Formerly Professor of History and Philosophy BA BSc MA (Yale) PhD (University of Qld) Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (FAHA) Current Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the University of Oxford, and a Fellow of Harris Manchester College. Peter Harrison studied Science and Arts at the University of Queensland before moving to the United States to take up a scholarship at Yale University to study philosophy and religion. On returning to Australia, he completed his PhD at the University of Queensland. He joined Bond University in its foundation year, 1989, and is currently Philosophy co-ordinator. Peter Harrison has published extensively in the area of cultural and intellectual history, with a particular focus on the philosophical, scientific and religious thought of the sixteenth to eighteenth centuries. He is the author of 'Religion' and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge, 1990) and The Bible, Protestantism, and the Rise of Natural Science (Cambridge, 1998). He is a Research Consultant in the Department of Studies in Religion at the University of Queensland, and has been a Visiting Fellow at Oxford, Yale, and Princeton. He is a founding member of the International Society for Science and Religion and is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. In 2003, Prof. Harrison was awarded a Centenary Medal for 'Service to Australian Society and the Humanities in the study of Philosophy and Religion'. His current research is focused mainly upon early-modern thought, and in particular on the interplay between scientific, philosophical, and religious ideas in the period from the sixteenth to the nineteenth century.
Articles
The Bible and the emergence of modern science, Humanities & Social Sciences papers (2006)
The Bible played a significant role in the development of modern science. Most obviously, its...
Miracles, Early Modern Science, and Rational Religion, Humanities & Social Sciences papers (2006)
[Introduction]: Readers of the New Testament could be excused for thinking that there is little...
"Science" and "Religion": Constructing the Boundaries, Humanities & Social Sciences papers (2006)
This article explores in some detail the historical circumstances of the emergence of the dual...
The 'Book of Nature' and Early Modern Science , Humanities & Social Sciences papers (2006)
No one who is familiar with the literature of the early-modern period can be in...
"Fill the Earth and Subdue it”: Biblical Warrants for Colonization in Seventeenth Century England, Humanities & Social Sciences papers (2005)
The importance of conceptions of natural law in early-modern debates about the legitimacy of colonization...
Contributions to Books
Natural Theology, Deism, and Early Modern Science, Science, Religion, and Society: An Encyclopedia of History, Culture and Controversy (2006)
One of the most far-reaching consequences of the Protestant Reformation of the sixteenth century was...
Having Dominion: Genesis and the Mastery of Nature, Environmental Stewardship: Critical Perspectives - Past and Present (2006)
The aim is to explore the ways in which the Genesis narratives were understood in...
Disjoining Wisdom and Knowledge: Science, Theology and the Making of Western Modernity, Wisdom or Knowledge? Science, Theology and Cultural Dynamics (2006)
This chapter focuses on four distinct phases of the relationship between science and wisdom in...
The 'Book of Nature' and Early Modern Science, The Book of Nature in Early Modern and Modern History (2006)
No one who is familiar with the literature of the early-modern period can be in...
The Natural Philosopher and the Virtues, The Philosopher in Early Modern Europe: The Nature of a Contested Identity (2006)
Natural philosophers, engaged as they were in a branch of philosophy, were expected to conform...