[Was Gregor Mendel subjected to chores before becoming a monk in 1843?] / Gregor Mendel fut-il soumis à la corvée avant de devenir moine en 1843 ?

Our knowledge of the young Mendel's life prior to his admission to the monastery comes essentially from the curriculum vitae submitted in 1850. His first biographer Hugo Iltis used this document as a sort of autobiography, although the document contained various voluntary omissions and inaccuracies. We have sought the reasons for these and in so doing have discovered why Mendel's entry into religion had become ineluctable.

TITLE: Gregor Mendel fut-il soumis à la corvée avant de devenir moine en 1843 ? ABSTRACT: Après avoir suivi brillamment deux ans de cours préparatoires à la formation universitaire qui devait le mener au professorat, Gregor Mendel entre subitement dans un monastère augustin en 1843. A-t-il renoncé à son projet professoral pour devenir prêtre ou a-t-il seulement repoussé ce projet ? Afin de déterminer les raisons de son comportement, nous étudions dans cet article ses années de formation secondaire, en complétant et en corrigeant les données d'un curriculum vitae rédigé par lui-même en avril 1850, pour le joindre à une demande d'habilitation à l'enseignement secondaire.

R.D. Laing's theological hinterland: the contrast between mysticism and communion.

Contrasting elements in R.D. Laing's psychiatry can be traced to two kinds of Christian theology: mystical theology and corporate theology. On one hand, Laing's mystical theology combined with psychoanalytic theory, to provide a New Age psychotherapeutic account of the recovery of authentic selfhood via metanoia. On the other, his incarnational, corporate theology promoted social inclusion of the mentally ill, particularly via therapeutic communities. For Laing, as for other post-war British Christians, a turn inwards, to mysticism and the sacralization of the self, and a turn outwards, to social and political activism, were ways of negotiating with the decline of traditional Christianity.

[To God through science. Natural theology in Francoism]. / A Dios por la ciencia. Teología natural en el Franquismo.

In Spain, during Franco's dictatorship (1939-1975) the teaching and divulgation of science were subordinated to the Catholic religion and many books defended a theistic and creationistic point of view of biology that accepted a literal interpretation of the Book of Genesis and denied the theory of evolution, especially as it relates to human origin. This article is devoted to the main books and characteristics of this way of thinking which reproduced arguments and metaphors of the pre-Darwinian natural theology, arguing that nature was ruled by God and living organisms were the results of his design.

R.D. Laing and theology: the influence of Christian existentialism on "The Divided Self".

The radical psychiatrist R.D. Laing's first book, "The Divided Self" (1960), is informed by the work of Christian thinkers on scriptural interpretation -- an intellectual genealogy apparent in Laing's comparison of Karl Jaspers's symptomatology with the theological tradition of "form criticism." Rudolf Bultmann's theology, which was being enthusiastically promoted in 1950s Scotland, is particularly influential upon Laing. It furnishes him with the notion that schizophrenic speech expresses existential truths as if they were statements about the physical and organic world. It also provides him with a model of the schizoid position as a form of modern-day Stoicism. Such theological recontextualization of "The Divided Self" illuminates continuities in Laing's own work, and also indicates his relationship to a wider British context, such as the work of the "clinical theologian" Frank Lake.

Bioethics and Christian theology in Brazil.

A Christian theology is important to bioethics in Brazil not only because Brazil is a country of strong Christian traditions, but also because of its theological method and because of many practices in their Christian communities. In fact, the interaction within practice and theory is a big point of its methodology. A heritage of a long history of colonialism in South America comes to our times as enormous social inequalities. In such a context, the silent cry of poor people is heard as a question of coherence to the Christian faith and to the neighbor love. Through a constant dialog with human sciences, the method of theology, known as liberation theology, seeks the roots of social inequalities and the alternatives to a movement of spiritual and social liberation. In touch with the modern bioethics, this theology has strongly contributed to understand all the questions of bioethics in the frame of social structures and systems. On the other hand, many actual practices of the Catholic Church in Brazil with popular impact, like its annual Fraternity Campaign, develop social themes and problems that are also big concerns of bioethics. In this article we try to expose some aspects of this dialog, where theology has a well considered contribution to Brazilian bioethics, at the same time his religious discourse is open to interact with a lay discourse.

History from the ground up: bugs, political economy, and God in Kirby and Spence's Introduction to Entomology (1815-1856).

William Kirby and William Spence's Introduction to Entomology is generally recognized as one of the founding texts of entomological science in English. This essay examines the ideological allegiances of the coauthors of the Introduction. In particular, it analyzes the ideological implications of their divergent opinions on animal instinct. Different vocational pursuits shaped each man's natural history. Spence, a political economist, pursued fact-based science that was shorn of references to religion. Kirby, a Tory High Churchman, placed revelation at the very heart of his natural history. His strong commitment to partisan sectarianism cautions against reference to a homogeneous "natural theology" that was an agent of mediation. Fissures in the "common intellectual context" reached beyond the clash between natural theologians and radical anatomists to render the intellectual edifice of natural theology structurally less sound for the future.