Science and Religion in the Anglo-American Periodical Press, 1860–1900: A Failed Reconciliation (original) (raw)
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Fides et Historia, 2018
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Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 2021
Historians of science and religion have given little attention to how historical-critical scholarship influenced perceptions of the relationship between science and religion in the nineteenth century. However, the so-called "cofounders" of the "conflict thesis," the idea that science and religion are fundamentally and irrevocable at odds, were greatly affected by this literature. Indeed, in his two-volume magnum opus, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), Andrew D. White, in his longest and final chapter of his masterpiece, traced the development of the "scientific interpretation" of the Bible. In this article, I argue that developments in biblical criticism had a direct impact on how White constructed his historical understanding of the relationship between science and religion. By examining more carefully how biblical criticism played a significant role in the thought of White and other alleged cofounders of the conflict thesis, this article hopes to relocate the origins, development , and meaning of the science-religion debate at the end of the nineteenth century.
Journal of Biblical and Theological Studies, 2017
The idea of inevitable and perpetual conflict between science and religion is known among historians as the “conflict thesis.” It exploded in popularity in the late nineteenth century with the rise of the Victorian scientific naturalists to positions of leadership in prominent scientific institutions. A common misperception exists concerning the two authors most central to the widespread dissemination and lasting popularity of the conflict thesis: John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. This misperception assumes that because Draper and White pitted science and religion at odds, they were not themselves theologically engaged. On the contrary, Draper and White held very specific theological views and championed them in their written works. Like others at the time, they shaped their theology to conform to their vision of science, a vision articulated by scientific naturalism, with its commitments to inviolable natural laws and nature as a closed system of physical causes. They viewed their theologies as the solutions that would bring peace in the conflict between science and religion. Since the commitments shared by the Victorian scientific naturalists remain central in science as it is conceived to the present day, the theological adjustments to accommodate them also continue. To understand the work of Draper, White, and other leading Victorian scientific naturalists offers valuable insight into the nexus of philosophy of science, metaphysics, and philosophy of religion both in the late nineteenth century and in the ongoing scholarly discussion of divine action today.
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The British Journal for the History of Science, 1996
Readers familiar with the work of John Brooke will know that he has been a leading interpreter of the historical interaction between science and religion, especially natural theology. This recent book shows a mature historian at work. The volume's broad scope (roughly from 1543 to the present) and its arresting themes, presented with careful precision, command attention. Nor has this book gone unnoticed. It has won a number of accolades, chief among them being the 1992 Watson Davis Prize by the History of Science Society in North America for the best work targeted for a general lay audience or for a student audience. It is a book that clearly deserves review in this journal. Can we learn from history ? The stated object of John Brooke's book 'is not to deny that assumption but to show that the lessons are far from simple' (p. 5). Consequently, the lessons to be learned about the complex set of interactions between science and religion are not to be captured by general theses of one form or another. This book should not be regarded as a pedagogical exercise in presenting these historical lessons, but rather as an effort 'to assist in the creation of critical perspectives' (p. 5). It also, the author takes pains to insist, is 'a historically based commentary' rather than a typical historical narrative. The historical episodes Brooke selects are in a sense not as crucial as is his conviction that religion and science have always been interrelated. In fact he concludes the book with this remark: 'But whether belief in the supreme worth of every human life, and the action such an ideal requires, can be sustained without reference to the transcendent, is a question unlikely to be laid to rest' (p. 347). The episodes Brooke does examine are ones chosen to display a plethora of interactions between science and religion and simultaneously make the reader ever more alert to the contingency and complexity of the historical moment. Brooke's temperate and even-handed analysis invites us to think along, and move beyond simplistic and frequently polemical solutions to the problems. Look and see, he gently argues, it is not a choice of either war or peace between science and religion. Those very categories and choices hide a complexity of issues. If we were to stick to rigid definitions of either religion or science we could easily, far too easily, exclude important questions that were in fact asked. Nor for that matter is it first of all a question of mediation or reciprocal relation between the two. Rather we need to remain aware of how particular individuals in their peculiar context 'wrestled with fundamental questions concerning their relationship with nature and God' (p. 5). Religion and science are caught in an entangled bank of interrelationships, and the methods employed to tease out these relationships
A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, Vol.1
A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 1896
Superior minds have addressed this question of Fact in conflict with Superstition and the most outstanding is Professor Andrew Dickinson White, Founder of Cornell University – Ezra Carnell provided the Funding and Prof. White provided the Brains. In the process of building Cornell University Prof. White found himself in constant conflict with Christian organizations and clergy to include, as fact, the disproved claims of Christianity. From his personal experience and superb research, Prof. White wrote: ‘A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom’ in two volumes. This magnificent set of Scholarly books should be in every Library in the United States, but is not. Emmett F. Fields
HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE
HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE, 1875
HISTORY OF THE CONFLICT BETWEEN RELIGION AND SCIENCE – 1875 By JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER, M.D., LL.D. The Preface in this book will give a glimpse of the Intellectual World as it was in 1875, when Christianity was in serious decline and Science and Human Progress was taking command. The idea that Christianity could rise again and plunge the world into another Religious War was unthinkable; as the Preface says: “Military fervor in behalf of faith has disappeared. Its only souvenirs are the marble effigies of crusading knights, reposing in the silent crypts of churches on their tombs.” Yet, in just 61 years from the year this book was published, 1875 to 1941, the largest Christian Army in history launched “Operation Barbarossa” an attack on Atheist Russia with intentions the enslave and exterminate the defeated population in true Christian style. Already Christian Germany was enslaving and exterminating the Jewish people in Germany, and in the Nations Germany occupied – WAR, Slavery, and Holocaust: Christianity was in power again! Emmett F. Fields Notes, See: Operation Barbarossa - Wikipedia The Holocaust - Wikipedia Introduction to the Holocaust: What was the Holocaust? | Holocaust Encyclopedia (ushmm.org)
The British Journal for the History of Science, 1976
DURING the decades following the publication of Darwin's Origin of species in I859, religious belief in England and in particular the Church of England experienced some of the most intense criticism in its history. The early i86os saw the appearance of Lyell's Evidence of the antiquity of man (I863), Tylor's research on the early history of mankind (I863), Renan's Vie deJsus (I863), Pius IX's encyclical, Quanta cura, and the accompanying Syllabus errarum, John Henry Newman's Apologia (I 864), and Swinburne's notorious Atalanta in Calydon (i865); it was in this period also that Arthur Stanley was appointed Dean of Westminster, and that Bills were introduced in Parliament to amend or repeal the 'Test Acts' as they affected universities. They were the years that witnessed Lyell present the case for geology at the British Association at Bath (I864), the first meeting of the X-Club (I864), and the award of the Royal Society's Copley Medal to Charles Darwin. These were the years in which, as Owen Chadwick has put it, 'the controversy between "science" and "religion" took fire'.' To be sure, only part of this criticism arose directly from the new work of science. From within the Established Church discussion focused on theological issues as central as everlasting punishment, redemption, the nature of the Trinity, and the social role of the Church. From without, the role of the Church and its schools was debated in the universities and in Parliament. The rigours of clerical ritualism, given added force by the political manoeuvres of the papacy, were exciting dissatisfaction throughout Europe. Finally, successive conquests of biblical criticism, proceeding from German example, created fresh rifts which became indelibly associated with the use of new 'scientific' methods of scholarship. Of course, the confrontations of science and religion were made more complicated, at both social and intellectual levels, by a conflation of issues concerning the sufficiency of natural theology, the doctrine of revealed truth, the belief in biblical literalism, and the unfettered search for new knowledge. The last issue, in particular, has much to do with the difficult relationship we now perceive between the self-defining, selfgenerating ethos of scientific inquiry, and broader political and philosophical concepts of intellectual freedom. We can hardly neglect to ask whether we may see in the 'warfare' between science and religion an important reflexion of a much more general concern about the realities of