Light On Dark Water

You may have noticed the Google Doodle today, a rocky-looking thing which turns out to be a reference to Blessed Nicholas Steno, a Danish priest (actually named Steensen) who did some pioneering work in geology. I was not aware of him before today, so I appreciate Google having brought him to my attention. And I'm glad they made note of someone who was not only a Catholic priest, and not only a scientist, but possibly a saint. 

One suspects, though, that Google, which generally avoids any religious significance for its Doodles, wasn't much interested in the Catholic aspect of Steno's life. When you click on the Doodle, you get (at least as of this writing) a series of articles praising him as a "mythbuster" and opponent of "creationsim." To say that this distorts his life is an understatement. It's curious that if you simply search for "Nicholas Steno", you get a somewhat different set of results, in which the "mythbuster" theme is less prominent. 

Try it. This is the URL which the Doodle uses:

 http://www.google.com/search?q=Nicolas+Steno&ct=steno12-hp&oi=ddle

And this is the one generated when you do a simple Google search:

http://www.google.com/search?source=ig&hl=en&rlz=&q=nicholas+steno&btnG=Google+Search

I don't know what those parameters ("ct=…") at the end of the Google URL mean. No, I don't think Google somehow engineered the "mythbuster" results. But it's odd. And certainly reflective of a widespread attitude: sure, he may have actually believed that Catholic stuff, but that's just because he wasn't far enough along in enlightenment; his real importance was that he was…like us.