Quotes from Gary B. Ferngren

Science's best-known victories were those of Copernicanism and Darwinism.

Their goal is to deepen our comprehension of the discussions themselves instead of justifying particular views involved in current debates.

The Middle Ages have served as a historical arena within which two schools of thought have done battle—one school accusing the medieval church of actively opposing the advancement of scientific learning, the other praising the medieval church and its theology for laying a foundation that made modern science possible.

If they were right, there was an absence of conflict not only over the specific case of cosmology but, in principle, over anything else in which scientific and biblical statements appeared to be in contradiction. A "conflict thesis" would have seemed untenable because there was nothing to fight about.

In Victorian times, one of the more serious reasons for opposing Darwin was the fear that his theories would lead to the law of the jungle, the abandonment of ethical constraints in society.

In Victorian times, one of the more serious reasons for opposing Darwin was the fear that his theories would lead to the law of the jungle, the abandonment of ethical constraints in society. In nearly all of these cases, however, it is not so much science as its application (often by nonscientists) that has been under judgment.

In short, the interaction between science and religion in the Middle Ages was not an abstract encounter between bodies of fixed ideas but part of the human quest for understanding. As such, it was characterized by the same vicissitudes and the same rich variety that mark all human endeavor.

The Judeo-Christian view, in contrast, historically regarded nature as the nonliving creation of a rational God, not cyclic but with a definite beginning and end.