Theology and the scientific imagination from the Middle Ages to the seventeenth century

"Theology and the Scientific Imagination should be read by every historian of science. I can also hardly imagine a philosopher of science who would remain indifferent to the roots of modern thinking. The reading of this book gives one a deep intellectual pleasure: to follow adventures in ideas is like experiencing the adventures themselves."--Michael Heller, The Review of Metaphysics "[This work] promises to raise the level and transform the nature of discourse on the relations of Christianity and science. . . . a bold study of ideas . . . bristling with insight and perceptive reinterpretation of familiar episodes in the history of natural philosophy."--David C. Lindberg, Journal of the History of Medicine "Funkenstein's powerful essay belongs to that genre of intellectual history which has addressed itself to . . . the metaphysical foundations of modern science. . . . Liberation from naive conceptions of historical continuity gives Funkenstein leave to concentrate on a finely nuanced exegesis of those philosophers who fall within his purview. The result is a work of discernment and distinction. . . ."--J. H. Brooke, The Times Higher Education Supplement Cover......Page 1 Front......Page 2 Copyright......Page 3 Contents......Page 5 Preface......Page 7 Abbreviations......Page 9 A. A Secular Theology......Page 12 B. The Themes......Page 19 C. A Differential History......Page 21 D. Ideas and Ideals of Science......Page 27 A. The Body of God......Page 32 B. The Original Setting of the Ideals......Page 40 C. A Short History of God's Corporeality and Presence......Page 51 D. Late Medieval Nominalism and Renaissance Philosophy......Page 66 E. Descartes and More......Page 81 F. Hobbes, Spinoza, and Malebranche......Page 89 G. Newton......Page 98 H. Leibniz......Page 106 A. Omnipotence and Nature......Page 126 B. Potentia Dei Absoluta et Ordinata......Page 133 C. Ideal Experiments and the Laws of Motion......Page 161 D. Descartes, Eternal Truths, and Divine Omnipotence......Page 188 E. Newton and Leibniz......Page 201 A. The Invisible Hand and the Concept of History......Page 211 B. "Scripture Speaks the Language of Man": The Exegetical Principle of Accommodation......Page 222 C. Accommodation and the Divine Law......Page 231 D. Accommodation and the Course of Universal History......Page 252 E. History, Counter-History, and Secularization......Page 280 F. Vico's Secularized Providence and His "New Science"......Page 288 A. A New Ideal of Knowing......Page 299 B. Construction and Metabasis, Mathematization and Mechanization......Page 308 C. The Construction of Nature and the Construction of Society......Page 336 A. Kant and the De-Theologization of Science......Page 355 B. Enlightenment and Education......Page 366 C. Theology and Science......Page 369 Bibliography......Page 373 Index......Page 408 This pioneering work in the history of science, which originated in a series of three Gauss Seminars given at Princeton University in 1984, demonstrated how the roots of the scientific revolution lay in medieval scholasticism. A work of intellectual history addressing the metaphysical foundations of modern science, Theology and the Scientific Imagination raised and transformed the level of discourse on the relations of Christianity and science. Amos Funkenstein was one of the world's most distinguished scholars of Jewish history, medieval intellectual history, and the history of science. Called a genius and Renaissance man by his academic colleagues, Funkenstein was legendary for his ability to recite long literary passages verbatim and from memory in Latin, German, French, Hebrew, Yiddish, and Greek decades after he had last read them. A winner of the coveted Israel Prize for History, Funkenstein was born and raised in Palestine and received his Ph. D. in history and philosophy at the Free University of Berlin in 1965, as one of the first Jewish students to receive a doctorate in Germany after World War II