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Discourse of His Holiness Pope Pius XII given on 30th November 1941 at the
Solemn Audience granted to the Plenary Session of the Academy.
It is with great joy that we
return to this hall of the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, amongst this
distinguished gathering of Eminent Cardinals, illustrious diplomats and
teachers of the highest repute. To be amongst you, Pontifical
Academicians, worthy investigators of nature, of its many manifestations
and of its history, who have been called together by our wise predecessor,
Pius XI, to establish this important scientific institute. He had the
wisest admiration for the progress of the physical sciences and the great
depths which they are able to reach, greater in fact than the deepest
crags which he was able to contemplate from the summits of the Alps. It is
important to pay the greatest tribute to him which will only then render
and amplify the honour paid to you, since he held you in the highest
esteem and had a great appreciation of your academic worth. It was with
the intention of rendering you honour that it was decided to grant you the
title of 'Excellency'; a title which is nothing but a recognition of the
scientific excellency which you possess and which exalts you in the eyes
of the world. The honour and the greeting which we give to you are first
and foremost destined to your well-deserving and indefatigable President
but they extend also to those Academicians who have not been able to leave
their countries and be present here due to the difficulties which we are
all experiencing during this period. The joy which we feel at being
present amongst such a learned gathering goes some way to dispel the
bitterness experienced as a result of this conflict between nations, all
of whom are dear to us; our greater debt for such comfort is due to God,
to whom we daily raise our trusting hopes; being wise and good, and by
giving us His light, and granting us health and forgiveness, He steers all
things towards that end where His infinite compassion triumphs over His
justice.
Our Lord, Omniscient God,
Creator of the Universe and Man
It is to Him that we must
raise our thoughts and hearts even here in this hall of science; because
it is the same God who sustains the universe, the passage of time, the
good and bad experiences of nations
and remains at the same time the
all-knowing God; Deus Scientiarum, Dominus (1 Reg., 2:3).
His infinite wisdom makes Him Master of both sky and earth, of angels
and men; in Him, creator of the universe, one finds hidden all the
treasures of wisdom and science (Col
2:3). It is in Him
that one finds the ineffable knowledge of Himself and the infinite
imitability of His life and beauty; in Him one finds the knowledge of
birth and rebirth, of grace and health; in Him are to be found the
archetypes of the admirable dances of the planets around the sun, of the
suns in their constellations, of the constellations in the labyrinth of
the firmament right up to the last islands in the sea of the universe. He
moved from the centre of the inaccessible light of his eternal throne so
as to create both earth and sky and, alongside Him, was to be found the
Divine Wisdom, delighting in the role of architect (Prov 8:30); He
addressed the void from the threshold of eternity with the power of His
voice; and the void was overwhelmed and conquered with the appearance of
the sky and the earth accompanied with the thunder of that all-powerful
voice. Ex
nihilo nihil fit is
applicable and true concerning
everything from the hand of man to every living creature, but in cannot be
applied with regards to the voice of God; ipse dixit, et facta sunt
(Ps 32:9). And in the same way as both sky and earth were created,
the earth began as a formless void and God's Spirit hovering over the
water (Gen 1: 1-2); so, too, was man fashioned out of dust
from the soil and God breathed into his nostrils a breath of life and thus
man became a living being (Gen 2:7). Such then is the macrocosm,
the universe of worlds, before the microcosm which is man
(S. TH., p. 1,
q.
91,
art. 1 in corp.); little man, a minuscule
world of spirit, surrounds and covers, like an arc filled with light, the
immense empyrean of mass matter which is beneath man because of its lack
of spirit.
God, Teacher
of man
That day in which God formed
man and crowned his head with His own image and likeness, making of him
the ruler of all living things in the sea, in the sky and on earth (Gen
1:26), the Omniscient Lord God became his teacher. He taught him
agriculture, to cultivate and look after the delightful garden in which he
had been placed (Gen 2: 15); He drew to man all the animals from
the field and all the birds of the air to see what he would call them and
so man gave names to all the cattle, all the birds, all the wild beasts (Gen
2: 19-20); but, despite being in the midst of so many living things,
man felt sad and lonely and attempted in vain to find a face which looked
like him and which would contain a ray of that Divine Image which shines
out of the eyes of every son of Adam. Only from man could there come
another man who would then call him father and ancestor; and the helpmate
given by God to the first man came from man himself and is flesh from his
flesh, made into a woman and called such because she came from man (Gen
2:23). At the summit of the ladder of all that lives, man,
endowed with a spiritual soul, was made by God to be a prince and
sovereign over the animal kingdom. The multiple research, be it
palaeontology or of biology and morphology, on the problems concerning the
origins of man have not, as yet, ascertained anything with great clarity
and certainty. We must leave it to the future to answer the question, if
indeed science will one day be able, enlightened and guided by revelation,
to give certain and definitive results concerning a topic of such
importance.
Man's greatness
Do not marvel if, in front of
you, you who have with so much acumen studied, researched, anatomised and
compared man's brain with that of irrational animals, we exalt man whose
face is bathed with that intelligence which is his exclusive inheritance.
True science never lowers or humiliates man in his origins, rather it
exalts and elevates him since it sees, compares and admires in each member
of the human family the traces of the Divine Image.
Man is truly great. The
progress made by him in the physical and natural sciences, in pure and
applied mathematics, render him even more eager to secure greater and more
certain advances. What is this progress if not the effect of the
domination, even if limited and won at great experience, which he still
exercises over inferior nature? And has the past ever witnessed a greater
study, scrutiny and penetration of nature than the present? A constant
research so as to understand nature's forces and forms so as to be able to
dominate them, subdue them with his instruments and then utilise them for
his own benefit.
Man is truly great, but he
was of an even greater stature at his origin. If he fell from his original
greatness by rebelling against his Creator and left, an exile, from the
garden of Eden, in order that the sweat from his brow would drop on his
bread, food from the earth amongst brambles and thistles (Gen
3:18-19); if the sky and sun, cold and heat, shelters and forests, if
countless other labours, discomforts of abode and conditions of life would
humiliate his face and body; if the remains of that empire granted to him
over the animals are nothing more than a faint reminder of his former
power and a small fragment of his throne; it is still true that he remains
great amongst his ruins because of that Divine image and likeness which he
carries in his soul and because of which God continues to express His
satisfaction in mankind, the last achievement of His creative hand. God
did not cease to love nor to abandon fallen man and then, in order to
raise him up once more, He himself 'became as men are and being as all men
are and knowing our weakness and temptations, He did away with sin' (Phil
2:7; Hebr 4:15).
Man, the investigator of the
universe and his achievements
Two gifts which raise man
high amongst the world of celestial spirits and the world of corporeal
beings, render man great despite his fallen nature. Firstly his
intellect, whose eye spans the created universe and crosses the skies,
eager to contemplate God; secondly his will, endowed with a freedom
to act and decide, servant and master of man's intellect, which, to
differing degrees, allows him to become the master of his own thoughts and
actions before himself, before others and before God. Are these not the
two magnificent wings which allow you to ascend to the firmament, O
scanners of the skies, and which, throughout the night, keep you from
sleep as you count the suns and stars, measure their movements, seek to
discern their colours and discover their flights, meetings and collisions?
You truly assume the stature of giants; with the broad vision of your
telescopes you measure the number of the stars and you divide the
spectrums, you pursue the vortices and the flashes of the nebulae and give
them a name; but it is necessary for you to bow to Divine science, which
is better able than you to fix the number of stars which exists and give
each one its proper name, numerat multitudinem stellarum, et omnibus
eis nomina vocat (Ps 146:4). The skies made of crystal
have disappeared. The genius of Kepler and that of Newton was able to
recognise in the sky the mechanical actions found on earth; in the flame
and light of those revolving worlds you were able to discover elements to
be found on our own globe; and by binding in marriage sky and earth you
were able to extend the Empire of physics which was already rich in her
pure and applied mathematical experiments, and in her genius,
investigations and courageous acts and which had the effect of promoting
nuclear and atomic physics.
From the infinitely big to
the infinitely small
In the depths of the
firmament you are able to discover, during your 'astronomical nights',
those 'supergalaxies' or 'nebular groups or masses' which—as
one of your distinguished colleagues pointed out—'go
to make up a most prodigious phenomenon which helps us to make certain
observations whose immensity goes beyond all intellects and imaginations'
(ARMELLINI,
Trattato di astronomia
siderale, Bologna 1936, Vol. III,
page
318):
colossal families, each one formed by
millions of 'galaxies', each one in itself an immense astral system which
has a diameter of many thousands of light years and holds within itself
millions of suns. Many of you are eagerly awaiting the non too distant
inauguration of the huge reflector which is five meters in diameter and
which stands on Mount Palomar in California. With this instrument the
sphere of the exploration of the universe will be able to expand to a
thousand million light years.
But from this infinitely big
realm of research you also descend to explore the infinitely small. Who
could have been able to imagine, one hundred years or so ago, the nature
of those enigmas which are trapped in those minute particles which we call
chemical atoms whose width is in the order of a tenth of a millionth of a
millimeter. At that time one considered the atom to be a homogenous
globule. The latest physics sees it rather in terms of a microcosm in the
real sense of the word, in which one finds hidden the most profound
mysteries. Despite the most sophisticated experiments and the employment
of the most modern mathematical instruments, current research still
remains today at only the start of its conquests in the knowledge of the
structure of the atom and of the elementary laws which regulate its
energies and movements. So, at present, the continual mutation and
transformation of all material things appears more than ever to be the
case, even when concerning the chemical atom which, for a long time, has
been considered to be unchangeable and imperishable. Only one being is
immutable and eternal: God. Ipsi (caeli) peribunt, tu autem permanes;
et omnes sicut vestimentum veterascent. Et sicut opertorium mutabis eos,
et mutabuntur; tu autem idem ipse es, et anni tui non deficient. (Ps
101:27-28).
'The heavens ... pass away but
You remain; they all wear out like a garment, like outworn clothes You
change them; but You never alter, and Your years never end'.
In such a manner you seek, in
the immense fields of experience, laws concerning matter and phenomena
which create the unity, variety and the beauty of the universe.
The order
of the universe revealing God's
hand at work
Is the universe perhaps dumb
when she presents herself to you? Does she not have something to tell you
so as to satisfy the powerful inclinations of your intellects for a grand
synthesis of the sciences? For a synthesis which is in accord with the
order of the universe? The most important matter concerning the universe
is the order which it manifests and which, in its entirety, both
distinguishes and unifies it, runs right through it and links it in her
various parts and natures which love and hate each other, repel and
embrace one another, flee and then seek one another, combine and then
separate from one another, and then conspire to steal the flash of
lightning, the thunder and the clouds from the sky. During these very
difficult times we are experiencing with a feeling of terror precisely
such disturbances of the earth, sky and sea. It remains a thing to be
wondered at that you know how each of these natures and elements in both
organic and inorganic chemistry operates according to a different instinct
owing to its own inclination and depends upon a principle without being
conscious of the fact and conspires to achieve a particular goal without
wanting necessarily to do so; in like manner the corporeal world, though
it lacks a soul to inform and unify it, and also lacking understanding to
govern and guide it, yet it is moved by reason as though it were something
living and acts in a meaningful way as if this were its aim. Is this not
the most evident demonstration of the fact that the world contains within
itself the guiding hand of that invisible teacher which manifests itself
in His work, He Who is the omniscient God, the God who orders the world
with the greatest perfection? (Cf.
BARTOLI, Delle
Grandezze di Cristo,
Ch., 2). You search for the truth and the
laws that sustain the synthesis of nature and creation, and of these laws
you seek the reasons for them, rapt in wonder and lost for words before
the movements of nature; in your hands and in your chains she tosses and
turns and, at times, menaces you with an indomitable force which does not
have its origin in you.
Neither the genius, nor the
will, nor the action of man, with his many machines and implements, can
disturb the order in nature; he can reveal it, as indeed doctors and
surgeons continually do with the use of a scalpel which reveals the heart
and the brain, muscles and veins; the most intimate secrets of the human
body are discovered, the ways of life and those of death, so as to help
life to repel death. Let us illustrious Academicians, lift our thoughts to
the Master of the sciences; a Teacher not of a knowledge learned from
somebody else but belonging properly to Him, creator of the very same
matter which He puts before man so that his genius may contemplate and
study it. Is there perhaps a contradiction between the investigation of
physical nature and the human intellect? Between science and philosophy?
There certainly exists a tension between those sciences which do not
recognise the hand of God at work in nature and that philosophy which sees
in the laws of this nature a manifestation of Divine reason which takes
care of all and governs the universe. Does philosophy seek to be an ideal
dream which confuses God and nature, which gazes longingly upon visions
and illusions of idols drawn from the imagination? Is not philosophy
rather the very discipline which keeps us firmly rooted in the reality of
the things that we see and touch, and the search for the deepest and
highest causes of nature and of the universe? Does not all our knowledge
stem from our senses? Where do laws come from? Let us for a moment
consider our life in society: do not all domestic servants working for one
head of the family have a certain hierarchy amongst themselves while still
remaining directly responsible to him? And the head of the family and all
the other citizens, do they not also maintain a certain order amongst
themselves and are they not also directly responsible to the head of the
city; he then, in turn, and alongside other heads of the cities in a
country, is responsible to the king or to the head of the state. The
universe—as
was already judged by Aristotle when recalling the thoughts of Homer
(Illyad,
2:204)—does
not wish to be ruled arbitrarily. A great number of different people all
issuing different commands is not a good thing; there should only be one
commander; ouk agathon polukoiranin
eis koiranos esto, eis basileus (ARISTOTLE,
Metaphysicorum I, XI,
Chapter X).
God the only commander and legislator of the universe. The
order to be found in the multiplicity and in the diversity of created
things
God is the unique commander
and legislator of the universe. He is a Sun diffusing and multiplying the
rays of His infinite light into all of creation; but no single image in
creation can equal His. Similarly, when a man finds it difficult
adequately to express a concept in his mind he solves the problem by using
many words. So, in the multiplicity of creatures and in their very many
natures one finds the different remains of the one divine image, differing
in quality to the degree to which they are able to draw near to God. You
who carefully study the nature of things, have you not perhaps found that
their differences is one of gradations? From the geological strata, that
of minerals and inanimate bodies you then move on to plants and from
plants to irrational creatures and, finally, from irrational animals to
man. Does not the very fact of such diversity dictate a certain inequality
between things and that all should be graded in an ascending order? In
this order and in these grades we see nature and her different forms
brought forward according to their perfections and strengths. They are
ordered according to their actions and their purposes, their reactions and
their compositions, their substance and quality. From these we find their
properties, their differing agents with their concomitant impressions and
differing effects; they differ because God has made them such, determined
and steered towards a particular goal and a particular action (Cf.
Contra Gent.,
1,
III, Ch., 97). In this
inherent necessity of things, which is nothing other than part of the
Divine Plan to bring all things to particular end, in the same manner as
an archer might direct his arrow to the appropriate goal, in this
necessity lies the law of the nature of physical bodies, a law which is
part of their very nature (S. TH., P. I, q. 103,
art. 1 ad 3). In the same way as a man may imprint a
certain manner of acting onto another man through the issue of a command,
so too does God imprint all of nature with the principle of her actions
(S. TH., Ia IIae, q. 39,
art. 5). So that—in
accordance with the teaching of the great Doctor of the church, Thomas
Aquinas—when
someone asks the reasons for a particular natural effect, we are able to
offer the explanation that the cause was due to the natural property of
the thing even though all is brought back ultimately to the will of God as
first cause, wise teacher of all of nature. So if a person is asked for
the reason explaining why fire gives off heat and answers that this is
because it is part of God's will, he would in fact be answering correctly
if he wished to discuss the issue in terms of first cause, he would,
however, have answered badly if he intended to exclude all the intervening
causes (Contra Gent., 1, II,
Ch. 97).
All men are brothers attending the same Divine school
As God's creatures, the first cause also imprinted a
sacred law within us, a sublime instinct, particular to man, which enables
us to gain an immediate knowledge of God; desire 'which is a spiritual
movement, and never rests until the object of its love makes it rejoice'
(Purgatorio,
Canto XVIII, 32-33). If our flesh
comes from the dust of the earth and is destined to return to it, then our
spirit is immortal and, coming from God, it attempts once more to climb to
God on the ladder of science but never actually managing to satiate its
thirst for truth. The world is the Divine school, teacher of every
science; when this school passes away we shall all remain face to face
before God the Teacher. Let us then bow down before His wisdom since we
can never overcome all the obstacles to a full knowledge of His wisdom;
let us bow because of His great gift of this vast school-room which is
filled with marvels and surrounded by even greater and immeasurable
wonders; which were seen to be good once God had created them
(Gen 1: 31).
You yourselves have no doubts
about it; you who have a better appreciation of the vastness of creation,
the way and degree of perfection, the diversity and the beauty of the vast
number of individual grades and the way in which their different weights
determine their appropriate functions and operations; you who both love
and magisterially promote the world of sciences. Is not also your science
a brilliant reflection of divine science which one glimpses, at times
clearly and at times obscurely, in the centre of things as they are in
themselves? And yet, in the hands of men, science can become a two edged
sword which can either bring health or death. Cast a glance at the
blood-filled fields and seas and then ask yourselves whether it was for
this that our provident and omniscient God made in His own image, redeemed
him from his guilt and gave him new life with many graces from heaven; ask
yourselves if God created such a developed intellect and warm heart so
that man could then treat his brother as an enemy.
In the Divine school we are
all brothers; brothers in our contemplation, in our study and employment
of nature; brothers in life and in death; we pray before the crib of Our
Lord, an infant who continues to love in silence, observes and then judges
mankind which is tearing itself apart, that all men become brothers once
more in love and in the victory of good in justice and peace over evil.
From Discourses of the Popes from Pius XI to John
Paul II to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences 1936-1986 (Vatican City:
Pontifica Academia Scientiarum, 1986), 41-49.
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