Inheriting the Wind?

Introduction: Many of the most important contributions of European civilization to world history have been in the field of science. Today we regularly use the scientific method as a framework for analysis of everything from physical phenomena to human behavior. But, of course, advances in scientific thinking were just as controversial in the seventeenth, eighteenth, or nineteenth centuries as they are today. In particular, the relationship between scientific analysis and religious belief has been an especially difficult one.  Perhaps the most famous trial to result from this difficult relationship was the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial   (site #2) in Tennessee in 1925, which will figure more prominently in our trial of Darwin.

Over the next two weeks we will examine the work of two of the most prominent European scientists, Galileo Galilei and Charles Darwin, and we will put them (and their work) on trial in much the same way that their contemporaries did. By following the various links below, you will find the assigned readings from our textbook, the indictment that gives shape and purpose to the trial, links to the evidence we will use in the trial, and, once the verdict is reached, the results along with a summary of the commentary by our punditocracy. If you do not remember your role in a particular trial, follow the link to "the players."