On a December evening in 1869, with memories of civil war still fresh in their minds, a large audience gathered in the great hall of Cooper Union in New York City to hear about another conflict, still taking its toll—“with battles fiercer, with sieges more persistent, with strategy more vigorous than in any of the comparatively petty warfares of Alexander, or Caesar, or Napoleon.” Although waged with pens rather than swords, and for minds rather than empires, this war, too had destroyed lives and reputations. The combatants? Science and Religion.

1. “First of the Course of Scientific Lectures—Prof. White on ‘The Battlefields of Science,’”New York Daily Tribune, 1812.1869, p.4.Google Scholar

2.Mazlish,Bruce, Preface toA History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, byWhite,Andrew Dickson (abridged ed.,New York,1965), p.13;Google ScholarWhite,Andrew Dickson,A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom,2 vols. (New York,1896), 1:viii.Google Scholar On White, seeAltschuler,Glenn C.,White,Andrew D.—Educator, Historian, Diplomat (Ithaca,1979).Google Scholar

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4.Ibid.

5.Ibid.;White,Andrew Dickson,The Warfare of Science (New York,1876), p.145Google Scholar; White,A History of the Warfare, 1: ix, xii. Although hints of White's distinction between religion and theology appear in his earlier works, the focus on dogmatic theology in his 1896 volumes seems to have been more of an afterthought—a misleading effort to distance himself from William Draper—than an essential premise. SeeDraper,,History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (New York,1874).Google Scholar Henry Guerlac corroborates this judgment in an unpublished memoire, “Sartoniana and Forward,” where he notes that White had intended to entitle the 1896 bookA History of the Warfare of Science and Religion, but was talked out of it by his collaborator, George Lincoln Burr.

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8.White,,A History of the Warfare, 1:325.Google Scholar For a fuller account of science and the early church, seeLindberg,David C., “Science and the Early Church,” inGod and Nature, pp.19–58.Google Scholar

9.White,,A History of the Warfare, 1:375.Google Scholar

10.Augustine,,Enchiridion 3.9, trans.Outler,Albert C., Library of Christian Classics 7 (Philadelphia,1955), pp.341–342.Google Scholar

11.Augustine,,Degenesi adhtteram 1.19;Google Scholar trans.Carre,Meyrick H.,Realists and Nominalists (London,1946), p.19.Google Scholar For another translation, seeAugustine,,The Literal Meaning of Genesis, trans.Taylor,John Hammond, S.J.,2 vols., Ancient Christian Writers 41–42 (New York,1982), 1:42–43.Google Scholar

12. The themes of this and the preceding paragraph are more fully developed inLindberg,, “Science and the Early Church,” pp.29–33.Google Scholar

13. For a good account of the effects of the condemnations, seeGrant,Edward, “The Condemnation of 1277, God's Absolute Power, and Physical Thought in the Late Middle Ages,”Viator10 (1979):211–244;CrossRefGoogle Scholar reprinted inGrant's,EdwardStudies in Medieval Science and Natural Philosophy (London,1981),Google Scholar article 13.

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16.Ibid., 1: 123–124.

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23. The text of the decree is given inPedersen,Olaf, “Galileo and the Council of Trent: The Galileo Affair Revisited,”Journal for the History of Astronomy14 (1983):28–29,CrossRefGoogle Scholar n. 46.

24. On the issues between Galileo and his critics within the church, seeibid; alsoShea,William R., “Galileo and the Church,” inGod and Nature, pp.118–133.Google Scholar

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27.White,,A History of the Warfare, 1:22,218.Google Scholar

28.Ibid., 1: 17–18.

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30.Gillispie,Charles Coulston,Genesis and Geology: A Study in the Relations of Scientific Thought, Natural Theology, and Social Opinion in Great Britain, 1790–1850 (Cambridge, Mass.,1951);Google ScholarWhite,,A History of the Warfare, 1:234.Google Scholar See alsoRupke,Nicolas A.,The Great Chain of History: William Buckland and the English School of Geology, 1814–1849 (Oxford,1983).Google Scholar

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32.White,,A History of the Warfare, 1:70–71.Google Scholar

33.Lucas,J. R., “Wilberforce and Huxley: A Legendary Encounter,”The Historical Journal22 (1979):313–330.CrossRefGoogle ScholarPubMed See alsoGilley,Sheridan, “The Huxley-Wilberforce Debate: A Reconsideration,” inReligion and Humanism, ed.Robbins,Keith, Studies in Church History 17 (Oxford,1981), pp.325–340.Google Scholar

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35.Ibid., pp. 313–330.

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38.Moore,,Post-Darwinian Controversies, pp.102–103.Google Scholar

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40.Turner,Frank M., “The Victorian Conflict between Science and Religion: A Professional Dimension,”Isis69 (1979):356–376.CrossRefGoogle ScholarChadwick,Owen has argued that the conflict between science and religion “was hypostatized, necessarily, out of a number of conflicts”;The Secularization of the European Mind in the Nineteenth Century (Cambridge,1975), pp.163–164.Google Scholar

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44. Although we are aware of the danger that some readers might interpret our use of the terms “science” and “Christianity” as an unwarranted reification of these entities, we have retained this terminology as a convenient way of designating the various manifestations of Christianity and science.