Peter Harrison provides an account of the religious foundations of scientific knowledge. He shows how the approaches to the study of nature that emerged in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries were directly informed by theological discussions about the Fall of Man and the extent to which the mind and the senses had been damaged by that primeval event. Scientific methods, he suggests, were originally devised as techniques for ameliorating the cognitive damage wrought by human sin. At its inception, modern science was conceptualized as a means of recapturing the knowledge of nature that Adam had once possessed. Contrary to a widespread view that sees science emerging in conflict with religion, Harrison argues that theological considerations were of vital importance in the framing of the scientific method.
- ISBN13 9780511487750
- Publish Date 24 October 2009 (first published 20 December 2007)
- Publish Status Active
- Publish Country GB
- Publisher Cambridge University Press
- Imprint Cambridge University Press (Virtual Publishing)
- Format eBook
- Language English