scientic thinkers i n this p lace is q uite

remarkable. Now, you may well ask, why was a priest like F ather Secchi doing

astronomy? F or that matter, why was t he Church co ncerned in a ny way with what a

scientist like Galileo was w riting?

In Galileos d ay, science was st ill well embedded in the eld of what was ca lled

Natural Philosophy. And the Church, who also invented and ran the medieval

Universities, was i n the position of what we sometimes c all the Academy, the received


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wisdom against which new ideas a re tested. It had a responsibility t o teach the truth as i t

knew it, and to protect against crazy ideas. That was e specially important in those days,

when crazy ideas w ould lead to wars. We tend to forget that the Galileo trial took p lace

at the height of the Thirty Years W ar.

Its n o different today. (Except for the wars.) To get a scientic paper published

you need to pass i t by a series o f anonymous r eferees, experts i n the eld who will

judge if the paper

many times; and I have b een refereed myself, many times. On more than one o ccasion

the referees h ave stopped me from publishing a paper Id submitted; and thank

heavens. They have found many e rrors t hat I had missed. I am thankful to these

referees. Theyve saved me from making a fool of myself in public.

We need referees be cause w e arent always r ight. We make mistakes. We also

need referees t o remind us that science, like philosophy, like religion, is not something

we do alone. We do it as a p art of a c ommunity.

Science is n ot a big book o f facts; it is a conversation with other scientists. To

have a conversation, you need a common language so that when I say porphyritic type

two olivine chondrules i n a carbonaceous c hondrite fall the other meteorite scientists

know exactly w hat sort of material I am talking about. Thats o ne of the important

reasons w e study a t universities not to learn the facts, which anyone could do just


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from reading books, but to learn the language by l iving and working in the world of

science where that language is sp oken and alive, where we can grasp all the subtle

shadings of meaning that no book can teach u s.

And h aving a conversation m eans t hat to d o s cience yo u h ave to d o the so rt of

work t hat other people are interested in. You cant have a conversation if no one is

listening. That also means yo u have to take the time to be around and to listen to the

others, as w ell.

You know, we get a lot of letters a t the Observatory from people who are

working alone in their attics a nd who think they have discovered some n ew secret of the

universe that the rest of us h ave missed. Its ve ry sa d. They are so eager to make a big

breakthrough and become famous, or at least eager to be part of the wonderful fun of

playing in Gods C reation. But of course, most everything they write to us i s n onsense.

And even if, buried in all the nonsense, there really w ere some great insight, it would be

completely u seless if it is n ot part of the conversation.

You can tell from their letters that they arent part of the conversation. They try to

use the same words t hat scientists u se, but they use them in ways t hat dont really m ean

what we mean, how we learned to use them in a ll those ye ars w e spent at University

learning how to converse in the language of science.


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It is e xactly the same thing that happens t o people who think they can nd God

without organized religion. They use ideas a nd words t hat they read someplace

probably in books produced by the very religions t hey are rejecting without really

knowing what they m ean. They t hink they h ave grand insights into the nature of God

and the Universe. But they are not in conversation with the rest of us and by us I

dont mean just with those of us a round today, but with those of us w ho have lived in the

past, who make up our traditions a nd history. They dont have referees t o warn them

when theyre m aking mistakes. They wind up wallowing in a dream world d evised by

their own egos, rather than confronting the glorious b ut challenging and always s lightly

incomprehensible reality that true religion, and true science, tries to deal with.

But heres the trickiest part: sometimes they actually do get it right. Kepler was

such a person. He had a very s trange idea of religion; he thought that the physical

universe should exactly m irror the nature of God. Since the Sun was t he brightest thing

in the sky, he assumed that it must represent the place of God the Father. The light

coming off the Sun, he said, was t he Holy S pirit. The realm of Earth on which it fell, was

the same as t he Second Person of the Trinity. Now, this i s r eally o dd theology. It wasnt

made any b etter by t he fact that Kepler wrote in a really t ortured form of Latin that many

people had a hard time understanding. When he sent his b ooks t o Galileo, Galileo

tossed them aside and n ever bothered to read them; he never even b othered to se nd


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Kepler a nice note thanking him for the books. Frankly, in Galileos p lace I would have

done the same thing.

But heres t he o dd part. Because Kepler insisted that the Sun was l ike God, he

also insisted that it must be the exact center of the universe. And he had read

Copernicus d eeply e nough to realize that in the Copernican system, with perfectly

circular orbits, the Sun actually had to move in a tiny circle around the center in order to

make the positions o f it and the other planets m atch the observations. This l ittle

eccentric c ircle, which most people hadnt noticed (I suspect they only looked at the

pictures in Copernicuss book, and never actually read the math), this little circle was

horrifying to Kepler. God the Father wouldnt make such a goofy little dance around

nothing. So instead Kepler devised a system where the planets m oved in ellipses, with

the Sun xed at a focus o f the ellipse. It was o nly fty y ears later that Edmund Halley,

the comet guy, pointed out Keplers w ork to Isaac N ewton. Newton showed that his n ew

theory of gravity actually predicted such elliptical orbits. And modern physics nally was

born.

Now, notice that Keplers theological idea was crazy. But it led to a scientic idea

that was b rilliant. How odd.

Meanwhile, Newtons su ccessful physics l ed to its o wn odd development in the

realm of science and religion. By b eing able to predict the positions a nd orbits o f the


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planets w ith great accuracy, at least as a ccurate as p eople could observe back then, his

physics gained great credibility. As t he famous p oem of Alexander Pope put it, Nature

and Nature's l aws l ay h id in night: God said, "Let Newton be!" and all was l ight. And so

people began to think t hat they c ould use the certainties o f Newtons p hysics as a basis

of religion.

For example, there were many subtle points o f planetary m otions t hat Newtons

physics couldnt exactly e xplain, at least not at rst; surely t hese gaps w ere the places

that proved God was n ecessary? O f course w e know what happens w ith this way of

thinking. First, you reduce God to the sort of Watchmaker of the Deists, someone who

merely w inds u p the Universe and lets i t run, adjusting it as n ecessary from time to time.

Then, you realize that all the gaps, all the adjustments yo u thought showed you that

needed God, actually ca n be lled in without resorting to God. Your reason for believing

in G od gets sq ueezed out as the gaps g et closed. Pretty so on youre a n a theist who

believes in a completely mechanical universe. And then, of course, modern p hysics

comes a long and shows t hat all of Newtons a ssertions a bout the universe were terrible

oversimplications. Quantum physics g ives a whole new set of gaps t o lure us into

thinking once a gain that we have science proving a need for God.

Notice how in Galileo, Kepler, and Newton we nd three different ways that

people have tried to t together faith and modern science.


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Newton and his f ollowers t hought you could use science to prove the existence

of God. Of course, the God they cam e up with was n o longer the God of love, the God

of scripture; and it eventually led to no God at all.

Kepler did the opposite; he thought that he could use his t heology, his i dea of

God, as a basis for explaining how the u niverse ought to work. We h onor Kepler today

only because he w as lucky e nough to have come up with a description o f orbits t hat

worked, even though the p hilosophy it was b ased on it was t otal nonsense.

Galileo himself spoke of two separate ways to reach God, what he called two

books: the book o f scripture and the book o f nature. (I remind you that Galileo, even

after his terrible and unfair trial, remained a devout Catholic; his two daughters were

both nuns.) But a lot of people have taken his two books idea as i f they were separate

ways t o view the universe, without any overlap. You do science during the week, they

say, and you leave religion to Sundays.

None o f those w ays w ork.

Father Michael Buckley, an old teacher of mine, is t he Jesuit theologian whom I

am borrowing from here. He writes a bout this i n a book ca lled Denying and Disclosing

God . And in the last chapter of his book, he points o ut that all of these attempts at

connecting science and faith fail because they m iss out on the essential fact of why we

believe.


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We are all scientists now, living in this scientic age; we all look for evidence for

everything. And our theories a re the w ay w e organize what we believe in order to

explain that evidence. What is t he evidence on which we base our faith? It is n ot the

orbits o f the planets, or the position of the Sun or the Moon. It is n ot the authority of

ancient sages, either saints o r scientists. Instead, Buckley q uotes a twentieth century

philosopher, Rassa Maritain, who came to Christianity by encountering, in history and in

her life, the lives o f saints. The essential data point for her was w hat she called the fact

of sanctity. Holiness exists. Any theory of the universe that fails to take into account that

existence, is i ncomplete.

This c an lead us t o a deeper connection between faith and science. It is c lear, I

hope, that you cannot substitute one for the other; science does not replace faith, nor

does f aith replace science. And yet they d o not deal with totally s eparate realms, as i f

they n ever overlap.

Because in fact science and religion do overlap most surely in one important

place: in the human being who chooses to d o the science, in the human being who

comes to know the Creator through the things t hat have been Created.

Not every culture has produced scientists; not every religion supports science.

And b y su pport I dont just mean n ding s omeone to pay you r salary, though o f course

thats i mportant; it is a lso the support of your family a nd friends, so your mom doesnt


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keep asking you why youre wasting your time doing science instead of making real

money writing computer games.

There are in fact three very important religious a ssumptions yo u have to make

before yo u c an do science.

The rst assumption is t hat you must take on faith the proposition that the

universe really e xists. What we see is n ot mere illusion. We are not butteries d reaming

that we are scientists. There are some religious t raditions a nd some philosophies w ho

insist otherwise; solipsism, for instance, suggests that everything you experience is

merely a projection of your own imagination. At least, thats w hat they c laim, though I

nd it hard to imagine how you actually live this w ay from day to day. The humorous I rish

writer George Bernard Shaw relates t he story o f confronting a woman who told him, I

am a solipsist, and so are most of my friends! (Think about it.)

The second assumption that you must make about the universe b efore yo u do

any science on it is to accept on faith that there actually are scientic laws to be

discovered, that effects h ave causes, that things d ont just happen on a whim or at

random. It seems o bvious t o us t hat scientic laws e xist, because we have learned

some of them and we c an see how they work; but what gave t he rst scientists t he

condence to think that there actually were such laws t o be found?


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If you were a believer in the ancient Roman gods, as so many pe ople were

whose temples are now ruins surrounding us here in Rome, then when lightning struck

you could blame Jupiter, god of lightning; when your crops g rew well you could thank

Ceres, goddess o f crops. No need to look a ny further for why these things h appened.

When Christians c ame along they were persecuted for being atheists, and rightly s o

they rejected all these nature gods i n favor of one, supernatural, God. But if there are no

nature gods, then you are free to speculate why natural events a ctually d o occur.

There is a third and most subtle religious b elieve you must have before you can

be a scientist, however a belief that a lot of people today d ont have. You must believe

that science is w orthy o f spending your life doing. I dont mean making nice

technological toys, like vaccines and iPods. Those are lovely, but thats a different level

from doing the frankly u seless w ork o f trying to understand black h oles o r Martian

weather. Pure science like astronomy wont make you rich, and it wont make yo u

powerful its rather telling that you nd astrologers and other fortune tellers in the

poorer parts o f town. It doesnt necessarily a ttract girls (a t least it didnt for me!). So why

would anyone spend their life doing astronomy?

Worse yet, if you believe that the physical universe is fundamentally evil, a trap

and a snare to pull you down from the more noble spiritual things o f life, then your

religion will actively try to stop you from wallowing in this dirty, dangerous physical


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morass. I remember once talking to a student from a such a r eligion who wanted to

become a geologist, but he was afraid he asked me, what will I tell my m om?

But Christianity, like Judaism and Islam, believes i n a universe that was

deliberately cr eated by a Creator God, who made things i n an orderly way, step by st ep,

and at each step of the w ay st opped to see t hat It Was Good.

Even more, as C hristians w e b elieve that God s o loved the world that He g ave

His O nly S on for its r edemption. As S aint Athanasius p ut it 1700 years a go in his b ook

On the Incarnation , we are cleansed and quickened by the Incarnation of God into

Nature that we celebrate during this C hristmas s eason. And as h e further states, the

fact that the Word of God entered our world because He provided the works o f creation

as a m eans by w hich the C reator might be known. In that, Athanasius is o nly e choing

St. Pauls Letter to the R omans w here in C hapter One h e r eminds u s that from the

beginning o f time G od h as r evealed Himself to u s in the t hings that He h as m ade.

We study creation to co me closer to the Creator. And how do we kn ow when we

have come close to God? One sign is a sense of joy; a joy t hat I know I have felt when I

encountered some wonderful insight into how the universe works. I dont mean just my

own discoveries those are few and far between but other peoples discoveries a s

well, which ll me with delight and a feeling of rightness in seeing how the pieces t

together, which is u nmistakable o nce it has b een e xperienced.


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but they h appen. The history o f science is l ittered with theories t hat were logical, well

supported by experiment, but nonetheless w rong.

But notice what that means a bout the attitude that a good scientist has t o have.

First of all, you have to admit you dont know everything; otherwise, you wouldnt be

motivated to learn anything new. Secondly, you have to be h umble e nough to admit that,

at any p oint along the way to n ew knowledge, you could g o wrong. Thats w hy yo u

constantly test your ideas w ith experiments, and then test your experiments w ith better

theories; why yo u work w ith others, rather than just work a lone.

And thats w hy s cience books keep getting updated. While scientists r ightly

revere Galileo or Newton, nobody a ctually tries t o learn astronomy o r physics b y reading

their original books. As w e make new discoveries, our understanding changes ( Pluto is

not a planet!). We nd better ways o f describing the things w eve been looking at for

centuries. By c ontrast, books of literature or philosophy Plato, or Shakespeare, or the

Bible are timeless. Those books a re not science books.

A religious b eliever can learn something from this h umility. No matter how close

to God we think we are, we must recognize that like his C reation, God too will always b e

more than we can ever completely know.

Science is always inadequate, always only partly true, always full of terrible

oversimplications. But we learn to recognize the pattern that truth makes; we develop a


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taste, an instinct, that helps us guess which theory of all the possible theories is the best

one to pursue at this p oint, which possible experiment the next experiment I ought to try.

It may sound funny to talk a bout guesses a nd instincts w hen dealing with the

rational world of science, but the truth is t hat science is a wonderful blend of the rational

with the instinctual. That is w hy s cience is n ot done by robots; it is d one by h uman

beings. Indeed, doing science is o ne of the things t hat makes us h uman.

I recall when I was a young postdoctoral fellow at MIT, before I joined the

Jesuits, I would lie in bed late at night pondering the meaninglessness of my life. Why

was I worried about the rings o f Saturn when there were people starving in the world?

Eventually I realized that I had no answer to that question. My l ife of a scientist was

meaningless or so I thought.

So I quit my job as a scientist and joined the US Peace Corps. I said I would go

anywhere they sent me, do anything they asked me to do, as p art of this b ig volunteer

group working with the poor in the third world. They sent me to Africa, and told me I

would be teaching high school science in a school up-country. But my a ssignment kept

changing a b etter high s chool, a g overnment high s chool, a n ational high s chool

after three months I was a ssigned to the University o f Nairobi, teaching postgraduate

students; teaching astronomy.


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There was a logic to it. To develop their nation, Kenya needed schools a nd

teachers. The s tudents I was t eaching would g o on to teach at the state Teachers

College to teach the teachers t o teach the students, to raise the technical level of the

nation.

But I would also go up-country, where the rest of my fellow volunteers w ere

working, taking my sm all telescope with me, and in every village everyone would line up

at night to see the rings o f Saturn and the craters o n the Moon. They were fascinated;

exactly the s ame way a s m y friends a nd family back in America were fascinated to look

at these things. And then nally i t struck me. Being in awe of the sky, looking at the

galaxies i n Andromeda, wondering about what it all is a nd how we t into it; these are

things t hat human beings d o. I had a very cl ever cat in those days, but she never

wanted to look through my telescope. Astronomy is so mething that makes u s different

from a cat, from well-fed cows.

And to deny som eone the chance to indulge in those ver y human wonderings

and longings, just because they were poor or hungry o r born in the wrong time or the

wrong continent, is t o deny them their humanity. To give them the opportunity to ponder

these things, is t o feed their soul. And this i s t erribly important. The Africans t aught me

why we d o a stronomy, even in a world where p eople a re h ungry. One does n ot hunger

for bread alone.


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Both astronomy a nd religion remind us t hat there are bigger questions t han

whats for dinner? They force us o ut of our day to day concerns a nd see everything

with a different perspective.

Sitting in this c hurch, we are strongly reminded of perspective how it can fool

us, or how it can make u s se e things in a new way t hat we might not have realized

before. I hope you have a chance to walk a round this ch urch, look u p at the ceiling, and

see the dome from each of the wings o f the building; see how different it looks. You

have to be in just the right place to get the full effect of the artists perspective; and then

you have to look a t it from a different place, to appreciate how he did it.

Do we learn truth from science or from religion? Which one gives u s t he truth?

Like looking at that dome, you really o nly g et the full truth when you have more than one

point of view.

But, you might say, one point of view gives m e an illusion, a lie! There is n o

dome, it is j ust fooling me into thinking that theres a dome. And thats t rue. If you only

have one point of view you might well be fooled by what you see, and interpret what you

see as s omething different from what it really is.

But, heres a n odd thing about illusion. Granted, that is n ot a real dome. But real

domes do exist. And if you had n ever seen a real dome, if you d id n ot know what real

domes w as, if there were in fact no real domes, then this i llusion wouldnt work a t all.


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You wouldnt know what it is you were supposed to be seeing. You wouldnt be reminded

here of domes yo u h ave seen in the past. Your mind wouldnt be a ble to be led to the

vision that the the artist, Pozzo, painted; the vision that the architect, poor Father Grassi,

had designed but which, for technical reasons, he couldnt complete. The illusion only

works because of the reality t hat the illusion is a ttempting to invoke.

All our scientic descriptions o f nature are, ultimately, illusions. They are

incomplete. They a re sketches; they a re idealizations o f the real thing; they a re not

literally true. A fter al l, even an equation in physics is a metaphor f or the activity it

describes; and a good mathematical physicist can read those metaphors like a poem.

They a re not themselves t he truth. But they p oint us t o the truth.

And likewise all our descriptions o f God can only b e poetry; no mere words ca n

describe that which is b eyond description. But like that painting on the ceiling, a good

piece of art and science is u ltimately a masterful piece of human art a good piece of

art can lead our imaginations b eyond our mortal bounds i nto realms t hat we can only

now glimpse from afar.

I am a scientist and I am a Jesuit brother. But you cant split me in two and say

this p art is t he man of science, that part is t he man of faith, any m ore than you could

split Grassi into the mathematician or the astronomer or the architect, any m ore than

you can split the painting above us i nto what it looks like from one point of view versus


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what it looks like from over there, to say t hat it is a dome or it is s ome strange abstract

shape. Both are the one and same painting on the ceiling.

It is t he one same universe that we live in, scientist and believer, and the one

same truth we search for. If we are both observer and believer, we are blessed in being

able to look a t that truth from more than one direction and thus l earn things t hat one

direction alone could never tell us.

And we are all called to be scientists i n that way. We may n ot all learn the

language of science, the poetry o f the mathematics, or participate daily in the

conversation. But you dont have to be a musician to listen to music. You dont have to

be a saint yourself to experience the holiness of others. You dont have to be an artist to

appreciate painting. I cant paint perspective like Brother Pozzo but I can let his talent

pull me up into his v ision of an innity o ver my h ead.

We have been given the gift of intelligence to at least look t hrough the telescope

and be amazed by the beauty o f nebulae and rings. We all have been given the ability to

know other people and experience Gods p resence within them. It just requires u s t o

open our eyes and see.

That is the faith of a scientist.

faith of a scientist

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