The relationship between religion and science involves discussions that interconnect the study of the natural world, history, philosophy, and theology. Even though the ancient and medieval worlds did not have conceptions resembling the modern understandings of "science" or of "religion", certain elements of modern ideas on the subject recur throughout history. The pair-structured phrases "religion and science" and "science and religion" first emerged in the literature during the 19th century. This coincided with the refining of "science" and of "religion" as distinct concepts in the preceding few centuries—partly due to professionalization of the sciences, the Protestant Reformation, colonization, and globalization. Since then the relationship between science and religion has been characterized in terms of "conflict", "harmony", "complexity", and "mutual independence", among others.
The scientific community is a diverse network of interacting scientists. It includes many "sub-communities" working on particular scientific fields, and within particular institutions; interdisciplinary and cross-institutional activities are also significant. Objectivity is expected to be achieved by the scientific method. Peer review, through discussion and debate within journals and conferences, assists in this objectivity by maintaining the quality of research methodology and interpretation of results.
The conflict thesis is a historiographical approach in the history of science that originated in the 19th century with John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. It maintains that there is an intrinsic intellectual conflict between religion and science, and that it inevitably leads to hostility. The consensus among historians of science is that the thesis has long been discredited, which explains the rejection of the thesis by contemporary scholars. Into the 21st century, historians of science widely accept a complexity thesis.
Ronald Leslie Numbers was an American historian of science. He was awarded the 2008 George Sarton Medal by the History of Science Society for "a lifetime of exceptional scholarly achievement by a distinguished scholar".
Dystroglycan is a protein that in humans is encoded by the DAG1 gene.
Hindus have found support for, or ideas foreshadowing evolutionary ideas, in scriptures, such as the mytheme of Dashavatara, the incarnations of Vishnu starting with a fish.
Scientific imperialism is a term that appears to have been coined by Ellis T. Powell when addressing the Commonwealth Club of Canada on 8 September 1920. He defined imperialism as "the sense of arbitrary and capricious domination over the bodies and souls of men," he used the term "scientific imperialism" to mean "the subjection of all the developed and undeveloped powers of the earth to the mind of man."
John Hedley Brooke is a British historian of science specialising in the relationship between science and religion.
Ernan McMullin was an Irish philosopher who last served as the O’Hara Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at the University of Notre Dame. He was an internationally respected philosopher of science who has written and lectured extensively on subjects ranging from the relationship between cosmology and theology, to the role of values in understanding science, to the impact of Darwinism on Western religious thought. He is the only person to ever hold the presidency of four of the major US philosophical associations. He was an expert on the life of Galileo.
Reijer Hooykaas was a Dutch historian of science. He along with Eduard Jan Dijksterhuis were pioneers in professionalizing the history of science in the Netherlands. Hooykaas gave the prestigious Gifford Lectures at St. Andrews in 1975-77. H. Floris Cohen dedicated his historiographical text The Scientific Revolution to Hooykaas; its section on religion deals primarily with Hooykaas.
The Christian Virtuoso (1690) was one of the last books published by Robert Boyle, who was a champion of his Anglican faith. This book summarised his religious views, including his idea of a clockwork universe created by God. Boyle was a devout Anglican, and with the rise of science and reason during his lifetime, was troubled by increasing atheism. This spurred him to write about his belief of science and religion supporting each other.
Issues in Science and Religion is a book by Ian Barbour. A biography provided by the John Templeton Foundation and published by PBS online states this book "has been credited with literally creating the contemporary field of science and religion."
John Dillenberger (1918–2008) was professor of historical theology at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. He was instrumental in forming the Graduate Theological Union which he headed during its first decade, first as dean from 1964 to 1969 and then, from 1967 to 1972, as its first president, a post to which he returned in 1999–2000. He also served as president of Hartford Seminary, dean of the faculty at San Francisco Theological Seminary, chair of the program in history and philosophy at Harvard University, and as president of the American Academy of Religion.
Most scientific and technical innovations prior to the Scientific Revolution were achieved by societies organized by religious traditions. Ancient Christian scholars pioneered individual elements of the scientific method. Historically, Christianity has been and still is a patron of sciences. It has been prolific in the foundation of schools, universities and hospitals, and many Christian clergy have been active in the sciences and have made significant contributions to the development of science.
Sabrina Petra Ramet is an American academic, educator, editor and journalist. She specializes in Eastern European history and politics and is a Professor of Political Science at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim.
William Hodson Brock is a British chemist and science historian.
Noah Jonathan Efron is a professor at Bar-Ilan University, where he was founding chair of the interdisciplinary program on Science, Technology, and Society.
Feminist philosophy of science is a branch of feminist philosophy that seeks to understand how the acquirement of knowledge through scientific means has been influenced by notions of gender identity and gender roles in society. Feminist philosophers of science question how scientific research and scientific knowledge itself may be influenced and possibly compromised by the social and professional framework within which that research and knowledge is established and exists. The intersection of gender and science allows feminist philosophers to reexamine fundamental questions and truths in the field of science to reveal how gender biases may influence scientific outcomes. The feminist philosophy of science has been described as being located "at the intersections of the philosophy of science and feminist science scholarship" and has attracted considerable attention since the 1980s.
In traditionalist philosophy, desacralization of knowledge or secularization of knowledge is the process of separation of knowledge from its perceived divine source—God or the Ultimate Reality. The process reflects a paradigm shift in modern conception of knowledge in that it has rejected divine revelations as well as the idea of spiritual and metaphysical foundations of knowledge, confining knowledge to empirical domain and reason alone.
Victoria Angela Harden is an American medical historian who was the founding director of the Office of NIH History and the Stetten Museum at the National Institutes of Health. Most known for organizing conferences and publishing works on the history of HIV/AIDS, Harden also authored books on the history of the NIH and Rocky Mountain spotted fever. She is a past president of the Society for History in the Federal Government.
