Religion and the Origins of Modern Science

剑桥历史学家赫伯特·巴特菲尔德（Herbert Butterfield）对17世纪世纪的科学革命有一个著名的描述，他说这场革命“超越了基督教兴起以来的一切，把文艺复兴和宗教改革降到了仅仅是插曲的地位。巴特菲尔德认为，正是科学的出现标志着现代世界和现代心态的真实的起源。虽然科学史学家现在不那么迷恋科学革命的想法，也不像巴特菲尔德那样庆祝它的假定成就，但很明显，17世纪见证了一系列显着的科学发展，同样重要的是，看到了一套高度重视科学成就的价值观的出现。一个一直困扰着历史学家的问题是，这一切是如何发生的。当考虑现代科学的起源时，历史学家们一直对为什么是西方，为什么是17世纪的问题感兴趣。用对比的例子来提炼这个问题，我们可能会问，为什么不是中国，或者中世纪的伊斯兰教，或者，就此而言，中世纪的基督教？本项目旨在从早期现代欧洲宗教文化的某些特征中寻找这些问题的答案。更具体地说，它将探讨宗教信仰、价值观、习俗和机构的各种特征，以确定这些特征是否可以说是科学文化兴起的必要条件，以及除此之外，它们如何解释科学文化的持续存在和主导地位。除了宗教对科学发展的影响问题之外，该项目还将寻求阐明科学对宗教的影响问题-与其说是科学发现如何塑造了特定的宗教教义，不如说是科学的成功如何改变了我们对宗教是什么的看法这一更根本的问题，以及它的中心主张是如何被证明的。虽然科学的宗教起源问题是一个以前被问过的问题，但这个项目有望在许多方面为这个老问题提供新的解释。首先，这部作品将超越宗教对科学影响的标准描述，建立在对这一时期“宗教”和“科学”同一性的讨论之上，并展示这些本质上现代的思想是如何通过自然哲学和宗教之间的相互作用而形成的。第二，它将提供一个批判性的分析，现有的工作，科学与宗教的关系，在近代早期。第三，这个项目将考虑，根据这些考虑，是否仍然有可能把“科学革命”说成是西方现代性的奠基事件。最后，历史学家理查德·韦斯特福尔（Richard Westfall）声称，“17世纪科学与宗教的关系是现代西方思想史的中心问题”。虽然自韦斯特福尔早期的研究以来，我们在这些问题上取得了相当大的进展，但本项目的任务仍然是通过展示科学与宗教相互作用的重要性来证明韦斯特福尔的主张，并展示这些差异化的制度-这是西方现代性的独特特征-如何在现代早期开始呈现其特征形式。

The scientific revolution of the seventeenth century was famously described by Cambridge historian Herbert Butterfield as an event that 'outshines everything since the rise of Christianity and reduces the Renaissance and Reformation to the rank of mere episodes.' It was the emergence of science, Butterfield argued, that marked the real origin of the modern world and the modern mentality. While historians of science are now less enamoured of the idea of a scientific revolution, and somewhat less celebratory of its putative accomplishments than Butterfield, it is nonetheless clear that the seventeenth century witnessed a series of remarkable scientific developments and, equally importantly, saw the emergence of a set of values that placed a high priority on scientific achievement. One question that continues to exercise historians is how this all came about. When considering the origins of modern science, historians have long been interested in the question of why the West, and why the seventeenth century. Refining the question with contrast cases, we might ask why not China, or medieval Islam, or, for that matter, medieval Christianity? This project seeks answers to these questions in certain characteristics of the religious culture of early modern Europe. More specifically, it will explore various features of religious beliefs, values, practices and institutions with a view to determining whether these might be said to constitute necessary conditions for the rise of a scientific culture and, beyond this, how they might explain its persistence and dominance. In addition to the question of the influence of religion upon the development of science, the project will also seek to illuminate the issue of the influence of science upon religion - not so much in terms of how particular religious doctrines have been shaped by scientific discoveries, but in terms of the more fundamental question of how the success of science has altered our perception of what religion is, and how its central claims are justified.While the question of the religious origins of science is one that has been asked before, this project promises to shed new light on this old question in a number of ways. First, this work will go beyond standard accounts of the influence of religion on science, by building upon discussions of the identity of 'religion' and 'science' in this period, and demonstrating how the formation of these essentially modern ideas was shaped by interactions between natural philosophy and religion. Second, it will offer a critical analysis of existing work on science-religion relations in the early modern period. Third, this project will consider whether, in the light of these considerations, it is still possible to speak of 'the scientific revolution' as a founding event of Western modernity. To conclude, historian Richard Westfall has claimed that 'the relation of science to religion in the seventeenth century is the central problem in the history of modern Western thought'. While we have made considerable progress since Westfall's earlier work on these issues, the burden of this project is nonetheless to vindicate Westfall's claim by showing the importance of the mutual interactions of science and religion, and demonstrating how these differentiated institutions - which are distinctive features of Western modernity - began to assume their characteristic forms in the early modern period.