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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/11/18, SPi
IA N R A M SEY C E N T R E ST U D I E S
I N S C I E N C E A N D R E L IG IO N
The Ian Ramsey Centre Studies in Science and Religion series brings readers innovative
books showcasing cutting-edge research in the field of science and religion. The series
will consider key questions in the field, including the interaction of the natural sciences
and the philosophy of religion; the impact of evolutionary theory on our understanding
of human morality, religiosity, and rationality; the exploration of a scientifically-engaged
theology; and the psychological examination of the importance of religion for human
flourishing and wellbeing. The series will also encourage the development of new and
more nuanced readings of the interaction of science and religion. This ground breaking
series aims to represent the best new scholarship in this ever-expanding field of study.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/11/18, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/11/18, SPi
Science without
God?
Rethinking the History of Scientific Naturalism
Edited by
P E T E R HA R R I S O N
and
J O N H . R O B E RT S
1
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/11/18, SPi
1
Great Clarendon Street, Oxford, OX2 6DP,
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© Oxford University Press 2019
The moral rights of the authors have been asserted
First Edition published in 2019
Impression: 1
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Published in the United States of America by Oxford University Press
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OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/11/18, SPi
Acknowledgements
This volume had its origins in a conference held at Florida State University in
February 2013. The meeting was to mark the retirement of the distinguished
historian of science and medicine, Ronald L. Numbers, and to explore some
of the themes of his seminal work on the historical relations between science
and religion. One of those themes was scientific naturalism, and it became clear
over the course of the meeting that there was room for a volume that dealt in
detail with the historical origins of scientific naturalism, covering different his-
torical eras and various scientific disciplines—hence, this present collection.
A number of the contributors to this volume were present at that meeting.
Other attendees offered helpful commentary and critique of those early drafts,
and joined in what were extremely productive discussions of key issues. There
is a long list of people to thank for those contributions: Terrie Aamodt, Keith
Benson, Jon Butler, Ted Davis, Matt Day, Noah Efron, John Evans, Dana
Freiburger, Fred Gregory, Florence Hsia, Judith Leavitt, Sue Lederer, David
Livingstone, Jay Malone, Gregg Mitman, Blair Neilson, Efthymios Nicolaidis,
Shawn Peters, Bob Richards, Todd Savitt, Rennie Schoepflin, Adam Shapiro,
Hugh Slotten, Elliot Sober, John Stenhouse, Rod Stiling, William Trollinger,
Steve Wald, John Harley Warner, and Stephen Weldon. Particular thanks are
due to Jeffrey Jentzen, and to the Department of Medical History and Bioethics
of the University of Wisconsin-Madison, for their financial support. Michael
Ruse was a congenial and entertaining host at FSU, and also made a generous
contribution, both materially and intellectually. Finally, we must express a
special debt of gratitude to The Historical Society, Boston University, and
Donald A. Yerxa, who were enthusiastic supporters of this project from the
start, and whose generosity has made possible this collection.
Like that original meeting, this volume is dedicated to Ron Numbers, an
outstanding scholar and dedicated teacher, a source of encouragement and
inspiration to generations of historians, and, for many of us, a valued colleague
and dear friend.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/11/18, SPi
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/11/18, SPi
Contents
List of Figures xi
Notes on Contributors xiii
Introduction 1
Peter Harrison
1. ‘All Things are Full of Gods’: Naturalism in the Classical World 19
Daryn Lehoux
2. Naturalist Tendencies in Medieval Science 37
Michael H. Shank
3. Laws of God or Laws of Nature? Natural Order in the
Early Modern Period58
Peter Harrison
4. Between Isaac Newton and Enlightenment Newtonianism:
The ‘God Question’ in the Eighteenth Century 77
J. B. Shank
5. God and the Uniformity of Nature: The Case of
Nineteenth-Century Physics 97
Matthew Stanley
6. Chemistry with and without God 111
John Hedley Brooke
7. Removing God from Biology 130
Michael Ruse
8. Christian Materialism and the Prospect of Immortality 148
Michelle Pfeffer
9. The Science of the Soul: Naturalizing the Mind in Great Britain
and North America 162
Jon H. Roberts
10. Down to Earth: Untangling the Secular from the Sacred
in Late-Modern Geology 182
Nicolaas Rupke
11. Naturalizing the Bible: The Shifting Role of the Biblical Account
of Nature197
Scott Gerard Prinster
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/11/18, SPi
x Contents
Index 255
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 13/11/18, SPi
List of Figures
Notes on Contributors
Notes on Contributors xv
Introduction
Peter Harrison
In 1922, Canadian philosopher Roy Wood Sellars confidently declared that ‘we
are all naturalists now’.1 While Sellars’s announcement was perhaps a little pre-
mature, it is difficult to deny, almost one hundred years later, that commitment
to some form of naturalism is the default position in virtually all departments
of human knowledge. ‘Naturalism’, of course, can mean a number of different
things. But what most forms of scientific naturalism have in common is a
commitment to the methods of the natural sciences and to the reliability of the
knowledge generated by those methods. As Sellars himself expressed it, natur-
alism is not so much a philosophical system as ‘a recognition of the impressive
implications of the physical and biological sciences’.2 When we inquire further
into what, specifically, is naturalistic about the sciences, the simplest answer is
that their methods involve a rejection of supernatural or spiritual explanations
and a focus on what is explicable in terms of natural causes, forces, and laws.
Naturalism and science thus go hand in hand. This volume is about that part-
nership, and its long and intriguing history.
While the subject of this book is the history of scientific naturalism, it is helpful
to begin in the present with contemporary debates about naturalism and its
relation to the natural sciences. Modern discussions of scientific naturalism
1 Roy Wood Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism (New York: Russell and Russell, 1922), p. i.
2 Sellars, Evolutionary Naturalism, p. i. Sellars’s son, Wilfred Sellars, put it even more starkly:
‘science is the measure of all things’: Wilfrid Sellars, Science, Perception and Reality (London:
Routledge, 1963), p. 173. On the varieties of naturalism see Geert Keil, ‘Naturalism’, in The Routledge
Companion to Twentieth Century Philosophy, ed. Dermot Moran (London: Routledge, 2008),
pp. 254–307; David Papineau, ‘Naturalism’, in Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Spring 2014
edn), ed. Edward N. Zalta, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/naturalism/.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/11/18, SPi
2 Peter Harrison
3 For this distinction see, e.g., Robert Pennock, Tower of Babel: The Evidence Against the New
Creationism (Cambridge, MA: MIT, 1999), p. 191; Maarten Boudry, Stefaan Blancke, and Johan
Braeckman, ‘How Not to Attack Intelligent Design Creationism: Philosophical Misconceptions
about Methodological Naturalism’, Foundations of Science 15 (2010): pp. 227–44; B. Forrest,
‘Methodological Naturalism and Philosophical Naturalism: Clarifying the Connection’, Philo
3 (2000): pp. 7–29.
4 ‘Such a universal naturalism—common to idealists and realists, to naturalists and theists
alike—may be called scientific or methodological naturalism. But methodological naturalism is
sharply to be distinguished from metaphysical naturalism.’ Edgar Sheffield Brightman, ‘An
Empirical Approach to God’, Philosophical Review 46 (1937): pp. 157–8; Paul de Vries, ‘Naturalism
in the Natural Sciences’, Christian Scholar’s Review 15 (1986): pp. 388–96. See also Ronald
L. Numbers, ‘Science without God: Natural Laws and Christian Beliefs’, in Science and Christianity
in Pulpit and Pew (New York: Oxford University Press, 2007), pp. 39–58.
5 Tammy Kitzmiller et al. v. Dover Area School District et al., 400 F.Sup2d 707 (2005).
No. 04cv2688.
OUP CORRECTED PROOF – FINAL, 15/11/18, SPi
Introduction3
NOTE 209.
NOTE 210.
NOTE 211.
Simo.—He is chained.
Pam.—Ah! dear Sir, that was not well done.
Simo.—I am sure I ordered it to be well done.
S. Vinctus est.
P. Pater non rectè vinctus est.
S. Haud ita jussi.
The jest in this sentence turns on the word rectè, which refers to
an Athenian custom of binding criminals’ hands and feet together.
Simo (A. 5. S. 3. p. 86.) orders Dromo to bind Davus in the manner
before mentioned: (atque audin’? quadrupedem constringito.)
Pamphilus says, non rectè vinctus est: rectè has a double meaning,
it signifies rightly, and also straight. Simo pretends to take it in the
latter sense, which makes his son’s speech run thus, He is not
bound straight or upright: to which Simo replies, I ordered he should
not be bound straight, but crooked, or neck and heels. I trust I have
made the force of this pun clear to the unlearned reader: the turn
given it in the English translation is borrowed from Echard.
NOTE 212.
Pam. (to himself.)—Any one would think, perhaps, that I do not
believe this to be true, but I know it is because I wish it so. I am of
opinion, that the lives of the gods are eternal, because their
pleasures are secure and without end.
“Epicurus observed, that the gods could not but be immortal,
since they are exempt from all kinds of evils, cares, and dangers. But
Terence gives another more refined reason, which more forcibly
expresses the joy of Pamphilus; for he affirms that their immortality
springs only from the durability of their pleasures. This passage is
very beautiful. Pamphilus prefaces what he is going to say by the
expression, “Any one would think, perhaps;” this was in a manner
necessary to excuse the freedom which, arising from his joy, makes
him assign another reason for the immortality of the gods than those
discovered by the philosophers, particularly by Epicurus, whose
name was still fresh in the recollection of every person, and whose
doctrines were very generally received and adopted.” Madame
Dacier.
NOTE 213.
NOTE 214.
NOTE 215.
Do you, Davus, go home, and order some of our people hither, to
remove her to our house. Why do you loiter? go, don’t lose a
moment.
Davus.—I am going. You must not expect their coming out: she will
be betrothed within, &c.
The concluding lines of the play from “You must not expect,” &c.,
were not originally spoken by the actor who personated Davus, but
formed a sort of epilogue, spoken by a performer, called Cantor; who
also pronounced the word Plaudite, with which the comedies and
tragedies of the Romans usually terminated. Vide Note 217, also
Quintilian, B. 6. C. 1., and Cicero and Cato. Horace expressly tells
us, that the Cantor said the words, vos plaudite.
“Tu quid ego, et populus mecum desideret audi.
Si plausoris eges aulæa manentis, et usque
Sessuri, donec Cantor vos plaudite dicat;
Ætatis cujusque notandi sunt tibi mores,
Mobilibusque decor naturis dandus et annis.”
Art of Poet., L. 153.
NOTE 216.
NOTE 217.
NOTE 218.
FINIS.
LONDON:
Printed by W. Clowes, Northumberland-court.
Transcriber’s Note:
Words may have multiple spelling variations or inconsistent
hyphenation in the text. These have been left unchanged unless
indicated below. Obsolete and alternative spellings were left
unchanged.
Note 108 has two footnotes that were lettered sequentially and
were moved to the end of the Note. Missing anchor was added to
Note 50. Obvious printing errors, such as backwards, upside down,
reverse order, or partially printed letters and punctuation, were
corrected. Final stops missing at the end of sentences and
abbreviations were added. Duplicate letters at line endings or page
breaks were removed. Punctuation and accent marks were
normalized.
The following items were changed:
“his” to “this”
“praisng” changed to “praising”
“thing” added to text where not legible in the original, Note 114
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