Skip to main content Accessibility help

We use cookies to distinguish you from other users and to provide you with a better experience on our websites. Close this message to accept cookies or find out how to manage your cookie settings.

Close cookie message
×
  1. Home
  2. Search

Refine search

Refine search

Access:
Content type:
Publication date:
Apply   From and To filters
Subject: Show more
Journals Show more
Publishers: Show more
Societies Show more
Series: Show more
Collections: Show more

Actions for selected content:

Select all | Deselect all
  • View selected items
  • Export citations
  • Download PDF (zip)
  • Save to Kindle
  • Save to Dropbox
  • Save to Google Drive

Save Search

You can save your searches here and later view and run them again in "My saved searches".

Please provide a title, maximum of 40 characters.
Cancel
×

31 results

Page 1 of 2

  • David Charles Gooding (21 November 1947–13 December 2009)

  • GEOFFREY CANTOR, FRANK JAMES
  • Journal: The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 43 / Issue 3 / September 2010
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 08 September 2010, pp. 459-467
  • Print publication: September 2010
    • Article
      • You have access
    • PDF
    • HTML
    • Export citation

Science and Religion
  • New Historical Perspectives
  • Edited by Thomas Dixon, Geoffrey Cantor, Stephen Pumfrey
  • Published online: 05 May 2010
  • Print publication: 01 April 2010
  • The idea of an inevitable conflict between science and religion was decisively challenged by John Hedley Brooke in his classic Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (Cambridge, 1991). Almost two decades on, Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives revisits this argument and asks how historians can now impose order on the complex and contingent histories of religious engagements with science. Bringing together leading scholars, this volume explores the history and changing meanings of the categories 'science' and 'religion'; the role of publishing and education in forging and spreading ideas; the connection between knowledge, power and intellectual imperialism; and the reasons for the confrontation between evolution and creationism among American Christians and in the Islamic world. A major contribution to the historiography of science and religion, this book makes the most recent scholarship on this much misunderstood debate widely accessible.

  • Preface

  • Edited by Thomas Dixon, Queen Mary University of London, Geoffrey Cantor, University of Leeds, Stephen Pumfrey
  • Book: Science and Religion
  • Published online: 05 May 2010
  • Print publication: 01 April 2010, pp xiii-xiv

  • Summary

    In July 2007 a conference was held at the University of Lancaster to mark the retirement of John Hedley Brooke. The original idea for the conference came from Stephen Pumfrey, who had started his career under John's mentorship at Lancaster. Thomas Dixon, who was at that time also at Lancaster, took the lead in organizing the event. Both the Lancaster organizers were extremely grateful for the advice and support of Geoffrey Cantor, who assisted with the planning of the original conference.

    The 2007 conference was attended by many of John Brooke's friends, colleagues, and students who were keen to acknowledge his substantial contributions to the historical study of science and religion, and particularly the influence he has had on a whole generation of scholars and students through his book Science and religion: Some historical perspectives, published in 1991, and his other publications, as well as through personal contact and encouragement. John taught in the History Department at the University of Lancaster from 1969 to 1999 and then moved to the Andreas Idreos Chair in Science and Religion at the University of Oxford until his retirement in 2006.

    Over a hundred and fifty people attended the Lancaster conference. Dozens of excellent papers were given on that occasion, which could together have provided material for several edited books offering a range of historical and contemporary perspectives.

  • 14 - What shall we do with the ‘Conflict Thesis’?

  • Edited by Thomas Dixon, Queen Mary University of London, Geoffrey Cantor, University of Leeds, Stephen Pumfrey
  • Book: Science and Religion
  • Published online: 05 May 2010
  • Print publication: 01 April 2010, pp 283-298

  • Summary

    INTRODUCTION

    John Rutty, a Dublin apothecary, maintained a diary for some twenty years, beginning in 1753. Every day he reflected on the state of his soul and the religious significance of his various experiences. We know a great deal about the state of Rutty's soul because in 1776, the year after his death, a number of his fellow Quakers published his diary under the title A spiritual diary and soliloquies. The Spiritual diary is a fascinating document which provides the historian with an entrée into the intimate religious thoughts and feelings of an eighteenth-century Quaker. We also know that Rutty had a thriving medical practice and published works on gallstones, on mineral waters, on the weather, and on the natural history of Dublin, and he even wrote a materia medica. For the historian of science and religion what is most striking is the large number of entries in which Rutty exposed his deep ambivalence about his pursuit of medicine and science. The following three diary entries characterize his attitude to science and medicine:

    Physick is less precious in my view, having for its object the welfare of the mortal body only: Lord, raise up the medicina mentis [the medicine of the soul].

    Lord, remember not the sin of my youth and age, even that of idolizing nature! O give me now to redeem the time, the precious time!

    Now is the snare laid in natural science: Lord, grant that it may be in vain!

    In these and many similar passages, which are loaded with biblical resonances, we see Rutty assailed by inner conflict as he was repeatedly pulled between the opposing poles of the pursuit of science and of the pure spiritual life.

  • Creating the Royal Society's Sylvester Medal

  • GEOFFREY CANTOR
  • Journal: The British Journal for the History of Science / Volume 37 / Issue 1 / March 2004
  • Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 March 2004, pp. 75-92
  • Print publication: March 2004

  • Following the death of James Joseph Sylvester in 1897, contributions were collected in order to mark his life and work by a suitable memorial. This initiative resulted in the Sylvester Medal, which is awarded triennially by the Royal Society for the encouragement of research into pure mathematics. Ironically the main advocate for initiating this medal was not a fellow mathematician but the chemist and naturalist Raphael Meldola. Religion, not mathematics, provided the link between Meldola and Sylvester; they were among the very few Jewish Fellows of the Royal Society. This paper focuses primarily on the politics of the Anglo-Jewish community and why it, together with a number of scientists and mathematicians, supported Meldola in creating the Sylvester Medal.

Page 1 of 2