History Commons^™

Altruism And The Administration Of The Universe: Kirtley Fletcher Mather On Science And Values, Edward Davis

Biology Educator Scholarship

Presentation of a paper originally published as “Altruism and the Administration of the Universe: Kirtley Fletcher Mather onScience and Values.” Zygon 46.3 (Sept 2011):517‐35.

Few American scientists have devoted as much attention to religion and science as Harvard geologist KirtleyFletcher Mather (1888–1978). Responding to antievolutionism during the 1920s, he taught Sunday school classes, assisted in defending John Scopes, and wrote Science in Search of God (1928). Over the next forty years, Mather explored the place of humanity in the universe and the presence of values in light of what he often called “the administration of the universe,” a term and …

Robert Boyle’S Religious Life, Attitudes, And Vocation, Edward B. Davis

Biology Educator Scholarship

Robert Boyle is an outstanding example of a Christian scientist whose faith interacted fundamentally with his science. His remarkable piety was the driving force behind his interest in science and his Christian character shaped the ways in which he conducted his scientific life. A deep love for scripture, coupled ironically with a lifelong struggle with religious doubt, led him to write several important books relating scientific and religious knowledge. Ultimately, he was attracted to the mechanical philosophy because he thought it was theologically superior to traditional Aristotelian natural philosophy: by denying the existence of a quasi-divine ‘Nature’ that functioned as …

Creation, Contingency, And Early Modern Science: The Impact Of Voluntarist Theology On Seventeenth-Century Natural Philosophy, Edward B. Davis

Biology Educator Scholarship

Could God have made it true that 2 + 2 = 5? Was he bound to make the best of all possible worlds? Is he able at this moment to alter the course of nature, either in whole or in part? Questions like these are often associated with medieval theology, not with early modern science. But science is done by people, and people have not always practiced the rigorous separation of science and theology that has come to characterize the modern world. Although many 17th century scientists sought validity for their work apart from revelation, divorcing science from religion was …