[12] December 7 - Cosmology and liberal theology
Presentation: Rebeka
Excursus: The Anthropic Principle. The encyclical "Faith and reason." (GyG)
Assigned reading:
Arthur S. Eddington, The Nature of the Physical World (1928). [Within your limited time constraints, page through the book to get an impression of his topical concerns, linger a bit on the chapter "Man's place in the universe," and then concentrate especially on the chapter "Science and mysticism."] (Hungarian review)
Matthew Stanley, "Religion in modern life: Science, philosophy, and liberal theology in interwar Britain," in Practical Mystic: Religion, Science, and A. S. Eddington (2007), 194-237.
Further reading:
Ernan McMullin, "Religion and cosmology," Encyclopedia of Cosmology: Historical, Philosophical, and Scientific Foundations of Modern Cosmology, ed. Norriss S. Hetherington (1993), 579-595.
Helge Kragh, "Religion, politics, and the universe," in Cosmology and Controversy: The Historical Development of Two Theories of the Universe (1996), 251-268.
Thomas Ryckman, "'A believing rationalist': Einstein and 'the truly valuable' in Kant," The Cambridge Companion to Einstein, eds. Michel Janssen and Christoph Lehner (2014), 377-397.
Robert Smith, The Expanding Universe: Astronomy's 'Great Debate' 1900-1931 (1982).
Loren R. Graham, "Cosmology and cosmogony," Science, Philosophy, and Human Behavior in the Soviet Union (1987), 380-427.