In this episode James and Will welcome Dr James Ungureanu, Historian in Residence in the George L. Mosse Program in History at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and Honorary Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH) at the University of Queensland.
Dr Ungureanu discusses his recent book Science, Religion, and the Protestant Tradition: Retracing the Origins of Conflict in which he reinterprets the origins, development, and popularization of the “conflict thesis,” the idea that science and religion are fundamentally and irrevocably at odds. The book recasts the role of two influential figures in the history of the ‘conflict thesis’, John William Draper and Andrew Dixon-White, and relocates the origins of the view of science and religion as being in perennial and irreconcilable conflict in a specifically liberal protestant tradition. In the episode, Dr Ungureanu also tells us a bit about his historical method and describes his dream library…