Hostname: page-component-5d84bcc8dc-w5pps Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2026-08-12T18:18:04.753Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Beyond War and Peace: A Reappraisal of the Encounter between Christianity and Science

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 July 2009

David C. Lindberg  and
Ronald L. Numbers
David C. Lindberg
Affiliation:
Professor of the history of science in the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.
Ronald L. Numbers
Affiliation:
Professor of the history of medicine and the history of science in the University of Wisconsin, Madison, Wisconsin.
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Extract

On a December evening in 1869, with memories of civil war still fresh in their minds, a large audience gathered in the great hall of Cooper Union in New York City to hear about another conflict, still taking its toll—“with battles fiercer, with sieges more persistent, with strategy more vigorous than in any of the comparatively petty warfares of Alexander, or Caesar, or Napoleon.” Although waged with pens rather than swords, and for minds rather than empires, this war, too had destroyed lives and reputations. The combatants? Science and Religion.

Information

Type
Research Article
Information
Church History , Volume 55 , Issue 3 , September 1986 , pp. 338 - 354
Copyright
Copyright © American Society of Church History 1986

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

Article purchase

Temporarily unavailable

References

1. “First of the Course of Scientific Lectures—Prof. White on ‘The Battlefields of Science,’” New York Daily Tribune, 18 12. 1869, p. 4.Google Scholar

2. Mazlish, Bruce, Preface to A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, by White, Andrew Dickson (abridged ed., New York, 1965), p. 13;Google ScholarWhite, Andrew Dickson, A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, 2 vols. (New York, 1896), 1: viii.Google Scholar On White, see Altschuler, Glenn C., White, Andrew D.—Educator, Historian, Diplomat (Ithaca, 1979).Google Scholar

3. “First of the Course of Scientific Lectures,” p. 4.Google Scholar

4. Ibid.

5. Ibid.; White, Andrew Dickson, The Warfare of Science (New York, 1876), p. 145Google Scholar; White, A History of the Warfare, 1: ix, xii. Although hints of White's distinction between religion and theology appear in his earlier works, the focus on dogmatic theology in his 1896 volumes seems to have been more of an afterthought—a misleading effort to distance himself from William Draper—than an essential premise. See Draper, , History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (New York, 1874).Google Scholar Henry Guerlac corroborates this judgment in an unpublished memoire, “Sartoniana and Forward,” where he notes that White had intended to entitle the 1896 book A History of the Warfare of Science and Religion, but was talked out of it by his collaborator, George Lincoln Burr.

6. Mazlish, Preface, p. 18; Sarton, George, “Introductory Essay,” in Science, Religion and Reality, ed. Needham, Joseph (New York, 1955), p. 14.Google Scholar

7. For a brilliant critique of the warfare metaphor, see Moore, James R., The Post-Darwinian Controversies: A Study of the Protestant Struggle to Come to Terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900 (Cambridge, 1979), pp. 19–122.CrossRefGoogle Scholar See also Lindberg, David C. and Numbers, Ronald L., eds. God and Nature: Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science (Berkeley, 1986),Google Scholar passim; and Numbers, Ronald L., “Science and Religion,” in Historical Writing on American Science, ed. Kohlstedt, Sally Gregory and Rossiter, Margaret W., Osiris 1, 2d ser. (1985): 59–80.Google Scholar

8. White, , A History of the Warfare, 1: 325.Google Scholar For a fuller account of science and the early church, see Lindberg, David C., “Science and the Early Church,” in God and Nature, pp. 19–58.Google Scholar

9. White, , A History of the Warfare, 1: 375.Google Scholar

10. Augustine, , Enchiridion 3.9, trans. Outler, Albert C., Library of Christian Classics 7 (Philadelphia, 1955), pp. 341–342.Google Scholar

11. Augustine, , Degenesi adhtteram 1.19;Google Scholar trans. Carre, Meyrick H., Realists and Nominalists (London, 1946), p. 19.Google Scholar For another translation, see Augustine, , The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans. Taylor, John Hammond, S.J., 2 vols., Ancient Christian Writers 41–42 (New York, 1982), 1: 42–43.Google Scholar

12. The themes of this and the preceding paragraph are more fully developed in Lindberg, , “Science and the Early Church,” pp. 29–33.Google Scholar

13. For a good account of the effects of the condemnations, see Grant, Edward, “The Condemnation of 1277, God's Absolute Power, and Physical Thought in the Late Middle Ages,” Viator 10 (1979): 211–244;CrossRefGoogle Scholar reprinted in Grant's, EdwardStudies in Medieval Science and Natural Philosophy (London, 1981),Google Scholar article 13.

14. See Gary, Deason, “Reformation Theology and the Mechanistic Conception of Nature,” in God and Nature, pp. 181–185.Google Scholar

15. White, , A History of the Warfare, 1: 123.Google Scholar

16. Ibid., 1: 123–124.

17. Oresme's discussion is translated and analyzed in Clagett, Marshall, The Science of Mechanics in the Middle Ages (Madison, 1959), pp. 600–609.Google Scholar

18. On the sixteenth-century Catholic response to Copernicanism, see Westman, Robert S., “Copernicanism and the Churches,” pp. 81–85, 86–95.Google Scholar

19. White, , A History of the Warfare, 1: 26.Google Scholar On the Protestant response to Copernicanism, see Westman, , “Copernicanism and the Churches,” pp. 81–85, 89–98.Google Scholar

20. On Luther and Melanchthon see Gerrish, B. A., “The Reformation and the Rise of Modern Science,” in The Impact of the Church Upon Its Culture: Reappraisals of the History of Christianity, ed. Brauer, Jerald C. (Chicago, 1968), pp. 231–265.Google Scholar For the latest word in the long debate over Calvin's position, see Stauffer, R., “Calvin et Copernic,” Revue de l'histoire des religions 179 (1971): 31–40;CrossRefGoogle ScholarWhite, Robert, “Calvin and Copernicus: The Problem Reconsidered. Calvin Theological Journal 15 (1980): 233–243.Google Scholar

21. Westman, Robert S., “The Melanchthon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory,” Isis 66 (1976): 164–193.Google Scholar

22. White, , A History of the Warfare, 1: 130–131.Google Scholar

23. The text of the decree is given in Pedersen, Olaf, “Galileo and the Council of Trent: The Galileo Affair Revisited,” Journal for the History of Astronomy 14 (1983): 28–29,CrossRefGoogle Scholar n. 46.

24. On the issues between Galileo and his critics within the church, see ibid; also Shea, William R., “Galileo and the Church,” in God and Nature, pp. 118–133.Google Scholar

25. On the course of events, see (in addition to the works by Petersen and Shea) Langford, Jerome J., Galileo, Science, and the Church (New York, 1966).Google Scholar

26. The struggle over heliocentrism was not the only battle during the period of the scientific revolution identified by White. For his discussion of the biomedical sciences, see A History of the Warfare, 1: 49–63. For contrasting views, see Numbers, Ronald L. and Sawyer, Ronald C., “Medicine and Christianity in the Modern World,” in Health/Medicine and the Faith Traditions, ed. Marty, Martin E. and Vaux, Kenneth L. (Philadelphia, 1982), pp. 134–136;Google Scholar and Walsh, James J., The Popes and Science (New York, 1908).Google Scholar

27. White, , A History of the Warfare, 1: 22, 218.Google Scholar

28. Ibid., 1: 17–18.

29. Numbers, Ronald L., Creation by Natural Law: Laplace's Nebular Hypothesis in American Thought (Seattle, 1977).Google Scholar

30. Gillispie, Charles Coulston, Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850 (Cambridge, Mass., 1951);Google ScholarWhite, , A History of the Warfare, 1: 234.Google Scholar See also Rupke, Nicolas A., The Great Chain of History: William Buckland and the English School of Geology, 1814–1849 (Oxford, 1983).Google Scholar

31. Moore, James R., “Geologists and Interpreters of Genesis in the Nineteenth Century,” in God and Nature, pp. 322–350.Google Scholar See also Martin J. S. Rudwick, “The Shape and Meaning of Earth-History,” ibid., pp. 296–321.

32. White, , A History of the Warfare, 1: 70–71.Google Scholar

33. Lucas, J. R., “Wilberforce and Huxley: A Legendary Encounter,” The Historical Journal 22 (1979): 313–330.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed See also Gilley, Sheridan, “The Huxley-Wilberforce Debate: A Reconsideration,” in Religion and Humanism, ed. Robbins, Keith, Studies in Church History 17 (Oxford, 1981), pp. 325–340.Google Scholar

34. Quoted in Lucas, , “Wilberforce and Huxley,” pp. 317–320.Google Scholar

35. Ibid., pp. 313–330.

36. Waggoner, Paul M, “The Historiography of the Scopes Trial: A Critical Re-evaluation,” Trinity Journal, n.s. 5 (1984): 155–174;Google ScholarNumbers, Ronald L., “Creationism in 20th-Century America,” Science 218 (1982): 538–544.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed See also Larson, Edward J., Trial and Error: The American Controversy over Creation and Evolution (New York, 1985).Google Scholar

37. White, , A History of the Warfare, 1: 68, 82.Google Scholar On the relationship between Darwinism and Calvinism, see Moore, , Post-Darwinian Controversies, pp. 280–298, 334–340.Google Scholar White's interpretation of the Darwinian debates is rejected also by Dupree, A. Hunter, “Christianity and the Scientific Community in the Age of Darwin,” in God and Nature, pp. 351–368.Google Scholar

38. Moore, , Post-Darwinian Controversies, pp. 102–103.Google Scholar

39. Gillespie, Neal C., Charles Darwin and the Problem of Creation (Chicago, 1979), pp. 12–13, 18, 53.Google Scholar Se also Ellegård, Alvar, Darwin and the General Reader: The Reception of Darwin's Theory of Evolution in the British Periodical Press, 1859–1872: (Goteborg, Sweden, 1958), p. 337.Google Scholar

40. Turner, Frank M., “The Victorian Conflict between Science and Religion: A Professional Dimension,” Isis 69 (1979): 356–376.CrossRefGoogle ScholarChadwick, Owen has argued that the conflict between science and religion “was hypostatized, necessarily, out of a number of conflicts”; The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge, 1975), pp. 163–164.Google Scholar

41. See, for example, Daub, Edward E., “Demythologizing White's Warfare of Science with Theology,” American Biology Teacher 40 (1978): 553–556.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

42. See, for example, Hooykaas, R [eijer], Religion and the Rise of Modern Science (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1972);Google Scholar and Jaki, Stanley L., The Road of Science and the Ways to God (Chicago, 1978).Google Scholar

43. On the need for a neutral stance, see Rudwick, Martin, “Senses of the Natural World and Senses of God: Another Look at the Historical Relation of Science and Religion,” in The Sciences and Theology in the Twentieth Century, ed. Peacocke, A. R. (Notre Dame, 1981), pp. 241–261.Google Scholar

44. Although we are aware of the danger that some readers might interpret our use of the terms “science” and “Christianity” as an unwarranted reification of these entities, we have retained this terminology as a convenient way of designating the various manifestations of Christianity and science.