308 Ch. 8 • The Nlw Philosophy Of Science
Science and Religion
As scientific discoveries led more people to doubt religious authority that
was based on faith alone, points of tension not surprisingly continued to
emerge between science and religion. This was particularly the case with
the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. There seemed to be a close associa
tion between Protestant countries and advances in science, given the pre
cocious role of England and, to a lesser extent, the Netherlands in the
emergence of a culture of science. This contributed to the debate over
whether Protestantism itself was more conducive to scientific inquiry.
Theological concerns still dominated the curricula at most universities,
despite the role of science at the University of Padua, and the University
of Cambridge, where by the 1690s both Newton’s theories and those of
Descartes were taught. Universities contributed relatively little to the dif
fusion of the scientific method. During the seventeenth century as a whole,
their enrollments declined as the European population stagnated. In
Catholic countries, canon law, and in Protestant states, civil law predomi
nated in universities, which trained Church and state officials, respec
tively. The number of German universities more than doubled to about
forty during the seventeenth century. The impetus for their creation
came from Lutheranism and Calvinism, however, not from an interest in
science.
The University of Padua in Italy, pictured at about the time Galileo taught there.