Courses
204: Science, Magic and Religion
Spring 2008 - History 204
MWF 9:30 to 10:25
Mr. Denery
Most people today imagine that science deals with the world, religion deals only with faith and magic is something we endure when there is nothing better to watch on television. For ancient Greeks, Romans and medieval Europeans, however, science had everything to do with religion and magic was a part of the real and everyday world. Indeed, the gradual separation of science from religion (along with the degradation of magic) marks one of the central transformations in European cultural and intellectual life, a separation that continues to shape our own world. Through a close examination of central texts, we will explore the ever-changing relations between science, magic and religion in an attempt to understand the forces that led to our modern understanding of ourselves and the world. The controversies that surrounded and continue to surround Darwin’s theory of evolution will serve as bookends for the course.
Texts to be purchased:
Plato, Timaeus
Cicero, On the nature of the gods
Galileo, Discoveries and Opinions
Robert Boyle, A Free Inquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature
Ed Grant, A History of Natural Philosophy
Keith Thomson, Before Darwin
Office Hours:
Wednesday, 2:30 to 4:00
Friday, 10:30 to 12:00
13 Hubbard Hall
ext. 3671
ddenery@bowdoin.edu
Requirements:
Mid-Term: 15%
Final: 30%
1st Paper: 20%
2nd Paper: 25%
Participation/Quizzes 10%
Total: 100%
Mid-Term and Final:
The mid-term and final will be comprehensive, in-class examinations and will include both longer essay questions, short answer questions and some identifications.
Papers:
You will be required to write two papers for this course. The first will be a short (four page) analysis and interpretation of one of our primary sources. The first paper is due at the beginning of class, Monday, February 25. The other will be somewhat longer (six or seven pages) and will require you to explore one of the course’s themes through an analysis of two or more primary sources. The second paper may be handed in anytime after the mid-term, but no later than Monday, April 21, at the beginning of class. I do not accept computer files or e-mail submissions.
Schedule of Lectures and Assignments:
(open to revision)
wk 1 Introduction: Themes and Problems
1/21 Introduction
1/23 Darwin and the “Eternal” Battle Between Science and Religion
Thomson, Before Darwin, pp. xi-20.
1/25 *Paul Feyerabend, “Realism and the Historicity of Knowledge” (jstor)
I. Pagans and Christians
wk 2 Greeks
1/28 Reason and the Myth of Philosophy Among the Early Greeks
1/30 Greek Natural Philosophy
Grant, History, pp. 1-26
2/1 *Plato, Timaeus, pp. 7-126
wk 3 Greeks, pt. 2
2/4 Aristotelian Natural Philosophy
*Grant, pp. 27-51
2/6 Astronomers and Skeptics
2/8 *Aristotle, Physics and On the Heavens (e-reserve)
wk 4 Christians in the Roman World
2/11 Religion and Magic in the Roman Empire
*Grant, pp. 52-60
2/13 Christians, Gnostics and Genesis
*Genesis 1-9 (e-reserve)
2/15 *Cicero, On the nature of the gods, pp. 69-189
II. The Middle Ages
wk 5 Christian Science
2/18 *Augustine, City of God (e-reserve)
2/20 Words and Worlds in the Middle Ages
*Pliny, Natural History (e-reserve)
*Isidore of Seville, Etymologies (e-reserve)
2/22 Monasteries, Cathedrals and the New Learning
*Grant, pp. 95-129
wk 6 Religion as Science at the Medieval University
2/25 The Medieval University: Education Professionalized
First paper due in class
2/27 The Recovery of Aristotle
*Grant, pp. 179-238
2/29 Science and Theology in the 13th Century
*Grant, pp. 239-73
*Thomas Aquinas, On theology (e-reserve)
wk 7 Faith and Reason
3/3 Divine Omnipotence
*Thomas Aquinas, On divine omnipotence (e-reserve)
3/5 Impetus Theory/Review
*Clagget, “John Buridan and the Impetus Theory” (e-reserve)
3/7 Mid-Term
Break
wk 8 Popular Religion and Popular Magic
3/24 The Body of Christ in the Later Middle Ages
3/26 Popular Magic
3/28 TBA
III. Renaissances, Reformations, Revolutions
wk 9 The Renaissance of Science
3/31 Arts, Artists and Optics
4/2 Hermeticism and the Occult Sciences
4/4 *Agrippa, Three Books of Occult Philosophy (e-reserve)
wk 10 The Reformation of Astronomy
4/7 Copernicus and the Heliocentrism
*Copernicus, On the revolution of the heavenly spheres (handout)
4/9 Galileo and the Heresy of Science
4/11 *Galileo, The Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo, pp. 145-216
wk 11 The Reformation and the World Machine
4/14 The Reformation, Science and Religion
4/16 Mechanical Philosophy
4/18 *Robert Boyle, A Free Enquiry into the Vulgarly Received Notion of Nature
wk 12 Math, Metaphysics and Natural Philosophy
4/21 Newton and Classical Physics
Second paper due in class
4/23 The Enlightenment and “Secularism”
4/25 *TBA
*Thomson, pp. 21-137
wk 13 After the Revolution
4/28 The Bible, the Earth and Sacred Theory
*Thomson, pp. 138-73
4/30 From Natural Theology to Darwin
*Thomson, pp. 174-265
5/2 *Anon., Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation (e-reserve)
wk 14 After the Revolution?
5/5 The Rhetoric of Modern Creation Science
5/7 Concluding Remarks