How does science influence the Victorian era

Science progressed rapidly during this time.

The French Revolution Lamarck Evolution, progress and natural laws Babbage, The Ninth Bridge-water Treatise Robert Chambers and Vestiges Charles Darwin

The threats were not only from France, however. British men of science, particularly geologists, were also making discoveries which threatened the literal meaning of Genesis. The effect of these discoveries on faith has, however, been oft-exaggerated. Clerical geologists were quite able to find ways to reinterpret Genesis in the light of their discoveries, with no harm done to their faith. Even the majority of evangelicals were, by the 1840s, willing to accept non-literal interpretations of Genesis which could be fitted with the latest accepted discoveries in geology or astronomy. The few people who stressed the threat to faith of these discoveries tended to be the working-class radicals, while the extreme evangelicals who promoted Scriptural Geology to retain a literal reading of Genesis were an equally vocal minority. The reaction to Darwin's Origin of the Species (1859) should also be seen in this light: while some people played up its radicalism, others were quite able to fit it into their religious worldview. It depended as much on the reader's existing beliefs and agenda as on anything intrinsic to the work itself.

J. P. Nichol & Nebular astronomy Evangelicals Darwin and reactions to the Origin of Species

By the middle of the century, there were increasingly two different arenas in which science and religion might be expected to interact: one was the preserve of the expert men of science; the other was society at large, whose members were benefiting from the increasing numbers of popular science publications appearing on the market. These two arenas did overlap, but it is worth considering them separately.

In the expert arena, would-be professionalism such as Thomas H. Huxley and John Tyndall, were beginning to make their marks. Although neither of these men were opposed to faith per se, both were opposed to the authoritarianism of organized Christian religion. Both objected to the involvement of clergymen in the sciences, and argued that science should be carried out by specialist experts - clergymen should focus on being experts in their own, separate, fields of theology and pastoral care. The rhetoric of this group of professionalism, and their growing prominence within the sciences meant that by the 1870s and 1880s, 'the sciences' and 'religion' were increasingly seen as utterly separate and distinct.

This view was exacerbated by the publication (originally in America) of two books claiming to show how theology and/or religion had repeatedly constricted the sciences throughout history: John Draper's History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1875) and Andrew White's The Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1876, expanded as The History of the Warfare ... in 1896). Although the myth of the conflict of science and religion was by now well established, and few clergy attempted to maintain a reputation as scientific experts, it should be noted that plenty of individuals continued to have a Christian faith and to participate in the sciences. James Clerk Maxwell is one of the most obvious examples.

Meanwhile, in the popular arena, there was far more variety in the relationship between science and religion. Although some writers and publishers did present the sciences in a secular manner, as Huxley and Tyndall would have liked, they did not have a monopoly. Publishers with explicit religious credentials continued to publish popular works on the sciences right up till the end of the century, and their works competed in the marketplace with the secular versions. Although much has been made of a mid-Victorian crisis of faith, perhaps triggered by the sciences, this seems to have been a feature of a certain class of intellectuals, and not an accurate description of the majority of society (especially middle-class society), which retained a religious faith long after most expert men of science.

George Combs T. H. Huxley Professionalization of science