Download mixing metaphors: science and religion or

Hist. Sci., xxxv (1997)
MIXING METAPHORS: SCIENCE AND RELIGION OR
NATURAL PHILOSOPHY AND THEOLOGY IN EARLY
MODERN EUROPE
Margaret J. Osler
The University of Calgary
The focus of this paper1 is historiographical: How have historians understood
the relationship between science and religion in early modern Europe? This
discussion bears directly on current re-considerations of the historiographical
utility of the concept of the Scientific Revolution. 2 One of the assumptions
embedded in the traditional historiography of science is that disciplinary boundaries have remained static throughout history. 3 This assumption embodies an essentialism about science according to which science is considered to be one sort
of thing, unambiguously identifiable in every historical era, and divisible into
specific sciences which — as categories of intellectual activity — have remained
constant. My aim in this paper is to demonstrate the flaws of such an essentialist approach in the narrower context of the historiography of science and religion. I do this by examining the metaphors historians have used to describe the
relationship between science and religion in the early modern period. I then
suggest an additional metaphor which, I think, avoids the problems of essentialism and pr esentism of the traditional approaches and provides a more
historicized analysis of at least some aspects of the relationship between early
modern science and religion. 4
TERMINOLOGICAL PROLEGOMENON
Although most of the historians in question have used the phrase “science and
religion” to denote the subject under discussion, the phrase itself is problematic. To begin with, the word ‘science’ had not yet acquired its twentieth-century
meaning.5 The differences between early modern and twentieth-century meanings concern both epistemic status and disciplinary scope. In the early modern
period, the term ‘science’ retained its Scholastic meaning: ‘scientia’ referred to
demonstrative knowledge of the real essences of things. During the Renaissance and seventeenth century, the growth of empirical investigation, especially
in natural history, yielded less-than-certain knowledge about the world, making
it increasingly difficult to assimilate natural philosophy into the Aristotelian
apodictic model for science. Many natural philosophers developed an empiricist
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and probabilist theory of knowledge which further separated their endeavours
from the Aristotelian model of ‘scientia’. 6 As late as 1690, John Locke could
write “that natural philosophy is not capable of being made a science”. 7
The disciplinary scope of natural philosophy derived from Aristotle’s classification of the sciences which became entrenched in the curriculum of the medieval universities. Physics, or natural philosophy, was one of the theoretical
sciences and dealt with things “which are inseparable from matter but not immovable”. 8 The study of natural philosophy included the study of “the first causes
of nature, change and motion in general, the motions of celestial bodies, the
motions and transformations of the elements, generation and corruption, the
phenomena of the upper atmosphere right below the lunar sphere, and the study
of animals and plants”.9 Medieval natural philosophy was conditioned by theological presuppositions, and its conclusions pertained to important theological
issues. Discussions of the causes of things, for example, included questions
about the cause of the world and revolved around the issues of the divine creation of the world. 10 Discussions of matter and change had implications for the
interpretation of the Eucharist.11 Discussion of the nature of animals and how
they differ from humans had direct bearing on questions about the immortality
of the human soul. 12
Despite their widespread rejection of Aristotelianism, early modern natural
philosophers continued to deal with the same range of topics as their medieval
predecessors. 13 Renaissance textbooks on natural philosophy tended to follow
the medieval pattern of commenting on Aristotle’s books on the natural world. 14
However, even seventeenth-century natural philosophers who explicitly rejected
Aristotle continued to consider the traditional range of topics, attempting to
show that their new, mechanical philosophy could function as a complete replacement for Aristotelianism. 15 Natural philosophy encompassed many topics
now considered theological or metaphysical — such as the immortality of the
soul or the study of divine providence in nature — and excluded others — such
as mixed mathematics — which are now considered to be scientific. 16
Different problems plague the term ‘religion’ which historians frequently fail
to distinguish from the term ‘theology’. ‘Religion’ refers to doctrine, faith, and
practice, whether or not within an institutional setting. ‘Theology’ refers to the
enterprise of explaining the meaning of religious doctrines or practices, usually
by employing philosophical concepts and arguments. For example, the Roman
Catholic celebration of the Eucharist is a religious practice; the explanation of
the real presence of Christ in the elements of the mass by the Thomist theory of
transubstantiation is theological. Many of the issues historians discuss under
the rubric of “science and religion” are actually issues about natural philosophy
and theology. In the discussion that follows, I attempt to keep the meanings of
the terms clear.
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STRATEGY OF THE ARGUMENT
Historians have commonly taken several approaches to describe the relationship between what they tend to call science and religion. Some historians have
emphasized conflict, Galileo’s conflict with the Church and the debate between
creationists and evolutionists being among the most frequently cited examples.
Other historians have focused instead on the mutual influence between science
and religion.17 In addition to conflict and harmony, some historians use what
might be called a “segregation” metaphor. 18 According to the segregationists,
religion and science are separate-but-equal, asking different kinds of questions
which they answer by starting from different premises and using different methods. As long as each remains within its proper domain, it retains its validity.
Problems arise when one strays into the other’s territory.
Do any of these characterizations adequately describe the relationship in the
early modern period? In the ensuing discussion, I illustrate the strengths and
weaknesses of each of these traditional metaphors. Despite their utility for explaining certain aspects of some historical episodes, they all suffer from limitations flowing from what we might call the metaphysics underlying their historical
interpretations. Whether they argue for conflict, for harmony, or for intellectual
segregation, scholars adopting the traditional accounts tend to view science and
religion as two separate, free-standing entities. As John Hedley Brooke has put
it, each of these approaches involves a “tendency to portray science and religion as hypostatized forces, as entities in themselves”. 19 Such portrayals assume that there exist entities called ‘science’ and ‘religion’ which are the same
in all times and places.
Following the lead of recent studies by James R. Moore, 20 Francis Oakley, 21
Amos Funkenstein, 22 and Andrew Cunningham,23 I will suggest that another
way to understand the relationship between them is to look at natural philosophy and Christian theology both as products of the same cultural and intellectual heritage. One important corollary of this view is that concepts formed in
each domain can be found to be deeply embedded in the other. The boundaries
between science and religion are neither fixed nor impermeable. Indeed the two
domains often overlap, so that in the early modern period theological concerns,
such as questions about the immortality of the soul or about evidence of providence in the world, were part of natural philosophy, while seemingly scientific
questions such as mathematical descriptions of planetary motion or the nature
of fossils were taken to have theological import. In addition to contextualizing
both natural philosophy and theology in the intellectual traditions from which
they sprang, this approach has the important consequence of permitting us to
consider their interaction without imposing modern claims of privileged knowledge on either of them. In contrast to the traditional approaches, I try to show
how in many cases natural philosophers have appropriated concepts from theology and translated them into the language of natural philosophy, 24 deploying
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these concepts to solve different problems in a new context.25 In addition to
fostering a more fine-grained analysis that examines the fate of particular concepts rather than whole worldviews, these metaphors underscore the important
point that individual people, not grand systems of ideas, are the agents of historical change. I am not arguing that the metaphors of appropriation and translation provide the only way to understand the relationship between natural
philosophy and theology, only that they enable the historian to explain some
aspects of their relationship overlooked by the traditional accounts. Each of the
approaches is sometimes appropriate. None of them, however, is the only story.
THE CONFLICT METAPHOR
The notion of conflict was reified and perpetuated by the warfare metaphors
developed by John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White in the nineteenth century. 26 Their rhetoric is now understood to have been the product of
their own preoccupations because they were writing in the midst of the postDarwinian controversies. 27 Draper saw the development of rationalism (by which
he meant, inter alia, appeal to natural law in contrast to theological explanations)
as the ineluctable force guiding human history.28 In History of the conflict between religion and science (1874), he claimed that religion has stood only as an
impediment to human development and is always directly opposed to science.
Two interpretations may be given of the mode of government of the world.
It may be by incessant divine interventions, or by the operation of unvarying law.
To the adoption of the former a priesthood will always incline, since it
must desire to be considered as standing between the prayer of the votary
and the providential act....
Even in the darkest ages intelligent Christian men must have had misgivings as to these alleged providential or miraculous interventions. There is a
solemn grandeur in the orderly progress of Nature which profoundly impresses us; and such is the character of continuity in the events of our individual life that we instinctively doubt the occurrence of the supernatural in
that of our neighbor....
Shall we not, then, conclude with Cicero, who ... says: ‘One eternal and
immutable law embraces all things and all times’? 29
Draper was uncritical in his use of the contemporary (nineteenth-century) concept of science, and he conflated theology and religion in his “diatribe against
the Roman Catholic Church” which had recently proclaimed papal infallibility.30
White’s classic, A history of the warfare of science with theology in Christendom (1896), was a response to the religious forces that had opposed his
attempt to institute a science curriculum at Cornell University, of which he was
MIXING METAPHORS
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president. 31 Science, he argued, is the path to truth and is to be the authority for
all knowledge.
In all modern history, interference with science in the supposed interest
of religion, no matter how conscientious such interference may have been,
has resulted in the direst evils both to religion and to science, and invariably; and, on the other hand, all untrammelled scientific investigation, no
matter how dangerous to religion some of its stages may have seemed for
the time to be, has invariably resulted in the highest good both of religion
and of science.32
White’s characterization of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ were not much different from
Draper’s. He thought of science in nineteenth-century terms and was not careful to distinguish between religion (as spiritual experiences and practices embodied in institutions) and theology (as the use of philosophy to explain the
meaning of religious beliefs and practices). In large part, his attack on religion
targeted the imposition of established religion on the intellectual freedom of
scientific research.
According to both Draper and White, science and religion stand in a relation
of perpetual conflict, which both writers viewed as a Manichaean struggle, in
which science was identified with the forces of good (rationality, truth, and
righteousness) and religion was identified with the forces of evil (unreason,
self-serving deception, and cruelty). The language of warfare embodies the assumption that one side in the conflict is privileged, and it allows the writing of
history from the standpoint of the victor.
Although the over-heated rhetoric of Draper and White raises more problems
than it solves, there are some episodes in the early modern period that can be
readily interpreted in terms of conflict, most notably the trial of Galileo. On
almost any interpretation of this affair, the fundamental issue between Galileo
and the Roman Catholic Church was conflict about questions of intellectual
authority. Historians disagree about exactly what the point of contention was,
arguing that it was, among other things, a conflict between science and scripture,33 a conflict of world views, 34 a conflict between underlying philosophies
of science,35 a conflict over matters of patronage, 36 a conflict between atomism
and the traditional interpretation of the Eucharist, 37 or a cultural and political
conflict within the post-Tridentine Church.38 However subtly nuanced these
accounts may be, the Galileo affair continues to emerge as a story of conflict.
THE HARMONY METAPHOR
The Galileo affair, however, is not emblematic of the entire relationship between science and religion. While conflict has been the focus of historians celebrating the rise of science and its triumph over religion, harmony has often
been the emphasis of religious apologists.39 These thinkers tend to emphasize
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the positive influence that religion (particularly the religion of their choice) has
had on the development of science. More subtle than the conflict historians,
they tend to talk about the intellectual content of religion or theology rather
than established religious practice. Nevertheless, like advocates of the warfare
model, they consider the meaning of the terms science and ‘religion’ to be unequivocal and atemporal.40
An influential example of the har mony model is provided by Robert S.
Merton’s famous thesis that Puritanism encouraged the practice of science in
England.
Puritanism attests to the theorem that non-logical notions with a transcendental reference may nevertheless exercise a considerable influence upon
practical behavior. If the fancies of an inscrutable deity do not lend themselves to scientific investigation, human action predicated upon a particular
conception of this deity does. It was precisely Puritanism which built a new
bridge between the transcendental and human action, thus supplying a motive force for the new science. 41
By cultivating the values of diligence and utility, the notion of a calling, and the
perception of scientific research as a way of worshipping the creator, Puritanism, according to Merton, was responsible for the flowering of “the new science” in seventeenth-century England. Note that Merton was equivocal in his
use of the term “Puritanism” which he used to refer both to theology and to
religious practice. He also used the term “the new science” to refer to natural
philosophy. His examples of Puritanism-inspired scientists include Robert Boyle,
John Wilkins, Isaac Newton, and John Ray, inter alia, all of whom saw the
discovery of divine providence and the attributes of God as an important part of
their natural philosophical endeavours. 42 In relating the rise of English science
in the seventeenth century to Puritanism, Merton extended Weber’s thesis that
had linked the rise of capitalism in early modern Europe to Protestantism. By
connecting science as well as capitalism to Protestantism, Merton reinforced
the claim that Protestantism (or, more particularly, English Puritanism) played
an important role in producing the modern world. In the course of defending his
thesis, Merton employed data collected by the nineteenth-century racial theorist Alphonse de Candolle for the purpose of demonstrating that Protestantism
was more conducive to the growth of science than Catholicism. 43 Although explicitly denying that he was an advocate for the religion of the seventeenthcentur y Puritans, 44 Merton’s appeal to Candolle appears to have been a
non-deliberate swipe at Roman Catholicism that reflects the anti-Catholic prejudices of American society in the 1930s.
A number of historians have taken Merton’s analysis as their starting point.
Christopher Hill also found a connection between Protestantism and modernity,
though he added a Marxist explanation of the link. “In my view science is not a
product of protestantism, or of puritanism: both science and puritanism sprang
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from the shift by which urban and industrial values replace those appropriate to
a mainly agrarian society.”45 Hill gave a more nuanced view of the religious
groups involved than did Merton; for while Merton identified “Puritanism” with
virtually the whole of English Protestantism, Hill defined Puritanism as including
all those radical protestants who wanted to reform the church but (before
1640 at least) did not wish to separate from it. After 1640 divisions appear
within puritanism, but there is a sense in which even the most radical
sectarians descended from the undifferentiated puritanism of pre-1640.46
For Hill, religious practice, rather than theology, was the historically salient
activity that was related to the rise of ‘science’. In a further variation on the
theme, Charles Webster argued for a relationship between Puritanism and the
development of the practical sciences, particularly medicine and agriculture. 47
All these analyses have the effect of focusing scholarly discussions on England,
although the Scientific Revolution must be understood as a European, not exclusively English, phenomenon.
Agreeing with the Merton thesis but emphasizing theology rather than religious practice, Reijer Hooykaas set out to examine “how the religious attitude
of so-called ‘ascetic’ Protestantism, which more or less stood under Calvin’s
influence, furthered the development of science”. 48 Penetrating more deeply into
the ideas of the scientists than the other Mertonians, Hooykaas argued that this
branch of Protestantism actually enhanced the development of empirical, experimental science.
In the interpretation of nature, the same sense of responsibility prevailed as
in the exegesis of Scripture: they [the Reformers] were anxious not to deviate from the true meaning of the Bible, so they felt religiously bound to
nature. Here also they considered themselves to be on holy ground, confronted with a book of God that had to be accepted even when not completely understood. It was sacrilege to make it conformable to human reason,
which, after the Fall, is always prone to blur and distort the facts in order to
satisfy its own pride.... Christian religion, they believed, is a religion of
facts; it bears a historical character. In the same way, natural science is
founded upon facts, however much they may transcend human understanding. In their anti-rationalism the spirit of the Reformation and the spirit of
experimental science show a close affinity.49
For Hooykaas the methods of biblical exegesis in reformed theology and of the
empirical approach in “the new science” stood in harmonious relation to each
other.
In a radical twist on the Merton thesis, Margaret C. Jacob links the influence
of religion on science to the political agendas associated with the different
branches of Protestantism in seventeenth-century England.
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The English reformers of the 1630s hurled their demands for reform against
what they saw as an obstinate monarchy, a corrupt court, and an insufficiently Protestant church. This confrontation ended in political revolution,
and that social upheaval in turn directly affected the direction taken by the
new science. On the basis of modern scholarship, we can now say that no
single event in the history of early modern Europe more profoundly shaped
the integration of the new science into Western culture than did the English
Revolution (1640–1660). It shaped the natural philosophical thinking of
Robert Boyle (1627–1691) and Isaac Newton (1642–1727) in ways that assisted in the development of their purely experimental and mathematical
interests; and out of their achievement, that synthesis of philosophy and
experimental method we describe as modern science came to exist. 50
It is not clear whether Jacob is talking about religion or theology. Like Merton
and Hill, she confines her vision to England, thereby neglecting other important
developments occurring throughout Europe. Her overestimation of the role of
the English civil war makes it impossible for her to consider the important contributions of Catholics, such as the Jesuits or Pierre Gassendi, 51 or of Lutherans
in the natural philosophical developments of the time. 52
While few of these historians are religious apologists per se, they all claim
that various presuppositions of modern science — the uniformity of nature,
empirical methods, the idea of the progress of knowledge — resulted from the
influence of some particular confession. Support for the existence of this harmony is often garnered from the writings of the actors themselves. For example, Kepler believed that his mathematical study of the heavens was really a
matter of decoding the geometrical plan God had employed in the creation. 53
For him, a built-in harmony between astronomy and theology led to an understanding of God’s creation. Kepler’s reification of the analogies among God–
man–cosmos as prototype–image–copy provided an epistemological foundation
for our ability to know God’s plan and ensured a harmonious relationship between the two activities.54 Boyle wrote extensively about the compatibility between Christianity and the study of natural philosophy, arguing that the study
of nature gives us insight into the divine attributes, and that theology rightly
understood provides grounds for the pursuit of natural philosophy and for its
proper method.55 Newton thought in similar terms, stating that the study of natural
philosophy brings us ever closer to knowledge of God. 56 Indeed, he believed
that the whole point of natural philosophy was to disclose theological truth.57
The arguments for harmony are more complex than those found in most conflict accounts but still allow the historian to privilege some particular religious
group by showing that it had a positive impact on the development of science,
an outcome which is generally presumed to be desirable. Like the conflict historians, the harmonizers do not historicize the concepts of science or religion,
but retain an essentialist view and discuss them as separate and entire entities,
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the nature and identity of which are presumed to be unproblematic and constant
through time.
The fact that neither the conflict metaphor nor the harmony metaphor alone
suffices to account for all historical examples is evident in the work of Richard
S. Westfall, who used both metaphors in his Science and religion in seventeenthcentury England. He described the virtuosi’s belief in the harmony of science
and religion, but at the same time, he saw them as fighting a losing battle against
the dangers implicit in science.58
With wonderful certainty and assurance each virtuoso proved the existence
of God from the creation; yet repeated too often, the assurance acquired an
odor of insecurity. With Newton the insecurity was growing toward open
fright. The creation pointed infallibly to the First Cause, but was Christianity itself entirely rational? Could it stand the test of reason? Did it not need
to be purged before it could be safe? Newton wrote a paper to prove to
himself that every doctrine of the true Christianity was rational and reasonable.... That picture of Newton in his old age writing and revising his statement on religion is the symbol of the insecurity that goaded the virtuosi as
they sought a foundation for certainty. But certainty there was not to be.
Following the birth of modern science the age of unshaken faith was lost to
western man.59
Westfall interpreted the virtuosi’s faith in the harmony of natural philosophy
and religion as ultimately illusory since, he believed, they were, in fact, preparing the ground for serious conflict.
THE SEGREGATION METAPHOR
Some historians, aiming to avoid conflict and hoping to preserve the autonomy
of both science and religion, have described them as separate but equal, suggesting that a metaphor of segregation might be the most useful way to describe
their relationship. Pierre Duhem argued that the conflict between Galileo and
the Church arose precisely because both parties insisted on a realist interpretation of physics, in the one case, and theology, in the other. A realist interpretation of either science or religion implies that the conclusions of one area have
consequences for the other.
The condemnation carried through the Holy Office resulted from the clash
between two realist positions. This head-on collision might have been
avoided, the debate between the Ptolemaists and the Copernicans might have
been kept to the terrain of astronomy, if certain sagacious precepts concerning the nature of scientific theories and the hypotheses on which they rest
had been heeded. These precepts, first formulated by Posidonius, Ptolemy,
Proclus, and Simplicius, had, through an uninterrupted tradition, come down
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directly to Osiander, Reinhold, and Melancthon. But now they seemed quite
forgotten.60
These precepts were “the underdetermination of theory by fact and the natural
classification as the end point of physical theory”.61 Although Duhem believed
that the historical end point of science would “harmonize with the teachings of
the Catholic Church”, scientific theories, which have not yet attained that end
point, “are not ultimate explanations but representations.... Theoretical propositions are not true or false, but ‘convenient’ or ‘inconvenient’.”62 Presumably
the conflict between Galileo and the Church could have been avoided had both
sides adopted the instrumentalism or fictionalism which Duhem believed is the
proper interpretation of science that is not at the end point. Such an approach
allowed him to remain a loyal Roman Catholic while he pursued modern physics.63 Galileo’s lapidary comment, “That the intention of the Holy Ghost is to
teach us how one goes to heaven, not how the heaven goes”,64 provides evidence for the appropriateness of the segregation metaphor in this case, although
Galileo, according to Duhem, belied his own slogan by insisting on a realist
interpretation of Copernicanism.
Like Ian Barbour, segregationists have often used the tools of positivistic
philosophy of science in the service of the view that science and religion function in separate spheres.
... science and religion are independent and autonomous, and each should
tend to its own affairs. They yield ‘complementary perspectives’ rather than
mutually exclusive descriptions; we are enjoined to be content with a plurality of unrelated languages. Both scientist and theologian are told to avoid
metaphysics — that is, inquiry concerning the most general categories for
interpreting the structure of reality. On this reading, there could be no dialogue between them — except about the personal problems which the scientist faces as a human being (for example, ethical choices, motivation for
work, responsibility to society). The theologian may also have something
to say to a culture that depersonalizes human existence and treats science as
a source of salvation, but to theological ideas as such the findings of science would be irrelevant.65
Barbour’s statement is clearly that of the historian (or perhaps philosopher)
about what the relationship between science and religion should be. How does
he deal with the natural philosophers of the seventeenth century who scarcely
distinguished between the two? Imposing his own attitudes on the historical
actors, he states, “Although the seventeenth-century virtuosi still considered
themselves Christians, they ended with a concept of God that was indistinguishable from that of Deism: the God who started the machine and left it to run by
itself ”. 66 This alleged distancing of God from the creation, Barbour argues, meant
that “the virtuosi believed that there were divine purposes in nature, but rightly
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held that these should play no role in the scientific account”. 67 Barbour’s desideratum of science and religion as separate, autonomous entities has led him to
ignore the most blatant textual evidence that final causes and divine purposes
did not disappear from seventeenth-century natural philosophy. For example, in
his debate with Descartes over the Meditations, Pierre Gassendi (1592–1655)
clearly stated that there is a role for final causes in physics.68 Among the virtuosi whom Barbour so confidently claimed to have abandoned finality in natural philosophy, we find Robert Boyle who wrote an entire treatise entitled A
disquisition about the final causes of natural things: Wherein it is inquired,
Whether, and (if at all) with what cautions, a naturalist should admit them?
(1688). 69 Both Gassendi and Boyle believed that God’s purposes in (at least in
some cases) could be discovered in nature and that searching for them made
natural philosophy an important source for establishing God’s power, wisdom,
and goodness. The segregation metaphor does not adequately describe their own
understanding of natural philosophy and theology.
Like the metaphors of conflict and harmony, the metaphor of segregation
presupposes that both science and religion are free-standing intellectual entities, having essences which transcend particular historical contexts. By using
historians’ categories of description rather than actors’ categories, the segregation model can badly misrepresent the historical record which is, among other
things, a record of shifting disciplinary boundaries. While the segregation model
might have some virtues as a prescription for a conflict-avoiding course of action in the present, it does not adequately account for the historical record. 70
NEW METAPHORS: APPROPRIATION AND TRANSLATION
In order to highlight another aspect of the historical relationship between theology and natural philosophy, I propose to use different metaphors to describe
aspects of the relationship not captured by the metaphors of harmony, conflict,
and segregation, metaphors of translation and appropriation. These metaphors
are designed to emphasize the conceptual influence and interaction between
theology and natural philosophy. According to this model, natural philosophers
sometimes appropriate ideas developed in religion or theology, translate them
into the language of natural philosophy, and use them to solve problems in the
new context. In these cases, the underlying structure of the idea is similar in
each domain, but it functions to solve problems peculiar to the new domain.71 In
this respect, I am thinking along the same lines as Francis Oakley and Amos
Funkenstein who noted that certain theological ideas articulated in the Middle
Ages continued to play important roles in seventeenth-century natural philosophy.72
The metaphors of appropriation and translation give agency to the historical
actors who work within their own particular social, ideological, and intellectual
contexts. “By speaking of ‘appropriation’, we acknowledge the change in a
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previously established idea, theory, technique, or practice as it enters a new
historical (and perhaps geographical) location. If the practice, idea, or whatever takes root, it is because it serves the continuing needs of the appropriators.” 73 Although such appropriation may be more or less deliberate, the salient
historical fact is that natural philosophers have drawn on theological concepts
to address problems in their own context.
In its literal sense, “translation” refers to a relationship between abstract symbol systems mediated by individuals in specific historical contexts. If we think
of natural philosophy and theology as two discursive domains, the contents of
which vary and the boundaries between which shift in different historical settings, then in many cases natural philosophers have appropriated concepts from
the one and translated them into the language of the other. In such cases, careful
attention to context — the immediate historical context, the context of a particular thinker’s agenda, and the context of the long history of the intellectual
tradition from which the concept sprang — enables the historian to understand
how certain aspects of the meaning of the concept have been carried from one
domain into the other, while at the same time seeing how the concept takes on a
life of its own in the new domain.
The relationships described by the metaphors of appropriation and translation have little to do with conflict or harmony or segregation, but rather with
continuity of meaning at a deep level. This approach has the advantage of highlighting the historical interconnections between natural philosophy and theology, viewing them both as intellectual constructs which have developed in
particular historical contexts and in relation to each other. Rather than considering science and religion as reified entities having essences unchanging through
time, this approach focuses on individual concepts as they have been used in
different intellectual and cultural milieus. In some cases, concepts from theology have been appropriated into scientific discourse, ultimately losing their
peculiarly theological trappings and functioning as fundamental scientific concepts. Sometimes scientific concepts have been absorbed into theological discourse with analogous consequences.74 Only by acknowledging the historical
origins of such concepts, can we understand the deeper relationship between
natural philosophy and theology. Both can be seen as constructions, developing
within particular historical contexts to meet particular intellectual needs. And
neither can be privileged, particularly if we come to understand how the concepts of one have grown from root stock taken from the other.
The metaphor s of appr opr ia tion and tr ansla tion expr ess the dee p
interconnectedness between natural philosophy and theology in the early modern period. As Cunningham has noted,
natural philosophy as such was a discipline and subject-area whose role and
point was the study of God’s creation and God’s attributes. Thus, no-one ever
undertook the practice of natural philosophy without having God in mind,
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and knowing that the study of God and God’s creation — in a way different
from that pursued by theology — was the point of the whole exercise. 75
Not only was the study of God’s creation a central feature of early modern
natural philosophy, but the conclusions of theology and natural philosophy each
had implications for the other. For example, the theory of matter seventeenthcentury mechanical philosophers adopted had direct theological consequences.
One reason why Boyle resisted openly endorsing atomism was that atomism
was closely associated with Epicureanism which had atheistic and antiprovidential associations.76 Conversely, those consequences often provided the
motives for choosing between alternative theories of matter. 77 Boyle rejected
Henr y More’s Spirit of Nature because it was incompatible with his own
voluntarist theology.78
Using these metaphors avoids the problems of essentialism that plague the
more traditional models. By focusing on the appropriation and translation of
individual concepts from one discursive domain to another rather than on the
relationship between entire bodies of thought, historians can attend to the particular ways natural philosophers deployed the concepts they borrowed to deal
with problems in their own particular contexts. Neither the theological source
nor the natural philosophical target for these concepts was a fixed body of knowledge. Rather, both were continually changing and had permeable and elastic
boundaries.
One important example of such appropriation and translation has been documented by Richard H. Popkin, Henry van Leeuwen, and Barbara Shapiro, whose
work combines to show how sceptical arguments that first arose in the context
of post-Reformation debates about the criteria for a rule of faith were carried
over into discussions of scientific knowledge where they were translated into
talk about degrees of certainty. 79 In this example, concepts were translated as a
consequence of the confluence of several historical contingencies: the postReformation debates, the recovery of the sceptical writings of Sextus Empiricus
in the mid-sixteenth century, and the search for alternatives to Aristotelian natural
philosophy and methodology. Natural philosophers, who were themselves deeply
concerned with theological issues, adopted language which had evolved in a
narrowly theological context. In time, this language lost its theological character, becoming the parlance of empiricist and probabilist natural philosophers
such as Boyle and Locke.
The appropriation-and-translation model underscores the degree to which
theological concepts were embedded in scientific discourse. 80 The thought of
Robert Boyle has attracted several scholars who have perceived the deep interconnections between his natural philosophy and theology. In a detailed study of
the relationship between Boyle’s theological presuppositions and his philosophy
of nature, Eugene Klaaren argues that Boyle’s mechanical conception of nature,
his theory of primary and secondary qualities, and his belief in the law-governed
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MARGARET J. OSLER
regularity of nature were rooted in his voluntarist theology.81 Jan Wojcik has
shown, in a detailed and highly contextualized study of Boyle’s epistemology,
how theological controversies of the day influenced Boyle’s own writings.82
Wojcik argues that Boyle wrote the treatise Things above reason in the context
of a controversy among nonconformists about predestination. Concluding that
that the truth or falsity of many theological claims lies beyond the capacity of
human reason to decide, Boyle extended this conception to his epistemology
more generally. Accordingly, he drew his empiricist and probabilist approach to
scientific method from ideas originally developed in a theological setting. In
this context, Boyle’s work exemplifies the appropriation-and-translation model,
even though, as I noted earlier, he was apt to interpret his own work as an example of harmony. His appropriation of theological concepts for use in a natural
philosophical context was perhaps not deliberate. But viewing it this way enables the historian to see the more complex relationship between theology and
natural philosophy in Boyle’s thinking.
In Divine will and the mechanical philosophy, I examined how philosophers
appropriated conceptualizations of divine power and translated them into views
about the epistemological and metaphysical status of scientific knowledge. 83 I
focused on Pierre Gassendi and René Descartes, who argued for significantly
different versions of the mechanical philosophy. Agreeing on the fundamental
tenet of the mechanical philosophy — that all natural phenomena can be explained in terms of matter and motion — as well as rejecting the Aristotelian
and occult philosophies of the day, they disagreed about virtually everything
else: the nature of matter, the epistemological status of scientific knowledge,
and particular mechanical explanations of individual phenomena. Gassendi,
following the ancient models of Epicurus and Lucretius, maintained that indivisible atoms and the void are the ultimate components of nature. Atoms possess magnitude, figure, and heaviness, properties that cannot be fully known by
reason alone. He advocated an empiricist theory of scientific knowledge, claiming, in addition, that only individuals exist and that it is impossible to acquire
knowledge of the essences of things. Descartes maintained that the universe is a
plenum and that the matter filling it is infinitely divisible. According to Descartes,
matter is identical with geometrical space, and its only property is extension, an
attribute that can be understood rationally, without any appeal to observation or
experience.84 Although his theory of scientific knowledge required appeal to
empirical methods, he claimed that the first principles of natural philosophy
can be known a priori and can lead to knowledge of the essences of things. I
have argued that one source of these differences between Gassendi and Descartes
was the difference between their underlying assumptions about God’s relationship to the creation.
Both Gassendi and Descartes were concerned with the issue of how binding
God’s act of creation is on his future interactions with the world. Is God bound
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by his creation, or is he always free to change whatever he created in the world?
The langua ge that they used to articulate answers to these questions was
originally developed in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries as a consequence
of the reintroduction of Aristotle’s works into mainstream philosophical thought.
There was a delicate balance in medieval theology between the rationality of
God’s intellect and His absolute freedom in exercising his power and will. Theologians like Thomas Aquinas who emphasized God’s rationality were more inclined to accept elements of necessity in the creation than those like William of
Ockham who emphasized His absolute freedom and concluded that the world is
utterly contingent. In the seventeenth century, natural philosophers appropriated these ideas about God’s relationship to the creation and translated them
into views about the metaphysical and epistemological status of human knowledge and the laws of nature. Necessity found expression in the view that the
laws of nature describe the essences of things and can be known a priori, while
the empiricist and probabilist interpretations of scientific knowledge provided
a way of thinking about the contingency of a world that no longer contained
essences in a Platonic or Aristotelian sense.
Gassendi described a world utterly contingent on divine will. This contingency expressed itself in his conviction that empirical methods are the only way
to acquire knowledge about the natural world and that the matter of which all
physical things are composed possesses some properties that can be known only
empirically. Descartes, on the contrary, described a world in which God had
embedded necessary relations, some of which enable us to have a priori knowledge of substantial parts of the natural world. The capacity for a priori knowledge extends to the nature of matter, which, Descartes claimed to demonstrate,
possesses only geometrical properties. Gassendi’s views can be traced back to
the ideas of the fourteenth-century nominalists, while Descartes’s can be linked
to the Thomist tradition he imbibed at the Jesuit College at La Flèche.
Translated into the language of the mechanical philosophy, these theological
conceptualizations of contingency and necessity in the world were expressed in
different styles of science that emerged in the second half of the seventeenth
century. By “style” of science I mean specific manifestations of the general
epistemological and metaphysical assumptions that govern a particular scientific practice. In the second half of the seventeenth century, at least two distinct
styles of natural philosophy developed, reflecting the influence of the two traditions embodied in Gassendi’s and Descartes’s versions of the mechanical philosophy. The development of these styles exemplifies the appropriation and
translation of theological conceptions into theories about the natural world.
Consider, for example, the differences between Christiaan Huygens’s and Isaac
Newton’s interpretations of mathematical physics. Deeply influenced b y
Descartes, but not following him in every detail, Huygens undertook a mathematical analysis of important problems in the science of motion.85 He improved
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MARGARET J. OSLER
Descartes’s notoriously erroneous treatment of impact, retaining the kinematic
approach which characterized the Cartesian science of motion. 86 He also retained
Descar tes’s r ealist interpr etation of the meta physical significance of
mathematical physics: he believed that his mathematical models described reality.87 In fact, he believed that physical systems can be reduced to the mathematics used to describe them and that the mathematics can be known with certainty.88
Huygens thus retained Descartes’s view that it is possible to acquire certain
knowledge of physics by a priori methods. In Huygens’s writings on physics,
which focus on particular problems rather than the philosophical foundations
of science, these views were completely divorced from theological or even metaphysical considerations.89
Contrary to Huygens, Newton made no such claims for the certainty of his
physics or for the identity of his mathematical concepts with physical reality.
Unlike Huygens, Newton did not divorce his physics from his theological concerns, making it possible to draw direct connections between the style of his
science and the theological issues that he appropriated into his natural philosophy. Like Gassendi and Boyle, Newton held a voluntarist understanding of God’s
relationship to the creation.90 Newton’s voluntarism was reflected in his scientific style. Methodologically, he was an empiricist, recognizing that all conclusions are subject to revision in the light of further empirical evidence. 91 Although
mathematics played a central role in Newton’s natural philosophy, mathematical truth was not identical with physical truth.92 Since matter has physical properties other than those that are purely geometrical, the science of the material
world cannot be known by mathematical demonstrations alone. 93 Like Boyle,
Newton probably thought of himself as an advocate of harmony between natural philosophy and theology, for he interpreted his work in natural philosophy
as establishing divine activity in the world. There is another dimension to his
work, however, the translation of his theological assumptions into an empiricist
style of science that emphasized the contingency of the world and the probability of knowledge.
In the generations that followed, scientists tended to adopt one of the two
styles, stressing either the powers of mathematics to describe a law-bound, deterministic universe or the contingency of the natural world and the consequent
need for empirical methods. They had appropriated either the Cartesian or the
Newtonian interpretation of the laws of nature and scientific method without
necessarily realizing that these styles had originally been taken from a theological context.
Despite certain apparent similarities, the appropriation-and-translation model
differs from the harmony model in important ways. Advocates of the harmony
model consider the worldviews propounded by ‘science’ and ‘religion’ as wholes
and argue that they are compatible and mutually supportive or that one promotes the well-being of the other. In this respect, harmonizers presume an
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· 107
essentialist interpretation of ‘science’ and ‘religion’, regarding them to be welldefined entities that can be identified at any time without concern for historical
context. This tendency is evident in Merton’s characterization of ‘science’ in
the seventeenth century and in the ensuing debates about the defining characteristics of “Puritanism”. 94 In contrast to the harmonizers, historians thinking in
terms of appropriation and translation focus on individual concepts and the way
they function in particular contexts. The emphasis on context is crucial, for it
enables the historian to take note of the particular features of an historicized
discourse, rather than imposing modern conceptions about the coherence of
worldviews. Just as Mendel’s focus on unit characters moved his thinking away
from traditional assumptions about specific essences, enabling him to observe
the inheritance of these characters without worrying about the definition and
production of species, so historians who consider the appropriation and translation of individual concepts can escape from the essentialist (and anachronistic)
activity of trying to define and identify ‘science’ and ‘religion’ as the same in
all times and places. 95 This approach enables the historian to acknowledge the
existence and significance of changing disciplinary boundaries and changing
intellectual preoccupations in a variety of historical contexts.
CONCLUSION
I have discussed three metaphors traditionally employed to analyse the historical relationship between science and religion and have noted that although they
work well to describe some aspects of the relationship in the early modern period, they do not tell the whole story. Moreover, they presume an essentialist
interpretation of ‘science’ and ‘religion’, an essentialism which does not adequately reflect the fluid and permeable boundaries that are evident when historical context is taken into account. To remedy these problems, I have proposed
new metaphors which capture some of aspects of the relationship neglected or
misconstrued by the traditional approaches. The metaphors of appropriation
and translation that I have proposed to add to the traditional metaphors of conflict, harmony, and segregation describe aspects of the relationship between
early modern natural philosophy and theology in a way that is compatible with
the newly emerging historiography of the Scientific Revolution, one that recognizes the difference between early modern intellectual preoccupations and those
of the twentieth century.
REFERENCES
1. I presented earlier versions of this paper at the Conference on Jewish Responses to Early
Modern Science, Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, May 1995, and as the Stillman Drake Lecture at
the annual meeting of the Canadian Society for History and Philosophy of Science, St
Catharine’s, Ontario, May 1996. Peter Barker, Pamela McCallum, J. J. MacIntosh, Barbara
J. Shapiro, and Jan W. Wojcik all made useful suggestions for improving earlier versions
108 ·
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.
12.
MARGARET J. OSLER
of this paper. Margaret G. Cook critically read successive drafts and helped me rethink a
number of issues in several lengthy discussions. Four anonymous readers for History of
science made extremely helpful suggestions for improving this paper. I am grateful to
them all. Fellowships from Calgary Institute for the Humanities and from the National
Endowment for the Humanities each provided time for the pursuit of this research.
The following works include the most important studies and re-evaluations of the concept of
the Scientific Revolution: I. Bernard Cohen, The Scientific Revolution (Cambridge, Mass.,
1985); David C. Lindberg and Robert S. Westman (eds), Reappraisals of the Scientific
Revolution (Cambridge, 1990); Peter Barker and Roger Ariew (eds), Revolution and
continuity: Essays in the history and philosophy of early modern science (Washington,
D.C., 1991); J. V. Field and Frank A. J. L. James (eds), Renaissance and revolution:
Humanists, scholars, craftsmen and natural philosophers in early modern Europe
(Cambridge, 1993); H. Floris Cohen, The Scientific Revolution: A historiographical inquiry
(Chicago, 1994); and B. J. T. Dobbs, “Newton as Final Cause and First Mover”, Isis,
lxxxv (1994), 633–43.
For incisive discussions of this and related assumptions in the traditional historiography, see
Andrew Cunningham, “Getting the game right: Some plain words on the identity and
invention of science”, Studies in history and philosophy of science, xix (1988), 365–89;
Andrew Cunningham, “How the Principia got its name: Or, Taking natural philosophy
seriously”, History of science, xxix (1991), 377–92; and Andrew Cunningham and Perry
Williams, “De-centring the ‘Big Picture’: The origins of modern science and the modern
origins of science”, The British journal for the history of science, xxvi (1993), 407–32.
John Hedley Brooke discusses a number of other kinds of interaction between science and
religion. See his article, “Religious belief and the natural sciences: Mapping the historical
landscape”, in Jitse van der Meer (ed.), Facets of faith and science, i: Historiography and
modes of interaction (Ancaster, Ontario and Lanham, Maryland, 1996), 1–26.
Sydney Ross, “Scientist: The story of a word”, Annals of science, xviii (1962), 65–85.
Barbara J. Shapiro, Probability and certainty in seventeenth-century England: A study of the
relationships between natural science, religion, history, law, and literature (Princeton,
N.J., 1983); Ernan McMullin, “Conceptions of science in the Scientific Revolution”, in
Lindberg and Westman (eds), Reappraisals of the Scientific Revolution (ref. 2), 27–92;
Margaret J. Osler, “John Locke and the changing ideal of scientific knowledge”, Journal
of the history of ideas, xxxi (1970), 3–16 (reprinted in Philosophy, religion and science
in the 17th and 18th centuries, ed. by John W. Yolton (Rochester, 1990), 325–38); Margaret
J. Osler, Divine Will and the mechanical philosophy: Gassendi and Descartes on
contingency and necessity in the created world (Cambridge, 1994), chap. 4; and Jan W.
Wojcik, Robert Boyle and the limits of reason (Cambridge, 1996).
John Locke, An essay concerning human understanding, ed. by Peter H. Nidditch (Oxford,
1975), Book 4, chap. 12, §10, p. 645.
Aristotle, Metaphysics, 1026a14–15, in The complete works of Aristotle, ed. by Jonathan Barnes
(2 vols, Princeton, 1984), ii, 1620.
Edward Grant, The foundations of modern science in the Middle Ages: Their religious,
institutional, and intellectual contexts (Cambridge, 1996), 136. See also Roger French
and Andrew Cunningham, Before science: The invention of the friars’ natural philosophy
(Aldershot, 1996).
Grant, op. cit., 137.
Ibid., 153–4.
Thomas Aquinas, Summa theologica, translated by the Fathers of the English Dominican
MIXING METAPHORS
· 109
Province (3 vols, New York, 1947), Part I, qu. 75, art. 6, vol. i, p. 368.
13. William A. Wallace, “Traditional natural philosophy”, in Charles B. Schmitt, Quentin Skinner,
and Eckhard Kessler (eds), The Cambridge history of Renaissance philosophy (Cambridge,
1988), 202–6.
14. Ibid., 209–13.
15. See Dennis Des Chene, Physiologia: Natural philosophy in late Aristotelian and Cartesian
thought (Ithaca and London, 1996), and Bar ry Brundell, Pierre Gassendi: From
Aristotelianism to a new natural philosophy (Dordrecht, 1987).
16. Wallace, “Traditional natural philosophy” (ref. 13), 212–19. On the changing relationship
between mixed mathematics and natural philosophy, see Peter Dear, Discipline and
experience: The mathematical way in the Scientific Revolution (Ithaca and London, 1995).
17. David C. Lindberg and Ronald L. Numbers (eds), God and nature: Historical essays on the
encounter between Christianity and science (Berkeley, 1986), Introduction.
18. Separating science and religion and restricting each to its own proper domain is the aim of
Ian G. Barbour, Issues in science and religion (Englewood Cliffs, N.J., 1966). See also
John Dillenberger, Protestant thought and natural science: A historical study (Nashville
and New York, 1960). Galileo adopted this view in “The letter to the Grand Duchess”.
See Galileo Galilei, “Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina”, translated by Stillman Drake
in Discoveries and opinions of Galileo (Garden City, N.Y., 1957), 173–216. Stephen J.
Wykstra introduced the term “segregationist” to describe this view in “Should worldviews
shape science? Toward and integrationist account of scientific theorizing”, in Jitse M. van
der Meer (ed.), Facets of faith and science, ii: The role of beliefs in mathematics and the
natural sciences: An Augustinian perspective (Ancaster, Ontario and Lanham, Maryland,
1996), 124–71. While I am fully prepared to acknowledge his introduction of this term,
note that I developed the terminology I use in this paper independently before I was
acquainted with his work.
19. John Hedley Brooke, Science and religion: Some historical perspectives (Cambridge, 1991),
42.
20. James R. Moore, The post-Darwinian controversies: A study of the Protestant struggle to
come to terms with Darwin in Great Britain and America, 1870–1900 (Cambridge, 1979).
21. Francis Oakley, Omnipotence, covenant, and order: An excursion in the history of ideas from
Abelard to Leibniz (Ithaca and London, 1984). See also, Francis Oakley, “Christian
theology and Newtonian science: The rise of the concept of the laws of nature”, Church
history, xxx (1961), 433–57.
22. Amos Funkenstein, Theology and the scientific imagination from the Middle Ages to the
seventeenth century (Princeton, N.J., 1986).
23. Cunningham, “How the Principia got its name” (ref. 3).
24. Moore, The post-Darwinian controversies (ref. 20), 326–40; Funkenstein, Theology and the
scientific imagination (ref. 22), 14.
25. Peter Barker develops this point in detail in “Understanding change and continuity:
Transmission and appropriation in sixteenth century natural philosophy”, in F. Jamil Ragep
and Sally P. Ragep (eds), Tradition, transmission, transformation: Proceedings of two
conferences on pre-modern science held at the University of Oklahoma (Leiden, New
York, and Cologne, 1996), 527–50.
26. John William Draper, History of the conflict between religion and science, abridged by Charles
T. Sprading (New York, 1926; first published 1874); Andrew Dickson White, A history of
the warfare of science with theology in christendom (2 vols, New York, 1960; first published
1896). For a discursive account of these and other historiographical positions, see Brooke,
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MARGARET J. OSLER
Science and religion (ref. 19), Introduction and chap. 1.
27. Brooke, Science and religion (ref. 19), 33–36. See also Lindberg and Numbers (eds), God
and nature (ref. 17), 1–3.
28. See John William Draper, History of the intellectual development of Europe, rev. edn (2 vols,
New York, 1876).
29. Ibid., 86, 113, and 116.
30. White, Warfare (ref. 26), i, Introduction; and Brooke, Science and religion (ref. 19), 35.
31. White, Warfare (ref. 26), i, Introduction.
32. Ibid., i, p. viii. Original italicized.
33. Giorgio de Santillana, The crime of Galileo (Chicago, 1955) and Richard J. Blackwell, Galileo,
Bellarmine, and the Bible (Notre Dame, Ind., 1991).
34. Richard S. Westfall, “Bellarmine, Galileo, and the clash of two world views”, in Essays on
the trial of Galileo (Vatican City State, 1989).
35. Pierre Duhem, To save the phenomena: An essay on the idea of physical theory from Plato to
Galileo, translated by Edmund Doland and Chaninah Maschler (Chicago and London,
1969; first published 1908).
36. Richard S. Westfall, “Galileo and the Jesuits” and “Patronage and the publication of the
Dialogue”, in Essays on the trial of Galileo (ref. 34), and Mario Biagioli, Galileo courtier:
The practice of science in the culture of absolutism (Chicago and London, 1993).
37. Pietro Redondi, Galileo heretic, transl. by Raymond Rosenthal (Princeton, 1987).
38. Rivka Feldhay, Galileo and the Church: Political inquisition or critical dialogue? (Cambridge,
1995).
39. Brooke, Science and religion (ref. 19), 42–51.
40. The examples I am discussing are focused on biblical religion in the Judaeo-Christian tradition.
The harmony model, used for apologetic purposes, is not confined to that tradition,
however. Seyyed Hossein Nasr, for example, argues that a particular branch of Islam
nurtured the development of science in the medieval Muslim world. See Science and
civilization in Islam (Cambridge, Mass., 1968), Introduction.
41. Robert K. Merton, Science, technology, and society in seventeenth-century England (New
York, 1970; first published 1938), 81.
42. Ibid., chap. 5.
43. Ibid., 134–5.
44. “The sociologist is not a Defender of the Faith, religious or scientific. When he has uncovered
the sentiments crystallized in religious values and the cultural orientation which governs
their expression, when he has determined the extent to which this led men toward or away
from scientific pursuits or perhaps influenced them not at all, then his task is, in its initial
outlines, complete.” Ibid., 55–56.
45. Christopher Hill, “Puritanism, capitalism and the Scientific Revolution”, in Charles Webster
(ed.), The intellectual revolution of the seventeenth century (London, 1974), 243–53, p.
244 (first published in Past and present, xxix (1964), 88–97).
46. Ibid., 245.
47. Charles Webster, The Great Instauration: Science, medicine and reform, 1626–1660 (London,
1975).
48. R. Hooykaas, “Science and Reformation”, in I. Bernard Cohen (ed.), Puritanism and the rise
of modern science: The Merton Thesis (New Brunswick and London, 1990), 189–99, p.
190 (first published in Journal of world history, iii (1956), 109–39).
49. Ibid., 191.
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50. Margaret C. Jacob, The cultural meaning of the Scientific Revolution (New York, 1988), 73.
51. On Jesuit science, see J. L. Heilbron, Elements of early modern physics (Berkeley, 1982), 93–
106; Rivka Feldhay, “Knowledge and salvation in Jesuit culture”, Science in context, i
(1987), 195–213; and Dear, Discipline and experience (ref. 16), passim.
52. See Peter Barker, “The role of religion in the Lutheran response to Copernicus”, in Margaret
J. Osler (ed .), The canonical imperativ e: Rethinking the Scientific Re volution
(forthcoming). See also Sachiko Kusukawa, The transformation of natural philosophy:
The case of Philip Melanchthon (Cambridge, 1995).
53. The interconnectedness of the study of astronomy and the understanding of God’s handiwork
is a constant theme in Kepler’s writings. See, for example, Johannes Kepler, Epitome of
Copernican astronomy, transl. by Charles Glenn Wallis, in Great books of the Western
World (Chicago, 1952), xvi, 841–1004.
54. J. V. Field, Kepler’s geometrical cosmology (Chicago, 1988), 49.
55. Robert Boyle, The usefulness of experimental natural philosophy, The excellency of theology,
A discourse of things above reason, Some considerations about the reconcileableness of
reason and religion, A free inquiry into the vulgarly received notion of nature, A disquisition
about the final causes of natural things, and The Christian virtuoso, all in Robert Boyle,
The works of the Honourable Robert Boyle, ed. by Thomas Birch, rev. edn (6 vols, London,
1772).
56. Isaac Newton, Opticks, or a Treatise of the reflections, refractions, inflections, and colours of
light, 4th edn (London, 1730; reprinted New York, 1952), 369–70.
57. B. J. T. Dobbs, The Janus faces of genius: The role of alchemy in Newton’s thought (Cambridge,
1991), 18.
58. Richard S. Westfall, Science and religion in seventeenth-century England (New Haven, 1958),
24.
59. Ibid., 219–20.
60. Duhem, To save the phenomena (ref. 35), 106.
61. Pierre Duhem, Essays in the history and philosophy of science, transl. and ed. by Roger Ariew
and Peter Barker (Indianapolis and Cambridge, 1996), p. x.
62. Ibid., p. xi.
63. See Pierre Duhem, The aim and structure of physical theory, transl. by Phillip Wiener
(Princeton, 1954).
64. Galileo Galilei, “Letter to Madame Christina of Lorraine Grand Duchess of Tuscany”, in
Drake, Discoveries and opinions of Galileo (ref. 18), 175–216, p. 186.
65. Barbour, Issues (ref. 18), 3–4.
66. Ibid., 54.
67. Ibid., 50.
68. Pierre Gassendi, Disquisitio metaphysica seu dubitationes et instantiae adversus Renati
Cartesii metaphysicam et responsa, ed. and into French by Bernard Rochot (Paris, 1962),
396–9, in Pierre Gassendi, Opera omnia (6 vols, Lyon, 1658; facsimile reprint, StuttgartBad Canstatt, 1964), iii, 359.
69. In Boyle, Works (ref. 55), v, 392–444. On the role of final causes in early modern natural
philosophy, see Margaret J. Osler, “From immanent natures to nature as artifice: The
reinterpretation of final causes in seventeenth-century natural philosophy”, The monist,
lxxix (1996), 388–407.
70. For a conceptual argument against the segregationist view, see Wykstra, “Should worldviews
shape science?” (ref. 18).
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71. See Wykstra, “Should worldviews shape science?” for a philosophical analysis of various
kinds of interactions between theology and scientific theory.
72. Oakley, Omnipotence, covenant, and order (ref. 21), and Funkenstein, Theology and the
scientific imagination (ref. 22).
73. Barker, “Understanding change and continuity” (ref. 25), 547.
74. Prime examples are the incorporation of Aristotelian natural philosophy into medieval theology
and the development of the higher criticism in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries.
See W. Neil, “The criticism and theological use of the Bible, 1700–1950”, in S. L.
Greenslade (ed.), The Cambridge history of the Bible (3 vols, Cambridge, 1963), iii, 238–
93.
75. Cunningham, “How the Principia got its name” (ref. 3), 388.
76. J. J. MacIntosh, “Robert Boyle on Epicurean atheism and atomism”, in Margaret J. Osler
(ed.), Atoms, pneuma, and tranquillity: Epicurean and Stoic themes in European thought
(Cambridge, 1991), 197–219.
77. See Keith Hutchison, “Supernaturalism and the mechanical philosophy”, History of science,
xxi (1983), 297–333.
78. See, for example, John Henry, “Henry More versus Robert Boyle: The spirit of nature and the
nature of Providence”, in Sarah Hutton (ed.), Henry More (1624–1687): Tercentenary
studies (Dordrecht, 1990), 55–76, and Margaret J. Osler, “Triangulating Divine Will: Henry
More, Robert Boyle, and René Descartes on God’s relationship to the Creation”, in
Marialuisa Baldi (ed.), “Mind senior to the world”: Stoicismo e origenismo nella filosofia
platonica del Seicento inglese (Milan, 1996), 75–88.
79. Richard H. Popkin, The history of scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza, rev. and expanded
edn (Berkeley, 1979; first published 1960); Henry van Leeuwen, The problem of certainty
in English thought 1630–1680 (The Hague, 1963); and Shapiro, Probability and certainty
in seventeenth-century England (ref. 6).
80. Cunningham, “How the Principia got its name” (ref. 3), 386–9.
81. Eugene M. Klaaren, Religious origins of modern science: Belief in creation in seventeenthcentury thought (Grand Rapids, Mich., 1977), chaps. 4, 5, 6. “While it is a truism that the
rise of modern natural science occurred within Christendom, I have sought to show in the
broadest sense that belief in creation constituted a definitive context within which the
basic questions of major figures in the advent of the new science were raised, pursued,
and developed. Systematically, the principals who gave shape to the new science ... took
for granted an orientation to God as Creator, His relation to creation, structure in creation
at large, and the human creature’s special place in creation” (p. 186). See also Margaret J.
Osler, “The intellectual sources of Robert Boyle’s philosophy of nature: Gassendi’s
voluntarism and Boyle’s physico-theological project”, in Richard Kroll, Richard Ashcraft,
and Perez Zagorin (eds), Philosophy, science, and religion in England, 1640–1700
(Cambridge, 1992), 178–98.
82. Wojcik, Robert Boyle and the limits of reason (ref. 6). See also Jan W. Wojcik, “The theological
context of Boyle’s Things above reason”, in Michael Hunter (ed.), Robert Boyle
reconsidered (Cambridge, 1994), 139–55.
83. Osler, Divine Will and the mechanical philosophy (ref. 6).
84. Daniel Garber, Descartes’ metaphysical physics (Chicago, 1992), 117–20.
85. Aant Elzinga, On a research program in early modern physics (New York, 1972), 73–80.
86. Richard S. Westfall, Force in Newton’s physics: The science of dynamics in the seventeenth
century (New York, 1971), chap. 4.
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87. Elzinga, On a research program (ref. 85), 80.
88. Joella Yoder, Unrolling time: Christiaan Huygens and the mathematization of nature
(Cambridge, 1988), 172–3.
89. Ibid., 172, and Alan Gabbey, “Huygens and mechanics”, in H. J. M. Bos, M. J. S. Rudwick, H.
A. M. Snelders, and R. P. W. Visser (eds), Studies on Christiaan Huygens: Invited papers
from the Symposium on the Life and Work of Christiaan Huygens, Amsterdam, 22–25
August 1979 (Lisse, 1980), 166–99, p. 185.
90. Dobbs, Janus faces (ref. 57), chaps. 4–7.
91. Isaac Newton, Sir Isaac Newton’s Mathematical Principles of Natural Philosophy and his
System of the World, transl. by Andrew Motte in 1729 and revised by Florian Cajori
(Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1934), 400.
92. See, for example, Newton to Oldenburg, 11 June 1672, in The correspondence of Isaac Newton,
ed. by H. W. Turnbull, J. P. Scott, A. R. Hall, and Laura Tilling (7 vols, Cambridge, 1959–
77), i, 187.
93. See Osler, Divine Will and the mechanical philosophy (ref. 6), chap. 10.
94. See articles by S. F. Mason, H. F. Kearney, Christopher Hill, and Theodore Rabb in Webster
(ed.), The intellectual revolution of the seventeenth century (ref. 45).
95. Elizabeth Gasking, “Why was Mendel’s work ignored?”, Journal of the history of ideas, xx
(1959), 60–84.