Conflict thesis

The conflict thesis is a historiographical approach in the history of science that originated in the 19th century with John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White.

[17][18] The scientist John William Draper (1811–1882) and the writer Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) were the most influential exponents of the conflict thesis between religion and science.

Draper had been the speaker in the British Association meeting of 1860 which led to the famous confrontation between Bishop Samuel Wilberforce and Thomas Henry Huxley over Darwinism, and in America "the religious controversy over biological evolution reached its most critical stages in the late 1870s".

Through these two thousand years, despite the waste of its energies on all the things its Blessed Founder most earnestly condemned on fetich and subtlety and war and pomp it has undermined servitude, mitigated tyranny, given hope to the hopeless, comfort to the afflicted, light to the blind, bread to the starving, joy to the dying, and this work continues.

So began this great modern war.In 1896, White published A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, the culmination of over thirty years of research and publication on the subject, criticizing what he saw as restrictive, dogmatic forms of Christianity.

In the introduction, White emphasized that he arrived at his position after the difficulties of assisting Ezra Cornell in establishing a university without any official religious affiliation.

That Dr. White's book, contradicted as it is so directly by all serious histories of medicine and of science, should have been read by so many thousands in this country, and should have been taken seriously by educated men, physicians, teachers, and even professors of science who want to know the history of their own sciences, only shows how easily even supposedly educated men may be led to follow their prejudices rather than their mental faculties, and emphasizes the fact that the tradition that there is no good that can possibly come out of the Nazareth of the times before the reformation, still dominates the intellects of many educated people who think that they are far from prejudice and have minds perfectly open to conviction.In God and Nature (1986), David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers report that "White's Warfare apparently did not sell as briskly as Draper's Conflict, but in the end it proved more influential, partly, it seems, because Draper's work was soon dated, and because White's impressive documentation gave the appearance of sound scholarship".

David B. Wilson notes: Despite the growing number of scholarly modifications and rejections of the conflict model from the 1950s [...] in the 1970s leading historians of the nineteenth century still felt required to attack it. [...]

And these facts were never forgotten in learned Western Culture.Principe's summary comment on Draper's work at the end of his coursebook reads: "The book that started the conflict myth.

"[28] However, according to historian of science and religion James C. Ungureanu, Draper and White actually hoped their narratives would preserve religious belief, not remove it.

[30] Biologist Stephen Jay Gould said: "White's and Draper's accounts of the actual interaction between science and religion in Western history do not differ greatly.

[31] In a summary of the historiography of the conflict thesis, Colin A. Russell, the former President of Christians in Science, said that "Draper takes such liberty with history, perpetuating legends as fact that he is rightly avoided today in serious historical study.

[38] In 1610, Galileo published his Sidereus Nuncius (Starry Messenger), describing the surprising observations that he had made with the new telescope, namely the phases of Venus and the Galilean moons of Jupiter.

[39] Part of the verdict on Galileo read "[Heliocentrism] is foolish and absurd in philosophy, and formally heretical since it explicitly contradicts in many places the sense of Holy Scripture".

[40][41] Nonetheless, historians note that Galileo never did observe the earth's motion and lacked empirical proof at the time; and that he was placed under house arrest, not imprisoned by the Inquisition.

Finocchiaro writes, "I believe that such a thesis is erroneous, misleading, and simplistic," and refers to John Draper, Andrew White, Voltaire, Einstein, Bertrand Russell, and Karl Popper as writers or icons who have promoted it.

[43] Pope Urban VIII had been an admirer and supporter of Galileo, and there is evidence he did not believe the Inquisition's declaration rendered heliocentrism a heresy.

Pope Urban VIII had asked that his own views on the matter be included in Galileo's book, and were voiced by a character named "Simplicio", who was a simpleton.

[46] Responding to mounting controversy over theology, astronomy and philosophy, the Roman Inquisition tried Galileo in 1633 and found him "vehemently suspect of heresy", sentencing him to house arrest.

"[56] The Magis Center for Reason and Faith was founded specifically to apply science in support of belief in a deity and the Christian religion.

[57] Some scholars such as Brian Stanley and Denis Alexander propose that mass media are partly responsible for popularizing conflict theory,[58] most notably the myth that prior to Columbus, people believed the Earth was flat.

[59] David C. Lindberg and Numbers point out that "there was scarcely a Christian scholar of the Middle Ages who did not acknowledge Earth's sphericity and even know its approximate circumference".