Synopses & Reviews
The past quarter-century has seen an explosion of interest in the history of science and religion. But all too often the scholars writing it have focused their attention almost exclusively on the Christian experience, with only passing reference to other traditions of both science and faith. At a time when religious ignorance and misunderstanding have lethal consequences, such provincialism must be avoided and, in this pioneering effort to explore the historical relations of what we now call "science" and "religion," the authors go beyond the Abrahamic traditions to examine the way nature has been understood and manipulated in regions as diverse as ancient China, India, and sub-Saharan Africa. Science and Religion around the World also provides authoritative discussions of science in Judaism, Christianity, and Islam -- as well as an exploration of the relationship between science and the loss of religious beliefs. The narratives included in this book demonstrate the value of plural perspectives and of the importance of location for the construction and perception of science-religion relations.
Review
"Dealing with a diverse array of cultures, Science and Religion around the World offers the best one-volume introduction into how different peoples merge their understanding of nature and the supernatural. Without offering an apology for any particular viewpoint, the book's fourteen authors -- all experts in their fields -- show that science and religion can conflict, compliment, or simply co-exist. It all depends on what science, which religion and whose culture."
---Edward J. Larson, the Pulitzer-Prize winning author of Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America's Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion
"The authors of Science and Religion around the World view the many religions in a sympathetic light. They show very convincingly that each religious tradition includes facets that are open to science, lead to good science, and/or involve the real practice of a scientific discipline as an essential part of the religion."--Perspectives on Science and Christian Faith
"It's essays are thorough, balanced, and masterfully scholarly." --Journal of the American Academy of Religion
Review
“The importance of new ideas about science in the development of new ideological currents in the late Ottoman Empire has been recognized for a while now, but no previous book has dealt with the topic in such detail and with such a focus as Yalçinkayas excellent Learned Patriots. Tracing the development and transformation of competing discourses on science in the Ottoman Empire during the nineteenth century, Yalçinkaya argues that these discourses were closely tied to debates on morality, cultural orientations, and ideological preferences during a period of intensifying military, political, and economic pressures on the Ottoman lands. The book will be of interest to scholars of the late Ottoman Empire, the modern Middle East, and anyone interested in the interplay between the dissemination of scientific knowledge and ideas and social and intellectual changes in the 1800s.”
Review
“Alper Yalçinkayas Learned Patriots will be greeted with enthusiasm by everyone interested in science and society in the late Ottoman Empire. Yalçinkaya brings together critical issues that earlier approaches have usually separated: history of science, political thought, elite formation, the polemics over issues of cultural change. Offering fascinating insights into change over time in the interactions of these issues, he shows that what mattered was not just scientific expertise but the social engagement and moral character of its custodians and its positive contributions to the communalistic universe of Ottoman social values.”
Review
“Professional historians and sociologists of science have been writing about the Ottoman Empire since the early 1940s, yet no work to date matches the sophistication and fascination of Alper Yalçinkayas Learned Patriots. In this engaging study of how nineteenth-century Turks embraced the ‘new science of the West to replace the ‘old science of the medreses, he sets a very high standard for future scholarship on the subject.”
Review
"A fascinating book for anyone interested in the entangled histories of science and modernity, and the ways that particular forms of identity and subjectivity emerged from inscriptions of that entanglement. I especially recommend it to readers paying special attention to the histories of the press, language, and the state as they are bound up with nineteenth century science and technology."
Review
"A rewarding reexamination of 19th-century Ottoman conversations about science and civilization. Rather than revisiting well-traveled narratives of the Ottoman adoption (or lack thereof) of modern 'science and technology,' and rather than asking how Ottoman bureaucrats and intellectuals established what was or was not properly science, Yalçinkaya asks a more 'naïve' question: 'What were the Ottomans talking about when they talked about science?' His answer—'people,' and in particular the ideal, scientifically informed, yet ethical and upright 'patriot'—turns much received wisdom concerning late Ottoman scientific discourse on its head. . . . This book is a welcome addition to scholarship on the rhetoric of science and technology in the Ottoman Empire. . . . Recommended."
Synopsis
Because the claim of universalism is associated with Western science, it is often taken for granted that, when exported, scientific knowledge simply diffuses unchanged into other regions. But what really happens when the science of one culture encounters that of another or becomes enmeshed in a different set of values? All too often scholars of science and religion have focused their attention almost exclusively on the Christian experience, mentioning Jews and Muslims only in passing. At a time when religious ignorance and misunderstanding have lethal consequences, such provincialism must be avoided. The wide range of possibilities in the study of science and religion makes it particularly desirable to look at both fields not parochially but around the world, and the goal of this book is to expand the knowledge of science and religion beyond its largely Christian base to include not only the other Abrahamic faiths but the indigenous traditions of Africa and Asia.
Synopsis
The nineteenth century was, for many societies, a period of coming to grips with the growing, and seemingly unstoppable, domination of the world by the Great Powers” of Europe. The Ottoman Empire was no exception: Ottomans from all walks of lifeelite and non-elite, Muslim and non-Muslimdebated the reasons for Ottoman decline” and European ascendance.” One of the most popular explanations was deceptively simple: science. If the Ottomans adopted the new sciences of the Europeans, it was frequently argued, the glory days of the Empire could be revived.
Learned Patriots offers, for the first time, a descriptive analysis of the nineteenth-century Muslim Ottoman debate about the nature, benefits, and potential dangers of science. M. Alper Yalçinkaya reveals that discussions centered on science were at the same time about the present and the ideal society, the relationship between the state and its subjects, and the very identity of the people.” In such a setting the Ottoman debate was less about the meaning of science than about the proper characteristics of a man of science. At base, he argues, it was a debate about morality. While there existed a variety of views on the relationship (or lack thereof) between science, morality, and the state, the phenomena were never discussed separately, and the complex interconnections the author tracesall centered around what kinds of people the Muslim Ottomans were, and were not, and what kinds of people they should, and should not, becomeare still felt today.
About the Author
John Hedley Brooke held the Andreas Idreos Chair of Science and Religion and Directorship of the Ian Ramsey Centre at Oxford University from 1999 to 2006. He is currently President of the International Society for Science and Religion.
Ronald L. Numbers is Hilldale Professor of the History of Science and Medicine and of Religious Studies and a member of the department of medical history and bioethics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, where he has taught for over three and a half decades. He is Past President of the International Union of History and Philosophy of Science.
Table of Contents
Introduction
1. Early Judaism
Noah Efron
2. Modern Judaism
Geoffrey Cantor
3. Early Christianity
Peter Harrison and David C. Lindberg
4. Modern Christianity
John Hedley Brooke
5. Early Islam
Ahmad S. Dallal
6. Modern Islam
Ekmeleddin Ihsanoglu
7. Early Chinese Religions
Mark Csikszentmihalti
8. Indic Religions
B. V. Subbarayappa
9. Buddhism
Donald S. Lopez, Jr.
10. African Religions
Steven Feierman and John M. Janzen
11. Unbelief
Bernard Lightman
12. Which Science? Whose Religion?
David N. Livingstone
A Guide to Further Reading