The Warfare between Science & Religion The Idea That Wouldn't Die

About this book

The "conflict thesis" – the idea that an inevitable and irreconcilable conflict exists between science and religion – has long been part of the popular imagination. In The Warfare between Science and Religion, Jeff Hardin, Ronald L. Numbers, and Ronald A. Binzley have assembled a group of distinguished historians who explore the origin of the thesis, its reception, the responses it drew from various faith traditions, and its continued prominence in public discourse.

Several essays in the book examine the personal circumstances and theological idiosyncrasies of important intellectuals, including John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who through their polemical writings championed the conflict thesis relentlessly. Other essays consider what the thesis meant to different religious communities, including evangelicals, liberal Protestants, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Finally, essays both historical and sociological explore the place of the conflict thesis in popular culture and intellectual discourse today.

Based on original research and written in an accessible style, the essays in The Warfare between Science and Religion take an interdisciplinary approach to question the historical relationship between science and religion. This volume, which brings much-needed perspective to an often bitter controversy, will appeal to scholars and students of the histories of science and religion, sociology, and philosophy.

Contents

Introduction / Mark A. Noll and David N. Livingstone

1. The Warfare Thesis / Lawrence M. Principe
2. The Galileo Affair/  Maurice A. Finocchiaro
3. Rumors of War / Monte Harrell Hampton
4. The Victorians: Tyndall and Draper / Bernard Lightman
5. Continental Europe / Frederick Gregory
6. Roman Catholics / David Mislin
7. Eastern Orthodox Christians / Efthymios Nicolaidis
8. Liberal Protestants / Jon H. Roberts
9. Protestant Evangelicals / Bradley J. Gundlach
10. Jews / Noah Efron
11. Muslims / M. Alper Yalcinkaya
12. New Atheists / Ronald L. Numbers and Jeff Hardin
13. Neo-Harmonists / Peter Harrison
14. Historians / John Hedley Brooke
15. Scientists / Elaine Howard Ecklund and Christopher P. Scheitle
16. Social Scientists / Thomas H. Aechtner
17. The View on the Street / John H. Evans

Contributors
Index

Customer Reviews

Biography

Jeff Hardin is the Raymond E. Keller Professor and chair of the Department of Integrative Biology at the University of Wisconsin. Ronald L. Numbers is the Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. He is the editor of Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. Independent scholar Ronald A. Binzley, who holds a doctorate in American religious history, is an environmental engineer at the Wisconsin Department of Natural Resources.


Contributors:
- Thomas H. Aechtner
- Ronald A. Binzley
- John Hedley Brooke
- Elaine Howard Ecklund
- Noah Efron
- John H. Evans
- Maurice A. Finocchiaro
- Frederick Gregory
- Bradley J. Gundlach
- Monte Harrell Hampton
- Jeff Hardin
- Peter Harrison
- Bernard Lightman
- David N. Livingstone
- David Mislin
- Efthymios Nicolaidis
- Mark A. Noll
- Ronald L. Numbers
- Lawrence M. Principe
- Jon H. Roberts
- Christopher P. Scheitle
- M. Alper Yalçinkaya