Part of a series on |
Christian culture |
---|
![]() |
Christianity portal |
Part of a series on |
Christianity |
---|
![]() |
Most scientific and technical innovations prior to the Scientific Revolution were achieved by societies organized by religious traditions. Ancient Christian scholars pioneered individual elements of the scientific method. Historically, Christianity has been and still is a patron of sciences.[1] It has been prolific in the foundation of schools, universities and hospitals,[2][3][4][5][6] and many Christian clergy have been active in the sciences and have made significant contributions to the development of science.[7]
Historians of science such as Pierre Duhem credit medieval Catholic mathematicians and philosophers such as John Buridan, Nicole Oresme and Roger Bacon as the founders of modern science.[8] Duhem concluded that "the mechanics and physics of which modern times are justifiably proud to proceed, by an uninterrupted series of scarcely perceptible improvements, from doctrines professed in the heart of the medieval schools".[9] Many of the most distinguished classical scholars in the Byzantine Empire held high office in the Eastern Orthodox Church.[10] Protestantism has had an important influence on science, according to the Merton Thesis, there was a positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism and German Pietism on the one hand, and early experimental science on the other.[11]
Christian scholars and scientists have made noted contributions to science and technology fields,[12][13][14] as well as medicine,[15] both historically and in modern times.[16] Some scholars state that Christianity contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution.[17][18][19][20] Between 1901 and 2001, about 56.5% of Nobel prize laureates in scientific fields were Christians,[21] and 26% were of Jewish descent (including Jewish atheists).[21]
Events in Christian Europe, such as the Galileo affair, that were associated with the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment led some scholars such as John William Draper to postulate a conflict thesis, holding that religion and science have been in conflict throughout history. While the conflict thesis remains popular in atheistic and antireligious circles, it has lost favor among most contemporary historians of science.[22][23][24] Most contemporary historians of science believe the Galileo affair is an exception in the overall relationship between science and Christianity and have also corrected numerous false interpretations of this event.[25][26][27][28]
Overview
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/4/4d/God_the_Geometer.jpg/220px-God_the_Geometer.jpg)
Most sources of knowledge available to the early Christians were connected to pagan worldviews as the early Christians largely lived among pagans. There were various opinions on how Christianity should regard pagan learning, which included its ideas about nature. For instance, among early Christian teachers, from Tertullian (c. 160–220) held a generally negative opinion of Greek philosophy, while Origen (c. 185–254) regarded it much more favourably and required his students to read nearly every work available to them.[29]
Earlier attempts at reconciliation of Christianity with Newtonian mechanics appear quite different from later attempts at reconciliation with the newer scientific ideas of evolution or relativity.[30] Many early interpretations of evolution polarized themselves around a struggle for existence. These ideas were significantly countered by later findings of universal patterns of biological cooperation. According to John Habgood, all man really knows here is that the universe seems to be a mix of good and evil, beauty and pain, and that suffering may somehow be part of the process of creation. Habgood holds that Christians should not be surprised that suffering may be used creatively by God, given their faith in the symbol of the Cross.[30] Robert John Russell has examined consonance and dissonance between modern physics, evolutionary biology, and Christian theology.[31][32]
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/51/Studying_astronomy_and_geometry.jpg/220px-Studying_astronomy_and_geometry.jpg)
France, early 15th century.
Christian philosophers Augustine of Hippo (354–430) and Thomas Aquinas[33] held that scriptures can have multiple interpretations on certain areas where the matters were far beyond their reach, therefore one should leave room for future findings to shed light on the meanings. Augustine Argued:
Usually, even a non-Christian knows something about the earth, the heavens, and the other elements of this world, about the motion and orbit of the stars ... Now, it is a disgraceful and dangerous thing for an infidel to hear a Christian, presumably giving the meaning of Holy Scripture, talking non-sense on these topics; and we should take all means to prevent such an embarrassing situation, in which people show up vast ignorance in a Christian and laugh it to scorn. The shame is not so much that an ignorant individual is derided, but that people outside the household of the faith think our sacred writers held such opinions, and, to the great loss of those for whose salvation we toil, the writers of our Scripture are criticized and rejected as unlearned men.[34]
The "Handmaiden" tradition, which saw secular studies of the universe as a very important and helpful part of arriving at a better understanding of scripture, was adopted throughout Christian history from early on.[35] Also, the sense that God created the world as a self-operating system is what motivated many Christians throughout the Middle Ages to investigate nature.[36]
The Byzantine Empire was one of the peaks in Christian history and Christian civilization, and Constantinople remained the leading city of the Christian world in size, wealth, and culture. There was a renewed interest in classical Greek philosophy, as well as an increase in literary output in vernacular Greek.[37] The Byzantine science played an important role in the transmission of classical knowledge to the Islamic world and to Renaissance Italy, and also in the transmission of Islamic science to Renaissance Italy.[38][39] Many of the most distinguished classical scholars held high office in the Eastern Orthodox Church.[40]
Modern historians of science such as J.L. Heilbron,[41] Alistair Cameron Crombie, David Lindberg,[42] Edward Grant, Thomas Goldstein,[43] and Ted Davis have reviewed the popular notion that medieval Christianity was a negative influence in the development of civilization and science. In their views, not only did the monks save and cultivate the remnants of ancient civilization during the barbarian invasions, but the medieval church promoted learnings and science through its sponsorship of many universities which, under its leadership, grew rapidly in Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. St. Thomas Aquinas, the Church's "model theologian", not only argued that reason is in harmony with faith, he even recognized that reason can contribute to understanding revelation, and so encouraged intellectual development. He was not unlike other medieval theologians who sought out reason in the effort to defend his faith.[44] Some of today's scholars, such as Stanley Jaki, have claimed that Christianity with its particular worldview, was a crucial factor for the emergence of modern science.[45] According to professor Noah J Efron, virtually all modern scholars and historians agree that Christianity moved many early-modern intellectuals to study nature systematically.[46]
David C. Lindberg states that the widespread popular belief that the Middle Ages was a time of ignorance and superstition due to the Christian church is a "caricature". According to Lindberg, while there are some portions of the classical tradition which suggest this view, these were exceptional cases. It was common to tolerate and encourage critical thinking about the nature of the world. The relation between Christianity and science is complex and cannot be simplified to either harmony[47] or conflict,[48] according to Lindberg.[49] Lindberg reports that "the late medieval scholar rarely experienced the coercive power of the church and would have regarded himself as free (particularly in the natural sciences) to follow reason and observation wherever they led. There was no warfare between science and the church."[50] Ted Peters in Encyclopedia of Religion writes that although there is some truth in the "Galileo's condemnation" story but through exaggerations, it has now become "a modern myth perpetuated by those wishing to see warfare between science and religion who were allegedly persecuted by an atavistic and dogma-bound ecclesiastical authority".[51] In 1992, the Catholic Church's seeming vindication of Galileo attracted much comment in the media:
Generations of historians and sociologists have discovered many ways in which Christians, Christian beliefs, and Christian institutions played crucial roles in fashioning the tenets, methods, and institutions of what in time became modern science. They found that some forms of Christianity provided the motivation to study nature systematically.[52]
A degree of concord between science and religion can be seen in religious belief and empirical science. The belief that God created the world and therefore humans, can lead to the view that he arranged for humans to know the world. This is underwritten by the doctrine of imago dei. In the words of Thomas Aquinas, "Since human beings are said to be in the image of God in virtue of their having a nature that includes an intellect, such a nature is most in the image of God in virtue of being most able to imitate God".[53]
During the Enlightenment, a period "characterized by dramatic revolutions in science" and the rise of Protestant challenges to the authority of the Catholic Church via individual liberty, the authority of Christian scriptures became strongly challenged. As science advanced, acceptance of a literal version of the Bible became "increasingly untenable" and some in that period presented ways of interpreting scripture according to its spirit on its authority and truth.[54]
Regarding the subject on the distribution of Nobel Prizes by religion between 1901 and 2000, the data taken from Baruch A. Shalev, shows that between the years 1901 and 2000 reveals that 654 Laureates belong to 28 different religion. 65.4% have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference. Overall, Christians have won a total of 78.3% of all the Nobel Prizes in Peace, 72.5% in Chemistry, 65.3% in Physics, 62% in Medicine, 54% in Economics and 49.5% of all Literature awards.[55]
History
[edit]Roots of scientific revolution
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/2/24/Philo_mediev.jpg/220px-Philo_mediev.jpg)
Between 1150 and 1200, Christian scholars had traveled to Sicily and Spain to retrieve the writings of Aristotle, which had been lost to the West after the Fall of the Roman Empire. This produced a period of cultural ferment that one "modern historian has called the twelfth century renaissance".[56] Thomas Aquinas responded by writing his monumental summas in support of human reason as compatible with faith.[57] Christian theology adapted to Aristotle's secular and humanistic natural philosophy.[58] By the Late Middle Ages, Aquinas's rationalism was being heatedly debated in the new universities.[59] William Ockham resolved the conflict by arguing that faith and reason should be pursued separately so that each could achieve its own end.[59] Historians of science David C. Lindberg, Ronald Numbers and Edward Grant have described what followed as a "medieval scientific revival".[58][60] Science historian Noah Efron has written that Christianity provided the early "tenets, methods, and institutions of what in time became modern science".[46]
Modern western universities have their origins directly in the Medieval Church.[61][62][63][64][65] They began as cathedral schools, and all students were considered clerics.[66] This was a benefit as it placed the students under ecclesiastical jurisdiction and thus imparted certain legal immunities and protections. The cathedral schools eventually became partially detached from the cathedrals and formed their own institutions, the earliest being the University of Bologna (1088), the University of Oxford (1096), and the University of Paris (c. 1150).[67][68][69]
Some scholars have noted a direct tie between "particular aspects of traditional Christianity" and the rise of science.[70] Other scholars and historians have credited Christianity with laying the foundation for the Scientific Revolution.[71] According to Robert K. Merton, the values of English Puritanism and German Pietism led to the scientific revolution of the 17th and 18th centuries. (The Merton Thesis is both widely accepted and disputed.) Merton explained that the connection between religious affiliation and interest in science was the result of a significant synergy between the ascetic Protestant values and those of modern science.[72][73]
Influence of biblical worldviews on early modern science
[edit]At first according to Andrew Dickson White's A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom from the nineteenth century, a biblical worldview affected negatively the progress of science through time. Dickinson also argues that immediately following the Reformation matters were even worse. The interpretations of Scripture by Luther and Calvin became as sacred to their followers as the Scripture itself. For instance, when Georg Calixtus ventured, in interpreting the Psalms, to question the accepted belief that "the waters above the heavens" were contained in a vast receptacle upheld by a solid vault, he was bitterly denounced as heretical.[74] Today, much of the scholarship in which the conflict thesis was originally based is considered to be inaccurate. For instance, the claim that early Christians rejected scientific findings by the Greco-Romans is false, since the "handmaiden" view of secular studies was seen to shed light on theology. This view was widely adapted throughout the early medieval period and afterwards by theologians (such as Augustine) and ultimately resulted in fostering interest in knowledge about nature through time.[75] Also, the claim that people of the Middle Ages widely believed that the Earth was flat was first propagated in the same period that originated the conflict thesis[76] and is still very common in popular culture. Modern scholars regard this claim as mistaken, as the contemporary historians of science David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers write: "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge [earth's] sphericity and even know its approximate circumference."[76][77] From the fall of Rome to the time of Columbus, all major scholars and many vernacular writers interested in the physical shape of the earth held a spherical view with the exception of Lactantius and Cosmas.[78]
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/9/95/Active_Christians_in_Science.jpg/220px-Active_Christians_in_Science.jpg)
H. Floris Cohen argued for a biblical Protestant, but not excluding Catholicism, influence on the early development of modern science.[79] He presented Dutch historian R. Hooykaas' argument that a biblical world-view holds all the necessary antidotes for the hubris of Greek rationalism: a respect for manual labour, leading to more experimentation and empiricism, and a supreme God that left nature and open to emulation and manipulation.[79] It supports the idea early modern science rose due to a combination of Greek and biblical thought.[80][81]
Oxford historian Peter Harrison is another who has argued that a Biblical worldview was significant for the development of modern science. Harrison contends that Protestant approaches to the book of scripture had significant, if largely unintended, consequences for the interpretation of the book of nature.[82] [page needed] Harrison has also suggested that literal readings of the Genesis narratives of the Creation and Fall motivated and legitimated scientific activity in seventeenth-century England. For many of its seventeenth-century practitioners, science was imagined to be a means of restoring a human dominion over nature that had been lost as a consequence of the Fall.[83][page needed]
Historian and professor of religion Eugene M. Klaaren holds that "a belief in divine creation" was central to an emergence of science in seventeenth-century England. The philosopher Michael Foster has published analytical philosophy connecting Christian doctrines of creation with empiricism. Historian William B. Ashworth has argued against the historical notion of distinctive mind-sets and the idea of Catholic and Protestant sciences.[84] Historians James R. Jacob and Margaret C. Jacob have argued for a linkage between seventeenth-century Anglican intellectual transformations and influential English scientists (e.g., Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton).[85] John Dillenberger and Christopher B. Kaiser have written theological surveys, which also cover additional interactions occurring in the eighteenth, nineteenth, and twentieth centuries.[86][87] Philosopher of Religion, Richard Jones, has written a philosophical critique of the "dependency thesis" which assumes that modern science emerged from Christian sources and doctrines. Though he acknowledges that modern science emerged in a religious framework, that Christianity greatly elevated the importance of science by sanctioning and religiously legitimizing it in medieval period, and that Christianity created a favorable social context for it to grow; he argues that direct Christian beliefs or doctrines were not primary source of scientific pursuits by natural philosophers, nor was Christianity, in and of itself, exclusively or directly necessary in developing or practicing modern science.
Oxford University historian and theologian John Hedley Brooke wrote that "when natural philosophers referred to laws of nature, they were not glibly choosing that metaphor. Laws were the result of legislation by an intelligent deity. Thus, the philosopher René Descartes (1596–1650) insisted that he was discovering the "laws that God has put into nature." Later Newton would declare that the regulation of the solar system presupposed the "counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful Being."[88] Historian Ronald L. Numbers stated that this thesis "received a boost" from mathematician and philosopher Alfred North Whitehead's Science and the Modern World (1925). Numbers has also argued, "Despite the manifest shortcomings of the claim that Christianity gave birth to science—most glaringly, it ignores or minimizes the contributions of ancient Greeks and medieval Muslims—it too, refuses to succumb to the death it deserves."[89] The sociologist Rodney Stark of Baylor University, argued in contrast that "Christian theology was essential for the rise of science."[90]
Reconciliation in Britain in the early 20th century
[edit]In Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-twentieth-century Britain, historian of biology Peter J. Bowler argues that in contrast to the conflicts between science and religion in the U.S. in the 1920s (most famously the Scopes Trial), during this period Great Britain experienced a concerted effort at reconciliation, championed by intellectually conservative scientists, supported by liberal theologians but opposed by younger scientists and secularists and conservative Christians. These attempts at reconciliation fell apart in the 1930s due to increased social tensions, moves towards neo-orthodox theology and the acceptance of the modern evolutionary synthesis.[91]
In the twentieth century, several ecumenical organizations promoting a harmony between science and Christianity were founded, most notably the American Scientific Affiliation, The Biologos Foundation, Christians in Science, The Society of Ordained Scientists, and The Veritas Forum.[92]
Branches of Christianity
[edit]Catholicism
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/36/Gregor_Mendel_Monk.jpg/170px-Gregor_Mendel_Monk.jpg)
While refined and clarified over the centuries, the Catholic position on the relationship between science and religion is one of harmony and has maintained the teaching of natural law as set forth by Thomas Aquinas. For example, regarding scientific study such as that of evolution, the church's unofficial position is an example of theistic evolution, stating that faith and scientific findings regarding human evolution are not in conflict, though humans are regarded as a special creation, and that the existence of God is required to explain both monogenism and the spiritual component of human origins. Catholic schools have included all manners of scientific study in their curriculum for many centuries.[93] Historian John Heilbron says that "The Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the study of astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learing during the late Middle Ages into the Enlightenment, then any other, and probably all, other Institutions."[94]
The first universities in Europe were established by Catholic Church monks.[2][3][4][95][96] The first Western European institutions generally considered to be universities were established in present-day Italy (including the Kingdom of Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples, and the Kingdom of Italy), the Kingdom of England, the Kingdom of France, Holy Roman Empire, the Kingdom of Spain, the Kingdom of Portugal and the Kingdom of Scotland between the 11th and 15th centuries for the study of the arts and the higher disciplines of theology, law, and medicine.[97] These universities evolved from much older Christian cathedral schools and monastic schools,[98][69][99] and it is difficult to define the exact date when they became true universities, though the lists of studia generalia for higher education in Europe held by the Vatican are a useful guide:
Today almost all historians agree that Christianity (Catholicism as well Protestantism) moved many early-modem intellectuals to study nature systematically. Historians have also found that notions borrowed from Christian belief found their ways into scientific discourse, with glorious results.[100]
— Noah J. Efron
Galileo once stated "The intention of the Holy Spirit is to teach us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go."[101] In 1981, John Paul II, then pope of the Catholic Church, spoke of the relationship this way: "The Bible itself speaks to us of the origin of the universe and its make-up, not in order to provide us with a scientific treatise, but in order to state the correct relationships of Man with God and with the universe. Sacred Scripture wishes simply to declare that the world was created by God, and in order to teach this truth it expresses itself in the terms of the cosmology in use at the time of the writer".[102] The influence of the Church on Western letters and learning has been formidable. The ancient texts of the Bible have deeply influenced Western art, literature and culture. For centuries following the collapse of the Western Roman Empire, small monastic communities were practically the only outposts of literacy in Western Europe. In time, the cathedral schools developed into Europe's earliest universities and the church has established thousands of primary, secondary and tertiary institutions throughout the world in the centuries since. The Church and clergymen have also sought at different times to censor texts and scholars. Thus, different schools of opinion exist as to the role and influence of the Church in relation to western letters and learning.
One view, first propounded by Enlightenment philosophers, asserts that the Church's doctrines are entirely superstitious and have hindered the progress of civilization. Communist states have made similar arguments in their education in order to inculcate a negative view of Catholicism (and religion in general) in their citizens. The most famous incidents cited by such critics are narratives of the Church in relation to Copernicus, Galileo Galilei and Johannes Kepler.
In opposition to this view, some historians of science, including non-Catholics such as J.L. Heilbron,[103] A.C. Crombie, David Lindberg,[104] Edward Grant, Thomas Goldstein,[105] and Ted Davis, have argued that the Church had a significant, positive influence on the development of Western civilization. They hold that, not only did monks save and cultivate the remnants of ancient civilization during the barbarian invasions, but that the Church promoted learning and science through its sponsorship of many universities which, under its leadership, grew rapidly in Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries. St.Thomas Aquinas, the Church's "model theologian," argued that reason is in harmony with faith, and that reason can contribute to a deeper understanding of revelation, and so encouraged intellectual development.[106] The Church's priest-scientists, many of whom were Jesuits, have been among the leading lights in astronomy, genetics, geomagnetism, meteorology, seismology, and solar physics, becoming some of the "fathers" of these sciences. Examples include important churchmen such as the Augustinian abbot Gregor Mendel (pioneer in the study of genetics), Roger Bacon (a Franciscan friar who was one of the early advocates of the scientific method), and Belgian priest Georges Lemaître (the first to propose the Big Bang theory; see Religious interpretations of the Big Bang theory). Other notable priest scientists have included Albertus Magnus, Robert Grosseteste, Nicholas Steno, Francesco Grimaldi, Giambattista Riccioli, Roger Boscovich, and Athanasius Kircher. Even more numerous are Catholic laity involved in science: Henri Becquerel who discovered radioactivity; Galvani, Volta, Ampere, Marconi, pioneers in electricity and telecommunications; Lavoisier, "father of modern chemistry"; Vesalius, founder of modern human anatomy; and Cauchy, one of the mathematicians who laid the rigorous foundations of calculus.
Throughout history many Catholic clerics have made significant contributions to science. These cleric-scientists include Nicolaus Copernicus, Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaître, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Roger Joseph Boscovich, Marin Mersenne, Bernard Bolzano, Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan, Robert Grosseteste, Christopher Clavius, Nicolas Steno, Athanasius Kircher, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, William of Ockham, and others. The Catholic Church has also produced many lay scientists and mathematicians.
Cistercian in science
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c7/Cistercian_numerals.svg/220px-Cistercian_numerals.svg.png)
The Catholic Cistercian order used its own numbering system, which could express numbers from 0 to 9999 in a single sign.[107][108] According to one modern Cistercian, "enterprise and entrepreneurial spirit" have always been a part of the order's identity, and the Cistercians "were catalysts for development of a market economy" in twelfth-century Europe.[109] Until the Industrial Revolution, most of the technological advances in Europe were made in the monasteries.[109] According to the medievalist Jean Gimpel, their high level of industrial technology facilitated the diffusion of new techniques: "Every monastery had a model factory, often as large as the church and only several feet away, and waterpower drove the machinery of the various industries located on its floor."[110] Waterpower was used for crushing wheat, sieving flour, fulling cloth and tanning – a "level of technological achievement [that] could have been observed in practically all" of the Cistercian monasteries.[111]
The English science historian James Burke examines the impact of Cistercian waterpower, derived from Roman watermill technology such as that of Barbegal aqueduct and mill near Arles in the fourth of his ten-part Connections TV series, called "Faith in Numbers". The Cistercians made major contributions to culture and technology in medieval Europe: Cistercian architecture is considered one of the most beautiful styles of medieval architecture;[112] and the Cistercians were the main force of technological diffusion in fields such as agriculture and hydraulic engineering.[112]
Jesuits in science
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/e/ec/Ricci_Guangqi_2.jpg/220px-Ricci_Guangqi_2.jpg)
Between the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries, the teaching of science in Jesuit schools, as laid down in the Ratio atque Institutio Studiorum Societatis Iesu ("The Official Plan of studies for the Society of Jesus") of 1599,[113] was almost entirely based on the works of Aristotle.
The Jesuits, nevertheless, have made numerous significant contributions to the development of science. For example, the Jesuits have dedicated significant study to earthquakes, and seismology has been described as "the Jesuit science".[114] The Jesuits have been described as "the single most important contributor to experimental physics in the seventeenth century".[115] According to Jonathan Wright in his book God's Soldiers, by the eighteenth century the Jesuits had "contributed to the development of pendulum clocks, pantographs, barometers, reflecting telescopes and microscopes, to scientific fields as various as magnetism, optics and electricity. They observed, in some cases before anyone else, the colored bands on Jupiter's surface, the Andromeda nebula and Saturn's rings. They theorized about the circulation of the blood (independently of Harvey), the theoretical possibility of flight, the way the moon affected the tides, and the wave-like nature of light."[116]
The Jesuit China missions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries introduced Western science and astronomy, then undergoing its own revolution, to China. One modern historian writes that in late Ming courts, the Jesuits were "regarded as impressive especially for their knowledge of astronomy, calendar-making, mathematics, hydraulics, and geography".[117] The Society of Jesus introduced, according to Thomas Woods, "a substantial body of scientific knowledge and a vast array of mental tools for understanding the physical universe, including the Euclidean geometry that made planetary motion comprehensible".[118] Another expert quoted by Woods said the scientific revolution brought by the Jesuits coincided with a time when science was at a very low level in China.
The missionary efforts and other work of the Society of Jesus, or Jesuits, between the 16th and 17th century played a significant role in continuing the transmission of knowledge, science, and culture between China and the West, and influenced Christian culture in Chinese society today.
Protestant influence
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/0/0d/Butler_Library_-_1000px_-_AC.jpg/220px-Butler_Library_-_1000px_-_AC.jpg)
Protestantism has promoted economic growth and entrepreneurship, especially in the period after the Scientific and the Industrial Revolution.[119][120] Scholars have identified a positive correlation between the rise of Protestantism and human capital formation,[121] work ethic,[122] economic development,[123] and the development of the state system.[124]
Protestantism had an important influence on science,[125][126][127] according to the Merton thesis there was a positive correlation between the rise of Puritanism and Protestant Pietism on the one hand and early experimental science on the other.[128] The Merton thesis has two separate parts: Firstly, it presents a theory that science changes due to an accumulation of observations and improvement in experimental techniques and methodology; secondly, it puts forward the argument that the popularity of science in seventeenth-century England and the religious demography of the Royal Society (English scientists of that time were predominantly Puritans or other Protestants) can be explained by a correlation between Protestantism and the scientific values.[129] In his theory, Robert K. Merton focused on English Puritanism and German Pietism as having been responsible for the development of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Merton explained that the connection between religious affiliation and interest in science was the result of a significant synergy between the ascetic Protestant values and those of modern science.[130] Protestant values encouraged scientific research by allowing science to study God's influence on the world and thus providing a religious justification for scientific research.[128]
According of Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States by Harriet Zuckerman, a review of American Nobel prizes winners awarded between 1901 and 1972, 72% of American Nobel Prize laureates, have identified from Protestant background.[131][132] Overall, Americans of Protestant background have won a total of 84.2% of all awarded Nobel Prizes in Chemistry,[131] 60% in Medicine,[131] 58.6% in Physics,[131] between 1901 and 1972.
Some of the first colleges and universities in America, including Harvard,[133] Yale,[134] Princeton,[135] Columbia,[136] Dartmouth,[137] Pennsylvania,[138][139] Duke,[140] Boston,[141] Williams, Bowdoin, Middlebury,[142] and Amherst, all were founded by mainline Protestant denominations.
Quakers in science
[edit]The Religious Society of Friends, commonly known as Quakers, encouraged some values which may have been conducive to encouraging scientific talents. A theory suggested by David Hackett Fischer in his book Albion's Seed indicated early Quakers in the US preferred "practical study" to the more traditional studies of Greek or Latin popular with the elite. Another theory suggests their avoidance of dogma or clergy gave them a greater flexibility in response to science.[143]
Despite those arguments a major factor is agreed to be that the Quakers were initially discouraged or forbidden to go to the major law or humanities schools in Britain due to the Test Act. They also at times faced similar discriminations in the United States, as many of the colonial universities had a Puritan or Anglican orientation. This led them to attend "Godless" institutions or forced them to rely on hands-on scientific experimentation rather than academia.[144]
Because of these issues it has been stated Quakers are better represented in science than most religions. There are sources, Pendlehill (Thomas 2000) and Encyclopædia Britannica, that indicate that for over two centuries they were overrepresented in the Royal Society. Mention is made of this possibility in studies referenced in religiosity and intellince and in a book by Arthur Raistrick. Whether this is still accurate, there have been several noteworthy members of this denomination in science. The following names a few.
Eastern Christian influence
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/1/14/Hunayn_ibn-Ishaq_al-%27Ibadi_Isagoge.jpg/220px-Hunayn_ibn-Ishaq_al-%27Ibadi_Isagoge.jpg)
Christian scientists and scholars (particularly Nestorian and Jacobite Christians) contributed to the Arab Islamic Civilization during the Ummayad and the Abbasid periods by translating works of Greek philosophers to Syriac and afterwards to Arabic.[146][147][148] Over a century and a half, primarily Middle Eastern Oriental Syriac Christian scholars in House of Wisdom translated all scientific and philosophic Greek texts into Arabic language in the House of Wisdom.[149][150] They also excelled in philosophy, science (Masawaiyh,[151] Eutychius of Alexandria, and Jabril ibn Bukhtishu[152]) and theology (such as Tatian, Bardaisan, Babai the Great, Nestorius, and Thomas of Marga) and the personal physicians of the Abbasid Caliphs were often Christians, such as the long-serving Bukhtishu dynasty.[153] Many scholars of the House of Wisdom were of Assyrian Christian background.[154][155]
Among the Copts in Egypt, every monastery and probably every church once had its own library of manuscripts.[156]
In the fifth century AD, nine Christian Syrian Monks translated Greek, Hebrew, and Syriac works into the Ethiopian language of Ge'ez and organized Christian monastic orders and schools, some of which are still in existence today. By the sixth century AD, Assyrian Christians had begun exporting back to the Byzantine Empire their own works on science, philosophy and medicine. the literary output of the Assyrians was vast. The third largest corpus of Christian writing, after Latin and Greek, is by the Assyrians in the Assyrian language. In the field of medicine, the Assyrian Bukhtishu family produced nine generations of physicians, and founded the great medical school at Gundeshapur in Iran. When Abbasid Caliph al-Mansur became ill and no physician in Baghdad could cure him, he sent for the dean of the medical school in Gundeshapur, which was renowned as the best of its time[157] The Assyrian philosopher Job of Edessa developed a physical theory of the universe, in the Assyrian language, that rivaled Aristotle's theory, and that sought to replace matter with forces (a theory that anticipated some ideas in quantum mechanics, such as the spontaneous creation and destruction of matter that occurs in the quantum vacuum).[158] One of the greatest Assyrian achievements of the fourth century was the founding of one of the oldest universities in the world, the School of Nisibis, which had three departments, theology, philosophy and medicine, and which became a magnet and center of intellectual development in the Middle East. The statutes of the School of Nisibis, which have been preserved, later became the model upon which the first Italian university was based.[159] The first Mongolian writing system (which was first set down by assyiran monks) used the Assyrian Aramaic and Syriac alphabets, with the name "Tora Bora" being an Assyrian phrase meaning "arid mountain." The hierarchical structure of Buddhism is modeled after the Church of the East. The Assyrian Christian Stephanos translated the work of Greek physician Pedanius Dioscorides into the Arabic language, and for over a century, this translated medical text was used by the Muslim states.[160][161][162][163]
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/a/a6/Cheshm_manuscript.jpg/220px-Cheshm_manuscript.jpg)
In the field of Optics, Nestorian Christian Hunayn ibn-Ishaq's textbook on ophthalmology called the Ten Treatises on the Eye, which was written in 950 A.D., remained the authoritative source on the subject in the western world until the 1800s.[164]
It was a Christian scholar and Bishop from Nisibis named Severus Sebokht who was the first to describe and incorporate Indian mathematical symbols in the mid 7th century, which were then adopted into Islamic culture and are now known as the Arabic numerals.[165][166][167][168]
During the fourth through the seventh centuries, scholarly work in the Syriac and Greek languages was either newly initiated, or carried on from the Hellenistic period. Centers of learning and of transmission of classical wisdom included colleges such as the School of Nisibis, and later the School of Edessa, and the renowned hospital and medical academy of Jundishapur; libraries included the Library of Alexandria and the Imperial Library of Constantinople; other centers of translation and learning functioned at Merv, Salonika, Nishapur and Ctesiphon, situated just south of what later became Baghdad.[169][170] The House of Wisdom was a library, translation institute, and academy established in Abbasid-era Baghdad, Iraq.[171][172] Nestorians played a prominent role in the formation of Arab culture,[173] with the Jundishapur school being prominent in the late Sassanid, Umayyad and early Abbasid periods.[174] The distinguished historian of science George Sarton called Jundishapur "the greatest intellectual center of the time."[175] Notably, eight generations of the Nestorian Bukhtishu family served as private doctors to caliphs and sultans between the eighth and eleventh centuries.[176][177]
The common and persistent myth claiming that Islamic scholars "saved" the classical work of Aristotle and other Greek philosophers from destruction and then graciously passed it on to Europe is baseless. According to the myth, these works would otherwise have perished in the long European Dark Age between the fifth and tenth centuries. Ancient Greek texts and Greek culture were never "lost" to be somehow "recovered" and "transmitted" by Islamic scholars, as many keep claiming: the texts were always there, preserved and studied by the scholars and monks of the Byzantines and passed on to the rest of Europe and to the Islamic world at various times. Aristotle had been translated in France at the abbey of Mont Saint-Michel before translations of Aristotle into Arabic (via the Syriac of the Christian scholars from the conquered lands of the Byzantine Empire). Michael Harris points out:[178]
The great writings of the classical era, particularly those of Greece ... were always available to the Byzantines and to those Western peoples in cultural and diplomatic contact with the Eastern Empire.... Of the Greek classics known today, at least seventy-five percent are known through Byzantine copies.
Historian John Julius Norwich adds that “much of what we know about antiquity—especially Hellenic and Roman literature and Roman law—would have been lost forever if it weren’t for the scholars and scribes of Constantinople.”[179]
![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/6/6c/ViennaDioscoridesFolio3v7Physicians.jpg/220px-ViennaDioscoridesFolio3v7Physicians.jpg)
The Byzantine science played an important role in the transmission of classical knowledge to the Islamic world and to Renaissance Italy, and also in the transmission of Islamic science to Renaissance Italy.[38][180] Many of the most distinguished classical scholars held high office in the Eastern Orthodox Church.[40] The migration waves of Byzantine scholars and émigrés in the period following the Crusader sacking of Constantinople in 1204 and the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453, is considered by many scholars key to the revival of Greek and Roman studies that led to the development of the Renaissance humanism[181] and science. These émigrés brought to Western Europe the relatively well-preserved remnants and accumulated knowledge of their own (Greek) civilization, which had mostly not survived the Early Middle Ages in the West. According to the Encyclopædia Britannica: "Many modern scholars also agree that the exodus of Greeks to Italy as a result of this event marked the end of the Middle Ages and the beginning of the Renaissance".[182] The Byzantines pioneered the concept of the hospital as an institution offering medical care and the possibility of a cure for the patients, as a reflection of the ideals of Christian charity, rather than merely a place to die.[183]
Paper, which the Muslims received from China in the eighth century, was being used in the Byzantine Empire by the ninth century. There were very large private libraries, and monasteries possessed huge libraries with hundreds of books that were lent to people in each monastery's region. Thus were preserved the works of classical antiquity.[184][185]
When Saint Cyril was sent by the Byzantine emperor in an embassy to the Arabs in the ninth century, he astonished his Muslim hosts with his knowledge of philosophy and science as well as theology. Historian Maria Mavroudi recounts:[186]
When asked how it was possible for him to know all that he did, he [Cyril] drew an analogy between the Muslim reaction to his erudition and the pride of someone who kept sea water in a wine skin and boasted of possessing a rare liquid. He finally encountered someone from a region by the sea, who explained that only a madman would brag about the contents of the wine skin, since people from his own homeland possessed an endless abundance of sea water. The Muslims are like the man with the wine skin and the [Greeks] like the man from the sea because, according to the saint's concluding remark in his response, all learning emanated from the [Greeks].
Perspectives on evolution
[edit]In recent history, the theory of evolution has been at the centre of controversy between Christianity and science, largely in America. Christians who accept a literal interpretation of the biblical account of creation find incompatibility between Darwinian evolution and their interpretation of the Christian faith.[187] Creation science or scientific creationism[188] is a branch of creationism that attempts to provide scientific support for the Genesis creation narrative in the Book of Genesis and attempts to disprove generally accepted scientific facts, theories and scientific paradigms about the geological history of Earth, formation of the Solar System, Big Bang cosmology, the chemical origins of life and evolution.[189][190] It began in the 1960s as a fundamentalist Christian effort in the United States to prove Biblical inerrancy and falsify the scientific evidence for evolution.[191] It has since developed a sizable religious following in the United States, with creation science ministries branching worldwide.[192] In 1925, The State of Tennessee passed the Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of the theory of evolution in all schools in the state. Later that year, a similar law was passed in Mississippi, and likewise, Arkansas in 1927. In 1968, these "anti-monkey" laws were struck down by the Supreme Court of the United States as unconstitutional, "because they established a religious doctrine violating both the First and Fourth Amendments to the Constitution."[193]
Most scientists have rejected creation science for several reasons, including that its claims do not refer to natural causes and cannot be tested. In 1987, the United States Supreme Court ruled that creationism is religion, not science, and cannot be advocated in public school classrooms.[194]
Theistic evolution is a discipline that accepts the current scientific understanding of the age of the Earth and the theory of evolution. It includes a range of beliefs, including views described as evolutionary creationism, which accepts contemporary science, but also upholds classical religious understandings of God and creation in Christian context.[195] This position has been endorsed by the Catholic Church.[196] Proponents of theistic evolution include prominent Christian philosopher and theologian, William Lane Craig, Founder of BioLogos, Francis Collins, Prominent conservative Christian Theologian, Tim Keller, and prominent Christian philosopher Alvin Plantinga.
Modern reception
[edit]Individual scientists' views
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/3/3f/Christian_Scientists_and_Inventors_Mosaic.jpg/220px-Christian_Scientists_and_Inventors_Mosaic.jpg)
Christian Scholars and Scientists have made noted contributions to science and technology fields,[12][13][14] as well as Medicine,[15] both historically and in modern times. Many well-known historical figures who influenced Western science considered themselves Christian such as Nicolaus Copernicus,[197] Galileo Galilei,[198] Johannes Kepler,[199] Isaac Newton[200] Robert Boyle,[201] Francis Bacon,[202] Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz,[203] Emanuel Swedenborg,[204] Alessandro Volta,[205] Carl Friedrich Gauss,[206] Antoine Lavoisier,[207] André-Marie Ampère, John Dalton,[208] James Clerk Maxwell,[209][210] William Thomson, 1st Baron Kelvin,[211] Louis Pasteur,[212] Michael Faraday,[213] and J. J. Thomson.[214][215]
Isaac Newton, for example, believed that gravity caused the planets to revolve about the Sun, and credited God with the design. In the concluding General Scholium to the Philosophiae Naturalis Principia Mathematica, he wrote: "This most beautiful System of the Sun, Planets and Comets, could only proceed from the counsel and dominion of an intelligent and powerful being." Other famous founders of science who adhered to Christian beliefs include Galileo, Johannes Kepler, René Descartes, Blaise Pascal, and others.[216][217]
Throughout history many Catholic clerics have made significant contributions to science. These cleric-scientists include Nicolaus Copernicus, Gregor Mendel, Georges Lemaître, Albertus Magnus, Roger Bacon, Pierre Gassendi, Roger Joseph Boscovich, Marin Mersenne, Bernard Bolzano, Francesco Maria Grimaldi, Nicole Oresme, Jean Buridan, Robert Grosseteste, Christopher Clavius, Nicolas Steno, Athanasius Kircher, Giovanni Battista Riccioli, William of Ockham, and others. The Catholic Church has also produced many lay scientists and mathematicians.
Prominent modern scientists advocating Christian belief include Nobel Prize–winning physicists Charles Townes (United Church of Christ member) and William Daniel Phillips (United Methodist Church member), evangelical Christian and past head of the Human Genome Project Francis Collins, and climatologist John T. Houghton.[218]
Scientific Revolution
[edit]Some scholars have noted a direct tie between "particular aspects of traditional Christianity" and the rise of science.[18][71]
Protestantism has had an important influence on science, according to the Merton thesis, there was a positive correlation between the rise of English Puritanism and German Pietism on the one hand and early experimental science on the other.[219][220][221] Robert K. Merton focused on English Puritanism and German Pietism as having been responsible for the development of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. He explained that the connection between religious affiliation and interest in science was the result of a significant synergy between the ascetic Protestant values and those of modern science.[222]
The history professor Peter Harrison attributes Christianity to having contributed to the rise of the Scientific Revolution:
historians of science have long known that religious factors played a significantly positive role in the emergence and persistence of modern science in the West. Not only were many of the key figures in the rise of science individuals with sincere religious commitments, but the new approaches to nature that they pioneered were underpinned in various ways by religious assumptions. ... Yet, many of the leading figures in the scientific revolution imagined themselves to be champions of a science that was more compatible with Christianity than the medieval ideas about the natural world that they replaced.[223]
Nobel Prize
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/5/50/Distribution_of_Christians_in_Nobel_Prizes_between_1901-2000.png/220px-Distribution_of_Christians_in_Nobel_Prizes_between_1901-2000.png)
According to 100 Years of Nobel Prizes a review of Nobel prizes award between 1901 and 2000 reveals that (65.4%) of Nobel Prizes Laureates, have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference (427 prizes).[225] Overall, Christians are considered a total of 72.5% in Chemistry between 1901 and 2000,[224] 65.3% in Physics,[224] 62% in Medicine,[224] 54% in Economics.[224] Between 1901 and 2000 it was revealed that among 654 Laureates 31.9% have identified as Protestant in its various forms (208 prize), 20.3% were Christians (no information about their denominations; 133 prize), 11.6% have identified as Catholic and 1.6% have identified as Eastern Orthodox.[226] Although Christians make up over 33.2% of the world's population,[227][228][229][230] they have won a total of 65.4% of all Nobel prizes between 1901 and 2000.[231]
In an estimate by scholar Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, between 1901 and 2001, about 57.1% of Nobel prize winners were either Christians or with a Christian background.[21] Between 1901 and 2001, about 56.5% of laureates in scientific fields were Christians.[21] According to scholar Benjamin Beit-Hallahmi, Protestants were overrepresented in scientific categories and Catholics were well-represented in the Literature and Peace categories.[21]
In an estimate made by Weijia Zhang from Arizona State University and Robert G. Fuller from University of Nebraska–Lincoln, between 1901 and 1990, 60% of Physics Nobel prize winners had Christian backgrounds.[232]
According of Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States by Harriet Zuckerman, a review of American Nobel prizes winners awarded between 1901 and 1972, 72% of American Nobel Prize Laureates, have identified from Protestant background.[131][132] Overall, Americans of Protestant background have won a total of 84.2% of all awarded Nobel Prizes in Chemistry,[131] 60% in Medicine,[131] 58.6% in Physics,[131] between 1901 and 1972.
Criticism
[edit]Events in Christian Europe, such as the Galileo affair, that were associated with the Scientific Revolution and the Age of Enlightenment led scholars such as John William Draper to postulate a conflict thesis, holding that religion and science have been in conflict methodologically, factually and politically throughout history. This thesis is held by several scientists like Richard Dawkins and Lawrence Krauss. While the conflict thesis remains popular in atheistic and antireligious circles, it has lost favor among most contemporary historians of science,[22][23][24][233] and the majority of scientists in elite universities in the U.S. do not hold a conflict view.[234]
More recently, Thomas E. Woods, Jr., asserts that, despite the widely held conception of the Catholic Church as being anti-science, this conventional wisdom has been the subject of "drastic revision" by historians of science over the last 50 years. Woods asserts that the mainstream view now is that the "Church [has] played a positive role in the development of science ... even if this new consensus has not yet managed to trickle down to the general public."[235] Science historian Ronald L. Numbers corroborates this view, writing that "Historians of science have known for years that White's and Draper's accounts are more propaganda than history. ...Yet the message has rarely escaped the ivory tower."[236]
Trial of Galileo
[edit]![](https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/b/bd/Galileo_before_the_Holy_Office.jpg/220px-Galileo_before_the_Holy_Office.jpg)
In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing observations made with his new telescope. These and other discoveries exposed difficulties with the understanding of the heavens that was common at the time. Scientists, along with the Catholic Church, had adopted Aristotle's view of the earth as fixed in place, since Aristotle's rediscovery 300 years prior.[237] Jeffrey Foss writes that, by Galileo's time, the Aristotelian-Ptolemaic view of the universe had become "fully integrated with Catholic theology".[238]: 285
Scientists of the day largely rejected Galileo's assertions, since most had no telescope, and Galileo had no physical theory to explain how planets could orbit the sun which, according to Aristotelian physics, was impossible. (That would not be resolved for another hundred years.) Galileo's peers alerted religious authorities to his "errors" and asked them to intervene.[238]: 285–286 In response, the church forbade Galileo from teaching it, though it did not forbid discussing it, so long as it was clear it was merely a hypothesis. Galileo published books and asserted scientific superiority.[238]: 285 He was summoned before the Roman Inquisition twice. First warned, he was next sentenced to house arrest on a charge of "grave suspicion of heresy".[238]: 286
The Galileo affair has been considered by many to be a defining moment in the history of the relationship between religion and science. Since the creation of the Conflict thesis by Andrew Dickson White and John William Draper in the late nineteenth century, religion has been depicted as oppressive and oppositional to science.[239] Edward Daub explains that, while "twentieth century historians of science dismantled White and Draper's claims, it is still popular in public perception".[240] Casting Galileo's story as a contest between science and religion is an oversimplification, writes Jeffrey Foss.[238]: 286 Galileo was heir to a long scientific tradition with deep medieval Christian roots.[46]
See also
[edit]Notes
[edit]- ^ Rodney Stark, For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts and the End of Slavery, 2003, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-11436-6, page 123
- ^ a b Den Heijer, Alexandra (2011). Managing the University Campus: Information to Support Real Estate Decisions. Academische Uitgeverij Eburon. ISBN 9789059724877.
Many of the medieval universities in Western Europe were born under the aegis of the Catholic Church, usually as cathedral schools or by papal bull as Studia Generali.
- ^ a b A. Lamport, Mark (2015). Encyclopedia of Christian Education. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 484. ISBN 9780810884939.
All the great European universities-Oxford, to Paris, to Cologne, to Prague, to Bologna—were established with close ties to the Church.
- ^ a b B M. Leonard, Thomas (2013). Encyclopedia of the Developing World. Routledge. p. 1369. ISBN 9781135205157.
Europe established schools in association with their cathedrals to educate priests, and from these emerged eventually the first universities of Europe, which began forming in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
- ^ Gavroglu, Kostas (2015). Sciences in the Universities of Europe, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Academic Landscapes. Springer. p. 302. ISBN 9789401796361.
- ^ G.A. Dawson, Patricia (2015). First Peoples of the Americas and the European Age of Exploration. Cavendish Square Publishing. p. 103. ISBN 9781502606853.
- ^ Wright, Jonathan (2004). God's Soldiers: Adventure, Politics, intrigue and Power: A History of the Jesuits. HarperCollins. p. 200.
- ^ Wallace, William A. (1984). Prelude, Galileo and his Sources. The Heritage of the Collegio Romano in Galileo's Science. N.J.: Princeton University Press.
- ^ Lindberg, David C.; Westman, Robert S., eds. (27 July 1990) [Duhem, Pierre (1905). "Preface". Les Origines de la statique 1. Paris: A. Hermman. p. iv.]. "Conceptions of the Scientific Revolution from Bacon to Butterfield". Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (1st ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 14. ISBN 0-521-34804-8.
- ^ The faculty was composed exclusively of philosophers, scientists, rhetoricians, and philologists; Tatakes, Vasileios N.; Moutafakis, Nicholas J. (2003). Byzantine Philosophy. Hackett Publishing. p. 189. ISBN 0-87220-563-0.
- ^ Cohen, I. Bernard (1990). Puritanism and the rise of modern science: the Merton thesis. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0813515304.
- ^ a b Gilley, Sheridan (2006). The Cambridge History of Christianity: Volume 8, World Christianities C.1815-c.1914. Brian Stanley. Cambridge University Press. p. 164. ISBN 0521814561.
... Many of the scientists who contributed to these developments were Christians...
- ^ a b Steane, Andrew (2014). Faithful to Science: The Role of Science in Religion. OUP Oxford. p. 179. ISBN 978-0191025136.
... the Christian contribution to science has been uniformly at the top level, but it has reached that level and it has been sufficiently strong overall ...
- ^ a b L. Johnson, Eric (2009). Foundations for Soul Care: A Christian Psychology Proposal. InterVarsity Press. p. 63. ISBN 978-0830875276.
... . Many of the early leaders of the scientific revolution were Christians of various stripes, including Roger Bacon, Copernicus, Kepler, Francis Bacon, Galileo, Newton, Boyle, Pascal, Descartes, Ray, Linnaeus and Gassendi...
- ^ a b S. Kroger, William (2016). Clinical and Experimental Hypnosis in Medicine, Dentistry and Psychology. Pickle Partners Publishing. ISBN 978-1787203044.
Many prominent Catholic physicians and psychologists have made significant contributions to hypnosis in medicine, dentistry, and psychology.
- ^ Baruch A. Shalev, 100 Years of Nobel Prizes (2003), Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, p.57: between 1901 and 2000 reveals that 654 Laureates belong to 28 different religions. Most (65.4%) have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference. ISBN 978-0935047370
- ^ Harrison, Peter. "Christianity and the rise of western science". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 28 August 2014.
- ^ a b Noll, Mark, Science, Religion, and A.D. White: Seeking Peace in the "Warfare Between Science and Theology" (PDF), The Biologos Foundation, p. 4, archived from the original (PDF) on 22 March 2015, retrieved 14 January 2015
- ^ Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L. (1986), "Introduction", God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 5, 12, ISBN 978-0-520-05538-4
- ^ Gilley, Sheridan (2006). The Cambridge History of Christianity: Volume 8, World Christianities C.1815-c.1914. Brian Stanley. Cambridge University Press. p. 164. ISBN 0521814561.
- ^ a b c d e Beit-Hallahmi, Benjamin (2014). Psychological Perspectives on Religion and Religiosity. Routledge. pp. 215–220. ISBN 9781317610366.
- ^ a b Russel, C.A. (2002). Ferngren, G.B. (ed.). Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 7. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0.
The conflict thesis, at least in its simple form, is now widely perceived as a wholly inadequate intellectual framework within which to construct a sensible and realistic historiography of Western science
- ^ a b Shapin, S. (1996). The Scientific Revolution. University of Chicago Press. p. 195. ISBN 9780226750200.
In the late Victorian period it was common to write about the 'warfare between science and religion' and to presume that the two bodies of culture must always have been in conflict. However, it is a very long time since these attitudes have been held by historians of science.
- ^ a b Brooke, J. H. (1991). Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives. Cambridge University Press. p. 42.
In its traditional forms, the conflict thesis has been largely discredited.
- ^ Finocchiaro, Maurice A. (2014). "Introduction". The Trial of Galileo : Essential Documents. Hackett Publishing Company, Incorporated. pp. 1–4. ISBN 978-1-62466-132-7.
..one of the most common myths widely held about the trial of Galileo, including several elements: that he "saw" the earth's motion (an observation still impossible to make even in the twenty-first century); that he was "imprisoned" by the Inquisition (whereas he was actually held under house arrest); and that his crime was to have discovered the truth. And since to condemn someone for this reason can result only from ignorance, prejudice, and narrow-mindedness, this is also the myth that alleges the incompatibility between science and religion.
- ^ Jules Speller (2008). Galileo's Inquisition Trial Revisited. Peter Lang. pp. 55–56. ISBN 978-3-631-56229-1.
- ^ John Lennox (2009). God's Undertaker. Lion Books. p. 26. ISBN 978-0-7459-5371-7.
- ^ McMullin, Ernan (2008). "Robert Bellarmine". In Gillispie, Charles (ed.). Dictionary of Scientific Biography. Scribner & American Council of Learned Societies.
- ^ Davis, Edward B. (2003). "Christianity, History of Science and Religion". In Van Huyssteen, Wentzel (ed.). Encyclopedia of Science and Religion. Macmillan Reference USA. pp. 123–7. ISBN 978-0-02-865704-2.
- ^ a b Religion and Science, John Habgood, Mills & Brown, 1964, pp., 11, 14–16, 48–55, 68–69, 90–91, 87
- ^ Russell, Robert John (2008). Cosmology: From Alpha to Omega. Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press. p. 344. ISBN 978-0-8006-6273-8.
- ^ Knight, Christopher C. (2008). "God's Action in Nature's World: Essays in Honour of Robert John Russell". Science & Christian Belief. 20 (2): 214–215.
- ^ Grant, Edward (2006). Science and Religion, 400 B.C. to A.D. 1550: from Aristotle to Copernicus (Johns Hopkins Paperbacks ed.). Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 222. ISBN 0-8018-8401-2.
- ^ Augustine of Hippo. Genesi Ad Litteram. Paulist Press. pp. 42–43.
- ^ Grant 2006, pp. 111–114
- ^ Grant 2006, pp. 105–106
- ^ Cameron, Averil (2006). The Byzantines. Oxford: Blackwell. pp. 42–49. ISBN 978-1-4051-9833-2.
- ^ a b George Saliba (27 April 2006). "Islamic Science and the Making of Renaissance Europe". Library of Congress. Retrieved 1 March 2008.
- ^ "Byzantine Medicine – Vienna Dioscurides". Antiqua Medicina. University of Virginia. Archived from the original on 2 April 2020. Retrieved 27 May 2007.
- ^ a b The faculty was composed exclusively of philosophers, scientists, rhetoricians, and philologists (Tatakes, Vasileios N.; Moutafakis, Nicholas J. (2003). Byzantine Philosophy. Hackett Publishing. p. 189. ISBN 0-87220-563-0.)
- ^ "What Time Is It in the Transept?". D. Graham Burnett book review of J.L.Heilbron's work, The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories. The New York Times. 24 October 1999. Retrieved 1 August 2013.
- ^ Lindberg, David; Numbers, Ronald L (October 2003). When Science and Christianity Meet. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-48214-6.
- ^ Goldstein, Thomas (April 1995). Dawn of Modern Science: From the Ancient Greeks to the Renaissance. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80637-1.
- ^ Pope John Paul II (September 1998). "Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), IV". Retrieved 15 September 2006.
- ^ Jaki, Stanley L. The Savior of Science. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing Company (July 2000), ISBN 0-8028-4772-2.
- ^ a b c Numbers, Ronald L. (8 November 2010). Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. Harvard University Press. pp. 80–81. ISBN 9780674057418.
- ^ Luk, R. W. P. (2021). "Christianity & science in harmony?". Science & Philosophy. 9 (2): 61–82. doi:10.23756/sp.v9i2.623.
- ^ Ecklund, E.H.; Park, J.Z. (2009). "Conflict between religion and science among academic scientists?". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 48 (2): 276–292. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01447.x.
- ^ David C. Lindberg, "The Medieval Church Encounters the Classical Tradition: Saint Augustine, Roger Bacon, and the Handmaiden Metaphor", in David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers, ed. When Science & Christianity Meet (Chicago: University of Chicago Pr., 2003).
- ^ quoted in: Peters, Ted. "Science and Religion". Encyclopedia of Religion p. 8182
- ^ Quoted in Ted Peters, "Science and Religion", Encyclopedia of Religion, p. 8182
- ^ Numbers, Ronald L. (8 November 2010). Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. Harvard University Press. p. 80. ISBN 9780674057418.
- ^ "Religion and Science (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)". Plato.stanford.edu. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
- ^ Enlightenment. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. 2017.
- ^ Shalev, Baruch A. (30 October 2023). 100 Years of Nobel Prizes. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. pp. 57–59. ISBN 9788126902781.
- ^ Matthews & Platt 1991, p. 221.
- ^ Matthews & Platt 1991, p. 222.
- ^ a b Grant, Edward (28 October 1996). The Foundations of Modern Science in the Middle Ages: Their Religious, Institutional and Intellectual Contexts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. Back cover. ISBN 978-0-521-56762-6.
- ^ a b Matthews & Platt 1991, p. 250.
- ^ Falk, Seb (30 November 2021). The Light Ages: The Surprising Story of Medieval Science. National Geographic Books. ISBN 978-0-393-86840-1.
- ^ Den Heijer, Alexandra (2011). Managing the University Campus: Information to Support Real Estate Decisions. Academische Uitgeverij Eburon. ISBN 978-90-5972-487-7.
Many of the medieval universities in Western Europe were born under the aegis of the Catholic Church, usually as cathedral schools or by papal bull as Studia Generali.
- ^ A. Lamport, Mark (2015). Encyclopedia of Christian Education. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 484. ISBN 978-0-8108-8493-9.
All the great European universities-Oxford, to Paris, to Cologne, to Prague, to Bologna—were established with close ties to the Church.
- ^ B M. Leonard, Thomas (2013). Encyclopedia of the Developing World. Routledge. p. 1369. ISBN 978-1-135-20515-7.
Europe established schools in association with their cathedrals to educate priests, and from these emerged eventually the first universities of Europe, which began forming in the eleventh and twelfth centuries.
- ^ Gavroglu, Kostas (2015). Sciences in the Universities of Europe, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Academic Landscapes. Springer. p. 302. ISBN 978-94-017-9636-1.
- ^ GA. Dawson, Patricia (2015). First Peoples of the Americas and the European Age of Exploration. Cavendish Square Publishing. p. 103. ISBN 978-1-5026-0685-3.
- ^ Riché, Pierre (1978): "Education and Culture in the Barbarian West: From the Sixth through the Eighth Century", Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, ISBN 0-87249-376-8, pp. 126–127, 282–298
- ^ Verger, Jacques [in French] (1999). Culture, enseignement et société en Occident aux XIIe et XIIIe siècles (in French) (1st ed.). Presses universitaires de Rennes in Rennes. ISBN 978-2-86847-344-8. Retrieved 17 June 2014.
- ^ Verger, Jacques. "The Universities and Scholasticism", in The New Cambridge Medieval History: Volume V c. 1198–c. 1300. Cambridge University Press, 2007, 257.
- ^ a b Rüegg, Walter: "Foreword. The University as a European Institution", in: A History of the University in Europe. Vol. 1: Universities in the Middle Ages, Cambridge University Press, 1992, ISBN 0-521-36105-2, pp. XIX–XX
- ^ Noll, Mark, Science, Religion, and A.D. White: Seeking Peace in the "Warfare Between Science and Theology" (PDF), The Biologos Foundation, p. 4, archived from the original (PDF) on 22 March 2015, retrieved 14 January 2015
- ^ a b Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L. (1986), "Introduction", God & Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter Between Christianity and Science, Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, pp. 5, 12, ISBN 978-0-520-05538-4,
It would be indefensible to maintain, with Hooykaas and Jaki, that Christianity was fundamentally responsible for the successes of seventeenth-century science. It would be a mistake of equal magnitude, however, to overlook the intricate interlocking of scientific and religious concerns throughout the century.
- ^ Becker, George (1992), The Merton Thesis: Oetinger and German Pietism, a significant negative case, Sociological Forum (Springer) 7 (4), pp. 642–660
- ^ Sztompka, Piotr (2003), Robert King Merton, in Ritzer, George, The Blackwell Companion to Major Contemporary Social Theorists, Malden, Massachusetts Oxford: Blackwell, p. 13, ISBN 9781405105958
- ^ Andrew Dickson White. History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (Kindle Locations 1970–2132)
- ^ Lindberg, David (2009). "Myth 1: That the Rise of Christianity was Responsible for the Demise of Ancient Science". In Ronald Numbers (ed.). Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion. Harvard University Press. pp. 15–18. ISBN 978-0-674-05741-8.
- ^ a b Jeffrey Russell. Inventing the Flat Earth: Columbus and Modern Historians. Praeger Paperback; New Ed edition (30 January 1997). ISBN 0-275-95904-X; ISBN 978-0-275-95904-3.
- ^ Quotation from David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers in Beyond War and Peace: A Reappraisal of the Encounter between Christianity and Science. Studies in the History of Science and Christianity.
- ^ Cormack, Leslie (2009). "Myth 3: That Medieval Christians Taught that he Earth was Flat". In Ronald Numbers (ed.). Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion. Harvard University Press. pp. 28–34. ISBN 978-0-674-05741-8.
- ^ a b The Scientific Revolution: A Historiographical Inquiry, H. Floris Cohen, University of Chicago Press 1994, 680 pages, ISBN 0-226-11280-2, pages 308–321
- ^ "Finally, and most importantly, Hooykaas does not of course claim that the Scientific Revolution was exclusively the work of Protestant scholars." Cohen(1994) p 313
- ^ Cohen(1994) p 313. Hooykaas puts it more poetically: "Metaphorically speaking, whereas the bodily ingredients of science may have been Greek, its vitamins and hormones were biblical."
- ^ Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge, 1998).
- ^ Peter Harrison, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (Cambridge, 2007); see also Charles Webster, The Great Instauration (London: Duckworth, 1975)
- ^ Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L. (1986). God and Nature. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520056923.
- ^ The Anglican Origins of Modern Science, Isis, Volume 71, Issue 2, June 1980, 251–267; this is also noted on page 366 of Science and Religion, John Hedley Brooke, 1991, Cambridge University Press
- ^ John Dillenberger, Protestant Thought and Natural Science (Doubleday, 1960).
- ^ Christopher B. Kaiser, Creation and the History of Science (Eerdmans, 1991).
- ^ John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives, 1991, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 0-521-23961-3, page 19. See also Peter Harrison, "Newtonian Science, Miracles, and the Laws of Nature", Journal of the History of Ideas 56 (1995), 531–53.
- ^ Science and Christianity in pulpit and pew, Oxford University Press, 2007, Ronald L. Numbers, p. 4, and p.138 n. 3 where Numbers specifically raises his concerns with regards to the works of Michael B. Foster, Reijer Hooykaas, Eugene M. Klaaren, and Stanley L. Jaki
- ^ Rodney Stark, For the glory of God: how monotheism led to reformations, science, witch-hunts and the end of slavery, 2003, Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-11436-6, page 123
- ^ Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-twentieth-century Britain, Peter J. Bowler, 2001, University of Chicago Press, ISBN 0-226-06858-7. Front dustcover flap material
- ^ James C. Peterson (2001). Genetic Turning Points: The Ethics of Human Genetic Intervention. Wm. B. Eerdmans Publishing.
As to specifically Christian theists, an example of continue presence would be the American Scientific Affiliation. It currently has about two thousand members, all of whom affirm the Apostles' Creed as part of joining the association, and most of whom hold Ph.D.s in the natural sciences. Their active journal is Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith. Across the Atlantic, the Society of Ordained Scientists and Christians in Science are similar affiliation in Great Britain.
- ^ "Catholic Encyclopedia". New Advent. Retrieved 16 June 2013.
- ^ Heilbron, J. L. (June 2009). The Sun in the Church. Harvard University Press. p. 3. ISBN 9780674038486.
- ^ Gavroglu, Kostas (2015). Sciences in the Universities of Europe, Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries: Academic Landscapes. Springer. p. 302. ISBN 9789401796361.
- ^ GA. Dawson, Patricia (2015). First Peoples of the Americas and the European Age of Exploration. Cavendish Square Publishing. p. 103. ISBN 9781502606853.
- ^ de Ridder-Symoens (1992), pp. 47–55
- ^ Riché, Pierre (1978). Education and Culture in the Barbarian West: From the Sixth through the Eighth Century. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press. pp. 126–127, 282–298. ISBN 0-87249-376-8.
- ^ Verger, Jacques. "The Universities and Scholasticism," in The New Cambridge Medieval History. Volume V: c. 1198–c. 1300. Cambridge University Press, 2007. p. 257.
- ^ Numbers, Ronald L. (8 November 2010). Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion. Harvard University Press. pp. 80–81. ISBN 9780674057418.
- ^ Machamer, Peter (1998). The Cambridge Companion to Galileo. Cambridge University Press. p. 306. ISBN 0-521-58841-3.
- ^ Pope John Paul II, 3 October 1981 to the Pontifical Academy of Science, "Cosmology and Fundamental Physics"
- ^ "J.L. Heilbron". London Review of Books. Retrieved 15 September 2006.
- ^ Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald L. (October 2003). When Science and Christianity Meet. University of Chicago Press. ISBN 0-226-48214-6.
- ^ Goldstein, Thomas (April 1995). Dawn of Modern Science: From the Ancient Greeks to the Renaissance. Da Capo Press. ISBN 0-306-80637-1.
- ^ Pope John Paul II (September 1998). "Fides et Ratio (Faith and Reason), IV". Retrieved 15 September 2006.
- ^ King, David (1995). "A forgotten Cistercian system of numerical notation". Citeaux Commentarii Cistercienses. 46 (3–4): 183–217.
- ^ Chrisomalis, Stephen (2010). Numerical notation : a comparative history. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 350. doi:10.1017/CBO9780511676062. ISBN 978-0-511-67683-3. OCLC 630115876.
- ^ a b Rob Baedeker (24 March 2008). "Good Works: Monks build multimillion-dollar business and give the money away". San Francisco Chronicle. Retrieved 7 August 2009.
- ^ Gimpel, p 67. Cited by Woods.
- ^ Woods, p 33
- ^ a b Herbert Thurston. "Cistercians in the British Isles". Catholic Encyclopedia. NewAdvent.org. Retrieved 18 June 2008.
- ^ "The Jesuit Ratio Studiorum of 1599" (PDF). 27 December 2017. Archived from the original (PDF) on 27 December 2017. Retrieved 16 January 2023.
- ^ Susan Elizabeth Hough, Richter's Scale: Measure of an Earthquake, Measure of a Man, Princeton University Press, 2007, ISBN 0-691-12807-3, p. 68.
- ^ Lindberg, David C.; Numbers, Ronald Leslie (1986). God and nature. Historical essays on the encounter between Christianity and science. Berkeley, California: University of California Press. p. 154. ISBN 0-520-05538-1.
- ^ Wright, Jonathan (2005). God's Soldiers. Adventure, Politics, Intrigue, and Power—A History of the Jesuits. New York City: The Doubleday Religious Publishing Group. p. 200. ISBN 0-385-50080-7.
- ^ Patricia Buckley Ebrey, p. 212.
- ^ Woods, Thomas E. (2005). How The Catholic Church Built Western Civilization. Washington, D.C.: Regnery Publishing. p. 101. ISBN 0-895-26038-7.
- ^ Cantoni, Davide (2015). "The Economic Effects of the Protestant Reformation: Testing the Weber Hypothesis in the German Lands". Journal of the European Economic Association. 13 (4): 561–598. doi:10.1111/jeea.12117. hdl:10230/11729. ISSN 1542-4766. JSTOR 24539263. S2CID 7528944.
- ^ Bendix, Reinhard (1978). Max Weber: An Intellectual Portrait. University of California Press. p. 60. ISBN 978-0520031944.
- ^ Boppart, Timo; Falkinger, Josef; Grossmann, Volker (1 April 2014). "Protestantism and Education: Reading (the Bible) and Other Skills" (PDF). Economic Inquiry. 52 (2): 874–895. doi:10.1111/ecin.12058. ISSN 1465-7295. S2CID 10220106. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
- ^ Schaltegger, Christoph A.; Torgler, Benno (1 May 2010). "Work ethic, Protestantism, and human capital" (PDF). Economics Letters. 107 (2): 99–101. doi:10.1016/j.econlet.2009.12.037. Archived (PDF) from the original on 9 October 2022.
- ^ Spater, Jeremy; Tranvik, Isak (1 November 2019). "The Protestant Ethic Reexamined: Calvinism and Industrialization". Comparative Political Studies. 52 (13–14): 1963–1994. doi:10.1177/0010414019830721. ISSN 0010-4140. S2CID 204438351.
- ^ Becker, Sascha O.; Pfaff, Steven; Rubin, Jared (2016). "Causes and Consequences of the Protestant Reformation". ESI Working Paper 16–13. ISSN 2572-1496.
- ^ Cohen, I. Bernard (1990). Puritanism and the rise of modern science: the Merton thesis. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0-8135-1530-4.
- ^ Cohen, H. (1994). The scientific revolution: a historiographical inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 320–321. ISBN 978-0-226-11280-0. Google Print, pp. 320–321
- ^ Ferngren, Gary B. (2002). Science and religion: a historical introduction. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 125. ISBN 978-0-8018-7038-5. Google Print, p.125
- ^ a b Sztompka, Piotr (2003), Robert King Merton, in Ritzer, George, The Blackwell Companion to Major Contemporary Social Theorists, Malden, Massachusetts Oxford: Blackwell, p. 13, ISBN 978-1-4051-0595-8
- ^ Gregory, Andrew (1998), Handout for course 'The Scientific Revolution' at The Scientific Revolution
- ^ Becker, George (1992), The Merton Thesis: Oetinger and German Pietism, a significant negative case, Sociological Forum (Springer) 7 (4), pp. 642–660
- ^ a b c d e f g h Harriet Zuckerman, Scientific Elite: Nobel Laureates in the United States New York, The Free Press, 1977 , p.68: Protestants turn up among the American-reared laureates in slightly greater proportion to their numbers in the general population. Thus 72 percent of the seventy-one laureates but about two thirds of the American population were reared in one or another Protestant denomination-)
- ^ a b J. Feist, Gregory (2008). The Psychology of Science and the Origins of the Scientific Mind. Yale University Press. p. 23. ISBN 9780300133486.
For instance, concerning the religious origins of American laureates, 72 percent are Protestant ...
- ^ "The Harvard Guide: The Early History of Harvard University". News.harvard.edu. Archived from the original on 22 July 2010. Retrieved 29 August 2010.
- ^ "Increase Mather". Archived from the original on 11 February 2006. Retrieved 16 February 2022., Encyclopædia Britannica Eleventh Edition, Encyclopædia Britannica
- ^ Princeton University Office of Communications. "Princeton in the American Revolution". Archived from the original on 14 June 2007. Retrieved 24 May 2011. The original Trustees of Princeton University "were acting in behalf of the evangelical or New Light wing of the Presbyterian Church, but the college had no legal or constitutional identification with that denomination. Its doors were to be open to all students, 'any different sentiments in religion notwithstanding.'"
- ^ McCaughey, Robert (2003). Stand, Columbia: A History of Columbia University in the City of New York. New York, New York: Columbia University Press. p. 1. ISBN 0231130082.
- ^ Childs, Francis Lane (December 1957). "A Dartmouth History Lesson for Freshman". Dartmouth Alumni Magazine. Archived from the original on 8 September 2015. Retrieved 12 February 2007.
- ^ Hochstedt Butler, Diana (1995). Standing Against the Whirlwind: Evangelical Episcopalians in Nineteenth-Century America. Oxford University Press. p. 22. ISBN 9780195359053.
Of all these northern schools, only Columbia and the University of Pennsylvania were historically Anglican; the rest are associated with revivalist Presbyterianism or Congregationalism.
- ^ Khalaf, Samir (2012). Protestant Missionaries in the Levant: Ungodly Puritans, 1820–1860. Routledge. p. 31. ISBN 9781136249808.
Princeton was Presbyterian, while Columbia and Pennsylvania were Episcopalian.
- ^ "Duke University's Relation to the Methodist Church: the basics". Duke University. 2002. Archived from the original on 12 June 2010. Retrieved 27 March 2010.
Duke University has historical, formal, on-going, and symbolic ties with Methodism, but is an independent and non-sectarian institution ... Duke would not be the institution it is today without its ties to the Methodist Church. However, the Methodist Church does not own or direct the University. Duke is and has developed as a private nonprofit corporation which is owned and governed by an autonomous and self-perpetuating Board of Trustees
- ^ "Boston University Names University Professor Herbert Mason United Methodist Scholar/Teacher of the Year". Boston University. 2001. Archived from the original on 26 December 2010. Retrieved 20 October 2011.
Boston University has been historically affiliated with the United Methodist Church since 1839 when the Newbury Biblical Institute, the first Methodist seminary in the United States, was established in Newbury, Vermont.
- ^ W.L. Kingsley et al., "The College and the Church," New Englander and Yale Review 11 (Feb 1858): 600. accessed 2010-6-16 Archived April 13, 2017, at the Wayback Machine Note: Middlebury is considered the first "operating" college in Vermont as it was the first to hold classes in Nov 1800. It issued the first Vermont degree in 1802; UVM followed in 1804.
- ^ Dandelion, Pink; Collins, Peter, eds. (26 March 2009). The Quaker Condition: The Sociology of a Liberal Religion. Cambridge Scholars Publishing. pp. 2–3. ISBN 978-1847185655.
- ^ King, Mike (2014). Quakernomics: An Ethical Capitalism. Anthem Press. p. 51. ISBN 9780857281128.
- ^ Porter, Roy (2001). The Cambridge Illustrated History of Medicine. Cambridge University Press. p. 67."The major ninth-century medical figure in Baghdad was a Christian Arab, Hunain ibn Ishaq, an amazingly accurate and productive scholar, who traveled to the Greek Byzantine empire in search of rare Galenic treatises."
- ^ Hill, Donald. Islamic Science and Engineering. 1993. Edinburgh Univ. Press. ISBN 0-7486-0455-3, p.4
- ^ Brague, Rémi (15 April 2009). The Legend of the Middle Ages. University of Chicago Press. p. 164. ISBN 9780226070803. Retrieved 11 February 2014.
- ^ Ferguson, Kitty Pythagoras: His Lives and the Legacy of a Rational Universe Walker Publishing Company, New York, 2008, (page number not available – occurs toward end of Chapter 13, "The Wrap-up of Antiquity"). "It was in the Near and Middle East and North Africa that the old traditions of teaching and learning continued, and where Christian scholars were carefully preserving ancient texts and knowledge of the ancient Greek language."
- ^ Rosenthal, Franz The Classical Heritage in Islam The University of California Press, Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1975, p. 6
- ^ Adamson, London Peter The Great Medieval Thinkers: Al-Kindi Oxford University Press, New York, 2007, p. 6. London Peter Adamson is a Lecturer in Late Ancient Philosophy at King's College.
- ^ Beeston, Alfred Felix Landon (1983). Arabic literature to the end of the Umayyad period. Cambridge University Press. p. 501. ISBN 978-0-521-24015-4. Retrieved 20 January 2011.
- ^ Contadini, Anna (2003). "A Bestiary Tale: Text and Image of the Unicorn in the Kitāb naʿt al-hayawān (British Library, or. 2784)" (PDF). Muqarnas. 20: 17–33. doi:10.1163/22118993-90000037. JSTOR 1523325.
- ^ Brague, Rémi. "Assyrians Contributions To The Islamic Civilization". christiansofiraq.com. Archived from the original on 27 September 2013.
- ^ Hyman and Walsh Philosophy in the Middle Ages Indianapolis, 1973, p. 204' Meri, Josef W. and Jere L. Bacharach, Editors, Medieval Islamic Civilization Vol.1, A-K, Index, 2006, p. 304.
- ^ Brague, Rémi (2009). The Legend of the Middle Ages: Philosophical Explorations of Medieval Christianity, Judaism, and Islam. University of Chicago Press. p. 164. ISBN 9780226070803.
Neither were there any Muslims among the Ninth-Century translators. Amost all of them were Christians of various Eastern denominations: Jacobites, Melchites, and, above all, Nestorians... A few others were Sabians.
- ^ Butler, Alfred Joshua. Ancient Coptic Churches in Egypt. Vol. 2. Clarendon Press. p. 239. ISBN 9780837076119.
- ^ Rassam, Suha (2005). Christianity in Iraq: Its Origins and Development to the Present Day. Gracewing. ISBN 9780852446331.
- ^ Donabed, Sargon (2003). Remnants of Heroes: The Assyrian Experience : The Continuity of the Assyrian Heritage from Kharput to New England. Assyrian Academic Society Press. ISBN 9780974445076.
- ^ Vööbus, Arthur (1961). "The statutes of the School of Nisibis".
- ^ Gutas, Dimitri (1998). Greek Thought, Arabic Culture: The Graeco-Arabic Translation Movement in Baghdad and Early 'Abbasid Society (2nd–4th/8th–10th centuries). Psychology Press. ISBN 9780415061322.
- ^ O'Leary, De Lacy (1949). How Greek Science Passed to the Arabs. Routledge and K. Paul. ISBN 9780710019035.
- ^ Rosenthal, Franz (January 1975). The Classical Heritage in Islam. University of California Press. ISBN 9780520019973.
- ^ The Myth of the Andalusian Paradise. Open Road Media. 9 February 2016. p. 66. ISBN 9781504034692.
- ^ Masood 2009, pp.47–48, 59, 96–97, 171–72
- ^ The Lost History of Christianity: The Thousand-year Golden Age of the Church in the Middle East, Africa and Asia. p. 18, 78.
- ^ MacCulloch, Diarmaid (2010). Christianity: The First Three Thousand Years. Penguin. p. 246. ISBN 978-1-101-18999-3.
- ^ Cajori, Florian (26 September 2013). A History of Mathematical Notations. Courier Corporation. p. 48. ISBN 9780486161167.
- ^ Montelle, Clemency (15 May 2011). Chasing Shadows: Mathematics, Astronomy, and the Early History of Eclipse Reckoning. JHU Press. p. 289. ISBN 9780801899102.
- ^ Kaser, Karl The Balkans and the Near East: Introduction to a Shared History p. 135.
- ^ Yazberdiyev, Dr. Almaz Libraries of Ancient Merv Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine Dr. Yazberdiyev is Director of the Library of the Academy of Sciences of Turkmenistan, Ashgabat.
- ^ Hyman and Walsh Philosophy in the Middle Ages Indianapolis, 3rd edition, p. 216
- ^ Meri, Josef W. and Jere L. Bacharach, Editors, Medieval Islamic Civilization Vol.1, A – K, Index, 2006, p. 451
- ^ Britannica, Nestorian
- ^ The American Journal of Islamic Social Sciences 22:2 Mehmet Mahfuz Söylemez, The Jundishapur School: Its History, Structure, and Functions, p.3.
- ^ Brickman, William W. (1961). "The Meeting of East and West in Educational History". Comparative Education Review. 5 (2): 85. doi:10.1086/444875.
- ^ Bonner, Bonner; Ener, Mine; Singer, Amy (2003). Poverty and charity in Middle Eastern contexts. SUNY Press. p. 97. ISBN 978-0-7914-5737-5.
- ^ Ruano, Eloy Benito; Burgos, Manuel Espadas (1992). 17e Congrès international des sciences historiques: Madrid, du 26 août au 2 septembre 1990. Comité international des sciences historiques. p. 527. ISBN 978-84-600-8154-8.
- ^ Harris, Michael H. (29 July 1999). History of Libraries of the Western World. Scarecrow Press. pp. 75–77. ISBN 9780810877153 – via Google Books.
- ^ Norwich, John Julius (29 October 1998). A Short History of Byzantium. Penguin Books Limited. p. 41. ISBN 9780141928593.
- ^ "Byzantine Medicine – Vienna Dioscurides". Antiqua Medicina. University of Virginia. Archived from the original on 2 April 2020. Retrieved 27 May 2007.
- ^ Byzantines in Renaissance Italy
- ^ "Fall of Constantinople". Encyclopædia Britannica.
- ^ Lindberg, David. (1992) The Beginnings of Western Science. University of Chicago Press. p. 349.
- ^ Laiou, Angeliki E. (2002). The Economic History of Byzantium: From the Seventh Through the Fifteenth Century. Dumbarton Oaks. ISBN 9780884023326.
- ^ Vryonis Jr., Speros (1967). Byzantium and Europe.
- ^ Mavroudi, Maria (2015). "Translations from Greek into Latin and Arabic during the Middle Ages: Searching for the Classical Tradition". Speculum. 90 (1): 41. doi:10.1017/S0038713414002450. JSTOR 43577272. S2CID 161272020.
- ^ "Religion and Science". stanford.edu. 2022.
- ^ Numbers 2006, pp. 268–285
- ^ Plavcan, J. Michael (2007). "The Invisible Bible: The Logic of Creation Science". In Petto, Andrew J.; Godfrey, Laurie R. (eds.). Scientists Confront Creationism. New York, London: Norton. p. 361. ISBN 978-0-393-33073-1.
Most creationists are simply people who choose to believe that God created the world-either as described in Scripture or through evolution. Creation scientists, by contrast, strive to use legitimate scientific means both to argue against evolutionary theory and to prove the creation account as described in Scripture.
- ^ Numbers 2006, pp. 271–274
- ^ Larson, Edward J. (2004). Evolution: The Remarkable History of a Scientific Theory. Modern Library. ISBN 978-0-679-64288-6.
- ^ Numbers 2006, pp. 399–431
- ^ The Origin of Rights, Roger E. Salhany, Toronto, Calgary, Vancouver:Carswell p. 32-34
- ^ "The legislative history demonstrates that the term "creation science," as contemplated by the state legislature, embraces this religious teaching." Edwards v. Aguillard
- ^ Collins, Francis S. (2007). The Language of God : A Scientist Presents Evidence for Belief. New York: Free Press. ISBN 978-1-4165-4274-2.
- ^ Schultz, Colin. "The Pope Would Like You to Accept Evolution and the Big Bang". Smithsonian Magazine. Retrieved 27 April 2022.
- ^ Pro forma candidate to Prince-Bishop of Warmia, cf. Dobrzycki, Jerzy, and Leszek Hajdukiewicz, "Kopernik, Mikołaj", Polski słownik biograficzny (Polish Biographical Dictionary), vol. XIV, Wrocław, Polish Academy of Sciences, 1969, p. 11.
- ^ Sharratt, Michael (1994). Galileo: Decisive Innovator. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 17, 213. ISBN 0-521-56671-1.
- ^ "Because he would not accept the Formula of Concord without some reservations, he was excommunicated from the Lutheran communion. Because he remained faithful to his Lutheranism throughout his life, he experienced constant suspicion from Catholics." John L. Treloar, "Biography of Kepler shows man of rare integrity. Astronomer saw science and spirituality as one." National Catholic Reporter, 8 October 2004, p. 2a. A review of James A. Connor Kepler's Witch: An Astronomer's Discovery of Cosmic Order amid Religious War, Political Intrigue and Heresy Trial of His Mother, Harper San Francisco.
- ^ Richard S. Westfall – Indiana University The Galileo Project. (Rice University). Retrieved 5 July 2008.
- ^ "The Boyle Lecture". St. Marylebow Church.
- ^ Bacon, Francis (1625). The Essayes Or Covnsels, Civill and Morall, of Francis Lo. Vervlam, Viscovnt St. Alban. London. p. 90. Retrieved 7 July 2019.
- ^ Leibniz on the Trinity and the Incarnation: Reason and Revelation in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2007, pp. xix–xx).
- ^ Swedenborg, E. The True Christian Religion, particularly sections 163–184 (New York: Swedenborg Foundation, 1951).
- ^ "Gli scienziati cattolici che hanno fatto lItalia (Catholic scientists who made Italy)". Zenit. Archived from the original on 16 April 2013.
- ^ Dunnington, G. Waldo (2004). Carl Friedrich Gauss: Titan of Science. The Mathematical Association of America. ISBN 978-0-88385-547-8. OCLC 53933110.
- ^ Grimaux, Edouard. Lavoisier 1743–1794. (Paris, 1888; 2nd ed., 1896; 3rd ed., 1899), page 53.
- ^ "John Dalton". Science History Institute. June 2016. Retrieved 20 March 2018.
- ^ Theerman, Paul (1986). "James Clerk Maxwell and religion". American Journal of Physics. 54 (4): 312–317. Bibcode:1986AmJPh..54..312T. doi:10.1119/1.14636.
- ^ Hutchinson, Ian (2006) [January 1998]. "James Clerk Maxwell and the Christian Proposition". Archived from the original on 31 December 2012. Retrieved 26 March 2013.
- ^ McCartney & Whitaker (2002), reproduced on Institute of Physics website
- ^ Vallery-Radot, Maurice (1994). Pasteur. Paris: Perrin. pp. 377–407.
- ^ Cantor, pp. 41–43, 60–64, and 277–280.
- ^ Peter J. Bowler, Reconciling Science and Religion: The Debate in Early-Twentieth-Century Britain (2014). University of Chicago Press. p. 35. ISBN 9780226068596. "Both Lord Rayleigh and J. J. Thomson were Anglicans."
- ^ Seeger, Raymond. 1986. "J. J. Thomson, Anglican," in Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith, 38 (June 1986): 131–132. The Journal of the American Scientific Affiliation. ""As a Professor, J.J. Thomson did attend the Sunday evening college chapel service, and as Master, the morning service. He was a regular communicant in the Anglican Church. In addition, he showed an active interest in the Trinity Mission at Camberwell. With respect to his private devotional life, J.J. Thomson would invariably practice kneeling for daily prayer, and read his Bible before retiring each night. He truly was a practicing Christian!" (Raymond Seeger 1986, 132)."
- ^ "Christian Influences In The Sciences". rae.org. Archived from the original on 24 September 2015.
- ^ "World's Greatest Creation Scientists from Y1K to Y2K". creationsafaris.com. Archived from the original on 15 January 2016. Retrieved 5 October 2015.
- ^ Easterbrook, G. (15 August 1997). "SCIENTIFIC COMMUNITY: Science and God: A Warming Trend?". Science. 277 (5328). American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS): 890–893. doi:10.1126/science.277.5328.890. ISSN 0036-8075. PMID 9281067. S2CID 39722460.
- ^ Cohen, I., ed. (1990). Puritanism and the Rise of Modern Science: The Merton Thesis. New Brunswick, New Jersey: Rutgers University Press. ISBN 978-0813515304.
- ^ Cohen, H. (1994). The scientific revolution: a historiographical inquiry. Chicago: University of Chicago Press. pp. 320–321. ISBN 9780226112800. Google Print, pp. 320–321
- ^ Ferngren, Gary B. (2002). Science and religion: a historical introduction. Baltimore, Maryland: Johns Hopkins University Press. p. 125. ISBN 9780801870385. Google Print, p.125
- ^ Becker, George (December 1992). "The Merton thesis: Oetinger and German Pietism, a significant negative case". Sociological Forum. 7 (4): 642–660. doi:10.1007/bf01112319. S2CID 56239703.
- ^ Harrison, Peter (8 May 2012). "Christianity and the rise of western science". Australian Broadcasting Corporation. Retrieved 28 August 2014.
- ^ a b c d e Shalev, Baruch (2005). 100 Years of Nobel Prizes. p. 59
- ^ Baruch A. Shalev (2003), 100 Years of Nobel Prizes, Atlantic Publishers & Distributors, p. 57
- ^ Shalev 2003, p. 60
- ^ 33.2% of 6.7 billion world population (under the section 'People') "World". CIA world facts. Archived from the original on 12 June 2007.
- ^ "The List: The World's Fastest-Growing Religions". foreignpolicy.com. March 2007. Archived from the original on 21 May 2007. Retrieved 4 January 2010.
- ^ "Major Religions Ranked by Size". Adherents.com. Archived from the original on 29 January 2010. Retrieved 5 May 2009.
- ^ ANALYSIS (19 December 2011). "Global Christianity". Pewforum.org. Retrieved 17 August 2012.
- ^ "A review of the Nobel prizes between 1901 and 2000 reveals that 654 Laureates belong to 28 different religions. Most (65.4%) have identified Christianity in its various forms as their religious preference. While separating Roman Catholic from Protestants among Christians proved difficult in some cases, available information suggests that more Protestants were involved in the scientific categories and more Catholics were involved in the Literature and Peace categories." Shalev 2003, p. 57
- ^ Zhang, Weijia; Fuller, Robert (May 1998). "Nobel prize winners in physics from 1901 to 1990: Simple statistics for physics teachers". Physics Education. 33 (3): 196–203. doi:10.1088/0031-9120/33/3/023. S2CID 250743713.
- ^ Ferngren, G.B. (2002). Ferngren, G.B. (ed.). Science & Religion: A Historical Introduction. Johns Hopkins University Press. p. x. ISBN 0-8018-7038-0.
... while [John] Brooke's view [of a complexity thesis rather than an historical conflict thesis] has gained widespread acceptance among professional historians of science, the traditional view remains strong elsewhere, not least in the popular mind.
- ^ Ecklund, Elaine Howard; Park, Jerry Z. (2009). "Conflict Between Religion and Science Among Academic Scientists?". Journal for the Scientific Study of Religion. 48 (2): 276–292. doi:10.1111/j.1468-5906.2009.01447.x.
- ^ "How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization". Retrieved 3 February 2010.
- ^ Numbers, Ronald L. "Introduction" in Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths About Science and Religion. Ed. Ronald Numbers. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 2009. Page 6.
- ^ Hilliam, Rachel (15 December 2004). Galileo Galilei: Father of modern science. The Rosen Publishing Group, Inc. ISBN 978-1-4042-0314-3.
- ^ a b c d e Foss, Jeffrey (2014). Science and the World: Philosophical Approaches (illustrated ed.). Broadview Press. pp. 285–286. ISBN 9781551116242.
- ^ Aechtner, Thomas."Galileo Still Goes to Jail: Conflict Model Persistence within Introductory Anthropology Materials"; and Garrett Kenney,"Why Religion Matters and the Purposes of Higher Education: A Dialogue with Huston Smith."." Zygon® 50.1 (2015): 209–226. loc=Abstract
- ^ Daub, Edward E. "Demythologizing White's Warfare of Science with Theology." American Biology Teacher 40.9 (1978): 553–56.
Works cited
[edit]- Numbers, Ronald L. (2006). The Creationists: From Scientific Creationism to Intelligent Design. Harvard University Press. ISBN 978-0-674-02339-0.
- Shalev, Baruch A. (2003). 100 Years of Nobel Prizes. Atlantic Publishers & Dist. ISBN 978-81-269-0278-1.
- Thomas, Anne (24 April 2000), This I Know Experimentally, Spring 2000 Monday Night Lecture Series: Science and Religion, Pendle Hill (published 6 October 2003), archived from the original on 1 May 2006, retrieved 29 June 2009
Further reading
[edit]- Buxhoeveden, Daniel; Woloschak, Gayle, eds. (2011). Science and the Eastern Orthodox Church (1. ed.). Farnham: Ashgate. ISBN 9781409481614.
- Spierer, Eugen. God-of-the-Gaps Arguments in Light of Luther's Theology of the Cross. Archived 19 August 2019 at the Wayback Machine
- Matthews, Roy T.; Platt, F. DeWitt (1991). The Western Humanities. Mayfield Publishing Co. ISBN 0874847850.
External links
[edit]- Christianity And The Scientist by Ian G. Barbour Archived 4 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
- Cambridge Christians in Science (CiS) group Archived 3 July 2019 at the Wayback Machine
- Christians in Science website
- Ian Ramsey Centre, Oxford
- The Society of Ordained Scientists-Mostly Church of England
- "Science in Christian Perspective" The (ASA)
- Canadian Scientific and Christian Affiliation (CSCA)
- The International Society for Science & Religion's founding members.(Of various faiths including Christianity)
- Association of Christians in the Mathematical Sciences
- Secular Humanism.org article on Science and Religion Archived 19 June 2010 at the Wayback Machine