For God and Country

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Michael J. Aminoff
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Anatomical Teaching

Charles Bell and his wife both had ecclesiastical backgrounds. Like many contemporary scientists, Bell was a creationist who believed in intelligent design. He not only published notes and supplementary dissertations to William Paley’s Natural Theology but also wrote a treatise on Animal Mechanics and a Bridgewater Treatise on The Hand. Natural theology had begun to decline in importance in the 1830s, however, seeming increasingly tired and dated in an era of change. Bell’s anatomical teaching—framed on the concept of intelligent design—was thus overshadowed by the concepts of Buffon, Geoffroy, Lamarck, Robert Grant, and Charles Darwin and by the teachings of younger, more modern professors. Nevertheless, national honors came his way—the Gold (Royal) Medal of the Royal Society for his work on the nervous system and a knighthood in 1831.

Charles Darwin and Intelligent Design

2003 ◽  
Vol 15 (1) ◽  
pp. 23-42
Author(s):  
Denis O. Lamoureux ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Natural Selection ◽  
Dynamic Process ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Biological Evolution ◽  
Historical Literature ◽  
The World ◽  
Argument From Design ◽  
Design In Nature

Many assume that Charles Darwin rejected outright the notion of intelligent design. As a consequence, the term "Darwinism" has evolved to become conflated with a dysteleological interpretation of evolution. The primary historical literature reveals that Darwin's conceptualization of design was cast within the categories of William Paley's natural theology, featuring static and perfect adaptability. Once Darwin discovered the mechanism of natural selection and the dynamic process of biological evolution, he rejected the "old argument from design in Nature" proposed by Paley. However, he was never able to ignore the powerful experience of the creation's revelatory activity. Darwin's encounter with the beauty and complexity of the world affirms a Biblical understanding of intelligent design and argues for the reality of a non-verbal revelation through nature. In a postmodern culture with epistemological fourmulations adrift, natural revelation provides a mooring for human felicity.

John Ray, physico-theology and afterwards

2011 ◽  
Vol 38 (2) ◽  
pp. 328-348 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. Berry
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Trinity College ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Biblical Interpretation ◽  
John Ray ◽  
The Way

Ray's most widely read book was his Wisdom of God manifested in the works of creation (1691), probably based on addresses given in the chapel of Trinity College Cambridge 20 years previously. In it he forswore the use of allegory in biblical interpretation, just as he had done in his (and Francis Willughby's) Ornithology (1678). His discipline seeped into theology, complementing the influence of the Reformers and weakening Enlightenment assumptions about teleology, thus softening the hammer-blows of Darwinism on Deism. The physico-theology of the eighteenth century and the popularity of Gilbert White and the like survived the squeezing of natural theology by Paley and the Bridgewater Treatises a century after Wisdom … , and contributed to a peculiarly British understanding of natural theology. This undergirded the subsequent impact of the results of the voyagers and geologists and prepared the way for a modern reading of God's “Book of Works” (“Darwinism … under the disguise of a foe, did the work of a friend”). Natural theology is often assumed to have been completely discredited by Darwin (as well as condemned by Barth and ridiculed by Dawkins). Notwithstanding, and despite the vapours of vitalism (ironically urged – among others – by Ray's biographer, Charles Raven) and the current fashion for “intelligent design”, the attitudes encouraged by Wisdom … still seem to be robust, albeit needing constant re-tuning (as in all understandings influenced by science).

Evolutionary Writings

2010 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles Darwin
Keyword(s):  
Climate Change ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
Global Impact ◽  
The World ◽  
Correspondence Project ◽  
Darwin Correspondence Project ◽  
Descent Of Man ◽  
Controversial Nature ◽  
Beagle Voyage

‘Man still bears in his bodily frame the indelible stamp of his lowly origin.’ On topics ranging from intelligent design and climate change to the politics of gender and race, the evolutionary writings of Charles Darwin occupy a pivotal position in contemporary public debate. This volume brings together the key chapters of his most important and accessible books, including the Journal of Researches on the Beagle voyage (1845), the Origin of Species (1871), and the Descent of Man, along with the full text of his delightful autobiography. They are accompanied by generous selections of responses from Darwin’s nineteenth-century readers from across the world. More than anything, they give a keen sense of the controversial nature of Darwin’s ideas, and his position within Victorian debates about man’s place in nature. The wide-ranging introduction by James A. Secord, Director of the Darwin Correspondence Project, explores the global impact and origins of Darwin’s work and the reasons for its unparalleled significance today.

IV. Postscript to a paper “On the ganglia and nerves of the heart.”

1849 ◽  
Vol 139 ◽  
pp. 47-48
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Left Ventricle ◽  
Blood Vessels ◽  
Coronary Arteries ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Posterior Surface ◽  
Anterior Surface ◽  
Entire Surface ◽  
Naked Eye ◽  
Nervous Structure

Since the communication above referred to was presented to the Royal Society, I have made a very minute dissection in alcohol of the whole nervous system of the young heifer’s heart. The distribution of the ganglia and nerves over the entire surface of the heart, and the relations of these structures to the blood-vessels and muscular substance, are far more fully displayed in these preparations than in any of my former dissections. On the anterior surface, there are distinctly visible to the naked eye ninety ganglia or ganglionic enlargements on the nerves, which pass obliquely across the arteries and the muscular fibres of the ventricles from their base to the apex. These ganglionic enlargements are observed on the nerves, not only where they are crossing the arteries, but where they are ramifying on the muscular substance without the blood-vessels. On the posterior surface, the principal branches of the coronary arteries plunge into the muscular substance of the heart near the base, and many nerves with ganglia accompany them throughout the walls to the lining membrane and columnse carneæ. From the sudden disappearance of the chief branches of the coronary arteries on the posterior surface, the nervous structure distributed over a consider­ able portion of the left ventricle is completely isolated from the blood-vessels, and on these, numerous ganglionic enlargements are likewise observed, but smaller in size than the chains of ganglia formed over the blood-vessels on the anterior surface of the heart. In the accompanying beautiful drawings, Mr. West has depicted with the greatest accuracy and minuteness the whole nervous structures demon­strable in these preparations on the surface of the heart. But the ganglia and nerves represented in these drawings constitute only a small portion of the nervous system of the heart, numerous ganglia being formed in the walls of the heart which no artist can represent. It can be clearly demonstrated that every artery distributed throughout the walls of the Uterus and Heart, and every muscular fasciculus of these organs, is supplied with nerves upon which ganglia are formed.

scholarly journals XXVI. Report on a Communication from Dr Dyce of Aberdeen, to the Royal Society of Edinburgh, ‘On Uterine Irritation, and its Effects on the Female Constitution.’

1823 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 365-379 ◽  
Author(s):  
H. Dewar
Keyword(s):  
Nervous System ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Mental Disease ◽  
The State ◽  
Healthy State ◽  
Mental Symptoms ◽  
Mental Powers

The communication received from Dr Dyce chiefly consists of a description of a singular affection of the nervous system, and mental powers, to which a girl of sixteen was subject immediately before puberty, and which disappeared when that state was fully established. It exemplifies the powerful influence of the state of the uterus on the mental faculties; but its chief value arises from some curious relations which it presents to the phenomena of mind, and which claim the attention of the practical metaphysician. The mental symptoms of this affection are among the number of those which are considered as uncommonly difficult of explanation. It is a case of mental disease, attended with some advantageous manifestations of the intellectual powers; and these manifestations disappearing in the same individual in the healthy state.

Faith and Thought

2019 ◽  
pp. 179-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Stuart Mathieson
Keyword(s):  
Nineteenth Century ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Scientific Practice ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Conservative Christianity ◽  
Leading Role ◽  
Teleological Argument ◽  
William Paley ◽  
Eternal Punishment ◽  
Evangelical Theology

This chapter examines Stokes as an outspoken scientist of faith. It uses Stokes to examine the intellectual threats to conservative Christianity in the second half of the nineteenth century, and highlights his leading role among Victorian Britain’s religious scientists, through bodies such as the Royal Society and the Victoria Institute. It also explains how Stokes’s upbringing and education formed the basis for his own evangelical theology, and highlights his two most significant contributions to that field. First, it explores Stokes’s opposition to the doctrine of eternal punishment, and his promotion of conditional immortality as an alternative. Second, it highlights how Stokes continued to advocate the natural theology and teleological argument of William Paley a century after they were first proposed, as a method of harmonizing faith and scientific practice.

Sir James Crichton Browne, 1840-1938

1939 ◽  
Vol 2 (7) ◽  
pp. 519-521
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
Royal Society ◽  
Mental Hospital ◽  
Charles Darwin ◽  
High Standard ◽  
Standard Of Care ◽  
The West ◽  
Mental Hospitals ◽  
Medical Superintendent ◽  
Care And Treatment

On 31 January 1938, Sir James Crichton-Browne died a few months after his 97th birthday. In him the Royal Society lost its oldest Fellow, both in age and in membership, for he was elected Fellow in 1883, Charles Darwin being one of his proposers. His father, Dr W. A. F. Browne, who was the first Medical Superintendent of the Crichton Royal Mental Hospital at Dumfries, was largely responsible for the high standard of care and treatment of the insane for which this institution has since been famous ; later he became Commissioner in Lunacy in Scotland. It was therefore not surprising that after qualifying in medicine in Edinburgh University at the age of 22, his son decided to devote himself to the study of mental disorders. After serving in junior posts in various county Mental Hospitals he was appointed in 1866 Medical Superintendent of the West Riding Asylum, at Wakefield, a post he held until 1875. It was here his most valuable researches and pioneering work was done.

Biology and Theology: Contemporary Issues

2016 ◽  
Author(s):  
Celia Deane-Drummond
Keyword(s):  
Biological Sciences ◽  
Intelligent Design ◽  
Evolutionary Biology ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Ethical Issues ◽  
Natural Theology ◽  
Mirror Image ◽  
Christian Theology ◽  
Theory Of Evolution ◽  
Science And Theology

Contemporary issues in biology and Christian theology are still dominated by the legacy of 19th-century biologist Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution by natural selection. Debates in evolutionary biology in relation to religious belief have been reinforced by historical myths that stress conflict over integration. More conservative branches of Christianity, often allied to particular Protestant traditions, argue for a form of popular theology that attempts to compete with science, namely, creationism. More sophisticated versions of this position may appear under the guise of intelligent design, though creationism and intelligent design are not synonymous. The mirror image of this position has developed among biologists who identify themselves as new atheists, adding further fuel to the fire of an existing controversy. Methodologically speaking, the engagement of biology and theology will depend on different philosophical presuppositions according to basic models of (a) conflict, (b) independence, (c) dialogue, and (d) integration. The biological sciences also have broader relevance to allied subject domains including, for example: (a) ecological, agricultural, animal, and environmental sciences; (b) anthropological, social, and political sciences; (c) medical sciences, including genetic science and embryo development; and (d) new technologies that include bioengineering. Theological engagement with the biological component of each of these domains is particularly intense where there are controversial ethical issues at stake that seem to challenge specific Christian beliefs about human nature or divine purpose. A more positive approach to the biological sciences that draws on research in the constructive systematic theological task, while avoiding historically naïve forms of natural theology, is starting to emerge in the literature. Within Orthodox, Catholic, and Protestant Christian traditions, there is a spectrum of possible positions, such that the field of science and theology as a whole tends to be ecumenical in orientation rather than divided along denominational boundaries. The Catholic and Orthodox churches, however, give greater precedence to official statements by their respective churches that then influence public reception of controversial issues in biology and theology in particular ways.

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