History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. Cet article n’est pas disponible.History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science

Not without astonishment can we look back at what, in those times, were popularly regarded as criteria of truth. Doctrines were considered as established by the number of martyrs who had professed them, by miracles, by the confession of demons, of lunatics, or of persons possessed of evil spirits... -from Chapter VIII: Conflict Respecting the Criterion of Truth In 1874, John William Draper foresaw the grand political conflict between religion and science that has afflicted American culture since the early 20th century-he deemed it an extension of the battle the Catholic Church has been fighting against logic and reason since its inception. In this incendiary work, which retains all of its passion and power today, Draper posits that the history of science cannot be appreciated except in relation to its war for legitimacy in the eyes of the Church, and he gives us a lucid and fascinating history of the discipline alongside the Church's ongoing grab for imperial power. This is an intriguing portrait of an "intellectual night" that fell in ancient times and is only breaking into an enlightened new dawn today. American scientist and writer JOHN WILLIAM DRAPER (1811-1882) was professor of chemistry and later medicine at New York University and made significant contributions to the development of photography. His many books of scholarship include The History of the Intellectual Development of Europe (1862).

From the preface: "WHOEVER has had an opportunity of becoming acquainted with the mental condition of the intelligent classes in Europe and America, must have perceived that there is a great and rapidly-increasing departure from the public religious faith, and that, while among the more frank this divergence is not concealed, there is a far more extensive and far more dangerous secession, private and unacknowledged. So wide-spread and so powerful is this secession, that it can neither be treated with contempt nor with punishment. It cannot be extinguished by derision, by vituperation, or by force. The time is rapidly approaching when it will give rise to serious political results. Ecclesiastical spirit no longer inspires the policy of the world. Military fervor in behalf of faith has disappeared. Its only souvenirs are the marble effigies of crusading knights, reposing in the silent crypts of churches on their tombs. That a crisis is impending is shown by the attitude of the great powers toward the papacy. The papacy represents the ideas and aspirations of two-thirds of the population of Europe. It insists on a political supremacy in accordance with its claims to a divine origin and mission, and a restoration of the mediaeval order of things, loudly declaring that it will accept no reconciliation with modern civilization. The antagonism we thus witness between Religion and Science is the continuation of a struggle that commenced when Christianity began to attain political power. A divine revelation must necessarily be intolerant of contradiction; it must repudiate all improvement in itself, and view with disdain that arising from the progressive intellectual development of man. But our opinions on every subject are continually liable to modification, from the irresistible advance of human knowledge."