SCIENCE AND RELIGION IN THE WESTERN WORLD:
A PRIMARILY HISTORICAL APPROACH

Professors Olson and Cave

Friday, 1:15 - 4:00 PM 
Parsons 1264

Course Objectives:

• To learn about the characters of science, religion, and their complex interactions from the Bronze age to the present.
• To examine a variety of interpretive schemas used by scholars to organize knowledge about science/religion interactions.
• To explore the theology of Phillip Clayton, as expressed in God and Contemporary Science.

Assignments and Grading (100 total points):

Discussion participation and attendance (20%, i.e., up to 20 points):  Seminars depend for their success on the contributions of all members.  If you are not prepared or not present, you cannot enrich the experience of others in the group.  Grading will be based on the instructors’ evaluation of participation.  More than two un-excused absences will lead to a lowering of the participation grade; so if you are going to be gone for a legitimate reason, let one of the instructors know.

Written reflections on readings (20%):  For each reading, students will write a 1-2 page response to be sent to <Olson@HMC.edu> and <Robert_Cave@HMC.edu> before 10:00 a.m. on the day of class.  This response should list either (i) the most important thing you learned from the reading and the most important question it left you with; or (ii) it should disagree with some point made and state your grounds for the disagreement.  Grading will be on a 2 point scale: 0 points if not turned in or if obviously uninformed by the reading; 1 point if the response shows a significant grasp of some issue; and 2 points for a thought-provoking response.  The best 7 of 10 responses will be averaged.  < 0.8 points = F; 0.8–1.5 points =C; >1.5 points =A for this segment of the grade.  There are no "D" grades for this portion of the grade; late responses will receive no credit.

Discussion Leading (20%):  Most class sessions will be devoted to a discussion of Common Readings.  For each of these sessions, 2 students will act as discussion leaders.  Minimum responsibilities of the discussion leaders will be: (i) to send a list of key questions to be discussed to <Rlst184s-l@hmc.edu> at least 24 hours before the class; (ii) to prepare a set of transparencies or PowerPoint slides highlighting major points from the reading and to make a roughly 30-minute presentation on the major issues raised; and (iii) to help the instructors stimulate discussion for the remainder of the class.  Although  this would seem self-evident, failure to fulfill the responsibilities of a discussion leader for the session assigned will result in no credit for this portion of the grade.

Additional Perspectives Presentation or Technical Report (10%):  For each of the regular meetings, beginning with the second meeting, two (2) students should each select an item from the  “Sources of Additional Perspectives,” or some source that of which you are aware that is not listed (subject to instructor approval) and make an ~10 minute presentation on it at the appropriate time during the class.  Alternatively, in some cases, it would be valuable to do an overview of certain scientific content before discussing religious connections.  This means that each student will do one such presentation during the semester.  Again, although seemingly self-evident, failure to fulfill responsibilities relating to the presentation for the session assigned will result in no credit for this portion of the grade.

Research Paper and Presentation (30%): Each student will write a substantial research paper on some topic related to the course and offer an ~20 minute presentation to the class during one of the final three meetings of the course (November 30, December 7, 14).

ALTHOUGH THERE WILL BE NO FINAL EXAMINATION IN THIS COURSE,
FINAL RESEARCH PAPERS ARE DUE BY NOON ON DECEMBER 17, 2007.

Recommended Book Purchases:
The following texts, roughly in order of use, are available at Huntley Bookstore.  Major portions of each will be used during the semester:

• Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion;
• David Sloan Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society;
• Gregory Cajete, Native Science: Natural Laws of Interdependence;
• Plato, Timaeus;
• Richard Olson; Science and Religion, 1450 - 1900;
• Phillip Clayton, God and Contemporary Science.

In addition, several common readings will be collected in a course packet which will be available in class from the instructor.  Additionally, a course packet will be placed on reserve at Sprague Library under “Religious Studies 184S".

Important Dates:

• Final day to get approval of major paper/presentation topic from instructors—October 19
• Meetings for end of the semester presentation—November 30, December 7, December 14*
• Final Research Papers due at instructors’ offices by noon—December 17

Provisional Schedule of Topics and Readings: Adjustments may have to be made to accommodate visiting speakers’ schedules if someone interesting is coming through town ; but we will try to keep very close.

* For planning purposes, every student should assume that they may be scheduled for their class presentation as early as November 30.

PART I:
AN OVERVIEW OF SCIENCE AND RELIGION INTERACTIONS

Meeting 1, September 7:         
Introduction to the course.  What is Science?  What is Religion?  Ways of Thinking About Science/Religion Interactions.

Common Reading:
Ian Barbour, When Science Meets Religion, pp. 7-38.  (Please read before coming to the first class.)

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

The Nature of Science:

•  Thomas S. Kuhn, The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (1962);
•  Alan Chalmers, Science and Its Fabrication (1990);
•  Charles Taylor, Defining Science: A Rhetoric of Demarcation (1996);
•  Helen Longino, The Fate of Knowledge (2002);

The Character of Religion:

•  William James, The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902);
•  Emile Durkheim, The Elementary Forms of Religious Life (1912);
•  Mircea Eliade, Patterns in Comparative Religious Life (1958);
•   Clifford Geertz, “Religion as a Cultural System,” in Michael Banton, ed., Anthropological Approaches to Religion (1966);
•  Morton Smith, “Historical Method in the Study of Religion,” in History and Theory, 8 (1968): 17-30.

Patterns of Interaction:

• John William Draper, History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (1874);
•   Andrew Dickinson White, A History of the Warefare of Science With Theology in Christendom (1896);
•  Charles Glock and Rodney Stark, Religion and Society in Tension (1965);
• James R. Moore, The Post Darwinian Controversies (1979); Part 1: “Historians and Historiography,” pp. 1-122;
•   Richard H. Bube, Putting it All Together: Seven Patterns for Relating Science and the Christian Faith. (1995);
•  Stephen Jay Gould, Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life (1999);
• Nancy Murphy, Theology in the Age of Scientific Reasoning (1990);
•  Arthur Peacocke, Theology for a Scientific Age (1993);
•  Gary Ferngren, ed. Science and Religion: An Historical Introduction (2002).

Meeting  2, September 14:
A Quick Trip Through Contemporary Issues and Their Historical Backgrounds

Common Reading:
Barbour, pp. 39 through end.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:
[The following are recent anthologies that cover the field or recent comprehensive historical treatments of the field.]

• John Mark Richardson & Wesley J. Wilde, eds., Religion and Science: History, Method, Dialogue (1996);
• Russell Stannard, ed., God for the 21th Century (2000);
• John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (1991);
•                               and Geoffrey Cantor, Reconstructing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (2000);
• David Lindberg & Ronald Numbers, God and Nature (1965).

Meeting 3, September 21:
Scientific Attempts to Understand the Character of Religion

Common Reading:
David Sloan Wilson, Darwin’s Cathedral: Evolution, Religion, and the Nature of Society  –all (~233 pp).

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

Ludwig Feuerbach, The Essence of Christianity, trans. George Eliot (1841);
Morton Klass, Ordered Universes: Approaches to the Anthropology of Religion (1995);
Roy Rappaport, Ritual and Religion in the Making of Humanity (1999);
Linda Woodward & Paul Heelas, eds. Religion in Modern Times (2000);
Steve Bruce, God is Dead: Secularization in the West (2002).

PART II:
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVES

Meeting 4, September 28:
Indigenous “Sciences” and “Religions”

Common Reading:
Gregory Cajete, Native Science, especially Chs. 1-3, 5, 7 (more if you have the energy).

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• Robin Horton, “African Traditional Thought and Western Science,” Africa (1967):50-71, 155-187;
• Anthony Aveni, Native American Astronomy (1975);
• Stanley J. Tombiah, Magic, Science, and Religion and the Scope of Rationality (1990);
• Joseph Epes Brown, Animals of the Soul: A Native American Bestiary (1992);
• Ray Williamson and Claire Farrer, Earth and Sky: Visions of the Cosmos in Native American Folklore (1992);
• Marsha Bol, ed., Stars Above, Earth Below: American Indians and Nature (1998);
• Roberto González, Zapotec Science: Farming and Food in the Northern Sierra of Oaxaca (2001).

Meeting 5, October 5:
Science and the Cultural Context for the Rise of Christianity: Mesopotamian Astral Religions, Gnostic Reactions, and Greek Natural Philosophy

Common Reading:

• R. Olson,  Draft copy of Ch. 4, “From Technologies of Divination and Time-keeping to the Science of
  Astronomy,” in Sciences and Technologies in Ancient Civilizations, forthcoming, Praeger, 2008. (In course packet)
• R. Olson, Science Deified and Science Defied, Vol. 1, Ch.  3, pp. 62 –105 (in course packet);
• Plato, Timaeus, all.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• Franz Cumont, Astrology and Religion Among the Greeks and Romans (1997 reprint of 1912 original);
• Frederick Cramer, Astrology in Roman Law and Politics (1954);
• Hans Jonas, The Gnostic Religion (1958);
• B.L. Van der Waerden, Science Awakening, Volume 2, (1974);
• D. Ulansey, The Origins of the Mithraic Mysteries: Cosmology and Salvation in the Ancient World (1989);
• Tamsyn Barton, Ancient Astrology (1994);
• Scott Noegel, Joel Walker, and Brandon Wheeler, eds., Prayer, Magic, and the Stars In the Ancient and Late Antique World (2003);
• N.M. Swerdlow, Ancient Astronomy and Celestial Divination (1999)
• Gregory Vlastos, Plato’s Universe (1975);
• J.E. Raven, Plato’s Thought in the Making (1965).

Meeting 6, October 12:
Early Christianity and Classical Science;  Exegetical Traditions

Visiting Scholar: 

Common Reading:

• Genesis 1-9 [The creation stories through the story of the Noacian flood]: choose your version;
• R. Olson, Science Deified and Science Defied, Vol. 1, Ch. 5. pp. 146- 180 (in course packet);
• Lynn White Jr. “The Historical Roots of our Ecological Crisis,” Science 155 (1967): 1203-1207 (<http://www.aeoe.org/resources/spiritual/rootsofcrisis.pdf> or "Google" title to find PDF file of text)

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• Saint Basil the Great, Hexameron (1895 edn. Of ~350 original);
• Saint Augustine: The Literal Meaning of Genesis (1982 edn. of 415 original);
• Frank E. Robbins, The Hexameral Literature (1912);
• Henry Chadwick, Early Christian Thought and the Classical Tradition (1966);
• D.S. Wallace Hadrill, The Greek Patristic View of Nature (1968);
• Jaroslav Pelikan, Christianity and Classical Culture (1993);
• G.R. Evans, Philosophy and Theology in the Middle Ages (1993);
• Edward Grant, Science and Religion, 400B.C. – A.D. 1550: From Aristotle to Copernicus (Greenwood Guides to Science and Religion) (2004).

Meeting 7, October 19:
Religion and the Scientific Revolution

Common Readings:
R. Olson, Science and Religion, 1450- 1900: From Copernicus to Darwin, pp. 25-110, 223 - 237.

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• Giorgio De Santillana, The Crime of Galileo (1955);
• Jerome Langford, Galileo, Science, and the Church (1966);
• Robert Westman, ed., The Copernican Achievement (1975);
• Maurice Finochiarro, The Galileo Affair: A Documentary History (1989);
• James M. Lattis, Between Copernicus and Galileo: Christopher Clavius and the Collapse of Ptolemaic Astronomy (1994);
• Richard Westfall, Science and Religion in 17th Century England (1958);
• Eugene Klaaren, Religious Origins of Modern Science (1977);
• I.B. Cohen, Puritanism and the Rise of Modern Science: The Merton Thesis (1990);
• John Heilbron, The Sun in the Church: Cathedrals as Solar Observatories (1999);
• Mordechai Feingold, ed., Jesuit Science and the Republic of Letters (2002).

Meeting 8, October 26:
From Newton to Just Before Darwin

Common Reading:

• R. Olson, Science and Religion, 1450- 1900: From Copernicus to Darwin, pp. 111-192, 238 - 251.
• David Lindberg & Ronald Numbers, When Scienced and Christianity Meet,  pp. 139-160. (In course packet).

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• David Hume, Principle Writings on Religion (1993, from 1747 & 1779 originals);
• Frank Manuel, The Eighteenth Century Confronts the Gods (1959);
•                              , The Religion of Isaac Newton (1974);
• Gale Christanson, In the Presence of the Creator: Isaac Newton and His Times (1984);
• James Force, William Whiston, Honest Newtonian (1985);
• James Force and Richard Popkin, Essays on the Context, Nature, and Implications of Isaac Newton’s Theology (1990);
•                              , eds. The Books of Nature and Scripture (1994);
•                              , eds. Newton and Religion: Context, Nature, and Influence (1999);
• Frederic Gregory, Nature Lost? Natural Science and the German Theological Traditions of the Nineteenth Century (1992);
• Herbert Hovenkamp, Science and Religion in America: 1800-1860 (1978);
• Charles Coulston Gillispie, Genesis and Geology -- 1790-1850 (1951).
• Sujit Sivasundarum, Nature and the godly Empire: Science and Evangeloical Mission in the Pacific, 1795- 1850.

Meeting  9, November 2: (Olson will be out of town at HSS meetings)
Darwinian Science and 19th and Early 20th Century Religious Responses –Through the Scopes Trial

Common Readings:

• Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species, Ch. 15, “Recapitulation and Conclusion,” and The Descent of Man, Ch. 21, “General Summary and Conclusion,” both to be found at <www.literature.org/authors/darwin-charles/>;
  Olson, 193 - 222, 252-256;
• Alvar Ellegaard, Darwin and the General Reader, Chs. 5 and 6, pp. 95-140 (in course packet).

View in Class:
Trial Scenes from "Inherit The Wind"

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• Charles Darwin, The Origin of Species (1859);
• Theodosius Dobzhansky, et. al., Evolution (1977);
• Peter Bowler, Evolution, the History of an Idea (revised edn., 1989);
• Michael Ghiselin, The Triumph of the Darwinian Method (1969);
• Ronald Numbers, Darwinism Comes to America (1998);
•                              , The Creationists (1992);
• Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock (1985);
• Edward Larson, Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate over Science and Religion (1997).
• Michael Ruse, The Evolution Wars: A Guide to the Debates (Santa Barbara: ABC Clio, 2000)
• Edward B. Davis, “Science and Religious Fundamentalism in the 1920's,” American Scientist (2005):253-260.

Meeting 10, November 9:
Naturalism, Modern Creationism, the Intelligent Design  Movement and Its Critics

Common Reading:  

• Selections from Robert Pennock, ed., Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics, pp. 59-98, 241-288 (on reserve/in course packet);
• Burt Humburg and Ed Brayton, “Kitmiller et. al. Versus  Dover Area School District,” in "eSkeptic online"  archives for Tuesday December 20, 2005 [<http://www.skeptic.com/eskeptic/05-12-20.html>]

Sources of Additional Perspectives:

• John Whitcomb, Jr., and Henry Morris, The Genesis Flood (1961);
• Henry Morris, Creation – The Cutting Edge (1982);
• Langdon Gilkey, Creationism on Trial: Evolution and God at Little Rock (1985);
• Christopher Toumey, God’s Own Scientists: Creationists in a Secular World (1994);
• Willem Drees, Religion, Science, and Naturalism, (1996);
• Phillip E. Johnson, The Wedge of Truth: Splitting the Foundations of Naturalism (2000);
• David Ray Griffin, Religion and Scientific Naturalism: Overcoming the Conflicts (2000);
• Robert T. Pennock, ed.,  Intelligent Design Creationism and its Critics (2001);
• Holmes Rolston III, “Shaken Atheism: A Look at the Fine-Tuned Universe,” Christian Century, (December 3, 1986).
• Taner Edis & Matt Young, eds., Why Intelligent Design Fails (2004)
• Taner Edis, Science and Nonbelief (2006)

Meeting 11, November 16:
Phillip Clayton’s Panentheistic Theology

Common Reading:
Phillip Clayton, God and Modern Science–all.

Visiting theologian: Phillip Clayton

Meetings 12, 13,  & 14, November 30, December 7 & 14  [see footnote regarding scheduling]:
Student presentations should be approximately 30 minutes in length  (20 minutes of formal presentation with 10 minutes  for questions and discussion).

December 17, 12 Noon:
Written version of paper due.

There is no final examination in this course.