Paper Summary:

This paper examines the emergence in 19th century Britain of science as a respected body of professionals, rather than as an amateur hobby of the idle rich. The paper reviews the article "The Victorian Conflict between Science and Religion: A Professional Dimension" by F. Turner. It looks at how the drive to raise professional standards within the new disciplines led to an increasing refusal to compromise scientific integrity to fit in with Church doctrine. This paper examines whether this conflict was caused by a fundamental opposition of science and religion or merely by individuals trying to resist or encourage the huge social changes occurring at the time.

From the Paper:

"At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the clergy had a huge amount of influence on British society in terms of government, school and University education, patronage and the prestige, authority and reverence given to them by all social classes. Science, on the other hand, was nothing but a disunited collection of amateurs, who were not even granted their own collective noun. The term "scientist", although coined in 1834 by Reverend Whewell, did not come into popular use until the 1890s. Science in this early period was very much influenced by religion and many (though increasingly not all) both within and outside the scientific community considered it perfectly acceptable and natural for research to be conducted under the authority of and be limited by Church doctrine."

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