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‘But where shall my soul repose?’: Nonconformity, Science and the Geography of the Afterlife, c. 1660–1720
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 21 March 2016
Extract
Life, the afterlife, and life beyond the Earth are matters of scientific inquiry as well as religious belief. As we might expect, in the wake of the scientific revolution of the seventeenth century, the afterlife was subjected to new scrutiny. Such scrutiny, notably the demonology of Joseph Glanvill and Henry More, both fellows of the Royal Society, was undoubtedly scientific and serious, even if it has rarely been treated as such by scholars preferring to treat belief in witchcraft as a hangover from an earlier age. Far from being opposed, or necessarily pulling in opposite directions, the conjunction of science and religion in this era breathed new life into old problems and opened up new questions for debate. One such area, with a long history as a philosophical conundrum, was the possibility of life beyond Earth. It is this question, its place within religious cultures, and its relation to traditional ideas about the afterlife, that is the subject of this essay.
- Type
- Research Article
- Information
- Studies in Church History , Volume 45: The Church, the Afterlife and the Fate of the Soul , 2009 , pp. 268 - 279
- Copyright
- Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 2009
References
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