Science And Scientism In Nineteenth Century Europe

The 19th century produced scientific and cultural revolutions that forever transformed modern European life. Richard Olson provides an integrated account of the history of science and its impact on intellectual and social trends of the day.

Galileo. Newton. Darwin. These giants are remembered for their great contributions to science. Often forgotten, however, is the profound influence that Christianity had on their lives and work. This study explores the many ways in which religion—its ideas, attitudes, practices, and institutions—interacted with science from the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution to the end of the nineteenth century. Both scientists and persons of faith sometimes characterize the relationship between science and religion as confrontational. Historian Richard G. Olson finds instead that the interactions between science and religion in Western Christendom have been complex, often mutually supportive, even transformative. This book explores those interactions by focusing on a sequence of major religious and intellectual movements—from Christian Humanist efforts to turn science from a primarily contemplative exercise to an activity aimed at improving the quality of human life, to the widely varied Christian responses to Darwinian ideas in both Europe and North America during the second half of the nineteenth century.

Explores how religion, its ideas, attitudes, practices, and institutions, interacted with science from the beginnings of the Scientific Revolution to the end of the nineteenth century.

The 19th century produced scientific and cultural revolutions that forever transformed modern European life. Richard Olson provides an integrated account of the history of science and its impact on intellectual and social trends of the day.

This is a concise but wide-ranging account of all aspects of the Scientific Revolution from astronomy to zoology. The third edition has been thoroughly updated, and some sections revised and extended, to take into account the latest scholarship and research and new developments in historiography.