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Science and Spirituality: The Volatile Connection
Until the end of the eighteenth century, almost everyone believed that the empirical world of science could produce evidence for a wise and loving God. By the twenty-first century this comforting certainty has almost vanished. What caused such a cataclysmic change in attitudes to science and to the world?
Science and Spirituality offers a new history of the interaction between Western science and faith, which explores their volatile connection, and challenges the myth of their being locked in inevitable conflict.
Journeying from the French Revolution to the present day, and taking in such figures as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Charles Darwin, Immanuel Kant, Albert Einstein, Mary Shelley and Stephen Hawking, David Knight shows how science evolved from medieval and Renaissance forms of natural theology into the empirical discipline we know today. Focusing on the overthrow of Church and State in revolutionary France, and on the crucial nineteenth century period when a newly emerging scientific community rendered science culturally accessible, Science and Spirituality shows how scientific disenchantment has provided some of our most flexible and powerful metaphors for God, such as the hidden puppet-master and the blind watchmaker, and illustrates how questions of moral and spiritual value continue to intervene in scientific endeavour.
Science and Spirituality offers a new history of the interaction between Western science and faith, which explores their volatile connection, and challenges the myth of their being locked in inevitable conflict.
Journeying from the French Revolution to the present day, and taking in such figures as Francis Bacon, René Descartes, Charles Darwin, Immanuel Kant, Albert Einstein, Mary Shelley and Stephen Hawking, David Knight shows how science evolved from medieval and Renaissance forms of natural theology into the empirical discipline we know today. Focusing on the overthrow of Church and State in revolutionary France, and on the crucial nineteenth century period when a newly emerging scientific community rendered science culturally accessible, Science and Spirituality shows how scientific disenchantment has provided some of our most flexible and powerful metaphors for God, such as the hidden puppet-master and the blind watchmaker, and illustrates how questions of moral and spiritual value continue to intervene in scientific endeavour.
240 pages, Hardcover
First published January 1, 2003
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March 24, 2007
I wrote this review for a class last quarter. To note, it somehow came out much more positive than I intended. Unless this is really your field, there's not much reason to read the book.
David Knight's most recent volume is allegedly a history of the relationship between faith and science in the Western world during the 19th century. Unfortunately, however, Science and Spirituality reads more like a collection of scattered musings on biographical details and amusing bits of social history than it does a thorough account of the science-religion relationship during this period. Moreover, Knight does not provide any sustained argument on the nature of this relationship. He chooses instead to gather character sketches of important British figures of science around loosely-structured themes that overlap with religious thought at the time.
Yet the failures of Knight's book may also be what ultimately makes it of value. His loose concept of religion allows him to cast his net widely as he collects statements on just how faith and science interact. This, along with the relaxed, semi-biographical and non-chronological organization, allows him to achieve what many a greater theoretician has aimed for with less success: a presentation of both science and religion as messy, overlapping, and fragmented, yet still analytically separate, entities of discourse and practice. He thus also avoids the polarization of religion and science so prevalent in many of today's conversations, both popular and academic.
The cause of such polarization, indeed, is one of the phenomena Knight seeks to understand. Why could matters of religion and science be so easily combined at the end of the 1700s, in the form of natural theology, and yet by the First World War, be seen as completely separate “spheres”? Knight suggests, “it was certainly not all the fault of Charles Darwin.”
And certainly Darwin, though present, does not take the lead role in Knight's presentation. This, too, is a strength. Knight's main argument, though perhaps never made explicitly, is that the discourse prior to Darwin had more to do with the splitting of paths between faith and science, as did many more discoveries and experiments that receive comparatively little attention in today's evolution-focused debates. Knight rightly calls our attention to the advancements in the understanding of the causes of diseases as one such stepping stone. Disease had for ages been considered divine punishment, but with greater knowledge of the causes and methods of spreading disease, it could be thought of instead as the result of failing to take common-sense precautions. “Prayer did not seem to alleviate plague, but scrubbing brushes, drains and water mains did,” writes Knight. “This discovery was just as alarming as anything coming out of evolutionary biology or materialistic chemistry.”
Taking the focus away from Darwin means also that the reader will gain a better view of the many scientific figures who helped to set the tone of the science-religion debates. Many of these were not merely clergy defending established orthodoxy against the scientific outsider, but writers who were simultaneously men of the cloth and men of science, attempting to square their own research results with their religious beliefs. That all fields of research at the time, both in their nascent and advanced stages, created both new justifications and new challenges for the religious believer is well-shown in the sketches Knight provides. In this way, despite its many failings, Science and Spirituality may serve to supply a useful contextualization for modern discussions on religion and science. Readers who have not the time to delve into the Royal Society's archives will be well-served by the glimpse Knight gives into the background of this discourse, and by the familiarity he creates with both its scientific and religious roots.
David Knight's most recent volume is allegedly a history of the relationship between faith and science in the Western world during the 19th century. Unfortunately, however, Science and Spirituality reads more like a collection of scattered musings on biographical details and amusing bits of social history than it does a thorough account of the science-religion relationship during this period. Moreover, Knight does not provide any sustained argument on the nature of this relationship. He chooses instead to gather character sketches of important British figures of science around loosely-structured themes that overlap with religious thought at the time.
Yet the failures of Knight's book may also be what ultimately makes it of value. His loose concept of religion allows him to cast his net widely as he collects statements on just how faith and science interact. This, along with the relaxed, semi-biographical and non-chronological organization, allows him to achieve what many a greater theoretician has aimed for with less success: a presentation of both science and religion as messy, overlapping, and fragmented, yet still analytically separate, entities of discourse and practice. He thus also avoids the polarization of religion and science so prevalent in many of today's conversations, both popular and academic.
The cause of such polarization, indeed, is one of the phenomena Knight seeks to understand. Why could matters of religion and science be so easily combined at the end of the 1700s, in the form of natural theology, and yet by the First World War, be seen as completely separate “spheres”? Knight suggests, “it was certainly not all the fault of Charles Darwin.”
And certainly Darwin, though present, does not take the lead role in Knight's presentation. This, too, is a strength. Knight's main argument, though perhaps never made explicitly, is that the discourse prior to Darwin had more to do with the splitting of paths between faith and science, as did many more discoveries and experiments that receive comparatively little attention in today's evolution-focused debates. Knight rightly calls our attention to the advancements in the understanding of the causes of diseases as one such stepping stone. Disease had for ages been considered divine punishment, but with greater knowledge of the causes and methods of spreading disease, it could be thought of instead as the result of failing to take common-sense precautions. “Prayer did not seem to alleviate plague, but scrubbing brushes, drains and water mains did,” writes Knight. “This discovery was just as alarming as anything coming out of evolutionary biology or materialistic chemistry.”
Taking the focus away from Darwin means also that the reader will gain a better view of the many scientific figures who helped to set the tone of the science-religion debates. Many of these were not merely clergy defending established orthodoxy against the scientific outsider, but writers who were simultaneously men of the cloth and men of science, attempting to square their own research results with their religious beliefs. That all fields of research at the time, both in their nascent and advanced stages, created both new justifications and new challenges for the religious believer is well-shown in the sketches Knight provides. In this way, despite its many failings, Science and Spirituality may serve to supply a useful contextualization for modern discussions on religion and science. Readers who have not the time to delve into the Royal Society's archives will be well-served by the glimpse Knight gives into the background of this discourse, and by the familiarity he creates with both its scientific and religious roots.
Displaying 1 of 1 review