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The Protestant Reformation and the Rise of Modern Science
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 02 February 2009
Extract
The vast literature on the Reformation and the rise of science has produced what may be called strong and weak interpretations of their relation. The strong interpretation holds that specific doctrines or attitudes affirmed by the Reformers and their followers contributed directly to the growth of science. On this view, the Reformation was among the causes of the Scientific Revolution. Without the changes in thought and values wrought by the Reformation, proponents of the strong interpretation argue, modern science would not have developed as it did. The weak interpretation, on the other hand, does not claim a direct influence of Protestantism on science. It acknowledges that modern science developed as a movement independent of the Reformation and it claims only that Protestantism offered relatively few obstacles to scientific expansion. On the weak interpretation, the absence of the Reformation would have had little, if any, effect on the Scientific Revolution. After brief discussion of each of these interpretations, I will argue that the strong interpretation is too strong and that the weak one can be strengthened. I will outline an indirect approach, which falls between the above extremes, and offers advantages not offered by either of them.
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References
1 In addition to the literature cited elsewhere in this article, important studies of Protestantism and science include: Dillenberger, John, Protestant Thought and Natural Science (Nashville: Abingdon, 1960)Google Scholar; Klaaren, Eugene, Religious Origins of Modern Science (Grand Rapids: Eerdmans, 1977)Google Scholar; Westfall, Richard, Science and Religion in Seventeenth Century England (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1958)Google Scholar; Westman, Robert S., ‘The Melancthon Circle, Rheticus, and the Wittenberg Interpretation of the Copernican Theory’, Isis, 1975, vol. 66, pp. 164–193CrossRefGoogle Scholar. Studies of English Puritanism and science include: Webster, Charles, The Great Instauration: Science, Medicine and Reform, 1626–1660 (London: Duckworth, 1975)Google Scholar; Hill, Christopher, Intellectual Origins of the English Revolution (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Jones, R. F., Ancients and Moderns (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1965)Google Scholar; Stimson, Dorothy, ‘Puritanism and the New Philosophy in Seventeenth Century England’, Bulletin of the Institute of the History of Medicine, 1935, vol. 3, pp. 321–334Google Scholar; Hall, A. Rupert, ‘Merton Revisited or Science and Society in the Seventeenth Century’, History of Science, 1963, vol. 2, pp. 1–16CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Rabb, T. K., ‘Puritanism and the Rise of Experimental Science in England’, Cahiers d'hisloire Mondiale, 1962, vol. 7, pp. 46–67Google Scholar; Greaves, Richard, ‘Puritanism and Science: The Anatomy of a Controversy’, Journal of the History of Ideas, 1969, vol. 30, pp. 345–368Google Scholar; Morgan, John, ‘Puritanism and Science: A Reinterpretation’, The Historical Journal, 1979, vol. 22, pp. 535–560CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and the exchange among Hugh Kearney, Christopher Hill, and T. K. Rabb in issues 28 (July 1964), 29 (Dec, 1964), 31 (July, 1965), 32 (Dec. 1965) of Past and Present.
The categories of strong and weak are useful, although they should be refined further. A more complete analysis than that given in this paper would require further distinctions to be drawn among types of strong interpretations in particular. A fuller analysis should appear soon in my article ‘Protestantism and Science: A Typology and Criticism of Interpretations’.
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