I have got to go get my back and associated loci of pain looked at, all the snow shoveling seems to have brought on sciatica and it's either that or I go out on an ice drift, assuming any will be drifting anytime soon.
Turning on the computer just now, I see Google is celebrating the 270th birthday of Alessandro Volta. Being idly curious, I read some of the links and found this piece which says he flirted with the Jansenism I mentioned yesterday.
Volta came from a Lombard family ennobled by the municipality of Como and almost extinguished, in his time, through its service to the church. One of his three paternal uncles was a Dominican, another a canon, and the third an archdeacon; his father, Filippo (1692-ca. 1752), after eleven years as a Jesuit, withdrew to propagate the line. Filippo Volta’s marriage in 1733 with Maddelena de’ conti Inzaghi (d. 1782) produced seven children who survived childhood; three girls, two of whom became nuns; three boys who followed precisely the careers of their paternal uncles; and Alessandro, the youngest, who narrowly escaped recruitment by his first teachers, the Jesuits.
The doctrines, social life, and observances of the church of Rome consequently made up a large part of Volta’s culture. He chose clerics as his chief friends, remained close to his brothers the canon and archdeacon, and actively practiced the Catholic religion. Examples of his religiosity include a flirtation with Jansenism in the 1790’s a confession of faith in 1815 to help defend religion against scientism (Epistolario, V, 290–292); and an appeal in 1794 to his brothers and to the professor of theology at the University of Pavia for advice about marriage. Not that Volta was prudish or ascetic. He was a large, vigorous man, who, in the words of his friend Lichtenberg, “understood a lot about the electricity of women” (Epistolario, II, 269). For many years he enjoyed the favors of a singer, Marianna Paris, whom he might have married but for the weight of theologial, and family, opinion.
Volta was about seven when his father died. His uncle the canon took charge of his education, which began in 1757 at the local Jesuit college, where his quickness soon attracted the attention of his teachers. In 1761 the philosophy professor, Girolamo Bonensi, tried to recruit him; his suit, sweetened by gifts of chocolated and bonbons, alarmed Volta’s uncle, who took him from school. Bonensi continued his compaign in letters (Epistolario, I, 6–33) carried secretly by Volta’s eccentric friend, the future canon Giulio Cesare Gattoni (1741-1809), until Volta’s uncle the Dominican, who shared his order’s opinion of Jesuits, put an end to the affair.
You could get the feeling that you won't be reading much about his confession of faith to help defend religion against scientism. Looking around for that, online, I found it in an article, "Scientists and Faith" from The American Catholic Quarterly Review of July 1909. The prose around it is a little old fashioned but it makes some important points:
The distinguished discoverer in electricity, having heard it said that he continued to practice his religion mainly because he did not want to offend his friends nor scandalize his neighbors, and above all did not want the poor folk around him to be led by his example into giving up what he knew to be their most fruitful source of consolation in the trials of life answered this unjust suspicion by deliberately writing out his confession of faith. He said:
"If some of my faults and negligencies may have by chance given occasion to some one to suspect me of infidelity, I am ready as some reparation for this and for any other good purpose to declare such a one and every other person and on every occasion and under all circumstances, that I have always held and hold now the holy Catholic religion as the one true and infallible one, thanking without end the good God for having gifted me with such a faith, in which I firmly propose to live and die, in the lively hope of attaining eternal life. I recognize my faith as a gift of God, a supernatural faith' I have not on this account, however, neglected to use all human means that could confirm me more and more in it, and that might drive away doubt which could arise to tempt me in matters of faith. I have studied my faith with attention as to its foundation, reading for this purpose books of apologetics as well as those written with a contrary purpose, and trying to appreciate the arguments pro and contra. I have tried to realize from what sources spring the strongest arguments which render faith most credible to natural reason and such as cannot fail to make every well balanced mind which has not been perverted by vices or passion to embrace it and love it. May this protest of mine, which I have deliberately drawn up and which I leave to posterity, subscribed with myown hand and which shows to all and every one that I do not blush at the Gospel - may it, as I have said, produce some good fruit." (Signed at Milan, January 1815, Allesandro Volta.)
When Volta wrote this he was not in his dotage, but, on the contrary, was in the full maturity of his power, not yet sixty years of age, and for the next decade he was looked up to as one of the greatest scientists of Europe and one of the profoundly original thinkers of his time. Indeed, he had shown by important discoveries and original investigations of great value in many departments of physical science that he was one of the exceptional intellects in the history of mankind. His confession of faith then must be taken as his well weighted declaration of what he thought were the relations of science and faith. Far from finding any antagonism between his science and his faith, he had only to report complete harmony. Far from science having disturbed his faith, he seems rather to think it had strengthened it and that the little additional knowledge that he had picked up on the shores of the infinite had served to make him appreciate better the depths of his ignorance, yet how much that ignorance could be supplied for a defective knowledge complemented by faith.
Suspecting they're going to make use of the discoveries of Alessandro Volta to diagnose whatever has put me in a world of pain, I am paying him the tribute of typing out the confession he left for posterity. I doubt you'll read about it much of anywhere else today. Oh, and it was well after Volta would have been in any danger of being burned at the stake or tortured for infidelity. For the typical history challenged guys who would probably gas on ignorantly in that manner if presented with his statement.
Update: Reading that article linked to above, I had no idea that Luigi Galvani was a member of The Third Order of St. Francis who requested to be buried in the Franciscan habit, and looking that up, Volta is also listed here as a member. The article is worth reading, it points out that though it was the materialist philosopher, Herbert Spencer who sloganized the mutual incompatibility of science and religion,
"Of all antagonism of belief, the oldest, the widest, the most profound and the most important is between religion and science."
Lord Kelvin, who was probably the most prominent British scientist at the time, on the basis of his experience while being a scientist, disagreed and said that science confirms religion.
"science confirms the existence of A Creator"
I wouldn't go that far but, then, I'm no Kelvin and neither was Spencer. I do agree with the quote from Galvani based on my own experience,
"Small draughts of philosophy lead to atheism but longer draughts bring one back to God."
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