A Brief History of Science...and Faith? | Prof. Lawrence Principe

The Thomistic Institute

Christianity, Society & Culture, Catholic Intellectual Tradition, Catholic, Philosophy, Religion & Spirituality, Thomism, Catholicism

4.8 • 729 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2022

⏱️ 45 minutes

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Summary

The lecture was given at the University of California, Berkeley on September 23, 2022. For information on upcoming events, visit our website at thomisticinstitute.org About the speaker: Dr. Lawrence M. Principe is Drew Professor of the Humanities at Johns Hopkins University. Professor Principe earned a B.S. in Chemistry and a B.A. in Liberal Studies from the University of Delaware. He also holds two doctorates: a Ph.D. in Organic Chemistry from Indiana University, Bloomington, and a Ph.D. in the History of Science from Johns Hopkins University. In 1999, the Carnegie Foundation chose Professor Principe as the Maryland Professor of the Year, and in 1998 he received the Templeton Foundation's award for courses dealing with science and religion. Johns Hopkins has repeatedly recognized Professor Principe's teaching achievements. He has won its Distinguished Faculty Award, the Excellence in Teaching Award, and the George Owen Teaching Award. In 2004, Professor Principe was awarded the first Francis Bacon Prize by the California Institute of Technology, awarded to an outstanding scholar whose work has had substantial impact on the history of science, the history of technology, or historically-engaged philosophy of science. Professor Principe has published numerous papers and is the author or coauthor of three books, including The Aspiring Adept: Robert Boyle and His Alchemical Quest.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This talk is brought to you by the Thomistic Institute.
0:04.0	For more talks like this, visit us at tamistic institute.org.
0:11.6	So my topic for this evening is the relationship between science and religion or between science and faith, depending on how you want to think about it.
0:20.3	It's a topic that
0:21.5	sometimes seems familiar enough. But I think that kind of familiarity can be deceptive.
0:28.4	And what I mean is that I think just everybody has heard about, let's say, a conflict between
0:33.2	science and faith, a conflict between science and religion, and probably can rattle off a few
0:38.5	things that sound like illustrative examples.
0:41.2	Galileo is usually up at the top of the list, although I understand now Bruno has reached
0:45.5	that level with him.
0:47.7	But usually there's a lot less appreciation of the origins of the notion or the validity
0:53.9	of the historical claims upon which this idea of conflict is based.
0:58.8	So what I want to do this evening is first I'm going to try and outline where and why the idea of a
1:05.1	constant conflict between science and religion originated and describe who continues to support it and why. Because I think the
1:12.3	why is very important here as well, not necessarily the surface meaning. I'm then going to
1:18.2	critique this misperception, first with some historical examples, and then I think what's more
1:23.1	important, well, what I think is more important is to cite certain features of religion,
1:28.8	of Catholic Christianity in particular, that formed basic foundations for the development of
1:34.3	modern scientific culture and the contributions it continues to make. So it still frequently
1:42.1	comes as a surprise that there are, I'm going to say this very carefully,
1:45.7	no serious historians of science who accept the notion of a long standing or inherent conflict
1:54.0	or warfare between science and religion. None. In contrast to what I would call the silly
	...

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