2. The ‘Religious Origins’ Thesis

Historical research into the religious origins of modern science is suggesting an increasing complex interplay of factors. The overall background context is well known: the ‘contingent rationality’ of the world, with roots in creation ex nihilo, the Hellenistic assumption of the rationality of nature, the debates over finitude and contingency in the Islamic culture of the 9th-12th centuries, the 13th century encounter with Aristotle in the West, the rediscovery of Greek and Roman cultures in the Renaissance, and so on. Scholars such as Michael Foster,Eugene Klaaren,Gary Deason, David Lindberg and Ron Numbers,Amos Funkenstein,Bernard Cohen,and John Brookehave taken up the broad portrayal of the significance of religion for the rise of science as Whitehead, Collingwood, Merton and Hooykaas earlier proposed. They have added to this careful analysis of the religion primarily in the seventeenth century, including the distinctive contributions of specific Protestant (particularly Puritan) and Roman Catholic voices.

Contributed by: Dr. Robert Russell