Emerging Scholars Blog

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Ted Davis

Ted Davis at U of Minnesota: Galileo and the Garden of Eden and More (Highlighting Community)

ESN loves to share what likeminded scholars and groups are doing in our Highlighting Community blog feature. Next week at University of Minnesota, historian of science and previous American Scientific Affiliation president Ted Davis will join a forum discussion on faith and science and give a lecture on Galileo and Eden. See below for details. Ted has a busy speaking schedule this spring, including talks in Texas and central PA, so stay tuned for more. For previous interviews with Ted at ESN, see this link.

Foundations Forum Discussion: Scientific Inquiry and Faith

With almost 80 percent of Americans professing some type of religious faith, it is important to consider how these views interact with science. Can faith somehow support scientific inquiry? Or does faith necessarily clash with the callings of science?

Join us the evening of January 26th for a discussion moderated by University of Minnesota professor Jennifer Alexander. We’ll host Dr. Michael Ruse, a secular philosopher of science from Florida State, and Dr. Ted Davis, a Christian historian of science from Messiah college, to discuss the relationship between science and faith. Organized by Campus Atheists, Skeptics, & Humanists, Anselm House Students, and the Round Table, with the help of many other student groups. More detail here.

Date: Thursday January 26 at 7 pm

Talk by Ted Davis: Galileo and the Garden of Eden: Galileo’s Hermeneutics, Modern Christians, and Natural History

To defend Copernican theory from the charge of being contrary to the Bible, Galileo argued that God’s “two books” of Scripture and nature could be harmonized by recognizing that Scripture is “accommodated” to ordinary human language and ideas, which are not scientific. Galileo’s hermeneutical strategy was widely imitated by scientists and clergy in the nineteenth century to help Christians accept an ancient Earth. Since then, however, American Christians have responded to these hermeneutical strategies in varying ways. This talk analyzes what Galileo said, shows how his arguments were reprised in nineteenth-century arguments about the relationship between natural history and Christianity, and explores the trajectory of these arguments into the present day.

Hosted by Anselm House and the University of Minnesota Center for Early Modern History, further details here and here.

Date: Friday January 27 at 3:30 pm

6/22: From COSMOS to PSYCHE early bird reg. extended!

From COSMOS to PSYCHE. 2014 ASA CSCA CiS Annual Meetings. McMaster University. July 25-28.he early-bird registration for From COSMOS to PSYCHE closes (Note: on-line registration available through July 25).

Update: Deadline for the early-bird registration for From COSMOS to PSYCHE extended from June 15 to June 22. (Note: on-line registration available through July 25).

From COSMOS to PSYCHE

Joint annual meeting of the American Scientific Affiliation, the Canadian Scientific and Christian Association, and Christians in Science (UK). McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada

July 25-28

If you are a student, don’t forget that your registration is free if you are a premier member and only $20 if you are a basic member (membership information). You may also qualify for a scholarship to cover a substantial part of your on-campus costs. If you are not a student but know someone who would be interested, consider sponsoring them and helping them attend.

Thank-you to the American Scientific Affiliation for the email reminder regarding early-bird registration (and its extension from June 15 to 22)! Yes, it’s time for me to work on my registration (and join the 177 others who have already registered). I truly look forward to connecting with some of you at McMaster University. I’m also really excited to increase awareness regarding Tom Ingebritsen’s Christianity & Science ESN Blog Series and his new project: A Little Book for New Scientists: Why and How to Study Science for InterVarsity Press. Pray for us as we prepare a display/”poster” for the exhibit hall to invite those present to become participants in and possibly even writers for ESN’s regular Science and Faith conversation. If you are not attending, but have interest in learning more about these endeavors, please drop me a line. As some of you know, I have very much enjoyed participating in several ASA Annual Mtgs and related gatherings. Click here for audio files and slides of presentations from last year’s mtgs focused on In God’s Image: Celebrating Creativity in Science and Invention, here for a little coverage of last year [including the launch of the Christian Women in Science (CWIS)], and here for ESN blog posts with the ASA tag. [Read more…] about 6/22: From COSMOS to PSYCHE early bird reg. extended!

Lent brings me back to reflections on loss, grief, suffering

2012 Lenten Reflection Series

The Book Nobody Read: Chasing the Revolutions of Nicolaus Copernicus” by Owen Gingerich (Walker Publishing Co, 2004)

Last week I began the 2012 series with Entering Lent: “I Want” in Higher Education. As you may remember, Kent Annan’s  After Shock saturated my 2011 Lenten reflection. With Kent’s recent visit to South Central PA and the deep chord which “I Want” struck not only with me, but also a number of the students with whom I watched it, I wondered if my 2012 reflections would largely draw from his earlier book Following Jesus Through the Eye of the Needle (InterVarsity Press, 2009). Although this may still occur, on Friday I began reading a new book.

I picked up a copy of The Book Nobody Read: A Closer Look at the Book that Moved the World by Owen Gingerich, Professor Emeritus of Astronomy and of the History of Science at Harvard University and a senior astronomer emeritus at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, at Hearts & Minds Books when dropping off materials from Scot McKnight’s Christian Scholar Series presentation en route to have dinner with and then hear Owen present on the fascinating adventures related in The Book Nobody Read. But that’s not the book I’m referring to 😉

As occurs in gatherings of Christian scholars and students, I connected with a number of people.* At the conclusion of the lecture sponsored by the Central Pennsylvania Forum for Religion and Science and Messiah College’s Center for Public Humanities, my friend Ted Davis (who directs the Forum and is Professor of the History of Science at Messiah College) introduced me to Paul Nisly. Paul is a retired Professor of English at Messiah College with a specialty is Southern literature. He particularly appreciates digging into William Faulkner and Flannery O’Connor. In addition to being an academic, Paul serves as a bishop in the Mennonite Church.

“Sweeping Up the Heart: A Father’s Lament for His Daughter” by Paul Nisly (Good Books. 1992)

When introducing my work with the Emerging Scholars Network in South Central PA and the Christian Medical Society (CMS)/CMDA at the Penn State College of Medicine, I related the various speakers which we have hosted over the past twelve months. Messiah College alumnus Janel Atlas was among those whom I mentioned. As some of you may know, Janel presented at both the Medical Center and the Elizabethtown Public Library on They Were Still Born: Personal Stories about Stillbirth (Rowman & Littlefield, 2010). Paul responded to Janel’s story and the work at PSU-Hershey by sharing some of his own loss. [Read more…] about Lent brings me back to reflections on loss, grief, suffering

American Scientific Affiliation Posts 2010 Annual Meeting Audios

In addition to the presentation on “Seeking Other Earths: Exoplanets and the Significance of Life,” conference participants had the opportunity to visit the NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center. The above photo is of “a small portion of one of the largest-seen star-birth regions in the galaxy, the Carina Nebula.”  It was taken by the Hubble Space Telescope (developed and serviced by NASA-Goddard), http://hubble.nasa.gov/.

The American Scientific Affiliation (ASA) has just begun to post audio podcasts of the talks from their 65th Annual Meeting:  Science, Faith, and Public Policy (Catholic University in America, Washington, D.C.).  I’d encourage you to check out their library.

Three presentations which I found of particular value and commend to you are …

If you have comments on any of these presentations, please post them here.  If you’d prefer a private on-line discussion group on one of these presentations, let me know.

Note 1: Files of many of the presentation slides will also be posted on the ASA site. We’ll keep you up-to-date.  In addition, interviews of several ASA presenters are in process for posting on the ESN blog.  As you may remember, we already have posted

Note 2:  If you’re a student in the sciences (or interested in the sciences), don’t miss the ASA’s special student rate of $20 a year. To learn more about the benefits of membership click here.  Might make a good item to request as a birthday or Christmas gift. Just an idea 😉

Note 3:  ESN’s looking forward to more conversations on the relationship of science-faith on the blog AND at next year’s ASA mtgs, which will be hosted by North Central College, in the Chicago area, July 29 – Aug 1, 2011. Mark your calendars!

History of Science Recommendations from Ted Davis

In Summer 2010, Ted Davis (History of Science, Messiah College) presented a series of four free lectures on ‘A Short History of Christianity and Science’ for the Pennsylvania Chautauqua, Mt. Gretna, PA.  Interested in having Ted speak on your campus?  If so, you might consider 1 or more of the topics from this series, http://www.messiah.edu/godandscience/fall10/short_history.html.

Last week, Edward B. (“Ted”) Davis, Distinguished Professor of the History of Science at Messiah College (Grantham, PA) and outgoing president of the American Scientific Affiliation (ASA), shared with us how he became interested in History of Science and some tips for Emerging Scholars as they seek academic positions. In this second post, we explore recommended resources for those interested in the History of Science. Let’s get started …

Thomas B. Grosh IV [TG]: For members of ESN with an interest in History of Science [HSC], what resources would you recommend as a place to get started? Would you have a book recommendation for a campus discussion group?

Ted Davis [TD]: Unfortunately many of the best historians of science write little or nothing for “popular” audiences, i.e., non-scholars. Ironically, the book that has probably sold more copies than any other book in my field, Thomas Kuhn’s “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions” (more than one million copies are reported to be in circulation), was written in terse academic prose for a very narrow audience, namely positivist philosophers of science—whose work was, equally ironically, all but undermined by Kuhn, even though he had not intended to do so. Readers who like Kuhn should be able to handle almost anything else in HSC, regardless of the audience for whom it was written. I had to read two of Kuhn’s books in Dr. Rosen’s course at Drexel, and I found both of them fascinating despite my very limited acquaintance with HSC at the time.

The kind of literature that could attract a person to HSC, however, might actually be something that was not written by a professional Historian of Science, such as the books on history of physics that I mentioned in the first part of this interview. A perfect example is Dava Sobel’s Galileo’s Daughter:  A Historical Memoir of Science, Faith, and Love. Sobel is neither a professional Historian nor even a scholar; she is a science writer who reads the professional scholars very carefully, understands them, and presents a very persuasive picture of Galileo life and his interactions with others in that book. I think that she’s a little too uncritical of the relationship between Galileo and his daughter, but overall the book is a very fine book. Anyone who likes that book might be interested in studying HSC. [Read more…] about History of Science Recommendations from Ted Davis