by Alan Cutler
Through an unexpected sequence of events, I pre-read this book I was considering for First Son next year (tenth grade) even though there's plenty of this year's pre-reading I haven't done (and may never do). Its excellence has cemented my decision to add a term of geology as our earth science in tenth grade.
He [Steno] showed that the earth had a history, revealed in its own rocks. As a result, the static world assumed by both the scientists and churchman of his day gave way to an evolutionary one. And with that idea came unlimited possibilities.This biography of Bl. Nicolaus Steno (1638-1686, beatified in 1988) describes his life of science, his life of faith, and how each influenced and fostered the other. As with the best of scientists, faith and reason were so intertwined as to be nearly impossible to unravel.
"In various places," wrote Steno, "I have seen that the earth is composed of layers superimposed on each other at an angle to the horizon."
It is an amazing fact of the history of science that before Steno few European writers had thought this fundamental observation worth mentioning.Steno's book De solido inaugurated a new science, that of geology. The three tenets he proposed and explained in this book, superposition, original horizontality, and lateral continuity, remain the main principles of the science, ones so instrumental they are general presented in the first chapter of any geology text, even for young students. (I've read a few, so I'm speaking from experience.)
The geological concepts are explained clearly in the biography, so anyone could read it without any scientific preparation. For geology students, however, its principles will echo what they have read in textbooks and, perhaps, reveal the great intellectual leap Steno made to establish them. Once they have been pointed out, it's shocking to imagine they weren't always obvious.
The author is respectful of Bl. Nicolaus's religious beliefs.
Such intimate mingling of science and religion seems strange to us today, but the distance that we now put between the two realms would have seemed equally strange to scientist's of Steno's generation. Most of the prime movers of the seventeenth-century scientific revolution were deeply religious. Conflict between true science and true religion was impossible in their minds because both ultimately came from God. Despite his problems with Rome, Galileo remained a devout Catholic until the end of his life.Cutler describes Steno's conversion from Protestantism to Catholicism, which surprised many of the scientists of Steno's day. While considering such a drastic step, Steno read, studied, talked with friends, and compared theological viewpoints. In the end, it was a leap of faith (as it always is), but he spent much of his time afterward carefully explaining his views to his contemporaries.
Conditioned by the familiar story of Galileo's persecution by the Catholic Church and by the modern-day clash between scientists and Protestant fundamentalists over evolution in the classroom, we often assume antagonism between religion and science is inevitable. But as much as their methods and ideals differ today, over the history of both there has been easily as much cross-fertilization as conflict. Until very recently, religious and scientific arguments were advanced by both sides in every important scientific controversy. Too often what filters down to us in the history books are the scientific arguments of the winners and the religious arguments of the losers. Thus the picture of a long-standing rift between the two.It's refreshing to read a scientific biography that gives such balanced thoughts on faith and religion. It's not that there is a conflict between faith and science, but there is an assumption that there is by many in the scientific community and, consequently, in the ones writing biographies. I think this book would be a great supplement to a foundation that prepares students to enter the world where they will encounter this assumption in science classes and books.
Though First Son (and presumably my other children in later years) will read this along with a text in geology, there is quite a bit of geology in the text so it could serve as a geology component of a survey of earth sciences, especially for students who do not intend to focus on scientific studies after high school.
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