Science and Religion

(1) Course description

In this class we will investigate the relationship between science and religion in the
modern world, beginning in the Middle Ages and primarily covering the past five
centuries. What has characterized this relationship? Have science and religion
primarily been in conflict? If so, why? If not, what are some of the other forms of
engagement? What are the boundary lines? Focusing on approaches adopted by
historians of science, we will read from two sets of secondary studies, along with
primary sources from key episodes of entanglement between theistic institutions,
practices, and commitments, and a modern world that increasingly describes itself
as scientific. Issues to be discussed include the impact of the Protestant
Reformation, the murky misunderstandings of the Galileo controversy, the search
for a materialized “soul” during the Enlightenment, the modern
compartmentalization of inquiry, the impact of evolutionary theory on religious
belief in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, and religious dimensions of
psychology and neuroscience in contemporary thought. Students who participate in
this class will come away with an informed sense of the complexity of
science/religion engagements across the centuries and an understanding of some of
the classic texts regarding religious dimensions of science (and vice versa).

(2) Course readings

Core texts

Brooke, John Hedley. Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1991.

Ferngren, Gary B., ed. Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction. Baltimore:
Johns Hopkins University Press, 2002.

Supplemental texts

Brooke, John Hedley, and others, “Complexity and the History of Science and
Religion,” from Historically Speaking 8, no. 5, May/June 2007.

Clegg, Brian. The First Scientist: A Life of Roger Bacon. New York: Carroll and Graf,
2003.

Copernicus, Nicholas. On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres. Trans. Wallis, Charles

Glenn. Amherst: Prometheus, 1995.
Darnton, Robert. The Great Cat Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural
History. New York: Basic Books, 1999.

Dawkins, Richard. The Selfish Gene. Oxford, Oxford University Press, 1989.

Diderot, Denis. D’Alembert’s Dream. In Rameau’s Nephew and Other Works. Trans.
Ralph Henry Bowen. Indianapolis: Hackett, 2001.

Draper, John William. History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. New
York: D. Appleton and Co., 1874.

Dunlap, Thomas R. Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as Religious Quest. Seattle:

University of Washington Press, 2004.

Finocchiaro, Maurices A., ed. The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1989.

Freud, Sigmund. The Future of an Illusion. New York: W.W. Norton & Company,
1989.

Harris, Ruth. Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age. London: The Penguin
Press, 1999.

Harrison, Peter. The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2001.

Hooykaas, R. Religion and the Rise of Modern Science. Edinburgh: Scottish Academic
Press, 1972.

Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion. Ed. Richard H. Popkin.

Indianapolis: Hackett, 1980.

Jefferson, Thomas. The Jefferson Bible, Smithsonian Edition: The Life and Morals of
Jesus of Nazareth. Ed. Rubenstein, Harry and Smith, Barbara Clark.
Washington, D.C.: Smithsonian Books, 2011.

Kitcher, Philip. Living With Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith.
Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007.

Knight, David. “Romanticism and the Sciences.” In Romanticism and the Sciences, ed.
Andrew Cunningham and Nicholas Jardine. Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1990.

Larson, Edward J. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing
Debate. New York: Basic Books, 1997.
LeMahieu, D.L. The Mind of William Paley. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press,
1976.

Lovelock, J.E., and L. Margulis. “Atmospheric Homeostasis by and for the Biosphere:
The Gaia Hypothesis.” Tellus 26, no. 1 (1974): 2‐10.

Outram, Dorinda. The Enlightenment. Second Edition. Cambridge: Cambridge

University Press, 2005.

Reiff, Philip. Freud: The Mind of the Moralist. Chicago: University of Chicago Press,
1959.

Schleiermacher, Friedrich. On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. Ed.

Richard Crouter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996.

White, Andrew Dickson. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in

Christendom. 2 vols. New York: Appleton, 1897.

White, Lynn. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” Science 155 (1967):
1203‐1207.

(3) Course outline

Week 1: Introductory and Organizational Meeting

Brooke and others, “Complexity and the History of Science and Religion.”

Week 2: The Conflict Thesis

Ferngren. Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction. (Read chapters 1 and 2)

Draper. History of the Conflict between Religion and Science.

White. A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. (Review

table of contents, and read chapter 11)

Week 3: Before and After the Protestant Reformation

Clegg. The First Scientist: A Life of Roger Bacon. (Final chapter)

Copernicus. On the Revolutions of Heavenly Spheres. (Read with an eye to allegorical

language)

Harrison. The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science. (Read chapter 5
and 6)

Week 4: God and Nature at the Origins of Modern Science

Brooke. Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. (Chapters 2 and 3)

Hooykaas. Religion and the Rise of Modern Science. (This is a short book, based on an
important set of lectures: read all)

Week 5: Galileo on Trial

Ferngren. Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction. (Read chapters 3, 5, and 7)

Finocchiaro. The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History. (Read chapters 3 and 4, plus
pages 214‐226, and finish with chapter 9)

Week 6: A “Natural” Theology?

Brooke. Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. (Read chapter 5)

Ferngren. Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction. (Read chapter 13)

Hume, David. Dialogues Concerning Natural Religion.

Week 7: The Dream of Enlightenment

Outram, Dorinda. “Science and the Enlightenment: God’s order and man’s
understanding,” and “The rise of modern paganism? Religion and the
Enlightenment.” In The Enlightenment. (Two chapters from a useful primer)

Darnton, Robert. “Philosophers Trim the Tree of Knowledge.” In The Great Cat
Massacre and Other Episodes in French Cultural History. (Read chapter 5 of this
classic study on learning in the enlightenment)

Diderot, Denis. D’Alembert’s Dream. In Rameau’s Nephew and Other Works. (Read
this bizarre tale of matter and spirit)

Week 8: The Reasonable God: Deism

LeMahieu. The Mind of William Paley. (Read chapters 1 and 2)

Jefferson, Thomas. The Jefferson Bible, Smithsonian Edition: The Life and Morals of
Jesus of Nazareth.

Week 9: A Romantic Turn

Brooke. Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. (Read chapter 6)

Knight, David. “Romanticism and the Sciences.” In Romanticism and the Sciences.
(Should serve as a useful introduction to the issues this week)

Schleiermacher, Friedrich. On Religion: Speeches to its Cultured Despisers. Ed.

Richard Crouter. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996. (Read all of this
important statement on the supra‐rational quality of spiritual experience)
Week 10: Evolution: That Timely Unfolding

Brooke. Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. (Read chapters 7 and 8)

Ferngren. Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction. (Read chapter 16)

Dawkins. The Selfish Gene. (Read chapters 1 and 11 from this brilliant exponent of
Darwinian evolution and notorious critic of faith)

Week 11: The Trial of the Century

Larson. Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate.
(This is a well‐respected narrative treatment of this important episode. It is long,
but let’s try to do the whole thing)

Week 12: The Mind of the Believer

Harris. Lourdes: Body and Spirit in the Secular Age. (Is religious enthusiasm a kind of
insanity?)

Freud. The Future of an Illusion. (Psychology can perhaps be understood, in its

formative period, as a science of religion itself)

Reiff. Freud: The Mind of the Moralist. (Or was Freud offering yet another kind of
religion?)

Week 13: Can Nature Save Us? (Or Vice Versa?)

Ferngren. Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction. (Read chapter 27)

Dunlap. Faith in Nature: Environmentalism as Religious Quest. (Can the

environmental movement be thought of as a kind of religious revival?)

White. “The Historical Roots of Our Ecologic Crisis.” (A classic early study on
attitudes toward nature)

Lovelock, J.E., and L. Margulis. “Atmospheric Homeostasis by and for the Biosphere:
The Gaia Hypothesis.” (Gaia “spiritualized” ecology in the 1970’s)

Week 14: Design and Intelligence

Brooke. Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. (Read the postscript)

Ferngren. Science and Religion: A Historical Introduction. (Read chapter 21)

Kitcher. Living With Darwin: Evolution, Design, and the Future of Faith. (Kitcher is a
philosopher, one whom for much of career has examined issues of biology)