From Galileo to Laudato Si’: Why Science Needs Faith

Guy Consolmagno, S.J., Director of the Vatican Observatory delivering The John C. and Jeanette D. Walton Lecture in Science, Philosophy, and Religion at Fordham University.

Guy Consolmagno is a planetary scientist, the director of the Vatican Observatory, and president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation. He is the author of over 200 scientific publications, and several popular books including Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? (with Paul Mueller, SJ) and Turn Left at Orion (with Dan Davis). He has hosted science programs for BBC Radio, has been interviewed in numerous documentary films, has appeared on The Colbert Report, and writes a monthly science column for The Tablet. He is the 2014 recipient of the Carl Sagan Medal from the American Astronomical Society.

Logic and reason must always start with assumptions, and the assumptions behind science are, at their root, religious assumptions. Our core beliefs not only determine how we expect the universe to work; they also and just as importantly supply the motivation for the science we do, and indeed they determine why we as individuals choose to be scientists. The nature of how we understand this relationship, however, has changed radically from the time of Galileo, when science was still being invented; and that change continues to this day, as can be seen in the way Pope Francis has blended science and faith in his recent encyclical Laudato Si’.

A reception immediately follows the lecture.

RSVP online by Monday, February 19, 2018.