Excuse Me, But There's a bit of Theology in Your Science: Readings in the History of Science and Christianity (Part Two)
In Part One I listed several books on the history of Science and Christianity I was reading for my final class at Seminary. This is a continuation of that list with one difference: whereas the works of the first list were more general introductions to the history (though this is an unfair summary), here I am listing works I will read, which imply the rise of science was not a "secularization", but rather theology and science were intricately related in often bizarre, and even hidden, ways.
Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century (Princeton, 1985), 440pp.
I actually read this one over the summer to aid in completing my thesis, but it nonetheless absolutely bears mentioning. This is an extremely fascinating (and extremely difficult) read which demonstrates how theological conceptions of God played into theology up until the early seventeenth century. Quite unexpectedly, Funkenstein organizes the first three-quarters of the book (perhaps a bit more) by looking at how three attributes of God (!)--his Omnipresence, Omnipotence, and Providence--evolved, mutated, implicated, and was implicated by, emerging scientific discourse. This is considered by experts in the field as a groundbreaking work. In unexpected ways, for example, post-nominalist speculations on God's absolute power led fairly directly into later theorizations on spatial vacuum, inertia, and planetary motion, while the doctrine of God's accommodation (the idea that God reveals only what man is capable of receiving at a given period of history) itself was transformed into, e.g. Adam Smith's theory of the Invisible Hand guiding the Free Market.
Peter Harrison, The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge, 2001), 328pp.
The first of two books by Peter Harrison I am going to read, this one, as with all the others, complicates the "warfare" thesis of science and Christianity by analyzing how science and interpretive strategies to read the bible co-evolved and provided mutual feedback to one another. Indeed, Harrison is so bold as to argue that the rise of modern science is linked to Protestant interpretive approaches to the texts of Scripture. This is, however, taken in its necessarily ambivalent form: if this mutual implication is true, then theology and Biblical exegesis (legitimate or not) are not just implicated in theoretical progress, but in the technical exploitation of nature.
Peter Harrison, The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (Cambridge, 2009), 316pp.
Harrison's more recent work is an investigation into how the theological concept of the Fall of Man played into the evolution of modern science. If this seems confusing, the basic premise is that in the noetic effects of sin (that is, regarding the darkening of the human mind) meant theologians had to become increasingly explicit and cautious in reflecting upon the methodology used to reached conclusions--not just about God, but even the world. At its inception, then, the sciences in their modern form have hiding within them the theological legacy of the idea that science itself variously conceived was a way to try and recapture the knowledge that Adam once possessed of nature.
Umberto Eco, The Search for the Perfect Language (Wiley-Blackwell, 1997), 400pp.
Tackling a similar subject to Harrison's The Fall of Man, Eco retraces the Western idea that once, before Babel, before the Fall, mankind possessed a perfect Edenic language that was pure and transparent to the world and God. As is Eco's want (and why we love him) this incredibly learned and fascinating work travels through the esoteric and the bizarre, unearthing the weird roots of European and Western thought at large. At the base of the modern scientific search for clarity, in startling ways, lay the myth of the primordial language. Our science, in one sense, is inspired by nothing other than the historical pretense to speak the name of God.
I actually read this one over the summer to aid in completing my thesis, but it nonetheless absolutely bears mentioning. This is an extremely fascinating (and extremely difficult) read which demonstrates how theological conceptions of God played into theology up until the early seventeenth century. Quite unexpectedly, Funkenstein organizes the first three-quarters of the book (perhaps a bit more) by looking at how three attributes of God (!)--his Omnipresence, Omnipotence, and Providence--evolved, mutated, implicated, and was implicated by, emerging scientific discourse. This is considered by experts in the field as a groundbreaking work. In unexpected ways, for example, post-nominalist speculations on God's absolute power led fairly directly into later theorizations on spatial vacuum, inertia, and planetary motion, while the doctrine of God's accommodation (the idea that God reveals only what man is capable of receiving at a given period of history) itself was transformed into, e.g. Adam Smith's theory of the Invisible Hand guiding the Free Market.
The first of two books by Peter Harrison I am going to read, this one, as with all the others, complicates the "warfare" thesis of science and Christianity by analyzing how science and interpretive strategies to read the bible co-evolved and provided mutual feedback to one another. Indeed, Harrison is so bold as to argue that the rise of modern science is linked to Protestant interpretive approaches to the texts of Scripture. This is, however, taken in its necessarily ambivalent form: if this mutual implication is true, then theology and Biblical exegesis (legitimate or not) are not just implicated in theoretical progress, but in the technical exploitation of nature.
Harrison's more recent work is an investigation into how the theological concept of the Fall of Man played into the evolution of modern science. If this seems confusing, the basic premise is that in the noetic effects of sin (that is, regarding the darkening of the human mind) meant theologians had to become increasingly explicit and cautious in reflecting upon the methodology used to reached conclusions--not just about God, but even the world. At its inception, then, the sciences in their modern form have hiding within them the theological legacy of the idea that science itself variously conceived was a way to try and recapture the knowledge that Adam once possessed of nature.
Tackling a similar subject to Harrison's The Fall of Man, Eco retraces the Western idea that once, before Babel, before the Fall, mankind possessed a perfect Edenic language that was pure and transparent to the world and God. As is Eco's want (and why we love him) this incredibly learned and fascinating work travels through the esoteric and the bizarre, unearthing the weird roots of European and Western thought at large. At the base of the modern scientific search for clarity, in startling ways, lay the myth of the primordial language. Our science, in one sense, is inspired by nothing other than the historical pretense to speak the name of God.
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