Talk:List of lay Catholic scientists

Title Update?
Should 'lay' be removed from the update? Formal definition of 'lay' is pertaining to an informal, non-professional understanding or involvement, while many on this list would indeed be described as working professionally in a scientific area of study. If it is a major concern perhaps a sub-section should be created to note those from the list that couldn't accurately be described as professional scientists. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 68.189.173.119 (talk) 01:01, 21 August 2018 (UTC)


 * In Catholic context, "lay" means not ordained as bishop, priest, or deacon. Anyone who is not clergy is lay, including monks and nuns. If we were to change it to a list of Catholic scientists, it should also mean a merging of this list with the one for Catholic clergy scientists. Which might be a good idea as there is no real point in distinguishing between cleric and lay for a list about scientists. Protoclete (talk) 10:56, 4 January 2021 (UTC)

2005 comments
All this is is a redirect to List of avowed Christians in science. This redirect is not at all a copy of List of Catholic scientists. And if the new avowed version is unacceptable I don't know what to say. I started working on it before the deletions came through. That list is very well sourced and the title comes from a suggestion at those delete votes.--T. Anthony 10:19, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * The AfD vote was very very clearly a delete result not a redirect and that is why I placed the db tag here. There was actually not a single vote for redirect. I can't view the contents to compare whether "List of avowed" is substantially different from the list that was voted down so I've asked an admin. While I'm very sure you created the new list in good faith, it is ultimately a way of short-circuiting an obvious delete. You should have tried to get a "Move to..." or "rename" consensus at AfD I'd suggest. Marskell 10:50, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * Very well. You can delete this redirect. The new list is in large part because I think the delete is wrong, but there was some acceptance of the idea a better list could be possible with a better title.


 * I hope it doesn't get placed on delete as it's on my watchlist and I've done a great deal of work on it. Many of you may not think so, but there is interest in this topic. That and I admit I do feel quite strongly that some list involving the topic should exist. Especially as List of Muslim scientists and philosophers exists.--T. Anthony 11:02, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I can see you've put a lot of work and I felt a little guilty... To be clear my notice has nothing to do with content and everything to do with procedure. If in the middle of every AfD headed toward to delete someone re-posted the material under a different title AfD obviously wouldn't work. However, we shall see what a third-party feels. Marskell 11:18, 23 November 2005 (UTC)


 * I understand in a way. Although I think part of why the vote was decisive is because the name of the list was too broad and also I withdrew myself on creating this new list. I might rename it, but anyway I'm taking out names who didn't do any books on religion by and large. I'm also adding some names of theologians who also did science. My intent might have been, admittedly, an amount of annoyance. However hopefully this will be valid. Because I'm thinking of just making it be people who contributed as much to theology or religious history as to science.--T. Anthony 11:30, 23 November 2005 (UTC)

There was no concensus, see Redirects for deletion to confirm that.--T. Anthony 07:30, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Talk page post delete/archive
I plan on deleting the comments on this page as they are six years old and no longer pertinent. Also, the article has changed from a redirect to a fully functioning page. I will wait to delete the old comments until October 15, 2011 to see if anyone disagrees.Akasseb (talk) 22:37, 1 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Talk page posts are archived, not deleted, but I'm not sure why you'd want the short comments above to be deleted/archived though.—Machine Elf 1735  07:52, 3 October 2011 (UTC)


 * Two reasons: 1) the discussion is nearly six years old, and 2) the information is no longer pertinent as this is a fully functioning page rather than a redirect.Akasseb (talk) 19:56, 5 October 2011 (UTC)
 * For this length page, archiving is really not needed yet. Lady  of  Shalott  15:30, 7 October 2011 (UTC)

d'Alembert
The mathematician d'Alembert is said to be a known unbeliever in the article on him. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 86.177.15.120 (talk) 13:42, 27 November 2011 (UTC)

Galileo
The Galileo section of the lede reads like an apology for the Catholic church (and this is a somewhat cleaned-up version):


 * Yet, the Galileo affair has come to typify the Church's relationship with science. John Henry Cardinal Newman has referred to the Galileo affair as the "one stock argument"[8] against the Church. The standard treatment of Galileo as a martyr for science has been overturned by modern historians, however. Galileo's Dialogue Concerning the Two Chief World Systems was removed from the Index of Forbidden Books in 1835, and his theories have been celebrated by popes and churchmen alike, with members of the Jesuits personally verifying many of his observations.[9] Galileo encountered trouble when he presented heliocentrism as fact rather than theory, when he lacked the necessary proofs to overturn long-standing dogma.

William M. Connolley (talk) 15:14, 12 April 2013 (UTC)

"Father of" paragraph
I deleted this paragraph, which was a variation on a paragraph previously deleted by User:Johnuniq.

"Catholic scientists are considered the fathers of numerous scientific fields, including, but not limited to, modern physics, acoustics, mineralogy, modern chemistry, modern anatomy, stratigraphy, bacteriology, genetics, analytical geometry, and heliocentric cosmology. Inventions from Catholic scientists include the battery, the barometer, the stethoscope, the mechanical calculator, braille, mechanical movable type printing, and the Foucault pendulum. Three electrical units are named after Catholic scientists as well: the amp, the volt, and the coulomb."

There are a lot of problems with this paragraph. "Father of" should generally be avoided, because there is rarely a clearly defined father of anything, and there are usually many competing claims. For example, the paragraph states "father of modern physics". A quick web search turned up three candidates: Galileo (Catholic), Einstein (Jewish), and Maxwell (Presbyterian). In all cases it is unclear why their religion is relevant to their claim to be father of modern physics. And this is an WP:exceptional claim, so any such claim should be supported by multiple, good sources that agree someone (presumably Galileo) is the father of modern physics, mentions that there are other candidates, and preferably that his Catholicism was relevant to his science. The most obvious way Galileo's religion was relevant to his science is that he was put on trial by his religion for his scientific views.

If you must bring religion into this list of scientific discoveries, please explain why it is actually relevant, as at first glance it seems to have very little to do with science, and more to do with seeing which religion can build the longest list. In some cases, conceivably the religion of a scientist might have directly influenced their approach to science, and this might be interesting in an encyclopedia (assuming it's properly cited). However an indiscriminate list of scientists' religions, where in the vast majority of cases where that religion could be deduced by which country they were born in and when, does not seem very helpful in an encyclopedia. --Merlinme (talk) 08:58, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Merlinme is correct. Wikipedia should not be used to construct articles that gather every claim to promote some cause, whether religion or nationality or whatever. This article should be based on independent WP:SECONDARY sources—do any such sources claim that a particular religion was an important factor in a person becoming the "father" of a branch of science? Johnuniq (talk) 09:38, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * The lead looks much better for being cut-down. Thanks. The next improvement would be to clearly source all claims to "father of", etc., which are WP:exceptional claims and which therefore need multiple, high quality sources.
 * In general because of the problems with competing claims I discussed above, except in very clear cases I think it's simpler to briefly list the one or two areas where a person's influence was significant. --Merlinme (talk) 13:44, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * yes the new lead sounds better, i will work more with the claims "fahter of", if it's true i will backed with high verifiability sources, and as i said befor i agree with removing the paragraph father of since it's highly debatable issue. The article should review only names of scientists who identified themselves as catholic.--Jobas (talk) 15:05, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Now the lede has essentially gone, we're back to the page being pointless: its just the intersection of the "scientist" and "catholic" categories William M. Connolley (talk) 15:32, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * This topic is similar exactly (just change the word catholic to atheists or muslims) to List of atheists in science and technology and List of Muslim scientists and List of Muslim Nobel Laureates and Muslim doctors (Given that there is a very long and detailed article on Islam and science) let's say that these articls are pointless, then we should discuss it in All these articles not just this one since they are same topice.--Jobas (talk) 16:19, 15 April 2013 (UTC)
 * Yes, those look rather pointless too. Don't rely on WP:OTHER though William M. Connolley (talk) 17:07, 15 April 2013 (UTC)

Split/Merge proposal
A given Jesuit scientist might technically belong on all 3 of these lists: List_of_Catholic_scientists,List_of_Roman_Catholic_cleric-scientists, and List of Jesuit scientists. One list is enough, with subsections in each list so readers can easily get to the other sub-lists. I suggest we split these lists, and put all the Jesuits in the Jesuit list, the non-Jesuits in the roman catholic cleric-scientist list (with a sub-section that links out to the Jesuit list, obviously), and leave the list of catholic scientists to be just lay people (again, with sections for jesuit priests and non-jesuit priests that link out to the relevant lists). A quick look at these suggests that there is a lot of dual/triple maintenance resulting in (currently) inaccurate lists all around. Let's normalize this database, or at least this little corner of the database. We could even turn this article into a disambiguation article, and move the lay people to List of Catholic lay scientists, but it's not really necessary - use of summarystyle here should be sufficient.

Note: to be clear, what is suggested is changes to two articles:
 * 1) place all Jesuits from this list into the Jesuit list
 * 2) place all non-Jesuit priests from this list into the cleric-scientist list
 * 3) From List of Roman Catholic cleric-scientists, remove all the Jesuits and move to the Jesuit list.

The result will be much more maintainable, as everyone will have one spot in this little triplet of lists - thus more accurate lists over time for the users. If you want to get really fancy, we could even transclude those sublists here. I'm not sure if that works well or not.--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 22:31, 10 June 2014 (UTC)


 * Is there any particular reason why the articles couldn't be merged? I would have thought it makes more sense to keep the material in one place; that's by far the easiest way of making sure there isn't duplication of effort. Does it really matter that much if someone is a cleric scientist, or a Jesuit? Surely that information could be added as a note to the list entry? --Merlinme (talk) 08:42, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * that's another option - a list, perhaps sortable by denomination and job (or lay).--Obi-Wan Kenobi (talk) 08:45, 11 June 2014 (UTC)
 * Having a single list with the relevant information given in that list would certainly be my preference. Having three such close lists strikes me as a recipe for duplication of effort and inconsistency with where people are listed. --Merlinme (talk) 10:01, 11 June 2014 (UTC)


 * One single list is needed for all clerics. Has anybody thought this through?  There were Benedictines writing on theoretical science for nearly a millennium before any Jesuits wrote about science.  Let's say somebody wants other lists for Benedictines, Franciscans, Jesuits, and so on:  fine, but don't take those names off the general list.  Jesuits are Roman Catholic clerics, except for Jesuit brothers; brothers aren't clerics, strictly speaking, any more than sisters are.Francvs (talk) 22:02, 28 April 2015 (UTC)


 * Well, it seems that there has been no agreement on a split, indeed there's some feeling for a merge. I don't personally think a split would help, either, and could happily go along with a merge if that's the decision. I shall therefore close the (very old) split proposal now. Chiswick Chap (talk) 08:43, 3 January 2017 (UTC)
 * Based on the near consensus here, I decided to merge the List of Jesuit scientists into the List of Catholic churchmen-scientists. Without the knowledge of the discussion here (open for 3 years), another editor reverted the merger. I am now making the proposed merger known here and at the other articles in question. FYI: I have been the main editor of the List of Catholic churchmen-scientists, and a contributing editor to the List of Jesuit scientists and the List of Lay Catholic scientists. Once the merger is finalized, we can have a discussion about the possibility of doing another merger of the List of Catholic churchmen-scientists and the List of Lay Catholic scientists; for now, the incremental approach seems prudent.Akasseb (talk) 18:26, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It escapes me who authorized you to make all this mess. Besides, you removed well-known catholic scientists on the list showing no clear knowledge about. Please, do the same with muslims distinguishing between sunnis, sciites and so on. It would be helpful the intervention of some administrator here.--Pra1998 (talk) 19:48, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
 * It escapes me why you have written this here. No scientists have been deleted in an absolute sense. Rather, all the of the churchmen-scientists were removed from the List of Lay Catholic scientists because of double counting (they are all on the List of Catholic churchmen-scientists). Also, I have a vested interest in making sure this is done right: all of those scientists were originally added by me (take a look at the edit history). I am also the main contributor to the List of Catholic churchmen-scientists. Furthermore, beyond my history with these articles, I have a deep knowledge about the historical relationship between the Church and science (I've been studying it for a decade) as well as a graduate degree in theology.Akasseb (talk) 21:05, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
 * That's fine for me. Apologize.--Pra1998 (talk) 21:16, 18 August 2017 (UTC)
 * Well, as I said back in January, I'm happy to support a merge, as long as it's done carefully. Chiswick Chap (talk) 19:50, 18 August 2017 (UTC)

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Potential Bias?
Looking through the list of people, most (if not all) seem to be Roman Catholic, rather than Catholic. Is this a list of Catholic scientists, or Roman Catholic scientists?

Though as this is just a list of articles, I'm not sure why we need it all; wouldn't it be simpler, to just have a category?

If there's no reference for living people on this list, isn't there a WP:BLP issue? Nfitz (talk) 01:44, 19 August 2017 (UTC)

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