Into all the World: expanding the History of Science and Religion beyond the Abrahamic Faiths

Almagest ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 9-26
Author(s):  
John Hedley Brooke ◽  
Ronald L. Numbers
Author(s):  
Yiftach Fehige

Thought experiments are basically imagined scenarios with a significant experimental character. Some of them justify claims about the world outside of the imagination. Originally they were a topic of scholarly interest exclusively in philosophy of science. Indeed, a closer look at the history of science strongly suggests that sometimes thought experiments have more than merely entertainment, heuristic, or pedagogic value. But thought experiments matter not only in science. The scope of scholarly interest has widened over the years, and today we know that thought experiments play an important role in many areas other than science, such as philosophy, history, and mathematics. Thought experiments are also linked to religion in a number of ways. Highlighted in this article are those links that pertain to the core of religions (first link), the relationship between science and religion in historical and systematic respects (second link), the way theology is conducted (third link), and the relationship between literature and religion (fourth link).


George Gabriel Stokes was one of the most significant mathematicians and natural philosophers of the nineteenth century. Serving as Lucasian professor at Cambridge he made wide-ranging contributions to optics, fluid dynamics and mathematical analysis. As Secretary of the Royal Society he played a major role in the direction of British science acting as both a sounding board and a gatekeeper. Outside his own area he was a distinguished public servant and MP for Cambridge University. He was keenly interested in the relation between science and religion and wrote extensively on the matter. This edited collection of essays brings together experts in mathematics, physics and the history of science to cover the many facets of Stokes’s life in a scholarly but accessible way.


Author(s):  
Larissa Alves de Lira

This paper aims to present the exemplarity of an intellectual meeting between a French intellectual, trained in history and geography at the Sorbonne, France (before spending time in Spain during the beginning of his doctorate), and the “Brazilian terrain”. From his training to his work as a university professor in Brazil, what I want to characterize is a transnational intellectual context in the domain of the history of science, using geographical reasoning as a reference. However, before becoming aware of these intellectual processes, it should be said that at the base of this context lies the Brazilian space. This kind of reasoning as a proposed methodology is named here the geohistory of knowledge. In this paper, I seek to present this methodology and its theoretical and empirical results, focusing on how the construction of contextualization can be related to space.


2018 ◽  
Vol 28 (1) ◽  
pp. 113
Author(s):  
Syarif Hidayatullah

Syed Hussein Nashr is one of the leading scholars in the field of science and religion relations,  especially in Islamic  world. A study on Nashr’s thought in this field is an important and necessary effort to understand one of the aspects that contribute particualrly to the development of sciences in the Islamic world, and in the Western world generally. The article aims to understand (1) Syed Hussein Nashr’s concept on science? And (2) the relevance of Nashr’s concept on science to the development of discourses in science and religion? This study focuses on Nashr’sconcept on science and its relevance to the development of the science and religion discourse. This study deploys a framework of philosophy of science, while applying descriptive and analitycal methodological approach. This study finds that: first, Nashr’s concept on science bases it self on the principle of unity, that is a concept of one-ness and inter-relationship of all beings, which allows integration of knowledge and action of human being into harmony. Nashr offers idea of sacred knowledge (scientia sacra) to allow the sacred values embeded in Islamic teaching to spiritualize modern sciences which are developed in the Western world. Secondly, Nashr was the first Muslim scholar who wrote a comprehensive work about history of science in Islam. His influence is attributed to his contribution to the dicsussion of science and to a grand narrative, namely, Islamization of knowledge or Islamic science, that had become a major scholarly debate among Muslim scholars.


Author(s):  
Sarah A. Qidwai

Abstract This paper addresses three aspects of Majid Daneshgar’s monograph Studying the Qurʾan in the Muslim Academy. The first part looks at the complexities around the lack of coherence between the Muslim Academy and so-called “Western” Institutions. Drawing on some examples from my own life, I will address the hesitance to embrace sources from the West as highlighted by Daneshgar. Then, I will present an example from the “Western Academy” that speaks to a broader audience across this divide. The second part of this paper will address the phenomenon of trying to find scientific proofs in the Qur‘an and the issues around those attempts in the field of the history of science and religion. Drawing on my own research, the third part of this reflection will draw on the example of Islam in India to show the complex nature of the so-called Muslim Academy and its ties to colonial encounters.


Author(s):  
Scott Huler

This chapter retraces Huler’s thoughts about Lawson’s book, including Lawson’s collection of plants and insects that benefitted the history of science. Huler does not fail to mention his admiration for Lawson’s voyage with the Indians and their tradition. Lawson provides his opinion of slaves and considers Indians the freest People in the World. Lastly, Huler makes his last stop in Grifton listening to lectures and learning of traditional crafts. Huler closes his book with thoughts about Lawson’s death and reminiscences about the beauty of nature.


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