Listening to History, Science, and Evolution

Last updated on: March 9, 2018 at 1:15 pm by Ben Spackman

Listening to History, Science, and Evolution 2018-03-09T13:15:17-05:00 Ben Spackman

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I’ve not had a lot of time to write here recently. I have done a lot of driving and listened to some good lecture series about the history and philosophy of science, religion, and evolution, so this post is mostly about cataloguing and sharing.

I’ve been impressed again at just how unaware we are of our own modern worldview and assumptions, and the story of how we come to conceptualize the world as we do, post-Enlightenment, post-Scientific Revolution. Much of what we take for granted is neither universal nor obvious, and some things we think we know are wrong.

These are available through either The Great Courses (where you purchase them) or Audible (now owned by Amazon) where you access them via subscription (trial available). My understanding is that if you subscribe to Audible, you can stream whatever you’d like, but you also get to claim ownership of one series/month.

Theory of Evolution: A History of Controversy– Edward J. Larson
- Larson casually picked up a Harvard law degree while working on his PhD in history of science under Ronald Numbers, himself a preeminent scholar of history of science and creationism. Larson won a Pulitzer for his Summer for the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science and Religion, and has authored other books on legal and religious history, as well as evolution. He’s interviewed here.
Darwinian Revolution– Frederick Gregory
- I’m not too familiar with his books, but I quite liked his lectures. Also a historian of science.
Science and Religion– Lawrence Principe
- Principe was tapped to write Oxford’s Very Short Introduction to The Scientific Revolution. I love that series.
Science Wars: What Scientists Know and How they Know It– Stephen L. Goldman
- Goldman teaches at Lehigh University; when James E. Talmage attended Lehigh as part of his PhD, Lehigh had the largest endowment in the US.
Birth of the Modern Mind: The Intellectual History of the 17th and 18th Century– Alan Charles Kors
- The information in this is really interesting to me, but like other listeners, Kors’ strong eastern accent is difficult to listen to at times.
History of Science: Antiquity to 1700– Lawrence Principe

Given my interest in science, religion, and Genesis, I’d say two of the three are covered well. There are two series that cover Genesis, and they’re decent, but they don’t say what I would.

Book of Genesis– Gary Rendsburg
- Rendsburg studied under brilliant maverick Cyrus Gordon, and has lectured at BYU before.
Old Testament– Amy-Jill Levine
- A Jewish New Testament scholar at Emory, Levine as been on the Maxwell Institute Podcast as well as Peter Enns’ podcast. She’s one of the editors of the Jewish Annotated New Testament (apparently with a new, greatly expanded version coming in September) as well as other good books on Jesus and the New Testament.

From an LDS perspective, BYU professor Stephen Peck‘s Summerhays Lecture covers some good ground as well.

Happy listening.

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