Ron Numbers Category

Historical Essays on the Encounter between Christianity and Science

Few subjects elicit stronger responses than the relationship between science and religion. How best to characterize this relationship? According to recent historical work, “No generalization has proved more seductive and tenacious than that of ‘conflict.’” Such generalizations, or assumptions, are widely prevalent in contemporary culture. In popular press, in journalism, and even among some academic […]

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Religion and Science: A Brief Note

Although published more than twenty-years ago, the essays “Science and Religion” (1985) and “Beyond War and Peace: A Reappraisal of the Encounter between Christianity and Science” (1986), written by Ronald L. Numbers and David C. Lindberg respectively, still serve well as introductions to the science-religion debate; and particularly well in introducing to the reader the […]

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Science and Religion: Some New Historical Perspectives: Ways Forward

Having forayed into the complexity of the history of reading and publishing, we now return to the remaining chapters in Thomas Dixon et al., Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives (2010). Noah Efron’s essay, “Sciences and Religions: What it means to take historical perspective seriously,” pays personal tribute to the influence of John Hedley Brooke. […]

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Myths about Science and Religion – That Creationism is a Uniquely American Phenomenon

Continuing the discussion from the previous post, Cohen’s tenacious assumptions about creationism and the Scopes trial undoubtedly arises from the notion that the movement is geographically contained. His examples of Tennessee, Alabama, Florida, Oklahoma, and Texas are no accident, and the underlying political assumptions are plain. But as Ron Numbers has made quite clear in […]

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