Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion

Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion PDF Author: Ronald L. Numbers
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674057414
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
If we want nonscientists and opinion-makers in the press, the lab, and the pulpit to take a fresh look at the relationship between science and religion, Ronald Numbers suggests that we must first dispense with the hoary myths that have masqueraded too long as historical truths. Until about the 1970s, the dominant narrative in the history of science had long been that of science triumphant, and science at war with religion. But a new generation of historians both of science and of the church began to examine episodes in the history of science and religion through the values and knowledge of the actors themselves. Now Ronald Numbers has recruited the leading scholars in this new history of science to puncture the myths, from Galileo’s incarceration to Darwin’s deathbed conversion to Einstein’s belief in a personal God who “didn’t play dice with the universe.” The picture of science and religion at each other’s throats persists in mainstream media and scholarly journals, but each chapter in Galileo Goes to Jail shows how much we have to gain by seeing beyond the myths.

Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion

Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion PDF Author: Ronald L. Numbers
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674057414
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 317

Get Book Here

Book Description
If we want nonscientists and opinion-makers in the press, the lab, and the pulpit to take a fresh look at the relationship between science and religion, Ronald Numbers suggests that we must first dispense with the hoary myths that have masqueraded too long as historical truths. Until about the 1970s, the dominant narrative in the history of science had long been that of science triumphant, and science at war with religion. But a new generation of historians both of science and of the church began to examine episodes in the history of science and religion through the values and knowledge of the actors themselves. Now Ronald Numbers has recruited the leading scholars in this new history of science to puncture the myths, from Galileo’s incarceration to Darwin’s deathbed conversion to Einstein’s belief in a personal God who “didn’t play dice with the universe.” The picture of science and religion at each other’s throats persists in mainstream media and scholarly journals, but each chapter in Galileo Goes to Jail shows how much we have to gain by seeing beyond the myths.

Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion

Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion PDF Author: Ronald L. Numbers
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674033272
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 317

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Book Description
Leading scholars in the history of science puncture the myths that continue to cause friction between the science and religious communities.

Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science

Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science PDF Author: Ronald L. Numbers
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 0674967984
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 304

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Book Description
A Guardian “Favourite Reads—as Chosen by Scientists” Selection “Tackles some of science’s most enduring misconceptions.” —Discover A falling apple inspired Isaac Newton’s insight into the law of gravity—or did it really? Among the many myths debunked in this refreshingly irreverent book are the idea that alchemy was a superstitious pursuit, that Darwin put off publishing his theory of evolution for fear of public reprisal, and that Gregor Mendel was ahead of his time as a pioneer of genetics. More recent myths about particle physics and Einstein’s theory of relativity are discredited too, and a number of dubious generalizations, like the notion that science and religion are antithetical, or that science can neatly be distinguished from pseudoscience, go under the microscope of history. Newton’s Apple and Other Myths about Science brushes away popular fictions and refutes the widespread belief that science advances when individual geniuses experience “Eureka!” moments and suddenly grasp what those around them could never imagine. “Delightful...thought-provoking...Every reader should find something to surprise them.” —Jim Endersby, Science “Better than just countering the myths, the book explains when they arose and why they stuck.” —The Guardian

The Warfare between Science and Religion

The Warfare between Science and Religion PDF Author: Jeff Hardin
Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press
ISBN: 1421426188
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 367

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Book Description
Why is the idea of conflict between science and religion so popular in the public imagination? The “conflict thesis”—the idea that an inevitable and irreconcilable conflict exists between science and religion—has long been part of the popular imagination. In The Warfare between Science and Religion, Jeff Hardin, Ronald L. Numbers, and Ronald A. Binzley have assembled a group of distinguished historians who explore the origin of the thesis, its reception, the responses it drew from various faith traditions, and its continued prominence in public discourse. Several essays in the book examine the personal circumstances and theological idiosyncrasies of important intellectuals, including John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, who through their polemical writings championed the conflict thesis relentlessly. Other essays consider what the thesis meant to different religious communities, including evangelicals, liberal Protestants, Roman Catholics, Eastern Orthodox Christians, Jews, and Muslims. Finally, essays both historical and sociological explore the place of the conflict thesis in popular culture and intellectual discourse today. Based on original research and written in an accessible style, the essays in The Warfare between Science and Religion take an interdisciplinary approach to question the historical relationship between science and religion. This volume, which brings much-needed perspective to an often bitter controversy, will appeal to scholars and students of the histories of science and religion, sociology, and philosophy. Contributors: Thomas H. Aechtner, Ronald A. Binzley, John Hedley Brooke, Elaine Howard Ecklund, Noah Efron, John H. Evans, Maurice A. Finocchiaro, Frederick Gregory, Bradley J. Gundlach, Monte Harrell Hampton, Jeff Hardin, Peter Harrison, Bernard Lightman, David N. Livingstone, David Mislin, Efthymios Nicolaidis, Mark A. Noll, Ronald L. Numbers, Lawrence M. Principe, Jon H. Roberts, Christopher P. Scheitle, M. Alper Yalçinkaya

A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom

A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom PDF Author: Andrew Dickson White
Publisher:
ISBN:
Category : Religion and science
Languages : en
Pages : 510

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Book Description


Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes

Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes PDF Author: Derrick Peterson
Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers
ISBN: 1532653336
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 379

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Book Description
We are all haunted by histories. They shape our presuppositions and ballast our judgments. In terms of science and religion this means most of us walk about haunted by rumors of a long war. However, there is no such thing as the “history of the conflict of science and Christianity,” and this is a book about it. In the last half of the twentieth century a sea change in the history of science and religion occurred, revealing not only that the perception of protracted warfare between religion and science was a curious set of mythologies that had been combined together into a sort of supermyth in need of debunking. It was also seen that this collective mythology arose in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries by historians involved in many sides of the debates over Darwin’s discoveries, and from there latched onto the public imagination at large. Flat Earths and Fake Footnotes takes the reader on a journey showing how these myths were constructed, collected together, and eventually debunked. Join us for a story of flat earths and fake footnotes, to uncover the strange tale of how the conflict of science and Christianity was written into history.

Ethnographic Sorcery

Ethnographic Sorcery PDF Author: Harry G. West
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 0226894126
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 147

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Book Description
According to the people of the Mueda plateau in northern Mozambique, sorcerers remake the world by asserting the authority of their own imaginative visions of it. While conducting research among these Muedans, anthropologist Harry G. West made a revealing discovery—for many of them, West’s efforts to elaborate an ethnographic vision of their world was itself a form of sorcery. In Ethnographic Sorcery, West explores the fascinating issues provoked by this equation. A key theme of West’s research into sorcery is that one sorcerer’s claims can be challenged or reversed by other sorcerers. After West’s attempt to construct a metaphorical interpretation of Muedan assertions that the lions prowling their villages are fabricated by sorcerers is disputed by his Muedan research collaborators, West realized that ethnography and sorcery indeed have much in common. Rather than abandoning ethnography, West draws inspiration from this connection, arguing that anthropologists, along with the people they study, can scarcely avoid interpreting the world they inhabit, and that we are all, inescapably, ethnographic sorcerers.

The Creationists

The Creationists PDF Author: Ronald L. Numbers
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674023390
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 636

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Book Description
In light of the embattled status of evolutionary theory, particularly as 'intelligent design' makes headway against Darwinism in the schools and in the courts, this account of the roots of creationism assumes new relevance. This edition offers an overview of the arguments and figures at the heart of the debate.

Science and Religion

Science and Religion PDF Author: Daniel C. Dennett
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN:
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 100

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Book Description
An enlightening discussion that will motivate students to think critically, the book opens with Plantinga's assertion that Christianity is compatible with evolutionary theory because Christians believe that God created the living world, and it is entirely possible that God did so by using a process of evolution.

Time Traveling With Science and the Saints

Time Traveling With Science and the Saints PDF Author: George A. Erickson
Publisher: Prometheus Books
ISBN: 1615929088
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 186

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Book Description
For sixteen centuries Christianity dominated Western culture, during which time a powerful church rigidly and sometimes ruthlessly imposed its dogma. Under these conditions progressive thinkers who departed from the Christian worldview encountered stiff opposition from ecclesiastical authorities. Persecution by both church and state as a means of stifling heretics became routine.Using the biblical dictum, ôby their fruits shall ye know themö (Mt. 7:20), humanist George Erickson surveys the historical record of the defenders of faith and the proponents of reason. His analysis challenges the commonly held belief that despite its many abuses religion on balance civilized the world. Beginning with the unfettered progress of science in pre-Christian, polytheistic societies, he notes that this progress was soon actively thwarted by the growing Christian throng. Aided by the carrot-and-stick appeal of heaven and hell, missionary passion, superstitions, and miracles, Christianity gradually overwhelmed its religious competitors while simultaneously working to destroy all interest in scientific reasoning.Yet even amidst these suffocating, often bloody conditions, certain individuals doggedly pursued new and dangerous, frequently heretical scientific research, sometimes at the risk of their lives. Erickson briefly profiles such pioneers as Giordano Bruno, Copernicus, Galileo, Darwin, Linnaeus, and others. While condemning the Christianity that produced such abominations as the Inquisition and witch hunts, Erickson concludes on an optimistic note, emphasizing that science and secular society have broken free from centuries of religious opposition, and continue to benefit the world through mass education, modern medicine, and technological progress.George A. Erickson (New Brighton, MN) is a former director of the American Humanist Association, a member of the Council for Secular Humanism and the National Center for Science Education, and the author of a pro-science, pro-freethought travel adventure book titled True North: Exploring the Great Wilderness by Bush Plane.