Category Archives: History

Another century-late review

Posted on 13/10/2014 by Jon Garvey

Following my custom of busting the myths that are spun about previous generations by reading the original sources, I finally got round to reading some Alfred Russel Wallace, in the form of his last (1910) book on a biological subject, The World of Life. Just to remind you of Wallace’s role, he was the co-discoverer of the Darwin-Wallace theory of evolution by natural selection, published in the 1858 paper On the Tendency of Species to form Varieties; and on the Perpetuation of Varieties and Species by Natural Means of Selection. By CHARLES DARWIN, Esq., F.R.S., F.L.S., & F.G.S., and ALFRED WALLACE, Esq. Communicated by Sir CHARLES LYELL, F.R.S., F.L.S., and J. … Continue reading →

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Creation and Evil

Posted on 06/10/2014 by Jon Garvey

One of the baseline positions of The Hump of the Camel is the essential goodness of creation both before and after the fall of mankind into sin. I’ve probably written on it too many times to do useful links (try the search box), but I’ve argued for it from the Bible, extensively from church history and in other ways too. Carnivores, parasites – all come within the wisdom of God’s good creation. At the same time, I’ve never wished to deny that, in numerous ways, sin has corrupted creation in God’s eyes, and damaged it both directly and indirectly. Whether by God’s judgement or man’s corruption there are aspects of creation that … Continue reading →

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The Cosmos of Cosmas

Posted on 22/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

While I was looking for suitable graphics to illustrate the mediaeval worldview for my recent series on the history of cosmology, I suddenly came upon this unfamiliar and completely off-the-wall conception, by one Cosmas Indicopleustes:

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Cosmology through the ages #3 – Mediaeval

Posted on 18/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

Enter, stage left, the Great Chain of Being… This, an idea common to much ancient Greek philosophy, held that all that exists is linked in a continuous chain, or hierarchy, from top to bottom. As we saw in the last post such ideas had little impact on early Christian thought, which though interacting with philosophy was fundamentally biblical, and concerned with religious truth, leaving science to the scientists. Exceptions were writers like the mainly Platonist Origen (whose views were considered flaky as a result) and, notably, the heretical Gnostics.

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Deep time – what’s the story?

Posted on 08/08/2014 by Jon Garvey

When one draws back from the “evolution is a proven fact” polemic, and aims to pin things down more rigorously, the least-contestable parts of the received scientific wisdom, vague as that is overall in the public arena, are the great age of the earth, and the succession of species (as opposed to common descent, which has some strong evidence but of a more inferential kind). Deep time’s strongest theological suit, in my book, is that a careful reading of the Bible makes no statement about the time of the creation – the chronological evidence of histories and genealogies actually takes one back to Adam, and it is an inference that … Continue reading →

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Creation and Magic

Posted on 31/07/2014 by Jon Garvey

The discussion on God’s “magical” activity on a previous thread managed to jettison the theme of the thread, and the overall theme of the blog too, that is the doctrine of creation. But it’s actually worth devoting a post to the subject of magic, because in many ways it is a magical understanding of the cosmos that the biblical creation doctrine subverted.

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Faking history for the better teaching of – history

Posted on 22/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

Further to the discussion about the distortion of history in the new Cosmos series (now, I gather, nearing the end of its run in the US), there has been a new discussion on a historian’s blog suggesting the possibility that the deliberate misrepresentation might possibly be justified for “greater truth”. The link to this came from a piece on Evolution News and Views, which rightly points out the tricky ethical waters this discussion is navigating.

Posted in History, Politics and sociology, Science, Theology | 2 Comments

Jaki – Science and Creation

Posted on 10/05/2014 by Jon Garvey

One of the books often cited with approbium on the Christian roots of science is Fr Stanley Jaki’s Science and Creation. It’s one of the best early (1986) attempts to reverse the Victorian myth that science and religion are incompatible, by showing, to the contrary, how only the Judaeo-Christian concept of creation really made science as we know it possible.

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Cosmic conspiracy

Posted on 11/03/2014 by Jon Garvey

A year or so ago I watched a UK-produced TV series about the history of archaeology. Prominent in the first episode was a quite mythological claim that early antiquarians were courageous scientists battling against the opposition of a Church monolithically defending biblical literalism and the Flood. It entirely bypassed the fact that most of these guys were churchmen, even though it named some of them, apparently oblivious to the self-contradiction. I thought I’d beefed about it here, but I can’t find anything so no doubt I bottled it up and attributed it to local ignorance … though you’d expect that a series about the “History of…” would do some homework … Continue reading →

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Erithacus rubecula in fact and fable

Posted on 10/03/2014 by Jon Garvey

How the human mind develops concepts is a wonderful thing. My mental schema for that most iconic of British birds, the robin, is built upon the foundation a song I learned from Miss Jerome (a wonderful teacher) for my first Christmas at school. Apart from an even more juvenile nursery rhyme involving cold north winds and what Robin does when they blow (poor thing), it was possibly my earliest exposure to the bird, maybe even pre-dating my seeing it in the feather.

Posted in Creation, History, Politics and sociology, Science | 5 Comments