Blaise Pascal 1623 - 1662
Blaise Pascal was one of those students classmates hate; the
kind that keeps the average so high, everybody looks dumb by comparison and
has to struggle to get C's. This genius did not offend too many classmates,
however, because he was home-schooled. And although his father did not feel
mathematics was a proper subject till age 15, young Blaise took interest at
12, and when his father relented, math became his best subject - one of many
best subjects. Pascal went on to excel at just about everything he tried:
physics, hydrostatics, hydrodynamics, mathematics, statistics, invention,
logic, debate, philosophy, and prose. We speak of "pascals" of pressure,
Pascal's Principle, and a computer language named Pascal. Computer
scientists remember the Pascaline, an early mechanical calculator he
invented, and mathematicians speak of Pascal's triangle. Literary
historians call Pascal the Father of French Prose, and theologians debate
Pascal's Wager while evangelists use it to reason with sinners about the
gospel. Few, however, know much about the personal life of this scientific
and mathematical genius. He knew pain, he knew conflict, and he knew Jesus
Christ with a depth and sensitivity few experience. And he accomplished all
his discoveries without reaching his 40th birthday.
Blaise Pascal was the youngest of three children, the only boy.
His mother died when he was three years old. His father, Etienne, a tax
collector, took to schooling the children himself. At age 19, Blaise
started working on a mechanical calculator to help his father with his work.
The Pascaline was the second such invention (the first, by Schickard, was 18
years prior). Pascal's invention consisted of toothed wheels which engaged
each other in such a way that rotating the first 10 steps would increment
the next by one, and so on. It was not successful because the French
currency was not a decimal system, and the calculator could only add, not
subtract. Nevertheless, it was a clever piece of work for a young man who
went on to greater things.
Pascal grew in reputation as a mathematician so that in his
prime he corresponded with other notable scientists and philosophers:
Fermat, Descartes, Christopher Wren, Leibniz, Huygens, and others. He
worked on conic sections, projective geometry, probability, binomial
coefficients, cycloids, and many other puzzles of the day, sometimes
challenging his famous colleagues with difficult problems which he, of
course, solved on his own.
In physics, Pascal also excelled in both theory and experiment.
At age 30, he had completed a Treatise on the Equilibrium of Liquids, the
first systematic theory of hydrostatics. In it he formulated his famous law
of pressure, that states that the pressure is uniform in all directions on
all surfaces at a given depth. This principle is foundational to many
applications today: submarines, scuba gear, and a host of pneumatic devices.
By applying the principle, Pascal invented the syringe and the hydraulic
press. Blaise Pascal's perceptive mind enabled him to explain the rising
liquid in a barometer not as "nature abhorring a vacuum," but as the
pressure of the air outside on the liquid reservoir. He argued against
Descartes (who did not believe a vacuum could exist) and other Aristotelians
of his day. Observing that barometric pressure dropped with altitude, he
reasoned that a vacuum existed above the atmosphere. James Kiefer writes,
"In presenting his results, he taunts his enemies the Jesuits with getting
their methods backward, accusing them of relying on ancient authority
(Aristotle) in physics, while ignoring ancient authority (the Scriptures and
the Fathers, especially Augustine) in religion.
Pascal's controversies with the Jesuits had begun in his early
twenties. Two brothers from a religious movement, while caring for Pascal's
father, had a profound influence on Blaise. He took great interest in a
movement called Jansenism that was a kind of "back to the Bible" movement
within Catholicism, that stressed salvation was the free gift of God by
grace through faith. Pascal became one of their chief apologists, and in
writing his Provincial Letters, also showed himself to be an exceptional
logician and writer. His wit, irony, perception, knowledge, and a logic
honed by mathematics, made his writing sparkle with enthusiasm and force.
Kiefer writes, "He taught his countrymen how to write work that could be
read with pleasure." And indeed it can! We encourage our readers to find
out by sampling his work. Pascal is a good source of pithy quotes,
proverbs, witty sayings, and thoughtful paragraphs.
His best-known work was not even titled or completed. In his
thirties, he was apparently working on an "Apology [Defense] of the
Christian Religion," but, unfortunately, at his death there was only found a
stack of unorganized papers that was published as Pensées (Thoughts).
Nevertheless, enough was written to give believers and unbelievers alike a
great deal of food for thought: on the nature of man, sin, suffering,
unbelief, philosophy, false religion, Jesus Christ, the Scriptures, heaven
and hell, and much more. The entire work is available online and highly
recommended reading.
Much has been made of "Pascal's Wager," a philosophical
challenge usually unfairly oversimplified as follows: If you choose
Christianity and it is false, you lose nothing. If you reject Christianity
and it is true, you lose everything. Skeptics (and many Christians) feel
this is a weak argument to become a Christian. It is, but it is not what
Pascal meant. James Kiefer explains that the Wager is an educated choice,
not a flip of the coin. Having decided that the evidence for Christianity
is strong, and having decided that union with Christ is a worthy goal in
life, it is the best bet to train for it like an athlete would train for the
highest prize, even though the athlete cannot be sure he will win or the
contest will even occur. Kiefer says, "Obviously, if Christ is an illusion,
then nothing will move me closer to Him, and it does not matter what I do.
But if He is not an illusion, then obviously seeking to love Him, trust Him,
and obey Him is more likely to get me into a right relation with Him than
the opposite strategy. And so it will be the one I take." Understanding
this, the Wager is not a blind hope that I'll find myself on the right side
after I die; it is a positive choice that will order my life and give me
peace, joy, and purpose in the present. To avoid misrepresenting Pascal's
Wager, we encourage readers to read the argument in his own inimitable words
in the Pensées. When used properly, it's still a powerful argument for
accepting Christ.
Pascal's last writings are all the more poignant when we
remember he wrote much of them while suffering intensely. A contemporary
wrote, "He lived most of his adult life in great pain. He had always been
in delicate health, suffering even in his youth from migraine ..." Pascal
died at age 39 in intense pain from stomach cancer. After his death, a
servant found a surprise in the lining of Pascal's coat.
At age 31, Pascal had a spiritual experience that was so
overpowering, he wrote it down so that he would never forget it. Somehow,
after a sweet hour of prayer or worship service - he never mentioned what it
was to anyone - he felt so close to God, so overjoyed with His grace and
salvation, so convinced of the urgency of trusting Him, that he took hasty
notes of his feelings and sewed them into the lining of his coat, to be near
his heart forever. Here are those words. Consider the brilliant scientist
and mathematician, the logical thinker and debater, the inventor and writer
and genius that got this close to the heart of God:
Memorial
In the year of grace, 1654, On Monday, 23rd of November, Feast
of St Clement, Pope and Martyr, and others in the Martyrology, Vigil of St
Chrysogonus, Martyr, and others, From about half past ten in the evening
until about half past twelve,
Fire!
God of Abraham, God of Isaac, God of Jacob, (Ex 3:6; Mt 22:32)
not of the philosophers and scholars.
Certitude. Certitude. Feeling. Joy.
Peace. God of Jesus Christ.
"Thy God and my God." (Jn 20:17)
Forgetfulness of the world and of everything, except God.
He is to be found only in the ways taught in the Gospel.
Greatness of the Human Soul.
"Righteous Father, the world hath not known Thee, but I have
known Thee." (Jn 17:25)
Joy, joy, joy, tears of joy.
I have separated myself from Him. "They have forsaken Me, the
fountain of living waters." (Jr 2:13) "My God, wilt Thou leave me?" (Mt
27:46)
Let me not be separated from Him eternally. "This is the
eternal life, that they might know Thee, the only true God, and the one whom
Thou hast sent, Jesus Christ." (Jn 17:3) Jesus Christ.
Jesus Christ
I have separated myself from Him:
I have fled from Him,
denied Him,
crucified Him.
Let me never be separated from Him.
We keep hold of Him only by the ways taught in the Gospel.
Renunciation, total and sweet.
Total submission to Jesus Christ and to my director.
Eternally in joy for a day's training on earth.
"I will not forget thy words." (Ps 119:16) Amen.
Blaise Pascal took the wager, and won.
Learn More About
Blaise Pascal
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Here is a secular biography of his life and achievements.
Read James Kiefer's short biography of Pascal that discusses not
only his achievements in science, but his strong Christian faith.
Read Pascal's own words: Here is the Provincial Letters
defending Jansenism.
Read the Pensées - thoughts on the defense of the Christian
faith. This is the best way to see into the heart and mind of Pascal, and
it's great reading, too.
Short of time? Read a few Pascal quotations.
Play with Pascal's Triangle, and use it to compute the number of
gifts in the 12 Days of Christmas.
Learn about the Pascaline calculator. Here is a Pascaline slide
show with great close-up color pictures of how it works. See where the
Pascaline fits in the History of Computing Timeline.
Learn about the Pascal Programming Language.
Find Pascal crater on the moon.
William Harvey: coming soon.
Robert Boyle 1627 - 1691
In this roster of great scientists who were Christians and
creationists, occasionally one stands out as worthy of a gold medal. The
requirements are stringent. The person needs to have performed exceptional
scientific work, that produced some fundamental discovery, or advanced the
scientific enterprise in a highly significant way; perhaps to be known as
the father of a branch of science or the discoverer of a fundamental law of
nature. Simultaneously, the person needs to have been a devout Christian
whose personal life and character was befitting the honor (this eliminates
Newton). Yet some who fulfilled both these qualifications did little to
relate their Christian faith to their scientific work; they were Sunday
Christians and weekday secular scientists.
The third qualification involves advancing philosophical
understanding of the relationship between science and Biblical Christianity,
or actively combatting unbelief and skepticism. All these requirements were
met with room to spare in the next honoree of this series, Robert Boyle. He
not only can be considered a pillar of modern science - and one of its most
eminent practitioners - but he also left the world a profound legacy of rich
literature explaining the Christian foundation for science. The title of
one of his many books was The Christian Virtuoso (i.e., Bible-believing
scientist), and to historians, he was one of the best examples.
Like most in this series, Boyle's life and adventures make for a
good story, but let's consider first some of the impacts he made on the
practice of science: (1) An emphasis on experiment instead of reason. (2)
Publication of experimental results. (3) Popularization of scientific
discoveries. (4) Collaboration of scientists in professional societies. (5)
Mathematical formulations of laws. (6) Putting all claims about nature, no
matter the reputation of the authority, to the test of experiment.
Of course, no one works in a vacuum (no pun intended, as we will
see); Boyle was not the only one to advance these ideals. He was influenced
by Bacon, Galileo and Kepler before him, and there were contemporaries who
also practiced one or more of these principles. But among his peers, Boyle
was an eminent leader in all of them. He took the initiative where others
stuck to old habits, and he led by example. He is the considered the father
of chemistry and a law was named in his honor. The world's first and oldest
professional scientific society with the longest record of continuous
publication is due largely to Robert Boyle and the colleagues he attracted
with his energy, drive, and enthusiasm for science. That enthusiasm came
directly out of his Christian faith. To Boyle, love of God came first, and
everything else second. Science was a means to a higher end: loving God
with all one's heart, soul, strength, and mind.
Because Boyle's philosophical thought will be our emphasis, we
will give an abbreviated version of his life story and refer the interested
reader to the biographies by John Hudson Tiner and others for details.
Despite being born with a silver spoon in his mouth, the
privileged son of a rich and prestigious landowner and friend of the king,
Robert Boyle would know before long the meaning of hardship. As the 14th of
15 children in the family of the great Earl of Cork in Ireland, young Robyn
had no lack of any material thing. Yet his wise father knew the values of
self-discipline, education and hard work, and ensured his children were not
idle but given the best training for honorable life. Robyn himself was sent
for his first five years to be raised by a peasant family rather than live
in his father's rich estate. Sadly, many of the children grew up to be
profligate and wild, but not Robyn or his older sister Katherine.
In the schools of the time, Aristotle still held sway over
almost every field of natural knowledge. Education consisted largely of
memorizing what authorities had said. Some schools actually prohibited
original thinking. If Aristotle said a vacuum cannot exist, then that was
that; memorize it and regurgitate it on the test. But early in his
education, Robyn learned to question the opinions of mere men. He was
introduced by a teacher to the new "experimental method" of learning. Young
Boyle also had a bright mind that asked questions, that was unsatisfied by
rote answers from experts. He wanted to know how the authorities knew what
they claimed, and why it was necessary to follow them. After all, who had
been their authorities?
At age 17 Boyle's life took a dramatic turn. Though certainly
not a spoiled rich child, he was suddenly transferred to the school of hard
knocks. While on an extended, all-expense-paid educational tour of Europe
with his brother Frank and a tutor, war broke out in Ireland. Oblivious to
the crisis at home, Robert visited leading scientists. He almost got to see
Galileo, missing the opportunity by a few months due to the great astronomer
's death. Paris, Rome, the great centers of learning had been on their
itinerary when the word reached them from their desperate father that the
war had hit home. King Charles, occupied with other conflicts, had been
unable to aid the Irish landowners against the popular uprising, and the
Earl of Cork had to spend every resource to protect his estate. In dire
straits, his father wrote to the sons that no more money could be
forthcoming. To the boys' tutor, he wrote, "For with inward grief of soul I
write this truth unto you that I am no longer able to supply them beyond
this last payment. But if they serve God and be careful and discreet in
their carriage [i.e., lifestyle], God will bless them and provide for them
as hitherto He has done for me."
Frank rushed back home to help, but Robyn had been too ill to be
of military assistance, and remained back in Geneva with the tutor. It was
no use. Lewis, a brother, died in battle. Lord Barrymore, the Great Earl's
favorite son-in-law, died in battle; and the grief-stricken father died the
day the truce was signed - not only had the rebels destroyed his property
and foundries, scattered his family and stolen all his possessions, but as
part of the peace treaty, the king sacrificed all the Earl's land to the
rebels. Now orphaned, Robyn stayed two years in Geneva with the tutor,
until he could no longer bear burdening his host. Selling the last
remaining valuables, he boarded a ship for London. He was 17 years old.
Tiner describes the setting: "Robyn had begun his travels from this city.
When he left he'd enjoyed every possible advantage. His future seemed
secure. He could look forward to wealth, an estate in the country, and
perhaps a family with Lady Ann Howard as his wife. Now, five years later,
Robyn walked the streets of London penniless and alone."
A famous gospel preacher once said, "The test of a man's
character is what it takes to stop him." Young Robert Boyle's character now
faced the acid test. Coming from such a large family, he did have siblings.
Robert moved in with his sister Katherine, 13 years older, who was a widow
after surviving a very unhappy arranged marriage to a churlish alcoholic
named Viscount Ranelagh (fortunately for her, he died young). Katherine and
Robert were alike in that they both loved learning and were not rebellious
like many of the other Boyle children. It would take years for Robert to
regain control of his share of his father's assets, and he considered his
situation unworthy of the marriage that had been arranged for him.
Nevertheless, with Lady Ranelagh's help and some remaining properties, he
was not destitute. Another productive influence she provided him were her
social contacts. Katherine had many friends who were scientists and
intellectuals. A group of Oxford scholars under John Wilkins had formed a
loosely-knit science club they dubbed the "Invisible College," because it
had no formal organization or meeting place. Though a mere teenager to
these intellectuals, Robert impressed them with his aptitude and knowledge.
His mind continued to flourish within this non-traditional university
program.
Politically, it was a tense time; these were the days leading up
to the Cromwell revolution, when Parliament and King Charles were at odds
and tensions ran high. Boyle took refuge in a family manor in Dorset and
kept a low profile. He devoted himself to his three loves: reading,
writing, and dabbling in science. During this period some profound works
came from his pen on theology and personal Christian living, including Style
of the Scriptures, Occasional Reflections, Ethics, and Some Motives and
Incentives to the Love of God. Katherine distributed copies of some of
these to her friends. As a result, Robert's reputation as a writer began to
grow. Robert recalled how at age 13 he had learned the fear of God.
Awakened by a thunderstorm, the reality of God's judgment flowed into his
mind. He realized right then that he was not ready to face his Maker. He
knew his good works were not enough: he needed salvation, and cried out to
God for forgiveness. From that night forward, he kept his promise to live
as a true Christian, not just going to church and being "good," but
sincerely trusting in the gift of God through Jesus Christ and following Him
as his Lord and Savior. Now at Stalbridge Manor, the young man was writing
about how to see God's providence in all things.
During this period of his 20's, Boyle read voraciously and also
tried scientific experiments, inspired by Galileo's writings and his
contacts from the Invisible College. Bad experiences with doctor's
medicines (carelessly prescribed without standards or quality control in
those days) also motivated him to learn chemistry; Robert was frail in
health much of his life and took great interest in finding effective
medicines as well as avoiding bad ones. These years were somewhat
unstructured and lonely for him. After ten years at Stalbridge, at age 27
he was invited to come to Oxford, the leading intellectual center in England
in those times.
This move launched his scientific career. Now with greater
insight and maturity from his reading and experiments, Boyle was again in
touch with the Invisible College, made up of doctors, scientists and
theologians who for the most part were devout Christians. Like the other
participants, Robert was excited about the prospects of the "new learning"
and "experimental philosophy" inspired by the works of Francis Bacon and
Galileo. Committed to the principle that science should be used not just
for pride of knowing but for the good of mankind, the College promoted
experimentation on a variety of subjects: chemistry, physics, and medicine.
During his six years of informal association with the Invisible College at
Oxford, Boyle was largely self-taught. He did not earn a degree or
professorship. Soon, however, he would be the most eminent scientist in
Britain.
Robert Boyle was a self-starter. He did not need a graduate
adviser to point the way. Eager to discover the natural laws the Creator
had devised, and with financial resources sufficiently restored, Robert
built a laboratory, equipped it, and hired assistants. His most capable
assistant was a young man named Robert Hooke. What Hooke lacked in social
skills he made up for engineering acumen (the prototype nerd); the master
would tell him what he needed, and Hooke would invent it. Boyle had heard
about interesting preliminary experiments with vacuum pumps. Otto von
Guericke had demonstrated by 1650 the ability to pump the air out of a wine
barrel, and then a copper globe, but the devices were clumsy and difficult
to operate, requiring the efforts of two strong men. Boyle was intrigued by
the idea of creating a vacuum. Aristotle had claimed "Nature abhors a
vacuum"; Descartes, many Jesuits and most others never thought to question
that dogma. To Boyle, this was a chance to show the superiority of the
experimental philosophy, so he asked Hooke to help him make a better air
pump. What followed was groundbreaking science, methods that set standards
for empirical work that survive to this day.
Hooke's ingenuity provided Boyle with an easily-operated air
pump with a glass receiver, into which the duo inserted a variety of items
that could be easily observed as the air was pumped out. They put a ticking
clock in and noticed the sound drop to silence as air was removed. They put
a bird and a kitten in and watched them struggle, then succumb, for lack of
air. They observed that sound, but not light, was affected by the vacuum.
They watched a candle go out. Each observation was meticulously recorded,
but beyond the mere collection of facts, Boyle had the insight to interpret
the results and formulate hypotheses that could be tested. A suite of
cleverly-contrived experiments provided Boyle and Hooke with many exciting
results, some that contradicted common sense, and many that contradicted
Aristotle.
Then, Boyle set two other important precedents: he published his
results in lively English, leading to the tradition of popularizing science,
and he carefully described his apparatus so that others could try to
reproduce the experiments, leading to the principle of repeatability. He
was even brutally honest about failures and errors, feeling these were
necessary parts of the learning process. All this was almost unheard of in
the practice of science. His first paper in 1660, New Experiments
Physico-Mechanicall Touching the Spring of the Air, and its Effects, created
no small stir. Some critics thought it unwise to question the great master
Aristotle. Others thought science should be published only in Latin.
Most, however, read his work with great eagerness. Boyle, in
effect, showed that science belonged to every man, and that it had very
practical effects. It led to principles that could be tested and repeated
by anyone (though few could hope to exceed the precision and thoroughness of
his experiments). Marie Boas Hall, writing for Scientific American (1967),
judged one of Boyle's most novel creations the idea that one could prove a
scientific theory by experiment - an idea we take for granted today, but
nearly the reverse of the Aristotelian/deductive approach to science of his
time.
Boyle and Hooke's lab teamwork led to many discoveries. Air, he
proved, acted much like a spring; it acted like a "mechanical" substance
(i.e., one subject to laws, not spirits or essences). Air contained
ingredients essential to life and combustion. Advancing the earlier work of
Torricelli, they showed air had weight and pressure. They experimented with
colors, optics, and chemical analysis, including the first crude litmus test
for acids and bases. By testing combinations of substances, Boyle deduced
that complex chemicals could be classified into simpler elements (but not
the Aristotelian view of elements such as earth, air, fire and water, of
which everything was supposed to contain proportions). In his best-known
experiment, he poured mercury into a J-shaped tube and observed the size of
the air column trapped as he added more fluid. With fastidious
measurements, he discovered that doubling the pressure cut the volume in
half: P = k/V, a relationship later named Boyle's Law in his honor. This
was on the cutting edge of the concept that there existed "laws of nature"
that were discoverable by experiment.
Well into his senior years, Boyle continued his experiments,
discoveries and publications. His work contributed to the understanding of
phosphorus, acids and bases, salts, precipitates and chemical elements. His
achievements in chemistry, both practical and theoretical, began to steer it
from the mystical and secretive arts of the alchemists, leading many
historians to consider him the Father of Chemistry. Notice how Aristotle's
statement "Nature abhors a vacuum" implied a kind of animistic character to
the world; Boyle's approach began to steer science away from a personified
nature, and view it as a machine created by God and operating according to
laws. Though Boyle was not alone in this approach, he showed originality
and creative insight. Marie Hall Boas explains:
The English scientists were much influenced by Descartes'
careful formulation of his mechanical philosophy, toward which they were
further predisposed by their adherence to similar ideas of Bacon's. ... [She
describes the influence also of Gassendi and Epicurus.] By the middle 1650
's Boyle had worked out his own version of the mechanical philosophy-the
"corpuscular philosophy," as he called it-in which he drew on both the
Cartesian and the atomic views but wholly accepted neither. He believed
"those two grand and most Catholic [i.e., universal] principles, matter and
motion," sufficed to explain all the properties of matter as we experience
it.
As we experience it indicates that Boyle understood the
limitations of science. His other writings, additionally, make it clear he
believed in the immanence of God, that the Creator is active in his
creation. Boyle was not a "mechanist" in the sense of denying the
possibility of miracles. He believed only that in the normal workings of
Nature, God's providence operated through uniform mechanical principles
accessible to observation. Hall describes Boyle's disagreements with
Descartes, Spinoza, and Huygens who felt that "the ultimate test of a theory
was the appeal to reason." On the contrary, Boyle believed it was possible
to prove a theory by experiment. This was a novel idea, not universally
accepted at the time, Hall claims, and she feels it is evidence for "the
originality of Boyle's approach to scientific proof-and to chemistry."
Obviously, the scientific world followed Boyle's lead. This establishes his
importance not only as an experimenter, but as a pioneering philosopher of
science. The wealth of his experimental work demonstrates that he walked
his talk.
Robert Boyle was one of the 12 charter members of a new
organization founded in 1662, The Royal Society for the Improving of Natural
Knowledge. Its charter was to promote the experimental philosophy for the
common good. In clear contradistinction to the Aristotelians, they made
their motto Nothing by mere authority; in other words, submit all claims
about nature to the test of experiment. The founders and early members were
predominantly Christians, especially Puritans. Henry Oldenberg, Boyle's
literary assistant, was secretary. The charter issue of their publication,
the Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society, written in Oldenberg's
hand and readable on the Royal Society website, reflects the Christian and
humanitarian ideals of the organization. Though Boyle refused the
presidency of the Royal Society because of scruples about taking an oath, he
was its most influential and esteemed member, especially at the time young
Isaac Newton was just becoming a rising star. There had been academies and
scientific clubs before, like the Academy of the Lynx to which Galileo
belonged, but the Royal Society was the first true formal institution
dedicated to experimental science, and its Philosophical Transactions is the
longest-running scientific journal in the world. As the number of "fellows"
grew and meetings shared the latest experimental demonstrations at Gresham
College in London, the fledgling organization became the cheerleader for the
scientific revolution.
At this point it is instructive to note some early crooked
swaths that soon became entrenched, leading to unintended consequences. Why
is the Royal Society the quintessential naturalist-Darwinist-atheist
organization it is today? Surely Boyle, John Wilkins, Henry Oldenberg and
the other founders would be appalled to see their journals filled with
absurd evolutionary speculations on every subject, propounding atheism as
science and ridiculing belief in the Bible and creation, as do most other
scientific societies in our post-Darwinist world. What happened? In a
recent article in Christian History magazine (issue 76 - November 2002, pp.
39-40), Chris Armstrong argues that the charter members defended religion
but laid the groundwork for irreligion through compromise. The Royal
Society was a curious blend of Puritan and Anglican, those who put all
authority in the Bible and those who valued tradition. They thought they
could ignore their religious differences and unite around the new
experimental philosophy, because all of them agreed that nature's "admirable
contrivance" and "accurate order and symmetry" glorified the Creator, His
power and glory. It does, of course, but this is lowest-common-denominator
approach glosses over deeper issues: does the authority of the word of God
extend to science? Is fallen man capable of discerning truth apart from the
spirit of God? "For both pragmatic and pious reasons," Armstrong writes,
"some members of the Royal Society were influenced by the rationalist
approach to religion urged by the Cambridge Platonists. In their public
discourse they gravitated toward an essential Christianity that affirmed
only the existence of God, the soul's immortality, and each person's ethical
obligation to others."
That is why their meetings were soon was obsessed with
microscopic images of fly eyes and plant seeds and euphoria about all the
possible benefits of science, but lost its focus on the Creator - till the
temple was filled with syncretistic idols, and like Ezekiel describes, the
spirit of God, by stages, departed. Why didn't the deeply religious members
see this coming? Sadly, their compromise put them on the defensive. "They
faced charges of irreligion themselves," Armstrong notes, and Hall adds,
"they were denounced from the pulpit, and its Fellows came to be touchy
about any accusation of godlessness." "They answered these charges,"
Armstrong alleges, "by insisting that the evidences of lawfulness and design
in the fabric of things pointed not away from by toward God." Little did
they realize, he argues, that the broadly-shared, lowest common denominator
principle of design would become, in the next century, "a substitute for the
Christ-centered teachings of the historic church." There was a God, all
would agree, but like Lewis Carroll's Cheshire Cat, He would slowly vanish
till just the grin was left. The distant "clockmaker God" of the deist
would displace the God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ, because there
was no need of that hypothesis. Is history repeating itself? Those in the
intelligent design movement, who think Muslims and Jews and Christians and
even atheists can rally around the banner of design would do well to study
the history of the Royal Society. It's not that design arguments are
unsound or unconvincing; but unless men are brought all the way to the
gospel of Christ and their minds are renewed by the Holy Spirit, the demon
is not dislodged; he returns with seven more, till the last situation is
worse than the first.
This parenthesis was necessary before turning to the
philosophical works of Robert Boyle. There is no question of his commitment
to historic Christianity and the authority of the Bible. Mulfinger writes
that he was strictly orthodox in his Christian beliefs, and "was intolerant
of preachers who spiritualized or allegorized important truths of the Bible
rather than accepting them at face value." Though he remained within the
Anglican church, he was a Puritan at heart, supportive of the nonconformists
who had left the state church; he even supported some financially and had
many Puritan friends. Boyle studied the Scriptures in the original
languages and accepted the Genesis accounts as literal, historical truth.
His faith was well reasoned and not traditional, refined in the furnace of
dealing with intellectual doubt, as was surely a trial any must face in an
intellectual climate. But he knew even as a young man that doubt was a
refining fire: "He whose Faith never doubted," he stated in 1647, "may
justly doubt his faith." That his faith passed the refinement crucible to
the point of reasoned commitment was made clear when he said, "I am not a
Christian, because it is the religion of my country, and my friends, when I
chuse to travel in the beaten road, it is not, because I find it is the
road, but because I judge it is the way."
Perhaps in hindsight the Puritan members could taken stronger
steps to steer the Royal Society away from compromise. They did oppose the
philosophy of Thomas Hobbes, and most of its members were godly men: John
Wilkins, the first secretary, was similarly convinced of the authority of
Scripture, and over half the original Fellows were Puritans. Nevertheless,
its purpose was to promote experimental science, not theology. The
unintended consequence of any institution that seeks to uncover truth apart
from a prior commitment to Christian revelation is that it will never be
content to stay within the bounds of observable and repeatable phenomena.
It will want to explain everything, even First Causes, by natural means.
Eventually, it becomes a substitute religion, arrogating to itself the right
to explain all that is, was and ever will be.
The Royal Society charter, God-fearing as it is, makes the
hidden assumption that unregenerate men are perfectly capable of discerning
truth, without having a commitment to the One who is the way, the Truth, and
the Life. It presumes an incomplete Fall, treating the mind as unaffected.
Given those assumptions, human pride resulting from sin will generate a
science that refuses to accept its limitations and moral flaws. It gives
Satan a handle to turn an honorable thing into a tool of skepticism. The
end result is seen in papers published in today's Philosophical Transactions
that seek to explain the evolution of morals and the origin of the universe
from nothing. It leads to arrogant addresses by its officers that "science"
is superior to Christian faith as a path to truth in all areas of inquiry.
In those first decades, however, the Royal Society was blessed
by the virtuous Christian testimony and reasoned faith of Robert Boyle. His
integrity was impeccable. Throughout his life, Boyle was humble, gracious,
prayerful, and peace-loving. He was conscientious to a fault, even stopping
to pause respectfully before mentioning the name of God. He was adamantly
intolerant of swearing. Never physically robust, it is remarkable how
productive he was. His secret powerhouse was passionate love of God and
fascination with creation. Boyle's pastor described him in these words:
"His great thoughts of God, and his contemplation of his works, were to him
sources of continual joy, which never could be exhausted." Apparently this
is part of the reason he never married, along with his distaste for the
abuse of marriage that was prevalent among men of his day. Instead, he
devoted himself wholeheartedly to his work. Furthermore, he was strong
supporter of foreign missions; For years, he financially supported Christian
missionaries and Bible translations to the far east, to the Irish (those who
had robbed his father's lands), and to the Indians across the sea in the
thriving American colonies. He lived frugally, but gave profligately toward
the advancement of the gospel.
His zeal for spreading the good news of Jesus Christ was matched
by his zeal against atheism. To him, science never rated even a close
second to Christian faith in importance. He said, "For I, that had much
rather have men not philosophers than not Christians, should be better
content to see you ignore the mysteries of nature, than deny the author of
it." (By atheism, Boyle did not mean just philosophical denial of God,
which was less common in his day, but the practical atheism that makes even
a believer live as if there was no God.) In his will, he established a fund
for a series of eight lectures, to be given once a year, for the defense of
the historic Christian faith against atheism, and the demonstration of the
superior reasonableness of Biblical Christianity against any philosophy or
arguments of critics and skeptics. The "Boyle Lectures," as they came to be
known, continued for many years.
In his writings, Robert Boyle advanced the study of the
relationship between the Christianity and science. His words are
well-reasoned, profound and enlightening. He did not fall into the trap of
relegating the Bible to matters of morals and faith alone; without
qualification, he applied II Tim. 3:16 ("All Scripture is given by
inspiration of God") to the entire Bible, including Genesis. Furthermore,
he believed in verbal inspiration, meaning that God's revelation was
contained in the very words, not just the meaning, of the text (the latter
view opening the door to unlimited human paraphrasing.) This drove him to
study the ancient languages to understand the primitive sense of the
original words, especially for passages that, in English translation,
presented difficulties.
In approaching difficulties, Boyle recognized that the Bible's
purpose was not to provide quantitative scientific descriptions of the
natural world like a textbook. Using this interpretive framework, he dealt
forthrightly with issues of when to evaluate a passage as poetry or
narrative, and when it should be treated as descriptive vs. prescriptive.
He followed Calvin's teaching on accommodation, that the Holy Spirit used
language appropriate to the common man, not specialists. The Bible contains
easily-understood phrases such as the rising and setting of the sun, using
the language of appearance instead of quantitative, technical description.
Thus, passages that seemed to teach geocentricity could be understood as
figures of speech without sacrificing verbal inspiration. As such, Boyle is
a good model for today's Christian virtuosi who desire to advance science
without sacrificing Biblical authority. Michael Hunter, a Boyle historian
and compiler of his voluminous output, is impressed with the depth and
breadth of his thinking on these subjects:
Boyle's major preoccupation was the relationship between God's
power, the created realm, and man's perception of it, a topic on which he
wrote extensively. ... Boyle laid stress on the extent to which God's
omniscience transcended the limited bounds of human reason, taking a
position that contrasted with the rather complacent rationalism of
contemporary divines .... He also reflected at length on the proper
understanding of final causes, and in conjunction with this provided one of
the most sophisticated expositions of the design argument in his period.
Boyle's significance for the history of science depends almost as much on
the profound views on difficult issues put forward in these philosophical
writings as it does on his experimental treatises.
Hunter goes on to describe the intense hostility Boyle expressed
against any "views of nature that he saw as detracting from a proper
appreciation of God's power in his creation." These included lengthy
published arguments against Aristotelianism and the materialism of Thomas
Hobbes, "despite his professed disinclination to involve himself in
philosophical disputes." On the positive side, the titles of some of Boyle'
s books hint at their rich contents: Some Considerations touching the
Usefulness of Experimental Natural Philosophy; Free Enquiry into the
Vulgarly Receiv'd Notion of Nature; The Excellency of Theology, Compar'd
with Natural Philosophy, Discourse of Things Above Reason, Disquisition
about the Final Causes of Natural Things, and especially, The Christian
Virtuoso. "In these," Hunter writes, "Boyle made a profound contribution to
an understanding of what he saw as the proper relationship between God and
the natural world, and man's potential for comprehending this."
It is enriching to read Boyle's own words on the relation of
science and Scripture. There is so much of it, only excerpts are provided
on a separate page. For those who wish to dig deeper into the mind of this
great creation scientist, see the Boyle website. There, Michael Hunter and
a group of scholars are compiling and publishing the works of Robert Boyle.
They even publish a newsletter, On the Boyle about latest efforts to collect
and disseminate his works.
Among the wealth of words we could quote in closing, perhaps the
most succinct is the best. It states clearly and simply the reason a
Christian should be a virtuoso, which in his time meant a lover of knowledge
(a synonym for natural philosopher or scientist). It echoes a familiar
theme running through this book, a motivation stated by many science-loving
Christians from the early middle ages on into the 21st century. Boyle
encapsulates it in only ten words:
"From a knowledge of His work, we shall know Him."
Learn More About
Robert Boyle
--------------------------------------------------------------------
Read Boyle! See our page of Boyle writings.
Read Robert Doolan's biography from Creation Ex Nihilo Magazine
on Answers in Genesis.
Can you afford 14 Volumes of Boyle books? Look over the titles,
and the blurbs by admirers. A picture of the volumes can be seen on the
Boyle website.
Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy has a lengthy biography.
A short biography of Boyle's life and science is at the History
of Mathematics website.
This short biography by Dr. Brad D. Hume on the History of
Science Chronology Project has a diagram of the apparatus Boyle used to
discover Boyle's Law, and a picture of the cover of his book The Sceptical
Chymist.
Here is the official Boyle Project website at the University of
London, headed by Dr. Michael Hunter of Birkbeck College, London, who has
been researching his works for 15 years. Here you can find out what's On
the Boyle (i.e., their newsletter). The site also has links, a
bibliography, lists of works, and a good introductory biography by Boyle
expert Michael Hunter, complete with pictures.
The Royal Society is still going strong, and has online history
resources.
Sir Isaac Newton 1642 - 1727: coming soon.
Antony van Leeuwenhoek 1632 - 1723
It's not often that a layman untrained in science makes a
fundamental discovery, starts a new branch of science, and alters the course
of human history. Nor is it often that a layman shows exemplary scientific
technique that becomes a model for scientists to come. Antony van
Leeuwenhoek was such a person. Extremely inventive, careful, and precise,
unfettered by false notions of the day, Leeuwenhoek was driven by an
insatiable curiosity that captivated him at age 40 and kept him going to his
dying day at age 91. It started when he read a copy of Robert Hooke's new
illustrated book Micrographia, which contained drawings of insects, cork,
textiles and other things revealed under a microscope at magnifications
about 20-30x. Leeuwenhoek took to grinding his own lenses and making his
own microscopes. Perfecting a technique that raised the power to over 200x,
he opened up a whole new world never before seen by man: the world of
microorganisms.
Born in Delft, Holland, Antony did not have any inclinations or
opportunities to become a scientist. He would also know hardship and grief.
His father, a basket maker, died when he was five or six. His mother was
the daughter of a beer brewer. She remarried a painter and bailiff, but he
died when Antony was 16. He was educated by an uncle, and never went to a
university, never learned Latin (the scientific language of the day) or any
other language other than his native Dutch. By age 16, he was apprenticed
to a textile merchant, and he became a drapery shopkeeper before he was 22.
He married Barbara de Mey, the daughter of a silk merchant about that time.
The Leeuwenhoeks had five children, four of whom died young.
Antony became a chamberlain in 1660, later a surveyor and an
inspector of the measures for wine. Through his appointments and possibly
some inheritance, he attained a comfortable income with time to pursue what
would later become his famous hobby. His wife died in 1666 when he was 34;
five years later, he married Cornelia Swalmius, the daughter of another
cloth merchant who was also a Calvinist minister. Her influence may somehow
have stimulated Antony's investigations into science, since these began
within two years after their marriage. This second marriage lasted 23 years
till her death in 1694; Antony was cared for by his last daughter till his
death in 1723, thus carrying on his scientific work for an additional 29
years after becoming a widower a second time.
Leeuwenhoek did not invent the microscope (compound magnifying
lenses were known 40 years before he was born), but he took it to new levels
of power. He was probably acquainted with magnifying lenses used to
investigate the textiles in his trade. His only trip to London (between
marriages, in 1668) introduced him to the unseen natural world under the
magnifying lens shown in Robert Hooke's popular new book, Micrographia. We
can only surmise what sparked his interest in microscopy that was in full
bloom five years later; this book? His second wife or her intellectual
friends? His own curiosity about nature? Somehow, he began grinding his
own magnifying glasses, and perfecting a way to mount them and hold
specimens in position for viewing. Crude by today's standards, they were
nevertheless far superior to those used by Hooke, Swammerdam, Malphighi and
others, and were unsurpassed until the 19th century. (The electron
microscope would have to wait 250 years.) The compound microscopes of his
day suffered from chromatic aberration and were not useful much above 20x.
Leeuwenhoek made tiny lenses not much bigger than a pinhead in his simple
microscopes, but aided with excellent eyesight, he achieved magnifications
as high as 270x and 1.4 micron resolution. He was now in position to peer
into a world never before seen by human eyes.
Other scientists of the day were content to magnify well-known
objects like leaves and textiles. Leeuwenhoek wanted to see the invisible.
By 1673, when he was finding exciting things with his microscope, a friend
put him in touch with the Royal Society of London. Antony sent them
drawings (made by a friend) of bee stings and mouthparts, a louse and a
fungus. The eminent British scientists were at first skeptical of the
claims by this untrained layman who only spoke Dutch. When in 1676 he
described finding microorganisms in water that were so small that "ten
thousand of these living creatures could scarce equal the bulk of a coarse
sand grain," the surprised Royal Society requested corroboration from other
eyewitnesses, especially since Robert Hooke himself could not repeat them
(until later, with a more powerful microscope). Several friends, including
a pastor, and a notary public, sent affidavits that they also saw these
things through Antony's microscope. As Leeuwenhoek's observations were
found to be true and accurate, his reputation grew, and by 1680 this
untrained layman was elected a fellow of the Royal Society. Though he would
never revisit London or attend a meeting, the Dutch cloth merchant kept up a
lively relationship with the British scientists for fifty years, sending
them hundreds of letters with attached samples, some of which survive to
this day in the Royal Society archives, along with a few of his hand-made
microscopes; though out of hundreds he manufactured, only nine survive.
Leeuwenhoek's letters sparkle with the excitement of discovery.
Part of the fun of reading them is catching his infectious joy; where words
like astonished, wonderful, odd, perfect, marvelous, inconceivable are
frequent as he describes his "wee animalcules" and their motions.
Describing protozoa and bacteria in a drop of fresh water, he writes, "The
motion of most of them in the water was so swift, and so various, upwards,
downwards, and roundabout, that I admit I could not but wonder at it. I
judge that some of these little creatures were above a thousand times
smaller than the smallest ones which I have hitherto seen on the rind of
cheese, wheaten flour, mold and the like . . . . Some of these are so
exceedingly small that millions of millions might be contained in a single
drop of water. I was much surprised at this wonderful spectacle, having
never seen any living creature comparable to those for smallness; nor could
I indeed imagine that nature had afforded instances of so exceedingly minute
animal proportions." His vocabulary must have seemed a bit undignified to
the British scientists at times - describing the plaque between his teeth,
he wrote, "I then most always saw, with great wonder, that in the said
matter there were many little living animalcules, very prettily a-moving,
the biggest sort...had a very strong and swift motion, and shot through the
water (or spittle) like a pike does through the water. The second
sort...oft-times spun round like a top." - but Antony's intense curiosity
and amazement at what he was seeing provided the energy and patience to hold
his little two-inch microscopes, illuminated by a nearby candle-flame, up to
his eyes repeatedly for five decades.
Of his motivation, he himself wrote, "...my work, which I've
done for a long time, was not pursued in order to gain the praise I now
enjoy, but chiefly from a craving after knowledge, which I notice resides in
me more than in most other men." Dobell, a translator of many of his
letters, describes him thus: "Our Leeuwenhoek was manifestly a man of great
and singular candour, honesty, and sincerity. He was religiously plain and
straightforward in all he did, and therefore sometimes almost immodestly
frank in describing his observations. It never occurred to him that Truth
could appear indecent. His letters, accordingly, are full of outspoken
thoughts which more 'scientific' writers would hesitate to put on paper: and
to the modern reader this is, indeed, one of his particular charms-for he is
far more childlike and innocent and 'modern' than any present-day writer."
(Dobell, p. 73).
Leeuwenhoek investigated almost anything and everything that
could be held up to his lens, exemplifying technical skill, persistence,
curiosity, insight and penchant for accuracy that would become a model for
others working in experimental biology. He was the first to observe
bacteria, rotifers and protists like Vorticella and Volvox. He observed
blood cells and was the first to see the whiplike action of sperm cells. He
also labored passionately to dispel myths. Working independently, untied to
the common misconceptions by scientists of his day, he used good empirical
methods to find the truth. One year, for instance, when people found
objects that looked like burnt paper with mysterious writing on them and
attributed them to messages from heaven, Antony proved they were merely
dried sheets of algae. In his proof, he did a model forensic analysis, even
reproducing the processes that led to the phenomenon. More importantly,
Leeuwenhoek refuted the doctrine of spontaneous generation that was popular
in his day, the idea that living things emerge spontaneously from inanimate
matter-eels from dew, shellfish from sand, maggots from meat, and weevils
from wheat. He observed the complete life cycle of ants, fleas, mussels,
eels, and various insects, proving that all organisms had parents. It would
take another 150 years for the false notion of spontaneous generation to be
dealt its final death blow under Louis Pasteur (although a new form of the
doctrine arose in the twentieth century, of necessity under Darwinian
philosophy, under the name "chemical evolution").
Antony van Leeuwenhoek became somewhat of a celebrity in his old
age. Visitors to his little shop wanting to see microscopic wonders
included Peter the Great, King James II, and Frederick II of Prussia. His
relationship with the Royal Society also brought him into contact with other
leading scientists of the day. He had no regard for fame or position,
though, and would rebuff royalty if he was too busy, or if they had not made
an appointment. Truly his passion was for the wonders of nature that God
had allowed him to investigate. There are indications he was also
interested in navigation, astronomy, mathematics, and other natural
sciences. He said, "Man has always to be busy with his thoughts if anything
is to be accomplished."
It is difficult to find much detail about Leeuwenhoek's church
attendance or spiritual life in most biographical sources, which tend to
focus on his experimental achievements, but it is clear that faith in God
and a love for creation were the key influences behind his scientific work.
He was born into the Dutch Reformed tradition, which had a high view of
Scripture and salvation in Jesus Christ, and a firm doctrine of creation, Of
his religion, Richard Westfall of Indiana University writes, "He was
baptized and buried in Calvinist churches, and his second wife was the
daughter of a Calvinist minister." This tradition, furthermore, understood
and encouraged man's role in the investigation of God's handiwork in nature.
A. Schierbeek, the Editor-in-Chief of the collected letters of Leeuwenhoek,
explains that he was part of the 'New Philosophy' of scientists like Robert
Boyle, who regarded the study of nature as "a work to the glory of God and
the benefit of Man." The newly-formed Royal Society was made up largely of
Puritans with similar convictions, from which we can infer Leeuwenhoek
shared with them a common bond of belief, since he took great pride in his
relationship with the Royal Society, mentioning it on his title pages and
even on his tombstone. Schierbeek observes, "His works are full of his
admiration of creation and the Creator, a theme which is frequently found in
writings of this period; in becoming better acquainted with creation, men
wanted to get nearer the Creator, a conviction which is found among many of
the early members of the Royal Society." (Schierbeek, p. 200). Thus we see
again that Christianity was the driving force during the rise of modern
science.
Of Leeuwenhoek's personal faith, Schierbeek says, "To this we
must add his deep religious assurance, his complete faith in the 'All-wise
Creator,' a never-flagging admiration for the perfection of the most minute,
hidden mysteries of the work of His hands and the conviction that his
researches would surely help to make His Omnipotence more universally known.
Without ever lapsing into high-flown phrases he repeatedly gave evidence of
his religious faith: 'Let us lay the hand on our mouth, and reflect that
the All-wise hath deemed this needful for the reproduction of all that hath
received movement and growth, and so, the why and the wherefore we can but
guess after.'" (Schierbeek, p. 31).
It is clear, too, from his stand against non-Christian
superstitions such as the doctrine of spontaneous generation, that he held
to a Biblical doctrine of creation. He believed it foolish to think his
little "animalcules" could have formed by chance, and he worked diligently
to prove that all things reproduce after their kind, as the book of Genesis
teaches. For example, after working for weeks observing the propagation of
insects, Leeuwenhoek stated confidently, ". . . This must appear wonderful,
and be a confirmation of the principle, that all living creatures deduce
their origin from those which were formed at the Beginning." (Schierbeek, p.
137). After another remarkable series of experiments on rotifers in 1702 he
concluded:
The preceding kinds of experiments I have repeated many times
with the same success, and in particular with some of the sediment which had
been kept in my study for about five months. . . From all these
observations, we discern most plainly the incomprehensible perfection, the
exact order, and the inscrutable providential care with which the most wise
Creator and Lord of the Universe had formed the bodies of these animalcules,
which are so minute as to escape our sight, to the end that different
species of them may be preserved in existence. And this most wonderful
disposition of nature with regard to these animalcules for the preservation
of their species; which at the same time strikes us with astonishment, must
surely convince all of the absurdity of those old opinions, that living
creatures can be produced from corruption of putrefaction. [Schierbeek, p.
171]
From Leeuwenhoek's writings we frequently sense the awe and
wonder that can only emanate from a man who has a joyful, personal
relationship with God the Creator. Dan Graves, in Scientists of Faith
(Kregel, 1996), writes, "He often referred with reverence to the wonders God
designed in making creatures small and great. His virtues were
perseverance, simplicity, and stubbornness. He loved truth above any
theory, even his own. He asked of his challengers only that they prove
their points as he proved his." Schierbeek says, "Leeuwenhoek was driven by
a passionate desire to penetrate more deeply into the mysteries of creation.
To him, as to many others of his time, a watch was a greater specimen of
craftsmanship than a clock in a tower; this opinion is reflected in his
biological views. The microscope gave him the opportunity to study and
admire the small organisms, the "animalcules," and whenever he was able he
expressed his admiration of the beautiful things he saw." (Schierbeek, p.
196).
Leeuwenhoek died shortly after dictating his latest observations
to the Royal Society. Clearly his long and full life was filled with the
enthusiasm of scientific inquiry. Microscopy has come a long way since
then; scientists now use electron microscopes which, at 100,000x, are
hundreds of times more powerful, investigating wonders even more amazing
than those Leeuwenhoek saw: DNA, molecular motors, and the machinery of the
cell. A vast horizon of creation under the microscope still remains largely
unexplored. Do you have the Leeuwenhoek spirit? We hope his story will
encourage others to see the scientific investigation of nature as a source
of joy, and a means of glorifying God. Dan Graves said, "Antonie van
Leeuwenhoek's life glorified God in many ways, but perhaps most by showing
us that there is far more under the sun than we had first suspected."
References:
A. Schierbeek, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of the Collected Letters of
A. v. Leeuwenhoek, Formerly Lecturer in the History of Biology in the
University of Leyden, Measuring the Invisible World: The Life and Works of
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek F R S, Abelard-Schuman (London and New York, 1959),
QH 31 L55 S3, LC 59-13233 . This book (223 pp.) contains excerpts of
Leeuwenhoek's letters and focuses on his priority in several new branches of
science, but makes several important references to his spiritual life and
motivation.
Clifford Dobell, F R S, Protistologist to the Medical Research
Council, London, Antony van Leeuwenhoek and His "Little Animals," Staples
Press Ltd (Cavendish Place, London, 1932), QH 31L55 D6. This large book
(435 pp.) contains new translations of many of Leeuwenhoek's letters, but
focuses on his observations. The author gives excessive details about
Leeuwenhoek's name, city, portraits and other matters, but seems to
de-emphasize references to his faith or spiritual life.
Learn More About
Antony van Leeuwenhoek
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Brian J. Ford examined the archives of the Royal Society
first-hand, and found some of the actual letters and samples Leeuwenhoek had
sent to them. Read his article, "From Dilettante to Diligent Experimenter:
A Reappraisal of Leeuwenhoek as Microscopist and Investigator." The site
also has pictures of Leeuwenhoek microscopes and the samples Brian Ford
found at the archives.
The BBC has a biography of Leeuwenhoek in their "Local Heroes"
series.
The Spaceship Earth website has a short biography, and a more
detailed one can be found at Who Named It.
Richard Westfall of Indiana University for the Galileo Project
researched some background material on Leeuwenhoek's family, education,
religion, income, and scientific work.
Some of the best modern microphotography can be found in
Microcosmos (Cambridge University Press, 1987) by Jeremy Burgess, Michael
Martin and Rosemary Taylor. It starts by saying, "In 1683, the Dutchman
Antoni van Leeuwenhoek made a startling observation in one of his regular
letters to the Royal Society of London. He declared that there were more
creatures living inside his mouth than there were people in the Netherlands.
.. . . Van Leeuwenhoek was the first person to see the teeming world of what
we now know to be bacteria and protozoa." The book continues with amazing
photographs and descriptions of things Leeuwenhoek could not even have
imagined.
Pictures! Here's a dazzling, colorful gallery of electron
photomicrographs from Dee Breger at Columbia University. Buckman Labs has a
collection of light microphotographs of protozoa and other organisms. Here
are some images by Ron Neuman of protozoa that Leeuwenhoek discovered. Here
is the Protist Image Data from the University of Montreal, Steve Durr's
outstanding collection of color protozoa, and a general reference on
microscopy Much more can be found by searching the Web for microphotography
or microscopy.
Mark Armitage, a Christian and creationist, runs an electron
microscope lab at Azusa-Pacific University and writes occasional papers for
the Creation Research Society illustrated with his original micrographs.
The excellent film Unlocking the Mystery of Life is loaded with
excellent full-motion microphotography, and stunning computer animations of
DNA and proteins at work. Imagine how dumbfounded Leeuwenhoek would have
been to see molecular machines and factories at work in the cell, orders of
magnitude smaller than the tiniest parts he was able to resolve with his
hand lenses!
Carolus Linnaeus 1707 - 1778
What's more scientific than a scientific name? To a scientist,
your pet dog is Canis familiaris. Your pet cat is Felis domesticus. A
grizzly bear is Ursus horribilus, and you are Homo sapiens. The convention
of two Latin names (binomial nomenclature), denoting genus and species, is
the foundation of taxonomy, the science of classification of living things.
It comes straight out of the work of Carl Linnaeus. Why did he pursue the
huge task of classifying plants and animals? He took his inspiration from
the Bible's first chapter, which states that God created plants and animals
to reproduce "after their kind." Linnaeus was attempting to determine what
the Genesis kinds are.
Linnaeus is rightly called the Father of Taxonomy. His
classification scheme assumes that organisms fall into recognizable groups
of animals in nested hierarchies. At the lowest level are species, which
are loosely defined as organisms capable of producing fertile offspring.
(This is complicated by the inability to determine this for fossils, and the
difficulty of determining the reproductive success for many living
organisms. Sometimes males and females of the same species can look so
different, they might be incorrectly classified as separate species.)
Species (produced SPEE-sees for both singular and plural) are
sometimes subdivided into subspecies and varieties, which are often labeled
with a third Latin name (as in Homo sapiens sapiens, or with a variety
designation, as in "Genus species, var. variety-name." Species, the bottom
of hierarchy, is the second term in the Linnaean system, and is not
capitalized. The first term, which is capitalized, is the next unit in the
hierarchy: the genus. Working up the ladder are families, orders, classes,
phyla, and kingdoms.
It becomes clear that the nested hierarchy is a problem for
evolution. The farther up the scheme, the larger the gaps between types.
At the level of phyla, for instances, think of the huge differences between
a starfish (an echinoderm) and a fish (a chordate), or between a beetle (an
arthropod) and a snail (a mollusk). Within each phylum are many common
characters, but there are large, systematic gaps between the phyla, classes,
orders and families. House cats, bobcats, lions, tigers and cheetahs share
many common characteristics within the cat family, but in every case we
know, these are always distinct from members of the dog family. Dogs and
cats belong to the class mammalia, but all mammals are very different from
all class aves (birds). Mammals and birds share characteristics (a
backbone) within the phylum chordata (subphylum vertebrata), but all
vertebrates are very different from clams in the phylum mollusca. Higher
up, members of the plant kingdom are even more different from members of the
animal kingdom.
The same picture of increasing gaps holds true within the fossil
record. This fact is common knowledge to both creationists and
evolutionists. The latter take the data and infer a branching tree
connecting them all, but the actual observational evidence shows only tips
of the branches, not the trunks and nodes. The true picture is more like a
lawn than a tree; small groups of organisms at the species level show
variations, but there is no evidence, living or fossil, for one "kind" of
animal changing into another, such as a reptile into a bird or a fish into a
salamander. Actually, one could say that species are the only level we
observe. The other relationships - families, orders, classes, phyla - are
all inferred because they share one or more similar characteristics.
Taxonomists can be confused about what phylum or class an
organism should be placed in, because many animals and plants are composed
of mosaics of characteristics from several groups. Consider the platypus,
for example. It lays eggs like a reptile, has webbed feet like a duck, a
venomous spur like a rattlesnake, and fur like a mammal. Classification can
be even more confusing for one-celled organisms. Some have been recently
placed into whole kingdoms separate from plants and animals. It is often an
arbitrary choice where to classify an organism. The sunflower family, for
instance, is kind of a catch-all category for many diverse flowering plants
that do not fit well into other families. Evolutionists have a hard time
with these mosaics, often invoking the hand-waving answer "convergent
evolution" when asked to explain how "unrelated" organisms share common
characteristics, such as the remarkable similarities between placental
mammals and their marsupial look-alikes.
On the other end, it is often difficult to know where the
species boundaries are. Consider that bison and many different kinds of
cattle can interbreed (ever had a beefalo burger?). Horses, donkeys and
zebras can interbreed more or less, and so can lions and tigers, yet most of
us would consider each of these animals to be separate species. At the
level of species, many organisms show great variety in size, shape and
coloration: think of dogs, pigeons and roses for example. Yet higher up, at
the genus and family levels, there appear to be stricter boundaries. No one
has ever seen a dog change into a cat, or a goldfish turn into a seahorse.
Evolutionists believe that variation has no limits and all
things are interrelated, but that is a belief, not an observed fact. Even
breeders know they can only take a horse or a rose or a cow or a sugar beet
so far before a trait becomes impossible to modify further. Taking the data
as we find it, without an evolutionary presupposition, we see living things
organized into groups within groups within groups, with the major groups
separated from one another by large gaps. The Linnaean classification
system reflects the observational evidence. Despite its occasional points
of debate or confusion, it has stood the test of time. Sadly, some
evolutionists are trying to push an alternate "PhyloCode" classification
scheme, which organizes plants and animals according to their presumed
evolutionary relationships. If successful, this would only cloud the issue.
It would embed evolutionary assumptions into the way students approach the
data.
Young Carl von Linne was a lover of plants and wildlife, as was
his father, a Lutheran minister, and avid gardener. His father hoped young
Carl would go into the ministry, but it was evident the boy was a born
naturalist. Though he eventually pursued a medical career, and both
practiced and taught medicine as a professional, Carl's heart was forever
drawn to the natural world. He has been described as a workaholic with a
mania for organization. He loved learning, reading and knowledge, and was
also ruggedly strong and physically fit. It would take those qualities to
take on a project of classifying every plant and animal on earth!
Others before him had shared this passion. John Ray, the
English naturalist who had died two years before Linnaeus' birth, was a
like-minded naturalist, who, by the way, was also a Christian and a
creationist. But the universal classification scheme using Latin binomial
nomenclature was the innovation Linnaeus brought to the discipline. He
chose Latin because it was not only the universal language of science, but
being a dead language, it was stable and unchanging. It provided a
universal scheme that all naturalists in all countries could use to
communicate with each other, as well as to publish their discoveries and
cross-check their findings against those of others. At age 40, Carl
latinized his own name into Carolus Linnaeus the name by which he is best
known. He moved to Holland in 1735 for three years, then back to Sweden,
where he lived out his days as a doctor and professor. Taxonomy remained
his obsessive hobby throughout his life.
Linnaeus at first actually believed it possible to classify
every living thing in the world. At age 25, Carl secured a grant from the
University of Upssala to take a thousand mile tour of Lapland to catalog
plants. One can only imagine the delights and dangers, the fatigue and
satisfaction this "creation safari" entailed as he waded icy streams,
slogged through bogs and avoided nervous landowners. He kept detailed
journals and catalogued thousands of plants. A similar trip through central
Sweden added many more. Linnaeus traveled over four thousand miles on foot
in his quest to catalog all the species in "God's garden." He also
leveraged his talent to students that he motivated, who often went on long
and arduous journeys to far lands to collect more specimens (Dan Graves said
a third of these died on their dangerous treks). Linnaeus continued
updating, expanding and improving his catalogs throughout his life, and as a
legacy, he left the Linnaean Society, which continues to this day as an
international taxonomic institution.
"Linnaeus was a firm creationist," says Dan Graves, but comments
that "Certain aspects of his theories were enigmatic. He seems to have
doubted that there was a universal flood. Sediments were deposited over a
long period of time, he said. He paid little attention to fossils and
insisted on classifying humans with apes." Nevertheless, Linnaeus did not
believe in any theory of evolution. He firmly believed that the kinds God
had created in the Garden of Eden still existed. Although he believed in
fixity of species at first, he did allow for variation with the Genesis
kinds later on.
Linnaeus wrote in rhapsodic lines about the wisdom of God in
creation. Dan Graves provides some examples:
a.. One is completely stunned by the resourcefulness of the
Creator.
b.. I saw the infinite, all-knowing and all-powerful God from
behind.... I followed His footsteps over nature's fields and saw everywhere
an eternal wisdom and power, an inscrutable perfection.
Linnaeus introduced the idea of classifying plants by their
reproductive structures. Sometimes he went a little overboard in his
descriptions: "The flowers' leaves... serve as bridal beds which the Creator
has so gloriously arranged, adorned with such noble bed curtains, and
perfumed with so many soft scents that the bridegroom with his bride might
there celebrate their nuptials with so much the greater solemnity."
Notwithstanding the romanticism, who could doubt that a firm belief in the
Genesis version of creation can be a strong stimulus for scientific
research?
Linnaeus continued classifying plants and animals into his
sixties, till he suffered a series of strokes. The frontispiece of his
magnum opus Species Plantarum, the work that set established taxonomy as a
scientific discipline, is a passage from the Psalms that could be viewed as
a life verse of all great creation scientists both past and present, who
similarly quoted it with feeling: Psalm 104:24 - "O Jehovah [Lord], how
ample are Thy works! How wisely Thou hast fashioned them! How full the
earth is of Thy possessions!"
Learn More About
Carl Linnaeus
--------------------------------------------------------------------
(to be continued)
William Herschel 1738 - 1822
The father of stellar astronomy and the pride of the English in
the late 18th to early 19th centuries was neither English nor a scientist
originally, but a German-born immigrant musician, and a Jewish Christian.
Friedrich Wilhelm Herschel (called William Herschel in his adopted country)
was a pioneer of the heavens, taking Galileo's early attempts at sky
surveying to grand lengths. Patrick Moore considers Herschel the greatest
observer who ever lived. Though just an amateur at first, he built the
largest telescopes of his era, and in the process of spending countless
hours on cold nights perched on a ladder at the eyepiece of his instruments,
he discovered binary stars, nebulae, comets, and the planet Uranus - the
first man to discover a planet since antiquity. He proved that the laws
that govern our earth and moon are the same throughout the heavens. He
brought into focus the understanding that the earth and sun are but specks
among thousands of similar suns. He launched modern astronomy's project to
understand the nature of the nebulae, the distribution of stars in the
galaxy and our place in it. He discovered invisible infrared light. In
addition to his scientific observations, William Herschel became a leading
natural philosopher and a friend of kings and intellectuals, yet he was
described as a man of devout, yet simple Christian faith.
To the Herschel legend we must quickly add his sister Caroline
and his son John William, who both rose to his level of greatness. William'
s father was a bandmaster in the Hanoverian guard. Each of his children
became talented musicians; William gained proficiency on the oboe. Troubles
with the Seven Years War in Germany made him leave for England, where he
landed with scarcely one coin in his pocket. His musical skills kept him
gainfully employed as a church organist and oboist. Seven years after
arriving, he began to take up seriously a hobby he had always enjoyed,
astronomy. The telescopes of his day were not powerful enough for him. He
learned how to grind mirrors, and spent all his spare time (when not playing
music) perfecting the art. Patrick Moore says that one of his first
attempts at making a 5" objective succeeded after two hundred failures.
By 1774, his brother and sister also arrived in England.
Caroline stayed with William and became his assistant. William's observing
career was launched in earnest with a look at the Orion Nebula, and he
continued for 37 years, making bigger and better telescopes along the way
until his home (Observatory House in Slough) boasted a 40-foot reflector,
with a mirror weighing over a ton, the tube slung within a giant wooden
scaffold. Caroline, short and unmarried, was her brother's biggest helper.
Even after William married at age 50, she remained near at hand, keeping his
records and doing some significant observing herself. She discovered six
comets (a big interest in those days), and was eventually honored by
royalty, famous in her own right to the age of 98. Caroline, however,
thought little of her own fame. Like a humble moon, she was content to bask
in the "reflected glory" of her famous brother.
Uranus was discovered accidentally while William scanned the
skies. The fame of being the first human to discover a new planet around
the sun resulted in King George III granting him a permanent salary as royal
astronomer, enough to let him abandon his musical career and do astronomical
work full time. He wanted to name the new planet in the king's honor, but
other astronomers voted to stick to the naming convention of mythological
gods, so the name Uranus was chosen. Uranus is a strange planet, hard to
explain by naturalistic theories, because of its energy, composition, and
inclination; tipped at 98 degrees, it circles the sun with its retinue of
moons like a bull's eye. Stranger still, discoveries by the Voyager
spacecraft in 1986 showed its magnetic field to be highly tilted and
off-center. No one has been able to explain why. One of its moons,
Miranda, has some of the strangest terrain ever seen, including a cliff so
high that in the weak gravity of that world, someone stumbling over the edge
would be in free-fall for eight minutes. Speaking of moons, Herschel also
discovered two more moons of Saturn (Mimas and Enceladus). How awe-struck
and fascinated would be his expression today to see what spacecraft have
revealed close-up on these objects that, to him, were mere faint points of
light twinkling in the eyepiece of his telescopes, as he gazed in the cold,
still night air.
One of Herschel's main goals was to sample the sky
systematically and map the distribution of stars, to gain a picture of where
the sun stood in relation to the Milky Way. Due to assumptions later shown
to be flawed, his map put the earth at the center of a somewhat flattened,
oblong shape. It was an important start, nonetheless. Herschel was a
diligent observer, ever willing to sacrifice his hypotheses on the altar of
new evidence. At first he thought binary stars were chance alignments, but
later observations proved they were in orbit around each other. He thought
the nebulae were composed of stars made faint by distance, but later
realized some were composed of dust or gas. Herschel gave us the
unfortunate term "planetary nebulae" because these objects at first appeared
to him as disks like planets; they have nothing to do with planets and exist
far beyond our solar system. The Hubble Space Telescope has revealed many
of these as brilliant, colorful stellar explosions with intricate hourglass
and spiral structures. Some show evidence of repeated incidents of mass
loss. In all, Herschel catalogued over 90,000 stars, far more than any of
his predecessors, and he increased the number of known nebulae from 103 to
2500. Most mysterious were the non-planetary nebulae. Herschel considered
Immanuel Kant's idea that these might be distant and distinct stellar
associations - galaxies like our own Milky Way, but the proof would have to
wait for 202 years after Herschel's death. Another contribution was
calibrating of the old stellar magnitude scale of Hipparchus; he realized
that a difference of five magnitudes corresponded to a change in brightness
of 100. Herschel submitted 90 volumes to the Royal Society during his
productive life. Patrick Moore says, "More than any other man, he put
stellar astronomy on a really firm footing. ... He was knighted in 1816, he
received every honor that the scientific world could bestow, and he became
the first President of the newly-formed Astronomical Society of London (now
the Royal Astronomical Society). He presented his last scientific paper
when he was eighty years old, and he was active almost to the date of his
death on August 25, 1822." He is buried under the tower of the old Anglican
church in Slough, England.
Though sources I've checked agree William Herschel was sincerely
religious, none are detailed enough to indicate if he was really a
"born-again" Christian. His family attended church regularly, but musician
that he was, William could have been more performer than believer. Was he
just a Sunday Christian, and secular astronomer the rest of the week? N. S.
Dodge wrote in 1871 of the family's sincere Christian faith, but Dan Graves
(Scientists of Faith, p. 115) called him "a nominal Christian, at best."
Herschel had some strange ideas: he believed the other planets, the moon,
and even the sun were inhabited (but so did many others in his day). Some
of his writings seem to assume long ages and the insignificance of man in a
universe populated not only by myriads of stars but perhaps other
civilizations. He speaks of the Author and Creator of the heavens, but not
of the Scriptures or Jesus Christ. Herschel dined with Hume and LaPlace,
the skeptics, but as a dignitary in frequent touch with the intellectuals of
the day and polite society, this cannot be taken to assume agreement with
them. in some of his diary entries, it appears they conversed about music
or the fine cuisine rather than philosophy or theology. In The Scientific
Papers of Sir William Herschel published by the Royal Society in 1912, he
relates an incident where the First Consul and La Place were having an
argument over naturalistic philosophy. Herschel writes in his diary,
The difference was occasioned by an exclamation of the First
Consul's, who asked in a tone of exclamation or admiration (when we were
speaking of the extent of the sidereal heavens) 'and who is the author of
all this.' M. de La Place wished to shew that a chain of natural causes
would account for the construction and preservation of the wonderful system;
this the First Consul rather opposed. Much may be said on the subject; by
joining the arguments of both we shall be led to 'Nature and Nature's God.'
Compromise? Theistic evolution? Wishy-washy belief in God, or
signs of a true believer? Hard to say, because he changes the subject in
his diary after leaving us hanging with "much may be said." At another
point, the Royal Society editor leaves a tantalizing footnote about missing
letters by Herschel:
These letters, which extend to some 400 pages, are still
extant but have not been at our disposal. We are informed that Herschel in
them interweaves his philosophy and even his musical studies with references
of an earnest kind to the Creator as a beneficent Deity, expressing his
gratitude and addressing him in a prayerful spirit.
Again, this could be said of a unitarian or deist, but hints at
something more. In a philosophical essay on Liberty and Necessity, he comes
out opposing the necessitarians (those that believe natural law necessarily
leads to the order we observe). This would be consistent with one who
believes God intervenes in human affairs.
Several Christian biographical essays have echoed Henry Morris'
attribution to Herschel of the line, "An undevout astronomer must be mad"
(Men of Science, Men of God, p. 30). Unfortunately, I have not been able to
corroborate this quotation. The slightly different line "An undevout
astronomer is mad" is part of a poem entitled "Night thoughts" by Edward
Young, whose life was earlier but overlapped with Herschel's. Perhaps the
poem was inspired by the life of Herschel, or a statement by him. It would
not be unrealistic to assume that the statement reflected Herschel's own
feelings about his work. It seems clear that Herschel was devout,
prayerful, humble, gracious, kind, and moral - good, but not enough to
indicate a true believer in the gospel of Jesus Christ. The sources I have
checked do not provide enough evidence to call William Herschel more than a
nominal Christian. Scientists in this period of the so-called
"Enlightenment" were enamoured with natural laws. They were taking Newton's
emphasis on laws to new extremes, and knowingly or not, tended to distance
God from immanent action in the affairs of the world. Where Herschel fits
in this trend is not clear. But even if he falls short of an example of a
thoroughly Biblical Christian, he clearly does exemplify one who believed in
a divine Creator and Author of the laws of nature, to whom we owe our
worship and admiration. As such, he was at least continuing in the
tradition of empirical science motivated by the Christian world view.
Observatory House was pulled down in 1960, but the tube of his
40-foot telescope was kept at the Greenwich Observatory as a monument to the
years of painstaking observation of the skies by a man starstruck by the
wondrous majesty and order of Creation. In the summer of 1986, the Voyager
2 spacecraft made a historic flyby of the planet Uranus. The St. Laurence
Anglican Church in Slough, England, where Herschel is buried, was recently
restored after years of damage and neglect, and in February 2001, was
adorned with a new stained-glass Herschel Window commemorating his
astronomical discoveries. Another nearby window quotes Psalm 8, "When I
consider the heavens, the work of Thy fingers, the moon and the stars, which
Thou hast ordained, what is man, that Thou art mindful of him?"
Learn More About
William Herschel
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William Herschel was also a composer of many musical works.
Click here to learn about them.
Visit the website of the restored St. Laurence Church in Slough,
and see a picture of the new (Feb. 2001) Herschel Window.
Learn all about the planet Uranus from the organization that
flew Voyager 2 by it in 1986, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
Peruse the Herschel Catalog of Deep-Sky Objects. The site also
has biographical information and a picture.
Visit the Herschel Museum at Bath, England, where William
discovered Uranus, and where he and Carolyn resided for a time before moving
to Slough.
John Herschel 1792 - 1871
William Herschel married at age 50 and had one son. John
Frederick William Herschel in many respects surpassed his father. Though he
did not make as many fundamental discoveries, he extended his famous father'
s astronomical work enormously, and achieved excellence in other fields as
well. Also, his Christian faith appeared to be deeper and more sincere.
John Herschel became the most eminent scientist in Britain during the first
half of the 19th century, and a highly respected philosopher of science. In
his senior years, he witnessed the rise of Darwinism. Though he opposed
evolutionary theory, some of his scientific philosophy may have lent
unwitting support to it, as we shall see.
It was a hard act to follow, growing up at Observatory House in
the shadow of his father William. An only child with few playmates, John
found himself more often in the company of his father's scientific friends.
Aunt Caroline loved him and provided a balance to the boy's intellectual
upbringing; the two remained close into her old age. It is a credit to his
father that he was able to inspire his son to continue the work rather than
rebel against it. This apparently was never forced upon him; William
desired his son to enter a ministry in the Anglican Church, and John felt
the freedom to consider law and other career paths. Nevertheless, growing
up around telescopes, young John learned early how to grind and polish
mirrors, and to observe like a good scientist. The lure of the stars gained
a response; John also was destined to spend a good part of his life peering
through the eyepiece of homemade telescopes, trying to understand the
workings of the cosmos. (Romantic as this sounds, it is hard work. At age
30, he spoke of the sacrifice in time, health and strength involved,
including "difficulties such as at one period had almost compelled me to
abandon it in despair.")
John's genius showed up early; at Cambridge, he was "Senior
Wrangler" (top of the class) in the math exams, the most rigorous in the
world. Soon after, at age 21, he was elected member of the Royal Society,
the youngest to date to achieve that honor. With the resulting association
with the most eminent scientists of the day, John Herschel formed close
friendships with many of them, including Charles Babbage, who became a
lifelong friend. The two founded the Analytical Society of London and
toured Europe together, where John met many more leading scientists. He
could have taken a government salary, but decided to extend the cataloguing
of of astronomical objects begun by his father. This would require a
vantage point from the southern skies. In 1834, with his wife Margaret
Stewart, he sailed to Cape Town, South Africa
For five years, John Herschel scanned the southern skies,
cataloguing 1200 double stars, and observing nebulae, the Magellanic Clouds
(sister galaxies of the Milky Way, visible only from the southern
hemisphere), Halley's Comet during its 1837 apparition, star clusters, moons
of Saturn, sunspots and much more. In all, his lifetime observations
yielded an astonishing catalogue of 70,000 celestial objects, all presented
neatly to the Royal Society and the Royal Astronomical Society. A personal
friend, N.S. Dodge, in an 1871 eulogy, stated that "His motives for his long
expatriation had not been money, nor pleasure, nor health, nor fame, but
increase and diffusion of knowledge among men."
John was a good theorist of astronomy as well as observer.
Important principles came out of these observations. He debunked a popular
response to Olber's Paradox (the question of why the night sky is mostly
dark, if space is infinitely filled with stars). Some had suggested that
the background starlight was simply being absorbed by dust or gas; Herschel
correctly noted that the dust would heat up and re-radiate the light,
maintaining the paradox. (A more lasting answer had to wait till the 20th
century, when relativity and the expansion of the universe led astronomers
to acknowledge that the universe is not infinitely old.) In addition,
Herschel noted that most nebulae were composed of faint stars.
He wrote of the physical insignificance of man, inhabiting a
tiny dot of a planet among an innumerable host of stars. He said that "we
have here attained a point in science where the human intellect is compelled
to acknowledge its weakness, and to feel that no conception the wildest
imagination can form will bear the least comparison with the intrinsic
greatness of the subject." The Copernican Principle was well along by
Herschel's time.
Perhaps his most far-reaching conclusion from his observations
was the universality of physical laws. From studying the orbits of binary
stars, he deduced that the laws of physics operated the same throughout the
universe as they did for our own solar system. This "memorable conclusion,"
the Duke of Sussex wrote, was "justly entitled, by the generality of its
character, to be considered as forming an epoch in the history of astronomy,
and presenting one of the most magnificent examples of the simplicity and
universality of those fundamental laws of nature by which their great Author
has shown that he is the same today and forever, here and everywhere."
John's diary of the South Africa years reveals that he and his
wife attended church services regularly. One entry, however, seems to
indicate he disdained scientists who tried to build their scientific
understanding from the pages of Scripture. John Herschel believed that the
Baconian ideal demanded a purely inductive science from observation and
experience, regardless of his religious feelings. Notwithstanding, his
Christian commitment was strong. As with most believers, there was a
process of spiritual growth, particularly due to the example of his wife.
Dan Graves writes,
Like his father before him, John Herschel had been a nominal
Christian at best. But following his marriage, he underwent a genuine
conversion experience. Margaret was the daughter of a Scottish
Presbyterian. Her piety and quiet life elevated John from a Christianity
verging on pantheistic-deism to a total and clear acknowledgement of Christ
as Lord and Savior.
(Scientists of Faith, p. 115.)
Graves says that his conversion fired him with a deeper moral
sensitivity to his fellow man; he worked for educational reform in South
Africa, stating his belief that schools should "fit them for a higher state
of existence, by teaching them those which connect them with their Maker and
Redeemer." This reveals that Herschel believed in Christ as Savior, and
accepted the doctrine of Divine creation. In a memoir of a visit with the
Herschels in 1857, Maria Mitchell described them as representatives of three
generations of "sound Protestants, in days when and in places where
Protestantism was a reproach." She took note of their faithful attendance
at a simple church.
John published at least ninety papers in the Philosophical
Transactions of the Royal Society, many of them of great significance. In
addition, he was president of the Royal Astronomical Society for six years,
and presided over the British Association. Herschel had many other
interests besides astronomy, including chemistry, geology, philosophy,
poetry and mathematics, any of which could have gained him fame had he been
the type to seek it. His knowledge of chemistry was so advanced, for
instance, that he duplicated Daguerre's discovery in photography one week
after hearing about it, with only the "scantiest details of Daguerre's
process" (Graves, p. 115). He even improved on it, finding additional
chemical agents, such that "his photographs are among the earliest we
possess" (Ibid.), and was the first to try applying it to astronomy, thus
beginning a timeline on a fruitful field that led eventually to Hubble's
photograph plates and, in our day, to the Hubble Space Telescope and digital
imaging. One could only imagine William and John Herschel's astonishment at
today's images of objects that, to them, were faint points of light that
required the utmost in patience and concentration to discern. To see the
surface of Saturn's moons from a spaceship, or to resolve stars in the
faintest nebulae, must have been unimaginable, to say nothing of detecting
bizarre objects like quasars, black holes, gravitational lenses, radio
galaxies, gamma-ray bursts, pulsars, and so much more that is commonplace
today.
John Herschel was a humble, truth-loving man of integrity. N.
S. Dodge's lengthy eulogy of Sir John William Herschel is almost
embarrassingly gushy in its praise of Herschel, not only for his
achievements, but for his personal character. He waxes eloquent about John'
s unselfishness and dignity, his willingness to alter any cherished belief
if required by the evidence, his moral sensibility, his thoroughness, his
"conscientious dealing, with indefatigable industry that characterized his
life." He calls him "the Homer of science because he was its highest poet."
Of Herschel's integrity, Dodge writes:
He was in the utmost degree a well-bred man, not from gentle
birth and careful training, not from scholarly pursuits and polite society,
not from association with persons of rank and intimacy with men of taste and
thought, not even from his loving nature and noble aspirations-not from all
these together, so much as from the lofty ideal he cherished from boyhood to
old age of perfect manhood. ... the air and manner, and bearing of well-bred
man never left him. He received criticisms upon his own speculations with
the same equanimity that he pointed out the errors of his opponents. His
action in discussion was never violent, nor his voice loud. He readily
acknowledged a fault, and still more readily apologized for a wrong. ...
Sir John Herschel's life-long contemplation of the infinite in
number and magnitude, exalting and hallowing his mind, was exhibited in its
effects upon his character. The truths he had learned from the stars were
converted into principles of action. Lofty thoughts promoted noble deeds.
"Surely," he himself had said ... "if the worst of men were transported to
Paradise for only half an hour amongst the company of the great and good, he
would come back converted."
Charles Darwin was strongly attracted to John Herschel's
philosophy of science. Herschel had written an influential book, A
Preliminary Discourse On the Study of Natural Philosophy, in which he
advocated an inductive, religiously-neutral, bias-free Baconian ideal type
of scientific investigation. He taught that one should attempt to rid his
mind of all presuppositions, and follow the evidence wherever it led. So
Darwin was quite mortified when the eminent scientist he so respected
reacted negatively to his book, On the Origin of Species, calling Darwin's
idea of natural selection "The law of higgledy-piggledy."
Yet Darwin's so called "law" triumphed. It could be argued that
John Herschel had handed his enemies the rope to hang his Christian faith,
because he, like Bacon, had assumed the unbiblical postulate of Thomas
Aquinas, that only the spirit of man was fallen, not the intellect.
Accordingly, Aquinas thought that natural revelation could be a means to fin
ding God (or ultimate truth), apart from Scripture and the convicting and
converting work of the Holy Spirit. This incomplete view of the Fall gave
secularists a free reign to discover their own truth apart from divine
revelation - not only reproducible facts about the operation of nature, but
its origin and destiny.
Baconian science slowly evolved into scientism, logical
positivism, and naturalism. Secularists extrapolated methodological
naturalism, in which the scientist attempts to discover laws through
experiment, into a full-fledged philosophical naturalism, in which God had
no place in nature. The two naturalisms became indistinguishable. God,
spirit, faith and purpose were relegated to inner experience, until they
became purely mystical and personal, unverifiable by history or science or
logic or any objective means. Secularists took great glee in capturing the
flag of "science" and taking religious belief hostage, relegating any appeal
to faith or divine revelation to the wastebasket of superstition and
fantasy.
This, of course, is a wholly unwarranted position, and an
extrapolation far beyond what both Bacon and Herschel believed. Both
sincerely believed in God as the Creator, and Jesus Christ as His incarnate,
resurrected Son. Their reaction to the authority of Aristotle or any other
teacher should not have been used as a rationalization for rejecting the
authority of God and His Word. Not every field of knowledge is open to the
scientific method: history, for instance, and the arts. Yet secularists
arrogated to themselves a presumed unbiased inquiry into all fields of
knowledge, till it became a substitute religion, unaware that their own
position was as metaphysical as any faith.
Though there are signs of change, we are still living today with
the legacy of that unwarranted extrapolation of Herschel's principles.
Phillip Johnson has characterized our secular society as having its own
creation myth, and like any creation myth, it has a priesthood - the secular
scientific establishment - that has sole custody of that myth. Evolutionary
theory today goes far beyond anything that can be observed or tested.
Cornelius Hunter describes the situation today: "Evolution is now found to
be capable of creating just about anything. We might say that evolution is
a closed metaphysical system. It not only supplies its own creation story
but also supplies its own source of morality. ... Furthermore, having
rejected divine creation and its Creator, evolution even becomes its own
authority. This story is true for those who believe it, but it cannot be
demonstrated by strictly scientific argument, for it requires metaphysical
premises" (Darwin's God, p. 155.
Methodological naturalism is reasonable to a point, as a
tentative or default position when examining observable, repeatable
phenomena subject to testing. It is like William Dembski's Explanatory
Filter, in which the flowchart first attempts to rule out natural law and
chance as causes before inferring design. But methodological naturalism
today has become an iron-clad rule that eliminates design from the field of
causes at the outset. It is an arbitrary rule that can prevent a scientist
from ever discovering the truth, when in fact design was the cause. It has
led to a modern science that is stuck with hand-waving and just-so stories
to explain the origin of the universe, planets, life, and eternal destiny -
phenomena that are not testable nor repeatable. Having ruled out the
validity of revelation or purpose, evolutionists are hostage to a closed
metaphysical system that excludes intelligent design by fiat, not by reason,
logic, or evidence. The hypocrisy of this position is revealed by the fact
that scientists routinely invoke intelligent causes in certain fields, such
as forensic science, archaeology, and SETI; yet when design is clearly
apparent in natural phenomena, the rules of naturalism prevent a design
inference.
How would John Herschel have reacted to today's reign of
naturalism? He probably would be appalled. He never saw his scientific
work as justifying atheism. On the contrary, he wrote, with years of
experience as one of the most eminent practitioners of the scientific
method, "All human discoveries seem to be made only for the purpose of
confirming more and more strongly the truths come from on high and contained
in the sacred writings."
N. S. Dodge concluded his 16-page eulogy of Sir John:
Herschel's whole life, like the lives of Newton and Faraday,
confutes the assertion, and ought to remove the suspicion, that a profound
study of nature is unfavorable to a sincere acceptance of the Christian
faith. Surrounded by an affectionate family, of which he was long spared to
be the pride, the guide, and the life, John Herschel died, as he had lived,
in the unostentatious exercise of a devout, yet simple, faith.
Herschel was buried in Westminster Abbey not far from Sir Isaac
Newton. In an ironic twist of fate, he was soon to have a strange
bedfellow: interred next to him a few years later was an admirer who used
some of his philosophical ideas against Christianity: Charles Darwin.
Learn More About
John Herschel
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Here is a biography by the Belmont Society.
Read the extended memoir of the Herschels by N. S. Dodge, and
Maria Mitchell's reminisces of her visit at the Herschel's home in 1857.
There is a short biography of John Herschel, with picture, on
the High Altitude Observatory website.
Georges Cuvier: coming soon.
Samuel F. B. Morse 1791 - 1872
Though an artist by profession, not primarily a scientist or
inventor, Samuel F. B. Morse brought a scientific principle to practical use
and changed the world. When the grand idea of instantaneous communication
across great distances hit him, Morse caught an obsession that cost him
every last penny and earned him scorn and snubbing for twelve years, until
at last the country gave him a chance to prove his idea. It's a great
American story of perseverance, of putting science to use to improve the
lives of millions.
Morse, a devout Christian, built on the exploratory work of
other Christians and creationists, like Davy, Faraday and Henry. In the
process, he gave the world the first binary code (Morse Code) and a whole
new industry (including a huge boost to the American economy and thousands
of new jobs), to say nothing of his other achievements - major improvements
to the new invention of photography, and some of the most famous portrait
and landscape paintings in America. Did all this go to his head? When
asked to sum up his life's work, Morse remembered the first message sent
across the wires (see below), and said, "It is His work." Quoting Psalm
115:1, he confessed, "Not unto us, but to Thy name, O Lord, be all the
praise."
Samuel Finley Breese Morse was born in Boston when America was
young, in the period when Ben Franklin had recently experimented with the
strange phenomenon of electricity. Franklin had proven that lightning was
the same as the static electricity familiar to those scuffing their shoes
across the carpet. Electricity remained, however, a curiosity with no
practical use. His father, Jedediah Morse, had achieved fame as a minister
and geographer who also investigated Flood geology. Young Samuel Morse was
not an exceptional student. When his father saw he had some talent for
sketching things, he reluctantly allowed him to pursue a career as an
artist. Samuel studied with American masters Gilbert Stuart and Benjamin
West.
After a "starving artist" period of time trying to support his
new bride Lucretia with his portraiture work, Samuel's skill garnered fame
and aroused the notice of the political elite in Washington. He was
selected to paint the portrait of Lafayette. While in Washington, meeting
the rich and famous, he was unaware that his wife had taken sick and died!
It had taken weeks for the mail to arrive with heartbreaking news.
Regretting he had not even had time to say good-bye, Morse was reminded also
of how many soldiers had died in the War of 1812 after peace had been
declared, because news traveled so slowly.
Morse had seen demonstrations of electricity during his college
years and his travels, but no one had yet put it to a practical use. It was
on board the Sully on a return voyage from France that he overheard a
conversation about electricity and magnetism. A passenger was describing
how Benjamin Franklin had passed an electric current through miles of wire,
and noticed an instantaneous spark at the other end. Thus began the spark
of an idea that would lead Morse through incredible trials, long hours of
work, and near starvation, trying to bring a great idea to reality.
Until the telegraph, communication over long distances was slow
and tedious. The French had perfected a system of semaphores on
mountaintops to send messages from peak to peak, but it only worked on clear
days. The proverbial Indians had their smoke signals. Everyone else used
feet and vocal cords. Morse's spark of an idea would bring the world the
first instantaneous communication across the country and across the ocean,
day or night, regardless of the weather. But first he would have to sell
his idea.
Samuel suspended his art work and poured himself into his new
project. Early on |
