5: Science and Progress
Professor Peter Harrison lectures on the place of the scientific revolution in the larger context of Christian history, and how this resulted in the eventual displacement of religion by science
Lecture abstract
The Fall-Redemption narrative not only informed the goals and methods of the new sciences, but also placed the scientific revolution within the larger context of Christian history.
The great efflorescence of scientific activity that characterised the seventeenth century was regarded variously as a prelude to the millennium, as one facet of a general reformation of religion and learning, or as a means of helping to restore to the human race a mastery of nature that had been lost as a consequence of the Fall.
The idea of scientific progress thus initially derived its legitimacy from a providential understanding of history. The seventeenth and eighteenth centuries saw the emergence of a number of ‘scientific eschatologies’, which, in their secularised forms in the nineteenth century, were ironically to consign religion to a primitive stage of historical development. On this view of history, religion was destined to be displaced by science.