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In the fourth episode of the fourth season of the “Saturdays at Seven” conversation series, Todd Ream talks with Jonathan Lunine, Professor of Planetary Science at the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and Chief Scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). Lunine begins by exploring the history of JPL, the evolution of the laboratory’s research efforts, and the relationships the laboratory shares with Caltech and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). Collaboration proves to be a definitive quality of the culture at JPL. Part of what Lunine stresses is how the nature of that culture not only includes scholars from different fields but how it also includes scholars working with graduate students, undergraduate students, and even high school students. Lunine then shares how he came to appreciate his vocation as a planetary scientist and the contributions various mentors played in his life. For example, while Lunine would eventually come to work with Carl Sagan at Cornell University and even be appointed to the chair Sagan once held, Lunine tells the story of how his mother encouraged him while a high school student to write to Sagan, how Sagan wrote him back, and how valuable their subsequent correspondence proved to be to Lunine during his formative years. Lunine shares the details of how the time he spent on the faculties at the University of Arizona and Cornell impacted his understanding of the academic vocation and his research agenda. Lunine turns to the discernment process that led him to Caltech and JPL and how he seeks to exercise his role as JPL’s chief scientist in support of his colleagues as they work together to probe the frontiers of knowledge. Lunine then closes by discussing how he theologically understands the role planetary scientists play in enhancing our appreciation of the created order.
- E. H. Levy and Jonathan Lunine’s (eds.) Protostars and Planets III (University of Arizona Press, 2024 / Open Access)
- Jonathan Lunine’s Earth: Evolution of a Habitable World (Cambridge University Press, 2013 / Second Edition)
- Chris Impey, Jonathan Lunine, and José Funes’ (eds.) Frontiers of Astrobiology (Cambridge University Press, 2012)
- Jonathan Lunine’s Astrobiology: A Multidisciplinary Approach (Benjamin Cummings-Pearson, 2005)
Todd Ream: Welcome to Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. My name is Todd Ream. I have the privilege of serving as the publisher for Christian Scholar’s Review and as the host for Saturdays at Seven. I also have the privilege of serving on the faculty and the administration at Indiana Wesleyan University.
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Our guest is Jonathan Lunine, professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology and chief scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Thank you for joining us.
Jonathan Lunine: Pleasure to be here.
Todd Ream: The history of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, or JPL, dates back to October 31st, 1936, when California Institute of Technology or Caltech professor Theodore von Kármán and a host of his associates tested an alcohol-fueled rocket motor in a dry riverbed or wash just above the Rose Bowl named Arroyo Seco. 90 years later, that site is home to the JPL, where you’re the chief scientist.
To begin, would you offer a brief overview of how the scope of research conducted at JPL has evolved over the years?
Jonathan Lunine: Sure. So JPL has really gone through three eras. The first era was, as you said, the development of rocket-powered flight. The second era was its work with the US Army that culminated in the collaboration between the Army and JPL and University of Iowa, leading to the Explorer 1 mission and the discovery of the Van Allen belts and the first scientific payload that was launched into space, which were the radiation detectors of Professor James Van Allen.
Then, JPL became, around that time, a part of NASA, and began to pursue missions, to the solar system, to the moon and the solar system, the Ranger missions and the Mariner missions to the planets. And that then, really is what JPL does today, but not only planetary science. It does missions, to the Earth observing the Earth and its climate, and also observing the universe with telescopes, space telescopes, that have really extend the range of human sight out to the far infrared and into what’s called the ultraviolet part of the spectrum.
So that’s much of what JPL does today, and developing the technologies for the future that will make future scientific missions push the frontiers science even further.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Collaboration is one of the key practices that defines the JPL as I understand it. Collaboration between scientists across disciplines, but also collaboration between scientists and undergraduate and graduate students.
Can you say a little bit more about how the culture of collaboration has developed at JPL and is exercised today?
Jonathan Lunine: It’s really, it’s rooted in Caltech. So, JPL is a division of Caltech. JPL is also an FFRDC, a Federally Funded Research and Development Center that is operated by NASA’s Federally Funded Research and Development Center operated by Caltech for NASA.
And so that culture of collaboration is rooted in the academic culture of collaboration, where the purpose of graduate education and even undergraduate education at technological schools is to build the capability of students to do independent research, to utilize data, to think up new experiments, new ideas.
And so that carries over to the experiences at, at JPL, where we also have internship programs during the summer, undergraduates work there. We have post-doctoral programs as well, and then of course graduate students working with individual scientists in collaboration with professors at JPL.
Todd Ream: In addition then to collaboration, what other commitments have come to define the culture there at JPL?
Jonathan Lunine: Well, the culture is one of engineering excellence. And if you want to visualize how all that ties together with science, I like to think of a, a kind of a golden triangle, where you have at each of the vertices, you have science, you have technology, and you have engineering.
And so science, both drives the purposes of the missions and also the missions provide the benefit to scientists and scientific research. The technology vertex is what enables new science to be done, building new detectors, building the capability to, to land and explore on the surfaces of planets. And then the engineering vertex is all about making those things reality, realizing them in a way that they will actually work. And so you need all three of those working together to push the boundaries of space exploration.
Todd Ream: Thank you. I want to ask you now about your own vocational discernment and development as a planetary scientist and how that came about. You earned an undergraduate degree in physics and astronomy from the University of Rochester and then master’s and doctoral degrees in planetary science from Caltech.
What experiences, if any, led you to pursue a vocation as a planetary scientist?
Jonathan Lunine: So I’ve been in academia for 40 years since obtaining my PhD, 45 if you count the time that I started in graduate school. And so that’s been most of my life. When I was very young growing up in New York City, we lived fairly close to the Hayden Planetarium of the American Museum of Natural History, and I remember going there as a little kid and being absolutely carried away by the visual and auditory experiences of the sky shows that were offered there. I also was growing up during the Apollo era, and there was lots of you know, there were books there were records.
I remember one record album I was given as a kid called “A Child’s Introduction to Outer Space”, with all of these somewhat campy jingles on them, but still I played it over and over and over again until I finally broke the record. But, to me as a kid, the exploration of space was really humankind’s future. It was the natural evolution, I mean, from my very, very small perspective as a child, natural evolution of where we’re going. So that was childhood.
And then when I was in junior high school, I came upon a book by someone named Carl Sagan. This was 1974 and the book was called, “The Cosmic Connection: An Extraterrestrial Perspective.” So this was six or seven years before the Cosmos series that Carl did um, he was, he was relatively unknown in the early ’70s but he was becoming better known.
I read that book, as I guess a ninth grader really, so it must have been in the first year of high school. And I was absolutely carried away by it. I mean, the whole vision of human, humankind as destined to move out into the cosmos. Some of his funny stories about um, how science and society sometimes interact with each other in strange ways.
And so my mother said, “You should write to him,” which I thought was an absurd idea, because here I’m just a little high school student, and you know, here’s professor Carl Sagan, a great professor at Cornell. So I did that, I listened to my mother, as we all should. And she was right. He wrote back, and we started a correspondence, which was terrific.
He provided useful advice on what to study in high school, as well as just encouragement. And so that really got me on my way. And years later, I was really privileged to be able to work with him for a short time, on the Cassini mission to Saturn. He passed away, unfortunately, before Cassini launched, and much too early in his own life but there was a period of a couple of years where we had some good collaborations.
Todd Ream: That’s wonderful. In addition to figures such as Carl Sagan, are there any other sort of mentors and/or authors that have inspired your understanding of your vocation as a planetary scientist?
Jonathan Lunine: Yeah. I think there are, so I would name three others. One, so later in high school even though I really loved astronomy and I’d gotten this letter from Carl Sagan the mid-1970s were a terrible time for scientific research. If you look at the amount of money that the nation spent on basic research from the 1970 on through that period, it just went down. And I was a little worried I would not get a job as an astronomer. So I thought, “Well, maybe I should be a medical doctor instead,” as typical flip-flopping of high school students.
So I talked to my pediatrician, who also happened to be a Cornell alum, and I guess he must have I thought I would not make make a good doctor because about a year after I, I talked to him, or some months after, he sent me a letter with a flyer for a talk by another Cornell professor, Frank Drake, famous radio astronomer, the developer of the whole idea of the search for extraterrestrial intelligence in a practical way. There were some predecessors, but he really pushed it forward.
And he was giving a talk in New York City uh, at the National Press Club on the new results from the Arecibo Radio Observatory. So encouraged by my pediatrician, I went downtown, I listened to the talk, and I realized at the end of that talk that I did not want to be a medical doctor. I wanted to be an astronomer.
And so it was Frank Drake’s talk that really, I think, put me back on that track. And decades later I had a chance to meet him at the 50th anniversary of the Arecibo Observatory uh, in 2013. I was the director of what was then the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research, which at Cornell did some of the coordination of Cornell’s part of Arecibo.
And so I flew down there and got to meet him and he was very humble about my claim that he had gotten me back on the right track. That, you know, he said he couldn’t imagine he would inspire anyone in that way, but he did. So that’s another one.
Two more, my senior thesis advisor, Hugh Van Horn at the University of Rochester, who was a fantastic teacher and he’s retired now. But he also, we did a great senior thesis project together, and he introduced me uh, remotely, of course, there wasn’t any email then, but he introduced me through a letter to someone who was arriving at Caltech as a new faculty member. This is 1980 when I was graduating from Rochester.
And that new faculty member David Stevenson became my dissertation advisor. I was actually his first student to complete a PhD, and he was just a fantastic thesis advisor. He is not only a brilliant scientist, but very devoted, very ethical, not the kind of person who, you know, is out there trying to win awards and beat somebody else his passion is the science itself. And to be honest, they’re not all that many people in science who have that kind of devotion, who kind of separate their own ego from the process. And that’s been, to me, a great lesson.
Todd Ream: Thank you. Before you served on the faculty at Cornell, you served on the faculty of the University of Arizona for a number of years, 1986 to 2011. Would you describe the discernment process that led you to accept that appointment at Arizona? And in what ways did you, your sense of vocation as a planetary science develop over the course of those years?
Jonathan Lunine: Sure. So I was, in my graduate career I knew that I wanted to be a faculty member to teach and do research. That was my passion. And the University of Arizona, which I almost went to for graduate school, it was kind of a toss-up between Caltech and the University of Arizona had a planetary science department, which at the time was very unusual.
Most planetary science, the study of the planets, the solar system and then then, you know, later by the mid-’90s, the study of planets outside our solar system was usually located within a geology department or an astronomy department. Those were the two, most common associations that planetary science had. There were only a couple of places in the United States, a handful of places, I would say, where planetary science was its own academic department.
And at Arizona that was thanks to Gerard Kuiper, who was pioneering planetary astronomer and who had participated in early NASA programs, the Ranger program, passed away in the mid-1970s, but he had established this lunar and planetary laboratory which then became an academic department. So that was very attractive to me, and I didn’t particularly think Tucson was attractive. I had not, you know, I thought it was kind of hot and dry, but academically it was great.
So I ended up there initially as a postdoc working for three faculty members all of whom left me alone. John Lewis, a cosmochemist, Bill Hubbard, a theoretical physicist, a planetary physicist, and Don Hunten who worked on atmospheres. But they left me kind of to do my own thing. And so I collaborated with them and started to build up a group. And it was a great place to do research.
And I also learned that Tucson is a lovely city to live in. It has a long history. It’s got these beautiful sky island mountains around it and great hiking. And so I really loved it. And so, after my first year there I began to discuss the possibility of becoming a faculty member, and there was a position open so I actually left to go to UCLA for an academic quarter to be a visiting assistant professor there. But during that time, they offered me a faculty position back in Tucson, and so I came back. That was 1986. And I was there for 25 years after that.
Todd Ream: 2011 then is when you made the transition to Cornell. And when you did so, you came as the chair of the Astronomy Department. Can you describe?
Jonathan Lunine: Yeah, sure. So I didn’t become the chair of the astronomy department quite yet until 2019. But I’ll describe the whole academic road there. So actually, I was on a three-year leave of absence from Arizona teaching at the University of Rome Tor Vergata. My wife and I during previous sabbaticals really fell in love with Italy. I mean, who knew, right? So, no surprise.
And there was an opportunity for these three-year teaching positions. And so the department head at the time at Arizona was kind enough to grant me that three-year leave. During that time, a faculty member at Cornell called me up that was Steve Squyres. They had lost a mid-career planetary scientist to another university, and they were trying to fill that position, and they wanted me to fill it. Now, you know, I was really torn because Arizona was a great place, but I had always had this great affection for Cornell, first because of Carl Sagan.
Then when I was a postdoc at Arizona in ’84- ’85, Joe Burns was a faculty member at Cornell, came and did a sabbatical there, and I got to know him very well. And then also there had been a conference on satellites of the solar system a year or two before that in 1983. And I met several of the faculty there. So I really, you know, it was, I had a lot of affection for it.
I didn’t go there as an undergraduate because we couldn’t afford it. They didn’t give me enough financial support. So I was torn, but I decided that would be the right thing to do, would be to move to Cornell. And the department head at Arizona was incredibly gracious about the whole thing. Mike Drake, he, you know, there was no bitterness at all, and he facilitated that move, and I was really very grateful for that.
Tragically, in the same year, he passed away from liver disease, and we lost a very, a great what you would call cosmochemist, somebody who studies the materials in meteorites that tell us about the origin of the solar system. So, off I went to Cornell, and I was the David C. Duncan Professor in the Physical Sciences in the astronomy department. That chair was the one that Carl Sagan had held during time at Cornell, and so that was really a great honor for me.
About a year after I got there they asked me to be the director of the soft money research center. So, soft money is money that researchers get from the federal government, and Cornell’s astronomy program was distinguished in having next to the academic department this soft money research institute which they asked me to run and I did that for seven years. It was the Center for Radiophysics and Space Research.
It had this kind of strange German, I mean, radiophysics is not really an English term, it’s more a German term, anglicized. But it started out as the center that got the Arecibo radio telescope going. So I directed that for seven years. We changed the name of it to the Cornell Center for Astrophysics and Planetary Science, which seemed more appropriate.
And then, the new dean came in. The previous department chair had finished his terms and wanted to step down, and so that was 2019. I became the chair of the astronomy department and did that until 2024 when I retired from Cornell emeritus.
So no podcast wants to be dragged down by the stories of what it’s like to be a department chair. So suffice to say, though, that I very much treasured and valued my colleagues, and I did as much as I could for the department.
Todd Ream: Thank you. In 2024 then, you came back to Caltech, this time as a faculty member, but also as the chief scientist at JPL.
Jonathan Lunine: At JPL, right.
Todd Ream: How would you define the scope of your responsibilities as JPL’s chief scientist? And in what ways do those responsibilities intersect with the culture that we discussed earlier on in our conversation?
Jonathan Lunine: So the chief scientist really is the science coach, the science champion, and the science diplomat. That’s really what I do. It’s not a fiduciary job, where, you know, I run a science department and have all the scientists working for me. That isn’t the way JPL’s organized.
My role is really strategic planning helping to determine the most promising directions of science in the laboratory helping to make sure that the science and the technology are really interfacing with the engineering, helping out scientists. There’s internal money, that seed money that allows people to kind of develop new ideas that can then eventually blossom into instruments or missions.
And I also then interface with chief scientists at NASA centers around the country like NASA Goddard and so forth. So that’s really what my job is. And in some ways, it’s a little bit like department chair, because the department chair, really as far as the other faculty go, has to reach consensus, has to cajole or convince people because after all, you know, much of the faculty at a university is tenured, and so you can’t simply say to them, you know, “Do this or you’ll be fired,” that doesn’t happen.
And so, you know, that process of convincing people and listening as well and trying to kind of move in a consensus fashion is very much what happens with my strategic planning at JPL as well. And then Caltech which is, uh the campus which is where I’m talking to you from right now, I’m a professor of planetary science.
I’ve got several postdocs, a grad student, a couple of grad students who are working with me, and you know, I mean, I am at heart an academic, and I am at heart a researcher and teacher. I teach one or two quarters each year here. And so, that’s really, for me very, very fulfilling to be able to do that.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You’re the author and co-author of approximately 400 articles and book chapters, as well as the author, co-author, and co-editor of four books. When you look back over the arc of your work, what questions do you believe are most reflective of how you understand your vocational commitment to planetary science?
Jonathan Lunine: Well I think there are really fundamental questions including how planets form and how common are habitable planets in the galaxy. Planets not necessarily even like the Earth, but we know from 50 years of Mars exploration that Mars was habitable at least in the first quarter of its history, maybe 10% of its history, maybe up to a quarter.
And then of course, the big question, which is, is there life elsewhere in the solar system and beyond in the galaxy. So those are the motivating questions. For me, I would say the most striking aspects of my own work has been the opportunity to explore not Mars, although Mars is really interesting, but rather Saturn’s moon, Titan.
Titan is the second largest moon in the solar system. It’s bigger than the planet Mercury in size, but it’s a mixed rock ice world, and it has the densest atmosphere of any of the solid bodies in the solar system except for Venus. It’s second only to Venus, and it holds that atmosphere because it’s far out, away from the Sun and so very cold.
This atmosphere was discovered by telescope in the 1940s by Gerard Kuiper, who I’ve already mentioned. And it was the subject of the Voyager 1 flyby, in 1980 as Voyager 1 flew through the Saturn system. I started as a grad student. A few months later, the Voyager flyby occurred. It turned out that the atmosphere of Titan was very dense, that it also had nitrogen in it, and there were a number of puzzles about the methane, the source, and the fate of methane, which became a substantial part of my PhD dissertation.
And so that got me then on the road to an involvement in what is arguably one of the most successful planetary missions ever flown, and that’s the Cassini-Huygens mission, which was officially started in 1990 as a joint mission between NASA, the European Space Agency, ESA, and the Italian Space Agency.
JPL built the Saturn orbiter part that orbited Saturn and carried a large probe, flying saucer-shaped probe that was built by the European Space Agency and plunged into the atmosphere of Titan. So by the way, I have Titan right here for everyone. Because Titan is covered in haze, it required a radar to really see the geology of the surface.
And I got involved in the radar team, as well as being what was called an interdisciplinary scientist, where I could utilize data from many instruments to attack a particular scientific subject, in this case, Titan. And I was there when the Huygens probe plunged through the atmosphere in 2005, January. And we saw the surface of Titan close up for the first time as the probe came down by parachute, and it was an incredible experience.
Titan is a very complex world, but it’s a very alien world. Because of the low temperatures, water is frozen out. But methane, which is the simplest organic molecule, CH4, is a liquid on the surface of Titan. The temperature is right for methane to be a liquid, and it’s sister molecule, ethane, which is two carbons and six hydrogens, which is made from methane in the atmosphere, that also is a liquid at the surface.
And Cassini discovered these large seas, the size of Lake Superior, the Caspian Sea on Earth, which are in the northern hemisphere, as well as hundreds of lakes that dot the northern hemisphere and a few in the south, and they are methane and ethane. We were able to determine that with remote sensing. So it’s a weird analog to the Earth in the sense that the geologic processes are similar, erosion, rainfall maybe some tectonics uplifting, but with very different materials. Instead of rock, it’s water ice. Instead of liquid water, it’s liquid methane. And so that has been a passion of mine for, for many, many years. So that’s been kind of a theme of my work although it’s not the only thing that I’ve worked on.
Also, Saturn has a smaller moon, Enceladus, which Cassini discovered, the Saturn orbiter part discovered, has a plume of ice and gas pouring out of its south pole. And it was once Cassini discovered that, the science team looked at whether we could fly Cassini through that plume and actually sample the material, because Cassini carried fortuitously two chemical instruments called mass spectrometers that can collect material and tell you what the atoms and molecules are. And we were able to do that and discovered that the plume not only had water but also organic molecules, carbon and hydrogen molecules, nitrogen phosphorus silicon dioxides, so there’s water rock chemistry going on.
So the liquid water underneath the ice crust of Enceladus, a sort of a subterranean ocean, it’s possible there’s microbial life there it. The Cassini data can’t tell us that. It can only tell us that the conditions would allow for that to be the case. And so next generation missions hopefully will be able to go and see whether that’s the case.
Todd Ream: Thank you. You also served as one of the founders of the Society of Catholic Scientists and have served that organization in a variety of key administrative roles. In what ways do your commitments as a planetary scientist and as a Catholic complement one another? And in what ways do they perhaps foster a deeper appreciation for the created order in which we exist and hopefully appreciate?
Jonathan Lunine: Yeah. So I’m a convert to the Catholic faith. I was raised in a Jewish family and converted after decades of on-and-off discernment at the age of 46. So almost next year will be my 20th anniversary. Soon after I converted, I began to get sort of, I was more in tune with the sense of this perception among both academic faculty and students that somehow science and faith were in conflict with each other.
It was a very common theme. But it was right around 2012, I think that 2013, I read an article in America magazine, which is a Jesuit magazine. It was an interview with Stephen Barr who’s the founding president of the society. And I realized that we resonated with each other, and I contacted him and said, you know, “What do you think about putting some kind of a society together that involves Catholic scientists and shows the world that there is no conflict?” So he had been thinking along the same lines, and that was how the society got started.
And I will say that he did 99% of the work and contributed 99% of the expertise. The rest of us on the founding board did our part, but it was really his, his genius and vision that made the society possible, and continues to be that way today.
To me having, having that faith and understanding that the material universe that we are a part of is the creation of the omnipotent and all-loving God, really gives you a different perspective, not on how we do science, but, you know, what the results of that are, what the, the nature of the universe is our own place in it, the beauty of it.
I try to emphasize to people that, you know, I don’t do my science any differently than any other scientist would, right? If you hire a plumber and the plumber happens to be a devout Christian or Catholic, they’re still going to do the plumbing the same way. The same is true for the science, but the appreciation for what we are learning and what it implies for the goodness of, of God and, and this overflowing abundance of love is something that I’ve come to appreciate more as a Christian.
I have also come to spend quite a lot of time studying the lives of a few scientists who contributed a great deal and were also Catholic religious. Georges Lemaître, for example the Belgian priest who was one of the great cosmologists of the early 20th century and is known as the Father of the Big Bang, but he did many, many other things as well in cosmology. And so, you know, that and many others as well that I’ve enjoyed studying James Macelwane, less well-known Jesuit priest, who was a key figure in geophysics in the 20th century was another one.
And of course, Gregor Mendel the Augustinian monk whose role in the history of evolution has actually been underplayed in most accounts, and has had a much greater role than, than most people realize. But, you know, understanding their lives and understanding what they’ve done both as scientists and as faithful Christians has been a wonderful journey for me.
Todd Ream: Thank you. As our time now begins to become short, I want to ask you a couple of questions about your exercise of the academic vocation. And in particular, what practices have you found to be important to nurture it? What opportunities have you found that you would encourage others to pursue in advancing it? But also, what forces out there do threaten it that you think are important for people to take notice and pay attention to?
Jonathan Lunine: So I’ll start with the threats. I think, you know, the politicization of academia, in various ways, is always a threat. And I think, you know, I can’t tell whether this is something that truly has become more and more of an issue or I’ve simply become more and more aware of it, as I’ve, you know, spent more and more years in, in academia.
I feel incredibly privileged, and thankful that the particular career that I chose, the particular area of academic pursuit, namely astronomy and planetary science. Our areas that don’t lend themselves to some of the negative aspects of the politics that have swirled around academia for several decades. I’m not going to get into which one, I mean, I’m talking about both sides here.
But really, uh astronomy has to a large extent remained, a pursuit of science and planetary science as well. To me, I’m very grateful for that, that, you know, your listeners who may be academics in the humanities or social sciences or political science, you know, maybe shaking their heads at how naive I am, but I’m sorry, I’m just a scientist, so what can I say?
The gift of academia on the flip side of this is that, it really is all about the formation of the human person and providing the kind of endeavors that utilize the human mind and the human spirit to their utmost pushing back the frontiers of knowledge in, in every area of academia from classical literature to foreign policy to chemistry to biology. These are some of the great things that happen in academia, and they happen with the collaboration of people who are very, very senior been there for decades, new faculty, post-docs, grad students, undergraduates.
I’ve even had a couple of high school students work with me. One of them is now a very successful astronomer. That’s a very unusual kind of endeavor in our society, and it’s a precious endeavor. And so I would say that, that’s really the gift that academia is all about people across the spectrum of their lives working to extend the bounds of human knowledge, extend those realms, and to better understand who we are as human beings.
Todd Ream: In terms of honoring those aspirations then, what virtues would you say are important for colleagues to cultivate? But also what vices might we need to guard against and be vigilant about addressing when we perceive they may be threatening that sense of culture and commitment?
Jonathan Lunine: Yeah. Well, I like to talk about the virtues. I mean, modesty, humility, steadfastness, I would say, and in a way, equanimity as well. I think modesty and humility are the most important. First and foremost, I have failed at maintaining those throughout my career. I’ll say that right up front.
It’s so easy to turn, particularly in the sciences, but any element of any aspect of academia into a full contact sport. Where you, you know, you’re battling with other colleagues. You want to be first. You’re always checking your h-index. In part it’s, of course, the way we get promoted in academia, and so that’s a natural part of it.
But we cannot forget that that isn’t the ultimate purpose of academia. It’s not to make people famous. It’s to expand the bounds of human knowledge, and when I see colleagues who are modest, who are humble, who are dedicated to what they do, that’s the model I want my students to really see and absorb. And I get that they’re in an incredibly competitive position.
They’ve got to be competitive, and so there’s always this tension between the two. But those are crucial. And then, you know, authenticity and veracity. I mean, you’ve got to be true. You’ve got to, you know, when you see a mistake or you don’t understand something, you’ve got to admit that. And that’s partly where the equanimity comes in, it is the ability to remain calm and move ahead.
I’ve made mistakes in my career in papers and other things, and that’s a part, I mean, as human beings, we’re fallible, and that’s a part of doing research and and being in academia. And so, you know, being honest about that is, is truly important. That, of course, gets us to the problem of scientific misconduct and scientific fraud, which is unfortunately all too common today.
Although the extent to which it happens, it’s debated depending on who you talk to. But it’s definitely a problem, and it derives from competition and the need to, you know, raise money for your laboratory and so forth. And it’s the dark side of academia and it’s something we have to strive to minimize as much as we can.
Todd Ream: Thank you. For our last question today, I want to ask you, in what ways can planetary scientists be of greater service to the Church in the years to come? But in what ways also can the Church be of greater service to planetary scientists?
Jonathan Lunine: Well, first of all, I love the fact that many priests even today not, you know, in thousands we’re talking, but quite a few, have an academic background in astronomy or planetary science. So one of my really good friends who I met as a postdoc he was a postdoc, I was a grad student, Guy Consolmagno became a Jesuit brother and eventually the director of the Vatican Observatory.
And of course, all of the Vatican astronomers are Jesuit brothers or priests, which I think is wonderful. And also in the Dominican Order and others. So planetary science provides the paint on the canvas, I guess you would say for what this universe is like in planetary science and astronomy. It paints the picture of what is going on in the universe beyond us.
And, you know, we’ve gone through many different perceptions of the cosmos from the planets being heavenly bodies made of material, ethereal material, to planets just like the Earth, you know, with their own creatures on them, even the Moon had creatures, to in the 1950s and ’60s, oh gosh, these are really boring. Nothing happens on them.
And then the exploration of the solar system showed they are very different from each other, but they have a lot of interesting things going on. Every planet and moon in the solar system really is, is extremely interesting and diverse and complex, so is bringing that sense of, of diversity, you know, Thomas Aquinas said that order comes out of the diversity of things, the diversity of material things that are the creation of God, of the Creator.
And the fact that he said that order comes from that diversity, he said that in um, it wasn’t the “Summa Theologiae,” it was another work of his “Compendium Theologiae.” That’s a tremendous insight.
So we see that in planetary science, and then here’s the Church through Thomas Aquinas providing the insight that there is order coming from all that complexity. And we see that now in the basic physics that’s done, this sense of order coming from from diversity and complexity. So there’s a dialogue between the Church and science, which is not appreciated by everyone, but I think deepens our understanding of the material universe of which we are a part.
And then, of course, the Church, you know, goes beyond that. Faith goes beyond that, beyond the material world, science can’t interrogate the non-material or immaterial world, and that’s something that is part of our spiritual being and comes through faith. So understanding the limits of science, understanding that human beings are not just the matter out of which we are made, but we go beyond that, and that we’re informed by our faith about that, that’s another part of the dialogue between science and faith that is important to keep going.
Todd Ream: Our guest has been Jonathan Lunine, professor of planetary science at the California Institute of Technology and chief scientist at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Thank you for sharing your insights and wisdom with us.
Jonathan Lunine: Pleasure to be here. Thank you.
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Todd Ream: Thank you for joining us for Saturdays at Seven, Christian Scholar’s Review’s conversation series with thought leaders about the academic vocation and the relationship that vocation shares with the Church. We invite you to join us again next week for Saturdays at Seven.
