Some New World

Peter Harrison is a former Andreas Idreos Professor of Science and Religion in the University of Oxford, and Emeritus Professor of the History of Science at the University of Queensland, where he was also an Australian Laureate fellow and Founding Director of the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities (IASH). His many celebrated books include 'Religion' and the Religions in the English Enlightenment (Cambridge University Press, 1990), The Fall of Man and the Foundations of Science (Cambridge University Press, 2007), The Cambridge Companion to Science and Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2010), The Territories of Science and Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2015), and – co-edited with John Milbank – After Science and Religion (Cambridge University Press, 2022). In 2019, he delivered in the University Church of St Mary the Virgin the prestigious University of Oxford Bampton Lectures, which constitute the basis of the present work.

'This is a superb book that takes on big questions and offers satisfying answers. Harrison's very careful examination of the development of the concepts of 'supernaturalism' and 'belief' is full of brilliant, new insights. This major new work will only add to his reputation as one of the leading figures in the humanities.' Bernard Lightman, Professor of Humanities, York University, Toronto, author of Victorian Popularizers of Science: Designing Nature for New Audiences (2007) and The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge (1987)

• Acknowledgements; Abbreviations; Introduction; 1. Hume's dilemma; 2. Languages of belief; 3. Inventing epistemology; 4. The age of evidences; 5. The birth of the supernatural; 6. The shape of history; 7. What the Greeks saw; Bibliography; Index.