-1896 stained glass

As an applied scientist, I have a passion for people of Faith & Science.  There is NO contradiction; quite to the contrary, I feel.  Those who believe there is are either intentionally confusing both, themselves, and others.  Or, they really demonstrate their ignorance of both subjects.

I have shared before Rev. Georges LeMaitre, Inventor of the Big Bang theory, (NOT the tv show), & St Albert the Great, OP.  Check out:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Catholic_scientists, &
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Roman_Catholic_cleric%E2%80%93scientists

While not a beatus, Robert Grosseteste was a scientist.  He is considered the first mathematician and physicist of his age.

From about 1220 to 1235 he wrote a host of scientific treatises including:
     De sphera. An introductory text on astronomy.
     De luce. On the “metaphysics of light.” (which is the most original work of cosmogony in the Latin West)
     De accessu et recessu maris. On tides and tidal movements. (although some scholars dispute his authorship)
     De lineis, angulis et figuris. Mathematical reasoning in the natural sciences.
     De iride. On the rainbow.

He also wrote a number of commentaries on Aristotle, including one on Aristotle’s Physics, which has survived as a loose collection of notes or glosses on the text.  It has been argued that Grosseteste played a key role in the development of scientific method.

Grosseteste did introduce to the Latin West the notion of controlled experiment and related it to demonstrative science, as one among many ways of arriving at such knowledge.  Grosseteste was the first of the Scholastics to fully understand Aristotle’s vision of the dual path of scientific reasoning: generalizing from particular observations into a universal law, and then back again from universal laws to prediction of particulars.

-13th century manuscript

-Grosseteste chapel

The Riverside Church
January 19, 1936

My dear Dr. Einstein,

We have brought up the question: Do scientists pray? in our Sunday school class. It began by asking whether we could believe in both science and religion. We are writing to scientists and other important men, to try and have our own question answered.

We will feel greatly honored if you will answer our question: Do scientists pray, and what do they pray for?

We are in the sixth grade, Miss Ellis’s class.

Respectfully yours,

Phyllis

January 24, 1936
Princeton, NJ

Dear Phyllis,

I will attempt to reply to your question as simply as I can. Here is my answer:

Scientists believe that every occurrence, including the affairs of human beings, is due to the laws of nature. Therefore a scientist cannot be inclined to believe that the course of events can be influenced by prayer, that is, by a supernaturally manifested wish.

However, we must concede that our actual knowledge of these forces is imperfect, so that in the end the belief in the existence of a final, ultimate spirit rests on a kind of faith. Such belief remains widespread even with the current achievements in science.

But also, everyone who is seriously involved in the pursuit of science becomes convinced that some spirit is manifest in the laws of the universe, one that is vastly superior to that of man. In this way the pursuit of science leads to a religious feeling of a special sort, which is surely quite different from the religiosity of someone more naive.

With cordial greetings,

your A. Einstein

Prayerfully & Scientifically yours,
Matthew