Customer Reviews

Scientist and Catholic: Pierre Duhem

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Brisk, fascinating biography of an important, though largely forgotten, French Catholic. Pierre Duhem was a scientist who devoted much of the second half of his life to extensive research in the primary medieval sources which document the fruition of modern Western science. On the basis of this research Duhem established the importance of specifically Christian belief in laying the foundation for Western science (contrary to the myth of opposition between Christianity and science). Author Jaki is a good writer who brings the man to life through many fascinating anecdotes. Duhem was a devout Catholic, and Jaki, who is a Catholic priest and scientist, particularly focuses on Duhem's spiritual life. This is an excellent and enjoyable book. Highly recommended.

Pierre Duhem was a French Physicist in the late 1800's and early 1900's. A Catholic, he was banished from the French mainstream (to their harm) but well known in his field. Duhem was interested in the history of science and reviewed manuscripts from antiquity. He found where Buridan disagreed with Aristotle on the question of whether the earth had a beginning or not. Seems simple but questions like this have consequences to the way in which people can think about things. Aristotle put science in fetters, not on purpose, but by the magnitude of his achievements. The quoting of Aristotle as an authority sealed arguments, deflected real science, deformed it. Aristotle was correct on so many things including that small mistakes in the beginning lead to large ones later on. Duhem had many observations,mostly unknown to history,but which are now available for perusal-likely with profit. Those with genius often throw out sparks which others pick up and fan into flames. Most anyone who has a mind finds it most tiresome to unlearn things that he picked up as easily as our computers pick up virus but Duhem and Jaki are programs to aid in the unlearning. Those with an orientation towards the Christian view of the world will find that Duhem didn't cheat by using revelation. Like Aquinas, he took what he could find and made it useful. I can't yet tell you about his physics until I go thru his translated, 1991, works, but we should rue the fact that we were denied his expertise all these years in America just as we should shout down the parasites that deny us the last work of Gulag's author(and,for much the same reasons are these censoships imposed).