{"id":379,"date":"2014-02-13T10:21:59","date_gmt":"2014-02-13T10:21:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/?p=379"},"modified":"2014-02-13T10:21:59","modified_gmt":"2014-02-13T10:21:59","slug":"2014-h-g-wells","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/2014\/02\/13\/2014-h-g-wells\/","title":{"rendered":"2014 H.G. Wells Lecture announced"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>This year&#8217;s H. G. Wells Lecture in Science &amp; Society will be\u00a0given by <a href=\"http:\/\/www.history.qmul.ac.uk\/staff\/profile\/4525-dr-thomas-dixon\" target=\"_blank\">Dr Thomas Dixon<\/a>, Senior Lecturer in History of Science at Queen Mary, University of London. It will take place on Wednesday 5 March at 17:15 in <a href=\"http:\/\/www.kent.ac.uk\/timetabling\/rooms\/room.html?room=MarLT1\" target=\"_blank\">Marlow Lecture Theatre 1<\/a>\u00a0at the Canterbury Campus.<\/p>\n<p>The title is <strong>BELIEVING WITHOUT SEEING: Faith and Doubt from Galileo to Dawkins.<\/strong><\/p>\n<div style=\"width: 445px\" class=\"wp-caption aligncenter\"><a href=\"\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/e\/e0\/Caravaggio_-_The_Incredulity_of_Saint_Thomas.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"   \" alt=\"File:Caravaggio - The Incredulity of Saint Thomas.jpg\" src=\"\/\/upload.wikimedia.org\/wikipedia\/commons\/e\/e0\/Caravaggio_-_The_Incredulity_of_Saint_Thomas.jpg\" width=\"445\" height=\"296\" \/><\/a><p class=\"wp-caption-text\">The Incredulity of Saint Thomas, by Caravaggio, 1601-2<\/p><\/div>\n<p>Doubting Thomas has been admired as a model of scepticism and empiricism by scientific luminaries from Thomas Huxley to Stephen Jay Gould and Richard Dawkins. His doubtful demand for evidence is favourably contrasted with the \u2018blind faith\u2019 of the other disciples. However, aside from misreading the original story, this interpretation misunderstands the nature of both science and faith. In this year\u2019s H. G. Wells Science and Society lecture, Dr Thomas Dixon of Queen Mary, University of London, will trace the histories of science, faith, and doubt from seventeenth-century Rome to the present, with particular reference to Galileo\u2019s telescopic observations, Caravaggio\u2019s masterpiece \u2018The Incredulity of St Thomas\u2019, the agnosticism of Thomas Henry Huxley, and the writings of one of his most famous pupils, H. G. Wells. The lecture will suggest that science and religion use evidence to produce knowledge in similar ways and will ask whether the other disciples might have made better scientists than St Thomas.<\/p>\n<p>Dr Dixon&#8217;s main publications relating to science and religion are <a href=\"http:\/\/books.google.co.uk\/books\/about\/Science_and_Religion_A_Very_Short_Introd.html?id=0lt1wmOUBLkC&amp;redir_esc=y\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Science and Religion: A Very Short Introduction<\/i><\/a> (2008), and\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/www.cambridge.org\/gb\/academic\/subjects\/religion\/religion-general-interest\/science-and-religion-new-historical-perspectives\" target=\"_blank\"><i>Science and Religion: New Historical Perspectives<\/i><\/a>\u00a0(2010). His two current projects are a book entitled\u00a0<i>Weeping Britannia: Portrait of a Nation in Tears,\u00a0<\/i>and a BBC Radio series on &#8220;Five Hundred Years of Friendship&#8221;, to be broadcast in March and April this year.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This year&#8217;s H. G. Wells Lecture in Science &amp; Society will be\u00a0given by Dr Thomas Dixon, Senior Lecturer in History of Science at Queen Mary, University of London. It will take place on Wednesday 5 March at 17:15 in Marlow Lecture Theatre 1\u00a0at the Canterbury Campus. The title is BELIEVING WITHOUT SEEING: Faith and Doubt &hellip; <\/p>\n<p><a class=\"more-link btn\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/2014\/02\/13\/2014-h-g-wells\/\">Continue reading<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":38176,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[20379],"tags":[130399,54834,20527,54836,54835],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/38176"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=379"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":383,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/379\/revisions\/383"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=379"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=379"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.kent.ac.uk\/sciencecomma\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=379"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}