PHIL 331: Philosophy, Science and Religion (Dr. Vailati)
Spring 2012
Where to reach me: PB 2212; phone: 3376; homepage:
http://www.siue.edu/~evailat; email: evailat@siue.edu
Office hours: M. 11-12 and T. 5-6, and by appointment if necessary.
Course Description and Goals
This course introduces students to some of the historically and conceptually
important interaction between philosophy, science and religion from the
beginning of the Scientific Revolution to the reactions to Darwinism.
Although the modern science often presented new problems for religion, their
relation was not always confrontational. Still, there was tension, and often
philosophers tried to provide either a middle ground on which science and
religion could amicably coexist or even interpenetrate, or an insurmountable
barrier between them so that each could develop in its autonomous sphere. At
other times, philosophers appropriated science, or what they perceived as
science, in order to attack specific religious views or even religion in
general. In this course, we shall try to disentangle all these different
strands by looking primarily at the history of the relations among philosophy,
science, and religion from the scientific revolution to the present.
Required Texts
· Lindberg and Numbers (eds.) God and Nature (UC Press, 1986) (G). Rental
· Mattews, The Scientific Background to Modern Philosophy (Hackett, 1989) (M). Rental
· Ridley (ed.) The Darwin Reader (Norton, 1987) (R). Rental
· Drake (ed.) Discoveries and Opinions of Galileo (D). Rental
· Brooke, Science and Religion (CUP, 1991) (S). Rental
· Dixon, Science and Religion (OUP, 2008) (TD) Rental
· Material to be downloaded from my homepage (http:www.siue.edu/~evailat); several handouts.
‘Religion and Science’ is a good entry in The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Look at it and keep it in mind as we move
along in the course.
Schedule
weeks 1-2. Intro to topic. Reading: TD, ch. 1; NOMA and Dawkins.
Science and early Christianity. Reading: Lindberg, "Science and the Early Church" (G, 19-48)
Science and religion in the Middle Ages
Preliminary: the solar system according to modern science. What do we see when we look at the heavens and how can we explain(?) what we see? A mathematical trick: the equant.
Readings:
Handout
on late medieval astronomy and theories of motion.
Grant, "Science and Theology in the Middle Ages" (G, 49-75).
End of week 2: First quiz.
week 3. The God of traditional theology.
The Abrahamic stories of creation, science, and philosophy:
readings: Genesis
I-II (this is Young’s literal translation); the same (but in traditional
version) with hostile but reasonable thought provoking marginal comments.
Philosophy and science impinging on religion: St. Thomas on the
eternity of the world. Readings:
Selection from the Summa: download; Aquinas on
what’s essential and what’s incidental to faith (handout)
How do we read scriptures?
week
4. The
scientific revolution
The astronomical revolution. Readings:
Copernicus (M
33-44); his system in action. Osiander’s Instrumentalism.
The
Tychonic system in action.
Kepler, selections from Mysterium Cosmographicum
and Astronomia Nova (handout). Kepler’s three
laws.
The telescope: Selections from Galileo's Sidereus
Nuncius (D 23-37; 50-58)
Skim S, ch. II.
week
5. Galileo
and his condemnation;
Readings:
Galileo (M 53-86); Letter to the Grand Duchess Christina (D, 175-216);
Galileo's letter to Castelli and Bellarmino's
letter to Foscarini (handout).
The trial documents. Here is a very good website for Galileo.
DT, ch. 2.
Skim S, ch. III
End of week 5: Second quiz
week 6. A first attempt at systematization of a new world view.
Descartes.
Readings: Descartes, Selections
from Discourse on Method (download). Letter to
Mersenne of April 1624 (handout); M 94-108
Boyle: Corpuscularianism and the good Christian.
Readings: Selection from Boyle (M 109-23)
Deason, "Reformation Theology and the
Mechanistic Conception of Nature" (G, 167-91)
A rejection: Pascal's fideism. Readings: Selection from Pascal's Pensées (download)
weeks
7-8. A second attempt at systematization: Newton's Deus Pantokrator and the religious use of physics
Readings:
Newton, M 133-58. First Letter to Bentley (handout).
Bentley, selections from The First Boyle Lecture
(handout).
Jacob, "Christianity and the Newtonian Worldview"
(G, 238-56).
Skim S, ch. IV.
Davies, "The Unreasonable Effectiveness of Science" (handout).
End of week 7
Third quiz.
End of week 8:
Midterm
week
9. Deism and Theism.
Readings:
Locke: Science and Reason as delimiting Religion: selections from An Essay
on human understanding (download-1;
download-2).
Tindal’s Deism: selections from Christianity Old As
Creation (handout).
Skim S, ch. V.
week
10- Mon. of week 11. An
antireligious interpretation of science: Naturalism and Secularism
Readings:
D'Holbach, selections from System of Nature
(handout).
Hahn, "Laplace and the Mechanistic Universe" (G,
256-76).
Q. Smith ‘Kalam Cosmological Arguments for Atheism’ (handout).
M. Ruse Atheism, Naturalisn and Science: three in one? (handout)
Wed.
of week 11. Miracles and God’s presence.
Readings:
Derham, selections from Physico-Theology
(handout)
Hume's First Treatise, ch. 10 (download)
TD ch. 3.
End of week 11: Fourth quiz
week
12. Geology, scriptures and the discovery of deep time
Readings:
Burnett, selections from Sacred Theory of the Earth (handout)
Selections from Lyell's Principles of Geology (handout)
Rudwick, "The Shape and Meaning of Earth
History" (G, 296-321)
USGS on geologic time.
Skim S, ch VII.
weeks 13-14. Paley, Darwin, and Darwinism; creationism
Selection from
Paley’s Natural
Theology: read chs. 1-3.
Darwin, R 84-135; 175-204. Darwin's letter on God's existence
(handout).
DT
ch. 4.
Gregory, "The Impact of Darwinian Evolution" (G,
369-90).
Behe, Dembski, and their critics (handout); Common anti-evolutionist claims and the standard answers to them
Handout from Ruse's book Can a Darwinian be a Christian?
DT ch. 5
End of week 14:
Fifth quiz; Paper
due.
week 15. Brooke, Science and Secularization (handout).
Final Discussion.
Course requirements and grades
1. Five multiple-choice quizzes, each worth 5% of the course grade. Some will be in class, some take-home. No make-ups unless in extreme circumstances.
2. Three unannounced in-class pop quizzes each worth 3% of the course grade. Only those present in class may take them.
3. A class presentation of 15-20 minutes, worth 10% of the course grade. Make sure you show up and give the presentation when you signed for it.
4. A midterm, worth 20% of the course grade
5. A paper, typed, double-spaced, 5 full pages long, on the topic of your presentation. The paper is worth 20% of the course grade
6. A final exam, consisting of a multiple choice quiz and a short essay, worth 16% of the course grade. The topic of the short essay will be chosen by me out of the following Topics for the final exam.
There are 100 possible points in this course. The breakdown in terms of grade is as follows: 100-90: A; 89-79: B; 78-68: C; 67-57: D; 56 or fewer: F.
Academic policies
1. The issues we deal with in this course are complex and require a considerable amount of background knowledge without which discussion quickly degenerates into nonsense. Unavoidably, there will be some amount of lecturing.
2. Students are responsible for knowing what has been said in class. Keep in mind that discussion in and outside class is essential to master the issues covered in this course. Papers or quizzes may be based on classroom discussions not derived from any written material. If for any reason you miss some classes, make sure to find out, from some other student or from me, what has been done in class.
3. Plagiarism will be dealt with in accordance with CAS draconian guidelines.
4.
Class
attendance is required; missing more than 5 classes without proper excuse will
reduce one’s course points by 10%.
Class Behavior
Please avoid texting, reading extraneous material, chatting, or sleeping. In general, behave civilly.
Papers
Be aware that you cannot write a satisfactory paper in one evening or one night
unless you have thought about it at length before. You are encouraged to give
me rough drafts of your papers. Keep in mind that I can return them with
significant comments only if: i) they are given to me
at least one full week before the papers are due; ii) they are written
reasonably clearly. Rough drafts consisting only of disjointed paragraphs
or, worse, mere paragraph headings cannot be properly evaluated. You may
turn in your rough drafts as many times as you like, compatibly with the above
requirements.
Grading
criteria
A paper providing mere information adequately and accurately in clear prose
substantially free of spelling and grammatical mistakes will be in the C
range. A paper which in addition to meeting this requirement shows some
originality supported by reasonably clear and cogent arguments will be in the B
range. A paper showing significant originality, clarity and cogency will
be in the A range.
My reading a student's rough draft of a paper does not entail, although it
makes it somewhat likely, that the paper, even if my comments are considered,
will get a B or an A. Often a bad paper must be revised more than once
to become good. Papers merely consisting of a composite of material taken
from web sites, articles, or books are not acceptable. You need to provide
thoughts of your own.
5% of the paper’s grade will be subtracted for every solar day it
is late.
Spelling and
grammar
Papers must be written in correct
English. Students who feel unsure about their command of grammar should
make sure to remedy the problem as quickly as possible by using the writing
center, for example.
Many students often confuse the following words:
it's/its;
there/their; cite/site; principal/principle; than/then; to/too/two;
who's/whose; weather/whether; conscience/conscious; since/sense; coarse/course.
In addition, students are often guilty of the following misspellings:
arguement; diety;
devine; concieve; decieve; percieve; sieze; truely; wholely.
If unsure about how to spell these words correctly, check a dictionary.