| Description |
xiii, 479 pages : illustrations ; 24 cm |
| Series |
Science and its conceptual foundations |
|
Science and its conceptual foundations.
|
| Contents |
Introduction: A Legacy of Conflict? -- Confrontation, Cooperation, or Coexistence? -- Victorian Background -- Science and Religion in the New Century -- The Sciences and Religion -- The Religion of Scientists -- Changing Patterns of Belief -- Scientists and Christianity -- Scientists and Theism -- Method and Meaning -- Science and Values -- Scientists against Superstition -- Science and Rationalism -- Religion without Revelation -- Marxists and Other Radicals -- Science, Religion, and the History of Science -- Physics and Cosmology -- Ether and Spirit -- The New Physics -- The Earth and the Universe -- Evolution and the New Natural Theology -- Science and Creation -- Evolution and Progress -- The Role of Lamarckism -- Darwinism Revived -- Matter, Life, and Mind -- The Origin of Life -- Vitalism and Organicism -- Mind and Body -- Psychology and Religion -- The Churches and Science -- The Churches in the New Century -- The Challenge of the New -- The Churches' Response -- The New Theology in the Free Churches -- Precursors of the New Theology -- Campbell and the New Theology -- Modernism in the Free Churches -- Anglican Modernism -- Modernism and the New Natural Theology -- Charles F. D'Arcy -- E.W. Barnes -- W.R. Inge -- Charles Raven -- The Reaction against Modernism -- Evangelicals against Evolution -- Liberal Catholicism -- The Menace of the New Psychology -- Science and Modern Life -- Theology in the Thirties -- Roman Catholicism -- The Wider Debate -- Science and Secularism -- Against Idealism |
| Summary |
Although much has been written about the vigorous debates over science and religion in the Victorian era, little attention has been paid to their continuing importance in early twentieth-century Britain. Reconciling Science and Religion provides a comprehensive survey of the interplay between British science and religion from the late nineteenth century to World War II. Peter J. Bowler argues that unlike the United States, where a strong fundamentalist opposition to evolutionism developed in the 1920s (most famously expressed in the Scopes "monkey trial" of 1925), in Britain there was a concerted effort to reconcile science and religion. Intellectually conservative scientists championed the reconciliation and were supported by liberal theologians in the Free Churches and the Church of England, especially the Anglican "Modernists." Popular writers such as Julian Huxley and George Bernard Shaw sought to create a non-Christian religion similar in some respects to the Modernist position. Younger scientists and secularists--including Rationalists such as H.G. Wells and the Marxists--tended to oppose these efforts, as did conservative Christians, who saw the liberal position as a betrayal of the true spirit of their religion. With the increased social tensions of the 1930s, as the churches moved toward a neo-orthodoxy unfriendly to natural theology and biologists adopted the "Modern Synthesis" of genetics and evolutionary theory, the proposed reconciliation fell apart. Because the tensions between science and religion--and efforts at reconciling the two--are still very much with us today, Bowler's book will be important for everyone interested in these issues |
| Bibliography |
Includes bibliographical references (pages 429-470) and index |
| Subject |
Religion and science -- Great Britain -- History -- 20th century.
|
| Genre/Form |
History.
|
| LC no. |
2001000719 |
| ISBN |
0226068587 (alk. paper) |
|
9780226068589 (alk. paper) |
|
