ABSTRACT
The large Protestant dictionary Die Religion in Geschichte und Gegenwart (1909-13) included an extensive article on 'Energy and energetics' which referred to the entropy law and the heat death, but without mentioning the entropic creation argument or other possible theological consequences of thermodynamics. Catholicism insists that blind faith is superior to reason; that mysteries are of more importance than facts. Neo-scholastic philosophers occupied themselves with both of the thermodynamic laws. Carl Braun, a Jesuit theologian and amateur astronomer, had studied under Pietro Secchi in Rome and taught physics at Catholic schools until 1878, when he became director of an observatory in Kalocsa in Hungary. Orson Pratt, a Mormon apostle and self-taught astronomer, was the first and most important of the early scientists of Mormonism. The eminent French chemist Charles-Adolphe Wurtz, professor at the Ecole de Medicine and a pioneer of organic chemistry, gave in 1874 the opening address at the Meeting of the French Association for the Progress of Science.
