Science and Dogma: Tracing Natural Knowledge within Scholastic Theology (1545–1789)

The early modern period is usually viewed as a time of profound change, including the so-called ‘Scientific Revolution’ and the Protestant/Catholic Reformation.

Historians have linked these two seemingly disparate transformations in many different ways, but one important dimension is yet to be uncovered.

SCIGMA’s main hypothesis is that natural knowledge significantly influenced dogmatics as a central branch of theology in the early modern university.

University textbooks eagerly addressed many questions related to natural knowledge, such as: Can the bodily resurrection be understood from a physiological perspective? Which physics apply for the Eucharist?

While much has been written on the impact of theology on the natural sciences, SCIGMA will turn the tables to uncover their truly entangled relationship.

The project will systematically investigate how naturalism and empiricism informed scholastic and dogmatic theology, from the Council of Trent to the French Revolution across all Western Christian denominations.

Its research agenda will consider theology as a ‘scientia’ in the premodern university and therefore include it within the history of science and knowledge.SCIGMA’s first goal is to discover the multiple and changing ways in which natural knowledge informed premodern scholastic theology, which sought a rational reconstruction of faith.

Second, it will uncover what effective epistemological frameworks accommodated this interplay of empiricism and revelation.

Third, it will trace how these epistemological frameworks were determined by their embedding within religious and secular institutions of learning.

This complex historical analysis will reveal the significant role of the ‘physico-dogmatic domain’ in institutional learning.

Thereby, it sheds novel light on how premodern Western societies fundamentally reshaped scientific inquiry while being deeply religious – and ultimately paved the way to secularization and scientism in these societies.