Cambridge Library Collection - Science and Religion

While the proper relation between Christianity and the sciences was the subject of an extensive literature during the Scientific Revolution and the Enlightenment, the increasing status of disciplinary science in the nineteenth century brought renewed and intense scrutiny to the question. This series explores the developing debate. It includes important early works asserting the harmony of scientific and religious truths, such as Paley's Natural Theology and the Bridgewater Treatises (written by authors appointed by the President of the Royal Society to examine the 'power, wisdom, and goodness of God as manifested in the creation'), but also numerous later works reflecting the growing controversy and a distinctively Victorian conception of the 'warfare' between science and religion. The series includes a particularly interesting selection of works debating the implications of Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1959) for religious belief and human identity.