Theology and the Scientific Imagination: From the Middle Ages to the Seventeenth Century

by Amos Funkenstein, Jonathan Sheehan (Foreword)

Theology and the Scientific Imagination is a pioneering work of intellectual history that transformed our understanding of the relationship between Christian theology and the development of science. Distinguished scholar Amos Funkenstein explores the metaphysical foundations of modern science and shows how, by the 1600s, theological and scientific thinking had become almost one. Major figures like Descartes, Leibniz, Newton, and others developed an unprecedented secular theology whose debt to medieval and scholastic thought shaped the trajectory of the scientific revolution. The book ends with Funkenstein's influential analysis of the seventeenth century's "unprecedented fusion" of scientific and religious language. Featuring a new foreword, Theology and the Scientific Imagination is a pathbreaking and classic work that remains a fundamental resource for historians and philosophers of science.

Genres: History, Philosophy, History Of Science, Science, Religion, Theology, Nonfiction

464 pages, Paperback

First published December 1, 1986

Reviews

[Dr Matt · Rating 3 out of 5]

Amos Funkenstein's book is clearly a masterful work of scholarship. He is often credited as being one of the first modern historians to demonstrate the utility of tracing the evolution of a contemporary idea back through its roots as a means of better understanding. His identification of divine attributes such as omnipotence and omnipresence is insightful and relevant to certain metaphysical developments in modern scientific thought.

That being said a few caveats and comments:
-This is a book that assumes you are very familiar with the history of Christian theology in the Middle Ages, and that you have a solid grounding in the philosophy of the Enlightenment
- a familiarity with the basics of ancient philosophy is also assumed.
-The writing style is extremely dense. Paragraphs are packed with meaningful insights and arguments.
-This is an academic book, meaning that it suffers from needless academic "accretions" such as:
Never settling for 2 or 3 examples when 20 or 30 can be cited.
Following an idea through exhaustively-- especially when it is possible to bury the reader in endless and often irrelevant details.
Always say more when its possible to say less, ... etc.

As I said this is an important book in the modern evolution of historiographic analysis (and I am sure for Professor Funkenstein's standing in his department) but the ideas and arguments are buried under layers of academic pyrotechnics that simply become boring (to me) after a while.

[AskHistorians]

An interesting read detailing the various views of emerging scientific thought and the prevalence of religious faith. The book takes time to work from a sociological as well as historical viewpoint to allow for a broader take.