Science and Religion in Seventeenth- and Eighteenth-Century Literature

Intellectual and Religious Historical Backgrounds

An essay by Richard Hooker on the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries in Europe, for a history course taught at Washington State University.
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Another article from Washington State University’s Web site, this overview of the development of reason and rational thought leading to the Enlightenment in France and England is by Paul Brians.
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Pascal and Descartes

A brief biography of Blaise Pascal, from a course site at Oregon State University.
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Illustrated by a diagram of Pascal’s arithmetical triangle, this excerpt from A Short Account on the History of Mathematics (4th ed., 1908) by W. W. Rouse Ball summarizes Pascal’s contributions to mathematics. The Web site is maintained by the School of Mathematics at Trinity College, Dublin.
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A helpful contrast between the philosophical positions of Descartes and Pascal, written by Tom Nickles of the University of Nevada, Reno.
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An explanation and critique of “Pascal’s Wager,” from Stanford University’s online
Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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A refutation of Pascal’s Wager by Massimo Pigluicci, published by a site for atheists.
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A biography of Descartes and his impact on the scientific revolution, with an introductory discussion of the evolution of the term science.
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Molière: Reason and Faith

A theatre professional’s description of the role of religion in Molière’s career.
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An encyclopedia article describing Molière’s final performance in Le Malade Imaginaire, with reflections on the play’s attack on medical practitioners and old-fashioned science and the Church’s attitude toward the author of Tartuffe.
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The Scientific Method

A lively overview of the gradual development of scientific thinking in the West, from an online course in world civilization at Washington State University. This article is by Richard Hooker.
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Chapter 5, Max Patrick, Francis Bacon, a discussion of Bacon’s promotion of induction and experiment as modes for testing assumptions.
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An excerpt from The Enlightenment, by Roy Porter (Palgrave: 2001), published by the British newspaper, The Guardian.
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Intellectual Societies and their Contributors

A discussion of the Royal Society, founded in 1662.
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A description of the Montmor Academy, an early French society for the study of science and philosophy founded in 1657, written by Robert Hatch for his students at the University of Florida.
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A discussion of the Paris Academy of Sciences founded in 1666, from a Web site maintained by the School of Mathematics and Statistics of the University of St. Andrews, Scotland. Note the elaboration of scientific disciplines when the royal academy was transformed into the National Institute in 1795.
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A brief biography of Edmond Halley, from the BBC’s Web site.
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From the British Broadcasting Company, a timeline noting royal patronage for the sciences in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Prominently noted are William Harvey and Isaac Newton.
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The Centrality of Isaac Newton

From the chapter on Isaac Newton in Daniel Boorstin, Chapter 52, The Discoverers (Random House, 1983), made available by an organization devoted to saving the wild salmon of Idaho. Newton’s work is presented here to show the limits of numerical calculation in quest of value.
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A good biographical sketch of Isaac Newton, from the BBC.
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The introduction to The Newton Project, a British Web site that aims to demonstrate the complexity of Newton’s thought.
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From a course in “Galileo and Einstein” taught by Physics Professor Michael Fowler at the University of Virginia, an illustrated description of Newton’s understanding of the universality of the gravitational force.
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A brief essay by D.W. Hauck on Isaac Newton’s fascination with alchemy.
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A transcript of a talk by Professor Rosalind Picard of MIT delivered in a series on The Faith of Great Scientists in 1998; the emphasis is on the influence of Newton’s faith on his science.
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A note on Newton’s Opticks, illustrated with a picture of one of Newton’s handmade telescopes and a diagram of his experiments with light, from the Web site of Jose Wudka, who teaches physics at the University of California at Riverside.
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From the Web site for The Norton Anthology of English Literature, a brief note on Pope’s epitaph for Sir Isaac Newton.
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James Thomson, “A Poem Sacred to the Memory of Sir Isaac Newton,” in a text provided by the University of Toronto Library. Compare with Voltaire’s Philosophical Letters on the relationship of Newton’s thought to that of Descartes, written at the same time as Thomson’s poem.
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The Problem of Evil

A teaching site devoted to the Lisbon Earthquake of 1755.
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A lengthy article by Michael Murray on Leibniz’s efforts to resolve the problem of evil, from the Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
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Literature and Science

Patey, Douglas Lane. “Swift’s Satire on ‘Science’ and the Structure of Gulliver’s
Travels.” ELH 58 (1991): 809-39. This is available online through the digital archive JSTOR.