Higher Pantheism

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In this Subject: Religion
By this author: Knight, David

Author: Knight, David

Source: Zygon, Volume 35, Number 3, September 2000 , pp. 603-612(10)

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Abstract:

Romantic sensibility and political necessity led Humphry Davy, Britain's most prominent scientist in the first quarter of the nineteenth century, to pantheism: nature worship, involving for him a fervent belief in the immortality of the soul. Rapt with a vision of sublimity, from mountain tops or balloons, men of science in succeeding generations also found in pantheism a reason for their vocation and a way of making sense of their world. It should be seen as an alternative both to active participation in church life (like Faraday's) and to a gritty agnosticism (like Huxley's), indicating again how subtle and complex relationships were between science and religion in the nineteenth century.

Keywords: agnostic; Britain; Humphry Davy; Michael Faraday; Victor Frankenstein; James Glaisher; Thomas Henry Huxley; mountains; Nature; pantheism; Romanticism; science; sublime; Alfred Tennyson; John Tyndall; Victorians; worship