The origins of modern science date to the seventeenth century, a period so marked by innovative thinking that it has been called the `century of genius.'...Breaking free of the bonds of tradition, these sixteenth-century thinkers developed the scientific method, a means of understanding based on a systematic observation of natural phenomena and experimentation regarding causes and effects (Merriman, 311).

The ideas of many scientists, and philosophers, such as Copernicus, Johannes Kepler, and Francis Bacon, flew in the face of the 16th century intellectual orthodoxy. Of these great thinkers, the ideas Galileo Galilei (1564-1642), Rene Descartes (1596-1650), and Sir Isaac Newton (1642-1727), stand as prime examples of human reason colliding with the ideas of the Catholic Church. Given their continued importance, and the unquestionable impact of these thinkers, we find it important to ask: why were these men and their ideas heretical"

The tradition of utilizing human reason...