When Science & Christianity Meet

by David C. Lindenberg (Editor), Ronald L. Numbers (Editor)

Overview

This book, in language accessible to the general reader, investigates twelve of the most notorious, most interesting, and most instructive episodes involving the interaction between science and Christianity, aiming to tell each story in its historical specificity and local particularity.
 Among the events treated in When Science and Christianity Meet are the Galileo affair, the seventeenth-century clockwork universe, Noah's ark and flood in the development of natural history, struggles over Darwinian evolution, debates about the origin of the human species, and the Scopes trial. Readers will be introduced to St. Augustine, Roger Bacon, Pope Urban VIII, Isaac Newton, Pierre-Simon de Laplace, Carl Linnaeus, Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, Sigmund Freud, and many other participants in the historical drama of science and Christianity. “Taken together, these papers provide a comprehensive survey of current thinking on key issues in the relationships between science and religion, pitched—as the editors intended—at just the right level to appeal to students.”—Peter J. Bowler, Isis 

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780226482156
Publisher:	University of Chicago Press
Publication date:	05/31/2024
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	357
File size:	45 MB
Note:	This product may take a few minutes to download.

About the Author

David C. Lindberg is the Hilldale Professor Emeritus of the History of Science at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Ronald L. Numbers is the Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Together Lindberg and Numbers edited God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science and are currently editing the CambridgeHistory of Science.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations
Acknowledgments
Introduction
1. The Medieval Church Encounters the Classical Tradition: Saint Augustine, Roger Bacon, and the Handmaiden Metaphor
David C. Lindberg
2. Galileo, the Church, and the Cosmos
David C. Lindberg
3. Christianity and the Mechanistic Universe
William B. Ashworth Jr.
4. Matter, Force, and the Christian Worldview in the Enlightenment
Thomas H. Broman
5. Noah's Flood, the Ark, and the Shaping of Early Modern Natural History
Janet Browne
6. Genesis and Geology Revisited: The Order of Nature and the Nature of Order in Nineteenth-Century Britain
Mott T. Greene
7. "Men before Adam!": American Debates over the Unity and Antiquity of Humanity
G. Blair Nelson
8. Re-placing Darwinism and Christianity
David N. Livingston
9. Science, Miracles, and the Prayer-Gauge Debate
Robert Bruce Mullin
10. Psychoanalysis and American Christianity, 1900-45
Jon H. Roberts
11. The Scopes Trial in History and Legend
Edward J. Larson
12. Science without God: Natural Laws and Christian Beliefs
Ronald L. Numbers
Notes
A Guide to Further Reading
Contributors
Index

Recipe

Have science and Christianity been locked in mortal combat for the past 2000 years? Or has their relationship been one of peaceful coexistence, encouragement, and support? Both opinions have been vigorously defended, widely disseminated, and hotly debated. And both have been rejected by knowledgeable historians as unacceptable oversimplifications of the historical reality.

This book steps back from those debates, abandoning, for the present, the attempt to formulate or defend generalizations of such breadth and scope. Its authors believe that every encounter had its own peculiar shape and that each must be examined uniquely before broader attempts at generalization are likely to succeed. This book, in language accessible to the general reader, investigates twelve of the most notorious, most interesting, and most instructive cases, aiming to tell each story in its historical specificity and local particularity.

Among the episodes treated in When Science and Christianity Meet are the Galileo affair, the 17th-century clockwork universe, Noah's ark and flood in the development of natural history, struggles over Darwinian evolution, debates about the origin of the human species, and the Scopes trial. Readers will be introduced to St. Augustine, Roger Bacon, Pope Urban VIII, Isaac Newton, Pierre-Simon de Laplace, Carl Linnaeus, Charles Darwin, T. H. Huxley, Sigmund Freud, and many other participants in the historical drama of science and Christianity.

Contributors:
*William B. Ashworth Jr.
*Thomas H. Broman
*Janet Browne
*Mott T. Greene
*Edward J. Larson
*David C. Lindberg
*David N. Livingstone
*Robert Bruce Mullin
*G. Blair Nelson
*Ronald L. Numbers
*Jon H. Roberts

Editorial Reviews

Clarity is a chief feature of all the contributions, each of which . . . has been chosen to illustrate ‘the most notorious, most interesting or most instructive instances’ of the encounter between science and Christianity. Clear and engaging: it is a winning combination. It should find favour with students and see the book listed as an essential text in many course reading lists.

Endeavour - Peter Broks

"The contributors . . . offer the educated public some fascinating twists of plot characteristic of the newer 'complexity' literature."

Journal of the History of Biology - Ryan C. MacPherson

With its illustrations, extended endnotes and annotated guide to further readings, the book reviews old questions in a thoroughly enlightening scholarly and interesting way.

Christian Century - Carl S. Keener

"Lindberg and Numbers, and their team, show how effective concentrating upon science and religion can be for getting scholarly history of science across. They write clearly, for ordinary readers, setting events in context, and supply formidable notes and bibliographies."

Annals of Science - David Knight

"An outstanding volume. . . . The book can certainly be recommended as an appropriate text for undergraduates."

Science & Theology News

"The well-written essays in this book cover material from the Middle Ages through the post-Darwinian debates. . . . Most of the essays are clear, and the excellent, annotated bibliography mentions many important readings."

Journal of Interdisciplinary History - Margaret J. Osler

"With its concise, clearly written essays . . . including extensive endnotes that refer the reader to primary texts and important scholarly studies, this volume is a superb introduction to some of the most fascinating episodes in the long history of the relationship between science and Christianity."

Catholic Historical Review - James A. Wiseman