Georges Lemaître: The Priest Who Discovered the Big Bang (Aquinas 101)

00:10:45
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qym7ZuGdCsU

概要

TLDRThe video highlights the life and contributions of Georges Lemaître, a Catholic priest and the father of the Big Bang theory. His groundbreaking work in cosmology in the 1920s and 1930s is presented, emphasizing that his faith deeply influenced his understanding of God and the universe. Lemaître's significant 1931 paper is discussed, illustrating his views on God's hidden nature and His sustaining role in creation. The narrative draws parallels to philosophical ideas from St. Augustine and Aquinas, emphasizing the distinction between potentiality and actuality. Lemaître's achievements illustrate a harmonious relationship between science and faith, culminating in his belief that science reflects God's creative thought.

収穫

  • 👨‍🔬 Georges Lemaître was a Belgian Catholic priest and astronomer.
  • 🌌 He proposed the Big Bang theory in 1931.
  • ✝️ Lemaître's faith influenced his scientific inquiries.
  • 📄 His 1931 paper is foundational in cosmology.
  • 🕊️ Lemaître viewed God as hidden yet sustaining existence.
  • 📖 He believed in a harmonious relationship between science and faith.
  • 🏆 Lemaître received recognition for both his scientific and religious contributions.
  • 🔍 He distinguished between the beginning of cosmic evolution and the act of creation.
  • 📜 His understanding of God aligns with Thomistic views.
  • 🔔 Lemaître saw science as a reflection of God's creative thought.

タイムライン

  • 00:00:00 - 00:05:00

    In this segment, we learn about Georges Lemaître, a Belgian Catholic priest and astronomer, who was pivotal in developing the Big Bang theory. Lemaître's faith shaped his worldview and led to significant contributions in cosmology during the 1920s and 1930s. His groundbreaking paper drafted in 1931 outlined the universe's origins and is considered foundational in the field. Lemaître controversially included a thought on God's nature in the paper, which he later removed, highlighting his belief in a God who exists in a hidden yet supportive role regarding creation.

  • 00:05:00 - 00:10:45

    The video delves into Lemaître's theological insights, aligning with Aquinas' perspectives on God being pure act. Aquinas distinguished between potency and actuality, suggesting that existence requires a source of pure act, which is God. Lemaître's understanding posits that the Big Bang signifies the universe's temporal evolution rather than its creation from nothing. His scientific and religious efforts earned him recognition, exemplifying the unity of faith and science, as encapsulated in his statement about the beauty of science being a reflection of God's creative thought.

マインドマップ

ビデオQ&A

  • Who was Georges Lemaître?

    Georges Lemaître was a Belgian Catholic priest and astronomer known for proposing the Big Bang theory.

  • What significant theory did Lemaître introduce?

    Lemaître introduced the Big Bang theory, which explains the origin of the universe.

  • How did Lemaître view the relationship between God and the universe?

    Lemaître saw God as a hidden force that supports all existence and acts, aligning with the Thomistic view.

  • What is the significance of Lemaître's 1931 paper?

    His 1931 paper is regarded as one of the most important works in cosmology, laying the groundwork for modern understanding of the universe's origins.

  • Did Lemaître receive recognition for his work?

    Yes, he won the Francqui Prize in 1934 and was honored as a Prelate of the Papal Household in 1960.

  • What was Lemaître's perspective on creation?

    He distinguished between the Big Bang as a beginning of temporal evolution and creation as a timeless act of God.

  • How did Lemaître's faith influence his scientific work?

    His Catholic faith inspired a sense of wonder and contributed to his insights in cosmology.

  • Did Lemaître believe in a personal God?

    Yes, Lemaître believed in a supreme being who actively supports all existence.

  • What analogy did Lemaître use regarding the Big Bang?

    He compared the Big Bang to a beginning like the north pole of a sphere, not as the creation of the sphere itself.

  • What was Lemaître's view on the hidden nature of God?

    He suggested that God's hiddenness is reflected in the veil physics provides over the act of creation.

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  • 00:00:00
    People today seem surprised that a  scientist could be a believing Catholic,
  • 00:00:05
    let alone a priest. Some have even suggested that  believing scientists only pretend to believe,
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    to fit in. But did you know that the father of  the Big Bang model of how the universe began
  • 00:00:19
    was a Catholic priest? In fact, this man’s  faith may have instilled in him a deep sense
  • 00:00:27
    of wonder and inspired his groundbreaking  research into the origin of the universe.
  • 00:00:45
    Georges Lemaître was a Belgian Catholic priest  and astronomer who made an extraordinary number
  • 00:00:51
    of contributions to our understanding  of the cosmos in the 1920’s and 1930’s.
  • 00:00:58
    He thought deeply throughout his life about the  role of God in the creation of the universe.
  • 00:01:04
    In this video, we’ll go over just one  example from his remarkable body of work.
  • 00:01:11
    In 1931, Lemaître produced a typewritten draft of  a paper outlining a theory about the beginning of
  • 00:01:19
    the cosmos—what would come to be known as the  Big Bang. The finished paper has since become
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    one of the most important works published in the  20th century about the origins of the universe,
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    and astronomers today regard it as the foundation  for everything we are doing in cosmology.
  • 00:01:41
    Lemaître was preparing to send his  manuscript to the famous journal Nature.
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    In a scientific paper like that, one would not  expect his views on God to intrude. And yet,
  • 00:01:54
    his draft contains an extra  sentence at the very end—one
  • 00:01:58
    that does not appear in the published  paper—that he crossed out with a pencil.
  • 00:02:04
    It reads: “I think that every one who believes in  a supreme being supporting every being and every
  • 00:02:12
    acting, believes also that God is essentially  hidden and may be glad to see how present
  • 00:02:19
    physics provides a veil hiding the creation.”  This single sentence is loaded with information
  • 00:02:28
    on Lemaître’s views of the nature of God and  His role as Creator. Let’s try to unpack it.
  • 00:02:34
    Lemaître thinks of God as hidden, and he was  not the first to say that. The Judeo-Christian
  • 00:02:42
    concept of the hidden God goes back  to a verse in chapter 45 of Isaiah.
  • 00:02:49
    But here, Lemaître takes it one step  further and suggests that the physics itself
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    hides the act of creation. This is not an  entirely religious or philosophical view. It
  • 00:03:02
    may just be Lemaître’s lyrical way of expressing  what is generally accepted about the Big Bang:
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    that one cannot use physics to learn what  happened in the cosmos “before” the Big Bang.
  • 00:03:16
    Indeed, in some views, time itself  began as part of the Big Bang.
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    Such an idea, without the astrophysics involved,
  • 00:03:26
    goes back to St. Augustine in the early 5th  century. The famous scientist Stephen Hawking,
  • 00:03:33
    an atheist, cites it as well. Lemaître himself  asserts this idea earlier in his Nature paper.
  • 00:03:41
    Elsewhere, he says, “Any preexistence of  the universe has a metaphysical character.
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    Physically, everything happens as if the  theoretical zero was really a beginning.”
  • 00:03:55
    Now, let’s return to the first part of Lemaître’s  redacted sentence from the Nature letter,
  • 00:04:01
    where he refers to God as “supporting every  being and every acting.” This important
  • 00:04:08
    excerpt reveals his understanding of  Aquinas’s view of God as pure act.
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    For Lemaître, God is not a  clockmaker, a disengaged creator who
  • 00:04:20
    starts the mechanisms of the cosmos  and then leaves the scene. Instead,
  • 00:04:27
    he very much holds the view of God espoused  by St. Thomas Aquinas (and also by Aristotle):
  • 00:04:34
    that God is the source of the actuality by  which the universe exists at every moment.
  • 00:04:42
    Let me break this down for you. Aquinas  saw the world as divided between potency
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    and act or actuality. The things around us in  nature are not only what they actually are,
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    but also what they can be. A pot of water on  the stove is actually cold and potentially
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    hot. But once it is on a hot burner for some time,  the potentiality to be hot becomes actualized.
  • 00:05:18
    Aristotle realized that everything that  changes goes from potentially being something
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    to actually being something. But, why does the  potentiality of things become actual? After all,
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    potentiality does not realize itself on its own.  To answer this question, Aristotle and Aquinas
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    argued that the influence of act on something  potential could not run backwards infinitely.
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    There cannot be an infinite chain of things  where each is actualized by something else.
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    There must be some ultimate source of  act, something that is itself pure act,
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    without any potentiality in it.  And that, they argued, is God.
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    Another way to look at this, as Aquinas did, is  through the concepts of essence and existence,
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    or being. One can readily describe the  essence of a human, or of a unicorn, but
  • 00:06:24
    neither necessarily exists. Indeed, of the two,  only the human truly exists as a material being.
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    Thus, the essence of something,  and its existence, are distinct.
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    Whatever gives the human existence  must itself be given existence,
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    and so forth, until one arrives  recursively, according to Aquinas,
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    at pure being: something whose essence is  existence itself. And that, Aquinas says,
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    is the God who revealed Himself in the second  chapter of Exodus to Moses as: I AM that AM.
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    The subtlety here in Aquinas’s  reasoning—and this is crucial—is
  • 00:07:12
    that the ordering is not in time (this led  to that which led to another thing, etc.):
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    it is hierarchical. So, all of material reality,  everything that participates in existence,
  • 00:07:28
    must be sustained at every moment by pure  being, pure act—that is, by God. And this is
  • 00:07:37
    exactly what Lemaître says: “a supreme being  supporting every being and every acting.”
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    To me, it is clear that Lemaître’s view of God is  the Thomistic view, the God who lends existence to
  • 00:07:54
    everything all the time, who creates in a  timeless fashion ex nihilo: from nothing.
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    And so, in that view, Lemaître’s Big Bang is  not the creation of everything, which happens
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    timelessly in God’s eternal now, but the beginning  of the temporal evolution of the universe—just
  • 00:08:17
    as the north pole is the spatial origin point  from which one moves progressively southward
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    on a sphere, but is not the origin  of that sphere in terms of creation.
  • 00:08:30
    Lemaître himself was somewhat elusive on  this point, saying, “We may speak of this
  • 00:08:37
    event as of a beginning. I do not say a creation.  Physically it is a beginning in the sense that if
  • 00:08:45
    something happened before, it has no observable  influence on the behavior of our universe… The
  • 00:08:52
    question if it was really a beginning or rather  a creation, something started from nothing, is a
  • 00:09:00
    philosophical question which cannot be settled  by physical or astronomical considerations.”
  • 00:09:08
    In his own lifetime, Lemaître was rewarded for  both his scientific accomplishments and his
  • 00:09:16
    work as a priest. As a scientist, in 1934, he won  the lucrative Francqui prize for his research—and
  • 00:09:24
    he was nominated for that honor by none other than  Albert Einstein! As a Catholic priest, in 1960,
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    Lemaître was named a Prelate  of the Papal Household
  • 00:09:36
    by Pope John XXIII, thereby  earning him the title of Monsignor.
  • 00:09:42
    In all that he did, throughout his whole life,  Georges Lemaître saw the harmony between our
  • 00:09:49
    scientific inquiry into the nature of the cosmos  and our worship of the God who created it all…
  • 00:09:56
    and us. As Lemaître said in accepting the  Francqui Prize, “Science is beautiful;
  • 00:10:04
    it deserves to be loved for itself, as it  is a reflection of God’s creative thought.”
  • 00:10:14
    For readings, podcasts, and more  videos like this, go to Aquinas101.com.
  • 00:10:21
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  • 00:10:26
    And don't forget to like and share with your  friends, because it matters what you think!
タグ
  • Georges Lemaître
  • Big Bang
  • Catholic Priest
  • Cosmology
  • God
  • Creation
  • Philosophy
  • Aquinas
  • Science and Faith
  • Astronomy