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Author: Bernard Lightman
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082298704X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300
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Book Description
The historical interface between science and religion was depicted as an unbridgeable conflict in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Starting in the 1970s, such a conception was too simplistic and not at all accurate when considering the totality of that relationship. This volume evaluates the utility of the “complexity principle” in past, present, and future scholarship. First put forward by historian John Brooke over twenty-five years ago, the complexity principle rejects the idea of a single thesis of conflict or harmony, or integration or separation, between science and religion. Rethinking History, Science, and Religion brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars at the forefront of their fields to consider whether new approaches to the study of science and culture—such as recent developments in research on science and the history of publishing, the global history of science, the geographical examination of space and place, and science and media—have cast doubt on the complexity thesis, or if it remains a serviceable historiographical model.
Author: Bernard Lightman
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 082298704X
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 300
Get Book Here
Book Description
The historical interface between science and religion was depicted as an unbridgeable conflict in the last quarter of the nineteenth century. Starting in the 1970s, such a conception was too simplistic and not at all accurate when considering the totality of that relationship. This volume evaluates the utility of the “complexity principle” in past, present, and future scholarship. First put forward by historian John Brooke over twenty-five years ago, the complexity principle rejects the idea of a single thesis of conflict or harmony, or integration or separation, between science and religion. Rethinking History, Science, and Religion brings together an interdisciplinary group of scholars at the forefront of their fields to consider whether new approaches to the study of science and culture—such as recent developments in research on science and the history of publishing, the global history of science, the geographical examination of space and place, and science and media—have cast doubt on the complexity thesis, or if it remains a serviceable historiographical model.
Author: Peter Harrison
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0192571540
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 304
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Book Description
Can scientific explanation ever make reference to God or the supernatural? The present consensus is no; indeed, a naturalistic stance is usually taken to be a distinguishing feature of modern science. Some would go further still, maintaining that the success of scientific explanation actually provides compelling evidence that there are no supernatural entities, and that true science, from the very beginning, was opposed to religious thinking. Science without God? Rethinking the History of Scientific Naturalism shows that the history of Western science presents us with a more nuanced picture. Beginning with the naturalists of ancient Greece, and proceeding through the middle ages, the scientific revolution, and into the nineteenth century, the contributors examine past ideas about 'nature' and 'the supernatural'. Ranging over different scientific disciplines and historical periods, they show how past thinkers often relied upon theological ideas and presuppositions in their systematic investigations of the world. In addition to providing material that contributes to a history of 'nature' and naturalism, this collection challenges a number of widely held misconceptions about the history of scientific naturalism.
Author: Thomas Bender
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520936035
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 437
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Book Description
In rethinking and reframing the American national narrative in a wider context, the contributors to this volume ask questions about both nationalism and the discipline of history itself. The essays offer fresh ways of thinking about the traditional themes and periods of American history. By locating the study of American history in a transnational context, they examine the history of nation-making and the relation of the United States to other nations and to transnational developments. What is now called globalization is here placed in a historical context. A cast of distinguished historians from the United States and abroad examines the historiographical implications of such a reframing and offers alternative interpretations of large questions of American history ranging from the era of European contact to democracy and reform, from environmental and economic development and migration experiences to issues of nationalism and identity. But the largest issue explored is basic to all histories: How does one understand, teach, and write a national history even as one recognizes that the territorial boundaries do not fully contain that history and that within that bounded territory the society is highly differentiated, marked by multiple solidarities and identities? Rethinking American History in a Global Age advances an emerging but important conversation marked by divergent voices, many of which are represented here. The various essays explore big concepts and offer historical narratives that enrich the content and context of American history. The aim is to provide a history that more accurately reflects the dimensions of American experience and better connects the past with contemporary concerns for American identity, structures of power, and world presence.
Author: Fern Elsdon-Baker
Publisher: University of Pittsburgh Press
ISBN: 0822987694
Category : Science
Languages : en
Pages : 379
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Book Description
Although historians have suggested for some time that we move away from the assumption of a necessary clash between science and religion, the conflict narrative persists in contemporary discourse. But why? And how do we really know what people actually think about evolutionary science, let alone the many and varied ways in which it might relate to individual belief? In this multidisciplinary volume, experts in history and philosophy of science, oral history, sociology of religion, social psychology, and science communication and public engagement look beyond two warring systems of thought. They consider a far more complex, multifaceted, and distinctly more interesting picture of how differing groups along a spectrum of worldviews—including atheistic, agnostic, and faith groups—relate to and form the ongoing narrative of a necessary clash between evolution and faith. By ascribing agency to the public, from the nineteenth century to the present and across Canada and the United Kingdom, this volume offers a much more nuanced analysis of people’s perceptions about the relationship between evolutionary science, religion, and personal belief, one that better elucidates the complexities not only of that relationship but of actual lived experience.
Author: Barbara O'Brien
Publisher:
ISBN: 9780692224502
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 184
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Book Description
Does religion have something positive to offer the 21st century (and beyond)? Or is it a vestige of the Iron Age that ought to be contained in museums, preferably under bell jars? More critically, is it even possible to be religious and also be a rational and entirely modern participant in 21st-century civilization? Is it possible to live a devotional, religious life today without denying science or otherwise being assimilated by some religious-authoritarian Borg? Rethinking Religion argues that today's clown-shoes religiosity is an infantile caricature of religion that the great theologians, scholars, saints and sages of the past wouldn't recognize as religion at all. Religion may be salvageable, and may even be beneficial, but only if we can rediscover what it is and how to make use of it. Rethinking Religion is a proposal for how we might do that. This book is not written from any one sectarian position. The author was raised Christian in the Bible Belt, but she has been a formal student of Soto Zen Buddhism for many years and is currently the expert on Buddhism for the reference website About.com. The perspectives in Rethinking Religion apply to all the world's religious great religious traditions - Buddhism, Christianity, Hinduism, Islam, Judaism, and the rest of them. The author also is supportive of atheism and does not think everyone has to be religious. Along the way, the author explains why Christian megachurches turn Christ into McJesus; why being "spiritual but not religious" may not be a good idea; why Buddhists in Sri Lanka and Burma (Myanmar) are turning violent; and why people join cults and believe ridiculous things. This book also challenges assumptions - why "faith" is not the same as "belief"; why some atheists aren't nearly skeptical enough; why "reality" may not be what you think it is; why morality doesn't have to be tied to religion; and why there may be a God, but if so, God isn't God - or at least, any God you can imagine. Today, most of the ongoing violent conflicts around the globe have a connection to religion. Recent studies reveal that religion-based violence is on the rise, in fact. In many ways religion has become a millstone around humanity's neck, holding us back from our potential to live in peace and harmony and enjoy the blessings of science. Rethinking Religion will show you that it doesn't have to be this way, and argues that enlightened religion is the most effective weapon against oppressive and stupid religion.
Author: Timothy Samuel Shah
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0199827982
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 330
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Book Description
In recent years, the role of religion in the study and conduct of international affairs has become increasingly important. The essays in this volume seek to question and remedy the problematic neglect of religion in extant scholarship, grappling with puzzles, issues, and questions concerning religion and world affairs in six major areas. Contributors critically revisit the "secularization thesis," which proclaimed the steady erosion of religion's public presence as an effect of modernization; explore the relationship between religion, democracy, and the juridico-political discourse of human rights; assess the role of religion in fomenting, ameliorating, and redressing violent conflict; and consider the value of religious beliefs, actors, and institutions to the delivery of humanitarian aid and the fostering of socio-economic development. Finally, the volume addresses the representation of religion in the expanding global media landscape, the unique place of religion in American foreign policy, and the dilemmas it presents. Drawing on the work of leading scholars as well as policy makers and analysts, Rethinking Religion and World Affairs is the first comprehensive and authoritative guide to the interconnections of religion and global politics.
Author: Thomas A. Tweed
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520917987
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 318
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Book Description
This collection marks a turning point in the study of the history of American religions. In challenging the dominant paradigm, Thomas A. Tweed and his coauthors propose nothing less than a reshaping of the way that American religious history is understood, studied, and taught. The range of these essays is extraordinary. They analyze sexual pleasure, colonization, gender, and interreligious exchange. The narrators position themselves in a number of geographical sites, including the Canadian border, the American West, and the Deep South. And they discuss a wide range of groups, from Pueblo Indians and Russian Orthodox to Japanese Buddhists and Southern Baptists.
Author: Peter Harrison
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
ISBN: 022618448X
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 315
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Book Description
Peter Harrison takes what we think we know about science and religion, dismantles it, and puts it back together again in a provocative new way. It is a mistake to assume, as most do, that the activities and achievements that are usually labeled religious and scientific have been more or less enduring features of the cultural landscape of the West. Harrison, by setting out the history of science and religion to see when and where they come into being and to trace their mutations over timereveals how distinctively Western and modern they are. Only in the past few hundred years have religious beliefs and practices been bounded by a common notion and set apart from the secular. And the idea of the natural sciences as discrete activities conducted in isolation from religious and moral concerns is even more recent, dating from the nineteenth century. Putting the so-called opposition between religion and science into historical perspective, as Harrison does here for the first time, has profound implications for our understanding of the present and future relations between them. "
Author: Warren A. Nord
Publisher: UNC Press Books
ISBN: 1469617455
Category : Education
Languages : en
Pages : 502
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Book Description
Warren Nord's thoughtful book tackles an issue of great importance in contemporary America: the role of religion in our public schools and universities. According to Nord, public opinion has been excessively polarized by those religious conservatives who would restore religious purposes and practices to public education and by those secular liberals for whom religion is irrelevant to everything in the curriculum. While he maintains that public schools and universities must not promote religion, he also argues that there are powerful philosophical, political, moral, and constitutional reasons for requiring students to study religion. Indeed, only if religion is included in the curriculum will students receive a truly liberal education, one that takes seriously a variety of ways of understanding the human experience. Intended for a broad audience, Nord's comprehensive study encompasses American history, constitutional law, educational theory and practice, theology, philosophy, and ethics. It also discusses a number of current, controversial issues, including multiculturalism, moral education, creationism, academic freedom, and the voucher and school choice movements.
Author: Jürgen Renn
Publisher: Princeton University Press
ISBN: 069117198X
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 580
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Book Description
Jürgen Renn examines the role of knowledge in global transformations going back to the dawn of civilization while providing vital perspectives on the complex challenges confronting us today in the Anthropocene--this new geological epoch shaped by humankind. Renn reframes the history of science and technology within a much broader history of knowledge, analyzing key episodes such as the evolution of writing, the emergence of science in the ancient world, the Scientific Revolution of early modernity, the globalization of knowledge, industrialization, and the profound transformations wrought by modern science. He investigates the evolution of knowledge using an array of disciplines and methods, from cognitive science and experimental psychology to earth science and evolutionary biology. The result is an entirely new framework for understanding structural changes in systems of knowledge--and a bold new approach to the history and philosophy of science.
