On Sunday March 4th, Dr. Peter Dodson '74, Professor of Veterinary Gross Anatomy at the University of Pennsylvania and Professor of Paleontology, gave a lecture as a part of the Thomas E. Golden, Jr. Fellowship in Faith & Science. Professor Dodson focused on the three pillars in his life—his fossils, his family and his faith, explaining their importance to his life, as well as how they intertwine, despite how different they may seem.
In 1997, Dodson wrote a piece for the Newsletter of Paleontology where he professed his faith as a Catholic and explained what it meant for a scientist to believe—a first for the newsletter, who normally has a prominent atheist authorship. What pushed him to write about his faith was an encounter he had a few years before with Dr. Will Provine, Professor of Evolutionary Biology at Cornell University, when he attended one of Provine’s seminars on the evolution of human morality. Throughout his talk, Provine reinforced the idea that scientific knowledge is the only valid form of knowledge, an idea supported by the philosophy known as Scientific Naturalism. Following this encounter, Dodson asked himself, “Is this not an impoverished view of reality?” There are many things we know that cannot be shown by science; as an example, Dodson notes that his wife loves him even though he cannot prove it. Our faith adds another dimension to our reality and enriches it: faith can help explain things like love, which science cannot do.
Left: Annie Killian GRD '19
As a STEM major and a Catholic, I am constantly thinking about the ways that faith and science interact. Before the talk, I was a little
skeptical as to how the two come together, as the Catholic tradition, like many other religious traditions, seems to disagree with scientific findings more often than not. However, Dodson reminded me that faith and science do not work to do the same thing, and so never oppose one another: science is our tool to understand how things work, and our faith helps us understand the “why.” They could never do what the other does, but we need both of them to gain a deeper knowledge of our lives and the world we live in—they work in a complementary manner in order to enrich our perceived reality.
