Rethinking Science and Religion in Early Modern Culture

Aaron Kitch (Anthology Editor) , Jennifer R. Rust (Anthology Editor)

Rethinking Science and Religion in Early Modern Culture

Aaron Kitch (Anthology Editor) , Jennifer R. Rust (Anthology Editor)

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Early modern Europe provides a rich context from which to challenge the rigid opposition between science and religion in this bold new edited collection. Rethinking Science and Religion in Early Modern Culture approaches “science” and “religion” as overlapping and mutually defining modes of thought, belief, and practice. In addition to reconceptualizing the boundaries between science and religion as practiced and represented in early modern culture, essays develop new perspectives on gender and embodiment in considering works and ideas of the past. Some authors demonstrate how early modern natural philosophers understood their objects of inquiry, from human bodies to the cosmos, in theological terms. Others demonstrate how religious ideas shaped colonial exploration and the nascent slave trade as scientific enterprises. Still others put early modern poetry and drama in conversation with influential debates between religion and science. Across these various inquiries, our contributors challenge received narratives of secular disenchantment and liberal progress while questioning conventional assumptions about divisions between scientific and religious communities.

Together, these essays seek to redefine both early modern religion and science as fluid and expansive discourses in which the rhetoric of the past continues to return uncannily within the controversies of the present. Science and religion were and remain mutually and dialogically constituted forms of knowledge, belief, practice, and power. These wide-ranging explorations return to fundamental questions and assumptions that underwrite both fields while also working to establish new questions, archives, and intellectual genealogies.

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Introduction by Aaron Kitch (Bowdoin College, USA) and Jennifer Rust (Saint Louis University, USA)

Part I: Divine Matter: Embodiment in Early Modern Science

Chapter 1. Vesalius, Anatomy, and Salvation History, Sarah S. Keleher (University of California, Berkeley)

Chapter 2. Strange Evidence: Hymens Between Science and Religion, Margaret Ferguson (University of California, Davis)

Chapter 3: Hamlet's Soul: Science, Religion, and Theatrical Subjectivity, Aaron Kitch (Bowdoin College, USA)

Part II: Legacies of Early Modern Science and Theology

Chapter 4. Versions of Negative Theology: Kenelm Digby and Margaret Cavendish, Peter Remien (Lewis Clark State College, USA)

Chapter 5. The Religious Origins of Colonial Science: Hans Sloane as Bacon's New Solomon, Amy Cooper (US Air Force Academy, USA)

Chapter 6. Counting Time: Then and Now, Jonathan Sawday (Saint Louis University, USA)

Part III: “Poesy” and the Mediation of Religion and Science

Chapter 7. Spouse, Heir, and Handmaid: Composing Natural Philosophy in Bacon, Cowley, and Dryden, Mingna Cheng(Donghua University, China)

Chapter 8. A 'Goldmine of Inspiration': Literature's Role in the Science and Religion of Richard Dawkins and Thomas Sprat, Jacqueline Cowan (Red Deer Polytechnic, Canada)

Bibliography

Index