| Popis: |
Chapter 4 details how the new natural, geographical, and ethnographical knowledge that Europe’s colonial expansion depended on shook the foundations of the medieval Earth. The radicalization of religious tensions, the Protestant and Catholic reformations, and the rise of biblical literalism shattered the barriers that for centuries guarded the autonomy of natural philosophy from theology, and vice versa. Restrictions to intellectual freedom all over Europe came with unprecedented calls for a Christianized science of nature. Yet, the new orientations often broadened the scope and breadth of traditional Earth history rather than outright replacing it. In Catholic Europe, authors were only required to state that the world had a beginning, not to uphold a recent one. A created world of undetermined age continued to inform much of the relevant literature. |
