Faith, education and science

A chara, – David McConnell, honorary president of the Humanist Association of Ireland, writes (Letters, November 20th): “there is no such thing as Catholic or Islamic maths. Too true today but it was not always thus.” This is a simplistic statement. The fact that maths or science in the past was done by a person of religious faith does not make it Catholic or Islamic, or indeed humanist. Isaac Newton was a Christian (albeit somewhat non-mainstream) and has some very religious writings, but this does not make his mathematics religious, although his work was probably inspired by his faith. The same may be said of Gregor Mendel, a Catholic monk, for his pioneering work in genetics, and of many other scientists and mathematicians of the past and present.

Prof McConnell points out the significant impact on maths with the introduction to Europe of the works of Euclid, etc, and the use of Indo-Arabic numerals. But he writes, “pre-Reformation Europe had made do with Roman numerals and baby arithmetic for more than a thousand years.” “Baby arithmetic” hardly describes the remarkable work in mathematics, using Roman numerals, as studied in “Music and the stars: Mathematics in medieval Ireland” by Mary Kelly & Charles Doherty, editors (Four Courts Press 2013), not to mention the remarkable monuments to medieval maths in pre-Reformation Europe as seen for example in so much architecture and other scientific advances of the time.

He writes, “Ireland will not fully embrace the new world of the open mind until preparation for religious life is removed from the school-day curriculum.”

He may be disappointed or shocked to know that the European Parliament, in a resolution of September 12th, 2023, on the system of European schools, “insists on maintaining the current provision of religious and ethical education”. – Is mise,