The Invention of Physical Science: Intersections of Mathematics, Theology and Natural Philosophy Since the Seventeenth Century Essays in Honor of Erwin N. Hiebert

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Modern physical science is constituted by specialized scientific fields rooted in experimental laboratory work and in rational and mathematical representations. Contemporary scientific explanation is rigorously differentiated from religious interpretation, although scientists sometimes do the philosophical work of interpreting the metaphysics of space, time, and matter. However it is rare that either theologians or philosophers convincingly claim that they are doing the scientific work of physical scientists and mathematicians. The rigidity of these divisions and differentiations is relatively new. Modern physical science was invented slowly and gradually through interactions of the aims and contents of mathematics, theology, and natural philosophy since the 17th-century. In essays ranging in focus from 17th-century interpretations of heavenly comets to 20th-century explanations of tracks in bubble chambers, historians of science demonstrate metaphysical and theological threads continuing to underpin the epistemology and practice of the physical sciences and mathematics, even while they became disciplinary specialities during the last three centuries. This volume is prefaced by tributes to Erwin N. Hiebert.