HARVARD CATHOLIC FORUM
NATURALISM VS. THE SUPERNATURAL: A MODERN CONSTRUCT?
by Peter Harrison, University of Queensland
Co-sponsored by the Harvard Christian Alumni Society, and Lumen Christi, the COLLIS Institute for Catholic Thought and Culture, and the Society of Catholic Scientists.
This event is free and open to all - please help spread the word to anyone who might like to join us. Details and registration info are below.
Thursday, August 29 @ 2:30 PM / 5:30 PM ET
St. Paul's Campus, DiGiovanni Hall & Livestreamed
The real history of the paired ideas “belief” and “supernatural” shows them to be part of secularization movements of the modern West: ideas that are important primarily for the self-understanding of contemporary naturalists rather than for religious believers. The legitimacy of these two categories, then, and hence of modern naturalism itself, rests upon the problematic assumption that the contingent history that produced them has been characterized by continuous progress. Instead, Professor Harrison points to a new genealogy of secular modernity, one that challenges common misunderstandings of the past and invites a reappraisal of religious thinking in the present.
Reception to follow.
This event is made possible through the support of grant #62372 from the John Templeton Foundation, “In Lumine: Promoting the Catholic Intellectual Tradition on Campuses Nationwide.
Peter Harrison
Peter Harrison is Professor Emeritus of History and Philosophy at the University of Queensland and a Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Notre Dame, Australia. Previously, he was the Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford. He has published extensively in intellectual history, focusing on the philosophical, scientific and religious thought of the early modern period, and has written, more generally, on the historical relations between science and religion. His twelve books include The Territories of Science and Religion (Chicago, 2015) and most recently, Some New World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age (Cambridge, 2024).