Religion and
Innovation in Human Affairs
Grant Recipients
Progress,
Religion, and
Innovation: From the
Reformation to the
Enlightenment
Religion,
Naturalism, and
Scientific Progress
Award
Amount: $100,000 PIs:
Peter Harrison and Jon
Roberts Sponsoring
Institution:
University of
Queensland
The Project will
investigate the
relations among science,
naturalism, and religion
with a view to
determining the nature
of their historical
interactions and the
manner in which singly,
or in combination, they
have contributed to, or
hindered, innovation in
human affairs. The chief
outputs of the Project
will be a conference, an
edited collection, and
book chapter.
Specifically, the
Project is designed to
explore the following
research questions: 1)
What are the historical
connections between
religion and naturalism,
and in what sense if
any, do they represent
opposing tendencies? Is
it possible that
religion might
contribute to the
disenchantment of nature
and/or to a naturalistic
outlook? 2) What are the
historical connections
between science and
naturalism, and in what
ways is the former
necessary for the
latter? 3) Granted that
innovation is at least
partly normative—which
is to say that in order
to judge something as
innovative requires some
appeal to values—what
values have led to the
identification of
science with innovation?
4) Have religious values
played a role in
normative judgments
about the contribution
of science to human
innovation in the past,
and do they still do so
today? 5) What is the
origin of the
distinction between the
natural and the
supernatural, and in
what ways is the
recognition of this
distinction related to
the emergence of modern
science and innovation
thought to characterize
the history of modern
West? 6) Can science be
defined in terms of
naturalistic
commitments, and have
such commitments always
been integral to
science?
Peter Harrison
is professor of history
and director of the
Centre for the History
of European Discourses
at the University of
Queensland. He
has written on the
emergence of modern
science in relation to
more general questions
about Western modernity.
He has paid particular
attention to the role of
religion in the rise of
science, and his 2011
Gifford Lectures at the
University of Edinburgh
dealt in detail with
science, religion, and
modernity. He was the
Idreos Professor of
Science and Religion at
the University of Oxford
as well as a member of
the Faculties of
Theology and History, a
Fellow of Harris
Manchester College, and
Director of the Ian
Ramsey Centre, where he
continues to hold a
Senior Research
Fellowship. He is the
editor of The Cambridge
Companion to Science
and Religion
(Cambridge University
Press, 2010) and author
of a number of important
books, including The Fall of
Man and the
Foundations of Science
(Cambridge
University Press, 2007)
and The Bible,
Protestantism, and the
Rise of Natural
Science (Cambridge
University Press, 1998).
Jon H. Roberts
is Tomorrow Foundation
Professor of American
Intellectual History at
Boston University. He is
author of Darwinism and
the Divine in America:
Protestant
Intellectuals and
Organic Evolution,
1859-1900 (University
of Wisconsin Press,
1988), which received
the Frank S. and
Elizabeth D. Brewer
Prize from the American
Society of Church
History; and (with James
Turner) The Sacred
and the Secular
University
(Princeton University
Press, 2000), which
received the Thomas
Bonner Prize.
