Title
Biologist Edwin Grant Conklin and the idea of the religious direction of human evolution in the early 1920s
Document Type
Journal Article
Publication Title
Annals of Science
Publication Date
2017
Date Added
2022-05-16
Abstract
Edwin Grant Conklin, renowned US embryologist and evolutionary popularizer, publicly advocated a social vision of evolution that intertwined science and modernist Protestant theology in the early 1920s. The moral prestige of professional science in American culture — along with Conklin’s own elite scientific status — diverted attention from the frequency with which his work crossed boundaries between natural science, religion and philosophy. Writing for broad audiences, Conklin was one of the most significant of the religious and modernist biological scientists whose rhetoric went well beyond simply claiming that certain kinds of religion were amenable to evolutionary science; he instead incorporated religion itself into evolution's broadest workings. A sampling of Conklin's widely-resonant discourse suggests that there was substantially more to the religion-evolution story in the 1920s US than many creationist-centred narratives of the era imply.
DOI
10.1080/00033790.2016.1242777
Keywords
History of racism
Disciplines
History
Recommended Citation
Pavuk, Alexander, "Biologist Edwin Grant Conklin and the idea of the religious direction of human evolution in the early 1920s" (2017). College of Liberal Arts. 24.
https://research.paynecenter.org/morgan_cls/24