March 6, 2009 at 6:00 PM EST
411 Willard Straight Hall
Fredrick C. Wood Lecture
Just over a century ago, Cornell’s first president and co-founder Andrew Dickson White published a two-volume work entitled A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, a work that has been very influential in framing conversations about science and religion throughout the twentieth century. Although the last thirty years has seen a significant amount of research challenging the notion that science and religion are incompatible, the metaphor of warfare persists, especially in the popular imagination. In this lecture, Dr. Noll will revisit A.D. White’s thesis, the persistance of the warfare metaphor, and suggest some paths forward in the relations of science and religion.
Mark Noll, the Francis A. McAnaney Professor of History at the University of Notre Dame, is one of the most prolific and highly regarded religious historians in North America. The New Republic has said that he is “As fine a historian as America now boasts.” Noll is the author of many books, including America’s God: From Jonathan Edwards to Abraham Lincoln (Oxford, 2002),The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind (Eerdmans, 1994), and most recently, God and Race in American Politics (Princeton, 2008).