Orthodox Christianity and Modern Science: Past, Present and Future
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Book Series
Science and Orthodox Christianity, vol. 4
Orthodox Christianity and the Study of Nature
Histories of Interaction
Kostas Tampakis, Ronald L. Numbers † (eds)
- Pages: 268 p.
- Size:156 x 234 mm
- Illustrations:1 tables b/w.
- Language(s):English
- Publication Year:2025
- € 100,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-61246-1
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- € 100,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
- ISBN: 978-2-503-61247-8
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The collection of papers in this volume aims to discuss the history of the interaction of Orthodox Christianity with the Natural Sciences. It covers a range of spaces, from modern Greece to 18th century Russia, and a variety of subjects, from environmental preservation to calendar reformation. This is the first edited volume to focus on the history of the subject.
Summary
This volume aims to discuss some of the histories of the interactions between the study of nature and Orthodox Christianity. The concept of Orthodoxy itself has been entangled, in both ‘West’ and ‘East’, with historically produced geographical distinctions, which have in turn been seamlessly internalized as theological and epistemic differences. These processes were only accentuated by fifty years of Cold War and the subsequent religious revivals in the formerly communist countries. The tacit theme of the contributions to this volume is that there are uncharted waters and undiscovered historiographical riches that still await historians of science and religion to engage with. Thus, this collection of essays is intended to act less as a map of an intellectual region, and more as a call to action. Its goal is to invite more historians to engage with the temporal, spatial, cultural, intellectual, spiritual and philosophical diversity that the interaction of Orthodox Christianity and the study of nature have created. Thus, the papers of this volume discuss, among other things, calendars and anticommunism, alchemy and poetry, cosmology and natural theology and range in scope from Byzantium to twentieth-century Russia and from modern Greece to fifteenth-century Florence.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Kostas Tampakis and Ronald Numbers, Introduction. Eastern and Western, Orthodoxies and Heterodoxies, Sciences and Religions
Gerasimos Merianos, Aspects of the Relationship between Alchemy and Christianity in Byzantium
Nicholas Jacobson, Religion and Lawgiving in Astronomical Tables. Tables of Time and the Council of Florence-Ferrara (1431–1449)
Olga Čadajeva, Cosmology in Russian Thought on the Eve of Modernity
Sandy Sakorrafou, Introducing Western Natural Theology in the Greek Orthodox Christian World (Late Eighteenth to Mid-Nineteenth Century). The Cases of Pamblekis, Lesvios, and Vamvas
Daniel P. Todes and Eleonora Filippova, Prayer as Paradigm. Aleksei Ukhtomsky, the Dominanta, and the Psycho-Physiology of Salvation
Kostas Tampakis, Science as an Orthodox Weapon and the Politics of Anti-Communism in Mid-Twentieth Century Greece
Christopher W. Howell, The Holiness of Creation. Philip Sherrard and the Climate Apocalypse
Vangelis Koutalis and Efthymios Nicolaidis, The Recent Literature about the History of the Relations between Orthodoxy and the Sciences. An Overview
