In 1553, a Spanish physician and theologian named Michael Servetus was burned at the stake in Geneva --- condemned by both Catholic and Protestant authorities for his unorthodox theology. But hidden inside the manuscript that sealed his fate was one of the most important medical discoveries of the sixteenth century: the first accurate European description of pulmonary circulation. Servetus never understood why science and faith should occupy separate rooms. They were, for him, a single act of attention directed at a world he found endlessly astonishing. His story is a cautionary tale about what happens when institutions need a wall that doesn't actually exist --- and a quiet reminder that most of us, when left to ourselves, don't build one either.

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