PODCAST

That"s So Second Millennium

Paul Giesting, William Schmitt

Taking science AND faith seriously.

science earth sciences

All Episodes

24:05

Episode 024 - Geology after Steno: Diluvialism,...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/09/10

With acknowledgments to A. Hallam and his Great Geological Controversies 18th century: it becomes more and more possible and even fashionable to discard the minimalist Scriptural timescale Nevertheless, Western thought is so thoroughly steeped in Christianity that every major development is either an extension (subconscious or not) of a Christian theme or a deliberate rejection of one. - Decay and refutation of the Genesis minimalist paradigm for interpreting geology. - "Diluvialism", the

52:03

Episode 023 - Clericalism, Sex Abuse, Addiction, and...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/09/03

Discussion notes: We start to discuss what everyone in the Catholic Church has been discussing for over a month now, which is the new storm of revelations about sexual abuse of children, youths, and seminarians by priests and bishops. Parallels between modern day and the 17th century. Nicolaus Steno (the subject of our last podcast) lived in a tumultuous time, and many of his contemporary churchmen, Protestant and Catholic both, do not cut an inspiring figure on the stage of history. Steno tried

27:34

Episode 022 - Nicolaus Steno (Niels Stensen) - The...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/08/27

In this episode we discuss the life and times of one Blessed Niels Stensen (Latinized as Nicolaus Steno), a Dane who laid down the basic principles that undergird the whole science of geology, from paleontology to stratigraphy to mineralogy and crystallography. Our discussion in the podcast is indebted to The Seashell on the Mountaintop by Alan Cutler. To better understand the impact of Steno's times on his thought and vice versa, we have to discuss extensively the intellectual world of the

36:39

Episode 021 - Hypocrisy and Geology: Battlegrounds...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/08/20

Bill and I start off by discussing some of the reasons why there is such animosity against faith and such a tendency to credit the claim that science and religion are mutually incompatible. I think we miss a great deal of the point if we do not take into account the relentless critique Christianity has mounted OF ITSELF over the past half millennium. The Reformation splintered the Christian nations and sparked unprecedented bloodshed between Christians. There had been terrible episodes before, but

38:57

Episode 020 - Bill and Father Spitzer Talk...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/08/13

Today was just one of those days where I needed a script to get through a three minute intro. I summarize the interview afterward. Paul: "Welcome to Episode 20 of That's So Second Millennium. "I'm Paul Giesting, a geologist, researcher, consultant, writer, and your co-host on this journey through the beautiful frontier country between science, philosophy, and religion as they stand here at the beginning of the third millennium. My opposite number is Bill Schmitt, a journalist, radio personality,

47:50

Episode 019 - Conclusion: SCS Conference

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/08/06

We pick up from last week's episode with the next speaker. Kara Lamb followed Andrew Sicree; her research is about the atmosphere and climate. She mostly talked about climate, and got a ways into specifics about her research on black carbon soot in the atmosphere. She did stop to draw a parallel between Laudato Si and Pacem in Terris, that in both cases the Popes stopped to address humanity at large and not just the Church. Juan Martin Maldacena was after her, and was presented the St. Albert Award

45:31

Episode 018 - SCS Conference: Peter Koellner, Andrew...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/07/30

As I've mentioned, we batch recorded the last four episodes about a month ago, and so we opened with a retrospective on the conference as a whole and its significance. We moved on to discuss Peter Koellner. Koellner was the next talk and probably deserves his own podcast. I have gotten his lecture slides from him but won't have time to analyze them for a few weeks. The short version for now is that he gave us some perspective on Godel's theorem, a result in mathematical logic that many (including

12:39

Episode 017 - Aaron Schurger at SCSC: Fifty Years...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/07/23

It's a short one this week. We discuss the talk at the Society of Catholic Scientists Conference by Aaron Schurger with the delightfully provocative title "Fifty Years Without Free Will." (Those of you who are similiarly obsessive about grammar will appreciate my deep feeling of conflict about capitalizing the preposition "without"...one is not supposed to capitalize prepositions, yet it looks awful to have a seven letter word not capitalized. It's not capitalized in my notes, but it was in the

18:31

Episode 016 - Valerio Scarani at the Society of...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/07/16

Dr. Scarani opened the talk by noting a paper he placed on arxiv.org about Aquinas and the sense that the universe would not be perfect without randomness. He moved on to discuss randomness in two senses: Process Randomness, which implies that there is an observer unable to predict the output of the process; and Product Randomness, the lack of structure of a product, which turns out to equate with the need for a very long algorithm to replicate the product. Products are tested for randomness by a

18:35

Episode 015 - Stephen Barr at the Society of Catholic...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/07/09

In today's episode we discuss Stephen Barr's talk at the SCS conference on June 9. His topic was the observer question in quantum mechanics. The observer problem is closely tied to the issue of probability and wavefunctions. We spend quite a while discussing what this problem is and how the question arises in the context of experiments like the famous two-slit experiment. The example of "Schrodinger's Cat" is an attempt to make this problem more understandable to the non-quantum mechanic. The cat is

28:48

Episode 014 - Ed Feser's Keynote at SCS

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/07/02

In this episode we begin a series of recaps and discussions of the issues brought up by individual lecturers at the Society of Catholic Scientists conference on June 9 and 10. We start with Ed Feser's keynote, "The Immateriality of the Mind." Feser's objective was to highlight how our ability to be rational, and in particular for our thoughts to mean something unambiguous - even in the face of our inability to express ourselves in a completely unambiguous way in our spoken or written words - makes

37:07

Episode 013 - Human Mind and Physicalism (Society of...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/06/25

Intro Overview of the conference - schedule Talks Edward Feser & connections to Bishop Barron Theme: Human Mind & Physicalism Development of the problem and the amazing change in intellectual climate since the 19th century Laplace and absolute determinism - 19th century consensus Quantum mechanics demolished this intellectual basis for determinism, although it is clung to fiercely down to the present day, including the profoundly horrifying "many worlds" hypothesis Bell inequality and the talk by

31:56

Episode 012 - Society of Catholic Scientists

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/06/18

Not to be confused with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, although one would understand the mistake. Bill interviews Paul about his experience and observations at the Society of Catholic Scientists conference that took place June 8-10 at the campus of Catholic University of America in Washington, D.C. The SCS is a very young organization. Its first president is Stephen Barr, a physicist at the University of Delaware. Its first conference was in April 2017 in Chicago. The theme of the 2018

29:42

Episode 011 - Intellectual Citizenship (part 2)

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/06/11

We start off unpacking the climate change example further and provide some additional context from political science and seismology. The point is to use climate change as an object lesson in how to break down a big issue at least a little bit, which is what a good intellectual citizen needs to do. That still leaves us with a picture of intellectual citizenship as a really, frighteningly large responsibility for all of us to try to bear. We spend some time discussing the other side of the issue: we

31:50

Episode 010 - Intellectual Citizenship (part 1)

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/06/04

Bill and Paul dive into a very simple question posed by Bill over email: "Please describe more what is intellectual citizenship?" That of course opens up a question that lurks behind every issue we discuss, and any philosophical or religious question touches upon, which is what we owe the universe, its Creator if it has one, and each other. We can't learn everything about everything, and we must make choices what to spend our time on. In the political system we inhabit, in the U.S. and other

36:15

Episode 009 – Ways to Think of Science and Religion...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/05/28

Bill’s introductory question: Would there be a quick curriculum in basic philosophical principles, including the philosophy of science, that could discourage people from assuming that science and religion are at incompatibly opposite ends of the spectrum of “how to think about things”? We discuss the difficulty of canning a “curriculum” or “program” to address anything, let alone a problem as nuanced as this is, before plunging ahead and taking our chances. Paul argues that there are actually

30:59

Episode 008 - Paradigm Shifts in Science and Religion

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/05/21

Resuming the cliffhanger: the breakdown of classical physics Shift from the classical to the quantum paradigm Light is in individual packets of energy whose size is keyed to the frequency of the light. This is the solution to the blackbody problem: the mathematics of emission of quanta of light energy produces the well-behaved curve with a peak at a given color that we see for hot objects, whether the Sun, iron in a forge, or a light bulb filament It is also the solution to the photoelectric effect:

07:23

Bonus Episode - Science, Scholarship, and University...

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/05/17

Bill prods Paul into discussing how the mindset of the saying, "Science progresses, funeral by funeral" and its attitude of constantly discarding the past in favor of the new has taken over the academy. It isn't the right mindset for, say, literature, or even for undergraduate teaching, but because of the prestige (and funding) accorded to science research in the modern university, other disciplines have begun to imitate it. Top researchers often do not make the best teachers, either...

30:13

Episode 007 - Falsifiability and Scientific Revolutions

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/05/14

Science’s origins in “natural philosophy” Tension between Aristo-Thomist metaphysics, post-Cartesian idealism and Kantian/Humian criticism and etc., and science Philosophy of science: what is it? My own introduction: Popper and falsification key, Kuhn and the sociology of science revolutions / paradigm shifts Tendency to exaggerate contrasts and play down common elements between them Quantum foundations, classic experiments leading to quantum physics, wave-particle, uncertainty principle –

35:10

Episode 006 - Evolution in Christianity and Geology

That"s So Second Millennium ·

2018/05/07

We follow up on last episode's promise to talk a little more about evolution. Evolution literally comes from the Latin "to turn outward" and had a huge meaning cloud. One classic image it might evoke is that of a flower bud opening and the petals turning outward to reveal the whole flower. This is not an alien concept to religion, and certainly not to Christianity. The moment you take the Christian scriptures as a set of texts written by real people scattered across over a millennium of history, you

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