The Warfare of Science

A landmark work of intellectual history that chronicles the long, often bloody conflict between scientific inquiry and religious authority. Andrew Dickson White, founding president of Cornell University, marshals centuries of evidence to demonstrate how theological dogma has repeatedly suppressed empirical discovery, from the Church's condemnation of Galileo to the violent resistance against Darwin's theory of evolution. Through meticulous historical case studies, White argues that when religious institutions impose doctrinal certainty upon questions of natural truth, they harm both science and faith. The book examines the geocentric model's stranglehold on astronomy, the Church's rejection of geological and anthropological findings that contradicted literal scriptural interpretation, and the endless struggles over the age of the earth and the origins of humanity. White's thesis remains electrifying: the warfare between reason and dogma is not ancient history but an ongoing struggle with profound implications for education, knowledge, and civilization itself. For readers fascinated by the history of ideas, the rise of modern science, or the eternal tension between institutional power and intellectual freedom.