[SydPhil] Peter Harrison: “The Natural and the Supernatural: A New Genealogy of Modernity” (Weds 29 Nov)

[Nathan Lyons]

Research seminar with Professor Peter Harrison: “The Natural and the
Supernatural: A New Genealogy of Modernity”



Professor Peter Harrison, Professorial Research Fellow in Science and
Religion at the University of Notre Dame Australia



Date: Wed 29 Nov 2023

Time: 11am – 12:30pm (SYD AEDT)

In-person location: Moorgate Room, The University of Notre Dame, 10 Grafton
St, Chippendale, NSW

Online: Zoom participation option - register to receive Zoom link



Register here: https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/WDqMCNLJyQUZ3JrmpTmVqnG?domain=events.nd.edu.au
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PDF flyer:
https://protect-au.mimecast.com/s/vcQzCOMKzVTNxl9mkTvcCd7?domain=ndeduau-my.sharepoint.com






Professor Peter Harrison is incoming Professorial Research Fellow in
Science and Religion at the University of Notre Dame Australia. For a
number of years he was the Idreos Professor of Science and Religion at the
University of Oxford. He is the author of several books on the history of
science and religion including *The Territories of Science and
Religion* (Chicago,
2015), based on his Gifford Lectures.  His forthcoming book, *Some New
World: Myths of Supernatural Belief in a Secular Age*, deals with the
historical emergence of modern naturalism and will be published by
Cambridge University Press in 2024.





ABSTRACT: Religion is typically thought to involve belief in the
supernatural. This paper argues that the central conceptions in this
understanding of religion—‘belief’ and ‘the supernatural’—were not
available to most of the subjects to whom they are now routinely applied.
It traces the history of these two ideas, showing how their emergence is
deeply implicated in the secularization of the modern West: these notions
turn out to be more important for the self-understanding of contemporary
naturalists than religious believers. This analysis also demonstrates that
the legitimacy of these categories, and hence of modern naturalism itself,
rests upon the problematic assumption that the contingent history that
produced them has been uniquely progressive. All of this is suggestive of a
new genealogy of secular modernity, one that challenges common
misunderstandings of the past and invites a reappraisal of religious
thinking in the present.





Dr Nathan Lyons

Senior Lecturer in Philosophy | Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow

School of Philosophy and Theology

University of Notre Dame Australia

nathan-lyons.net
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