Jul 08, 2024
OHIO University Undergraduate Catalog 2023-2024
OHIO University Undergraduate Catalog 2023-2024
[Archived Catalog]
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T3 4104 - God and Science in the Western World
This interdisciplinary course examines the relationship between religion and science in the Western world, with a particular focus on the era from sixteenth until the late nineteenth century. It is a subject which has vexed historians for nearly a century and a half. Historians originally conceived of religion and science as inherently antagonistic forces which were necessarily at war with one another. The so-called “warfare school” argued that the history of modern science was the history of the science’s gradual, indeed, inevitable victory over religion. Others, however, have countered that religion and science were often allies. Still others have contended that the relationship between religion and science cannot adequately be described in terms either of conflict or harmony. Their relations were, instead, complex and can only be appreciated properly when considered in their particular, contingent historical contexts. Students will be forced to grapple with these conceptual models as we cover the broad sweep of religio-scientific development in the Western world, with particular emphasis on the period from 1500 until 1900. We shall also zero in on particular topics Galileo’s trial, Newton’s alchemical experimentation, Hume’s attack on the miraculous, Darwin’s theory of evolution, and the Wilberforce-Huxley debates, for instance, which illuminate the distinctive relationship between religion and science in the Western world.
Requisites: Sr only
Credit Hours: 3
General Education Code (students who entered prior to Fall 2021-22): 3
Repeat/Retake Information: May be retaken two times excluding withdrawals, but only last course taken counts.
Lecture/Lab Hours: 3.0 lecture
Grades: Eligible Grades: A-F,WP,WF,WN,FN,AU,I
Learning Outcomes:
- Be able to acquire information from a variety of sources (books, pamphlets, letters).
- Be able to present and explain a research finding or creative activity.
- Be acquainted with the values associated with the public good.
- Have a capacity for synthesis.
- Have an appreciation for the process of gaining new knowledge and skills.
- Have the ability effectively to present information orally.
- Have the ability to acquire increasingly complex intellectual skills (e.g., reading, writing).
- Have the ability to follow the process of gaining new knowledge and skills.
- Have the ability to make independent judgments and to carry out constructive changes in existing systems.
- Have the ability to weave many complex strands into a fabric of definable issues, patterns and topics.
- Learn how appropriately to acquire and analyze information from early modern texts.
- Understand that problems and issues are only successfully approached from a variety of perspectives.
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