In the early 1850s, a new philosophical, social, and political movement evolved from the Freethought tradition of Thomas Paine, Richard Carlile, Robert Owen, and the radical periodical press. The movement was called “Secularism.”1 Its founder was George Jacob Holyoake (1817–1906) (Grugel 1976, 2–3).2 Holyoake was a former apprentice whitesmith turned Owenite social missionary, “moral force” Chartist, and radical editor and publisher. Given his early exposure to Owenism and Chartism,3 Holyoake had become a Freethinker. With his involvement in Freethought publishing, he became a moral convert to atheism. However, his experiences with virulent proponents of atheism or infidelity and the hostile reactions to them on the part of the state, church, and press induced him to develop in 1851–1852 the new creed and movement he called Secularism. Published in Ryan T. Cragun, Lori Fazzino, Christel Manning, eds. Organized Secularism in the United States. Boston and Berlin: De Gruyter (November 2017): 31-56. Click here or on title.
In the late 1840s, a new philosophical, social, and political movement evolved from the freethought tradition of Thomas Paine, Richard Carlile, Robert Owen, and the radical periodical press. The movement was called “Secularism.”1 Its founder was George Jacob Holyoake (1817–1906).2 Holyoake was a former apprentice whitesmith turned Owenite social missionary, “moral force” Chartist, and leading radical editor and publisher. Given his early exposure to Owenism and Chartism, Holyoake had become a freethinker. With his involvement in free-thought publishing, he became a moral convert to atheism. But his experiences with virulent proponents of atheism or infidelity and the hostile reactions to infidelity on the part of the state, church, and press induced him to develop in 1851–52 the new creed and movement he called Secularism. Published in Michael Rectenwald, Rochelle Almeida and George Levine, eds. Global Secularisms in a Post- Secular Age. Boston: De Gruyter (2015): 43-64. Click here or on title.
Review of Victorian Scientific Naturalism: Community, Identity, Continuity. G. Dawson, B. Lightman (Eds.). University of Chicago, 2014. This anthology adds to a recent spate of publications devoted to ‘‘scientific naturalism,’’ including two other books published in 2014. This particular volume enhances our understanding of the creed and its advocates. But it also challenges its conceptual and historical coherence, despite the editors’ claims that the term should be accepted as a valid actors’ category and guide for historiography. A few of the most impressive essays in this volume challenge at least the first assertion, although this reviewer believes that the editors are correct in both claims. Published in Endeavour Vol. 39, No. 1. March 2015. Click here or on title.
Review of The Age of Scientific Naturalism: Tyndall and His Contemporaries. Bernard Lightman, Michael S. Reidy (editors). Pickering & Chatto, 2014. Published in Endeavour Vol. 38, No. 3–4 . September 6, 2014. Click here or on title.
This essay examines Secularism as developed by George Jacob Holyoake in 1851–1852. While historians have noted the importance of evolutionary thought for freethinking radicals from the 1840s, and others have traced the popularization of agnosticism and Darwinian evolution by later Victorian freethinkers, insufficient attention has been paid to mid-century Secularism as constitutive of the cultural and intellectual environment necessary for the promotion and relative success of scientific naturalism. I argue that Secularism was a significant source for the emerging new creed of scientific naturalism in the mid-nineteenth century. Not only did early Secularism help clear the way by fighting battles with the state and religious interlocutors, but it also served as a source for what Huxley, almost twenty years later, termed ‘agnosticism’. Published in The British Journal for the History of Science. 46(2): 231–254, June 2013. Click here or on title.
In this paper we critically evaluate an argument put forward by William Lane Craig for the existence of God based on the assumption that if there were no God, there could be no objective morality. Contrary to Craig, we show that there are some necessary moral truths and objective moral reasoning that holds up whether there is a God or not. We go on to argue that religious faith, when taken alone and without reason or evidence, actually risks undermining morality and is an unreliable source of moral truths. We recommend a viewpoint on morality that is based on reason and public consensus, that is compatible with science, and that cuts across the range of religious and non-religious positions. Published in the International Philosophical Quarterly. 51.3. 203 (September 2011): 331-38. Click here or on title.
Despite his unique contribution to evolutionary theory, the mechanism of natural selection, Charles Darwin can hardly be considered the first evolutionary theorist in history. It is generally acknowledged that organic evolution, or ’transmutation’ as it was called during his lifetime, was hardly a new idea when Darwin published On the Origin of Species in 1859 … In fact, Darwin not only followed closely behind other transmutation theorists, but his own views met with a degree of skepticism not altogether unlike that which greeted his predecessors. As James Secord notes, the scientific consensus regarding natural selection “is a twentieth-century creation” and the “centrality given to Darwin” is also a recent phenomenon (Intro. to Vestiges x). As historians of science have begun to dismantle the ’all-roads-lead-to-Darwin’ consensus (Secord, Intro. to Vestiges x) by exploring its social, cultural and even ideological contingencies, an exploration of the evolutionary roads not taken promises to be an important and illuminating venture. Published on The Victorian Web. December 2008. Click here or on title.
The fictionalizing of science happens to be a meta-theme in Middlemarch, and one which, I argue, George Eliot sets out consciously and masterfully to interrogate. In the process, I hope to show that Eliot's use of science is far from naive or merely syncretic. To the contrary, I argue that in Middlemarch Eliot actually anticipates a greater discursive shift in scientific theory of which Thomas Kuhn's The Structure of Scientific Revolutions (l962) is the watermark in the philosophy of science, and which Michel Foucault marks and notes in his various archaeologies of knowledge. (Originally published on The Victorian Web. December 2008. Click here or on title.
One way to understand the diverse discourse known as science studies is to consider the ways in which different camps and theorists think (or do not think) the question of history, and to consider how historical theories and methods connect with epistemologies and the possibilities for critical discourse regarding science. Can the question of historical method or theory serve as a useful guide to the discourse, perhaps even a better index for considering the issue of critical engagement, than epistemological conviction (or lack thereof)? I will explore the issue by considering the historical methods and theories of history of several interlocutors located within the discourse of science studies, in order to illustrate the possibilities for this approach. As the discussion should make clear, the historical approach is productive of comparative reading of interlocutors in terms of the possibilities for a critical discursive relationship to their objects of knowledge, as well as for demonstrating the relationship between historical method and theory, and epistemology. Click here or on title.
The books are everywhere, stacked like barricades between me and my family, on coffee tables, end tables, the kitchen table, dining room table, chairs, desks, dressertops… Published in Constance Coiner and Diana Hume George, eds. The Family Track: Keeping Your Faculties while You Mentor, Nurture, Teach, and Serve. University of Illinois Press (1998): 107-13. Click here or on title.
