Mr. Marcus Hellyer, working under the direction of Professor Robert Westman, is undertaking his doctoral dissertation research on a topic which remains of great importance in contemporary science: the relationship of science and the institutions of religion. There is a belief that certain religions are essentially reactionary with respect to scientific revolutions. One group that has been considered especially reactionary in the history of science has been the Catholic Church. Yet within an organization as large and complex as the Catholic Church, it is not at all surprising that there should be parts which are in fact extremely reactionary as well as parts that participate in and foster science and scientific change. Mr. Hellyer is examining one segment of this organization to show how it has been a major contributor to the advance of science. Specifically, Mr. Hellyer is examining the role of German Jesuits in propagating experimental science in Germany. He is studying a paradigmatic example of the experimental method, the air-pump, and trace its path through Germany, from its invention by Otto von Guericke to the first printed account of it by a Jesuit, Gaspar Schott, a professor of mathematics at the University of W rzburg. The main problem the dissertation will attempt to solve is why a Jesuit would support a physics which, on the surface, appears so radically different to that commonly considered to be taught at universities in the early modern period. To do this, he is examining Jesuit science and its relation to the Jesuit university curriculum to determine what was actually taught at W rzburg. He is examining the culture of the Society of Jesus to determine how much freedom of opinion on scientific issues was permitted and to assess the role of Jesuit correspondence in the propagation of experimental knowledge and practice. In order to study these questions, Mr. Hellyer is making extensive use of archives in Rome and in Germany.
