Abstract In the 1930s, Alfred Bentz, August Moos and Karl Krejci-Graf were among the most noteworthy petroleum geologists in Germany. Being scientific modernists, they systematized the search for oil, introducing modern exploration methods. All three, at some stage, worked for the German state on providing the petroleum needed by the German military during World War II. The three colleagues seem to have had an amicable relationship. They were, however, very different. Bentz was not a member of the National Socialist party but obviously lent his expertise to the regime; as did Krejci-Graf, who, although also was not a party member, was a member of the SS, whereas Moos, due to his Jewish background, was murdered in January 1945 in the concentration camp of Buchenwald. This paper endeavours to sketch the lives of the three colleagues, highlighting their relationship and the interconnectedness of contemporary moral issues with professional and scientific demands.

Abstract At some stage in their past, all advanced civilizations have developed some sort of mining industry and a mythical approach to the explanation of various geological phenomena. Nevertheless, the geosciences per se developed in Europe, as part of natural philosophy and from there spread throughout the globe. Why Europe was the cradle of this type of natural philosophy, which led to modern science, can only be understood if we take into account not only the history of science, but a more general history of human intellectual accomplishments, including a history of theology and philosophy. This paper endeavours to trace the philosophical/religious settings that either furthered or hampered science. Historically, geology and palaeontology have been fashionable sciences from their first tentative beginnings in Renaissance times to the late nineteenth century. They were popular and of public interest as long as they bore not only scientific fruits, but also had a certain feedback on the contemporary world view. This paper outlines these interdependencies between the two magisteria of science and religion and gives an insight into the contemporary relationship between geology and religion.

Abstract For thousands of years, religious ideas have shaped the thoughts and actions of human beings. Many of the early geological concepts were initially developed within this context. The long-standing relationship between geology and religious thought, which has been sometimes indifferent, sometimes fruitful and sometimes full of conflict, is discussed from a historical point of view. This relationship continues into the present. Although Christian fundamentalists attack evolution and related palaeontological findings as well as the geological evidence for the age of the Earth, mainstream theologians strive for a fruitful dialogue between science and religion. Much of what is written and discussed today can only be understood within the historical perspective. This book considers the development of geology from mythological approaches towards the European Enlightenment, biblical or geological Flood and the age of the Earth, geology within ‘religious’ organizations, biographical case studies of geological clerics and religious geologists, religion and evolution, and historical aspects of creationism and its motives.

Abstract The paper considers issues arising when historians of different theological persuasions write about geologists whose religious principles influenced their geological work. For illustrative purposes, three accounts of the work of Jean-André de Luc are discussed, written by a freethinker (Charles Gillispie); an Anglican (Martin Rudwick); and two co-authors, one a Calvinist (François Ellenberger) and the other an atheist (Gabriel Gohau). The issue of understanding or empathizing (or otherwise) with one's subject in writing the history of geology is raised. It is suggested that the accounts of de Luc discussed here show the marks of the religious views of the different historians. In discussing this suggestion, the concepts of ‘emic’ and ‘etic’ from cultural anthropology are deployed. (These terms indicate, respectively, an ‘insider's’ or an ‘outsider's’ approach to a subject.) Older geological writings commonly reflected their authors' religious perspectives; but this is much less common in modern work. Therefore the science–religion issue will become of less importance for historians writing about the history of geology for the twentieth century onwards.

Abstract Water was a key element in the Inca civilization ( c . ad 1438–1534), both for their crops and as part of their vision of the cosmos. According to myths on the origin of the Incas, their civilization arose from the sea through one of its main manifestations, Lake Titicaca. Throughout the period of Inca dominance, as in some of the cultures that preceded them, water was a sacred element. This vision of the cosmos can be regarded as a hydrogeological model with similarities to the beliefs in force in Europe from the classical period until the end of the seventeenth century. Because of their excellent intuitive understanding of water, the Incas developed a complex irrigation system to channel water to their agricultural lands. Coinciding with the distribution of water, they organized periodical thanksgiving festivals, when farming communities gathered to celebrate the beginning of a new agricultural cycle with songs, dances and festivities. However, the centralized control of water resources introduced in the twentieth century led to the disappearance of many of these traditions and to the replacement of an irrigation system that had proved acceptable, by one that was alien to the customs and history of the country people. This led to the first conflicts over water control. As a result, the vision of the cosmos based on water and rooted in agricultural communities has been lost.

Abstract Pre-Meiji Japan was a religiously rich and intellectually varied country, where a large number of theories and beliefs about the origin of the Earth and its features coexisted. The history of science, and the history of geology in particular, lacks an account of this fertile and stimulating socio-cultural system and intellectual environment. The present paper aims to contribute to its understanding, by providing an overview of the most influential religious and scholarly approaches to geological topics in Japan from the eighth century to 1868. The comparison of explanations and beliefs on subjects such as fossils, volcanic eruptions, mountains and the origin of the Earth, and the analysis of geological expertise confirm the heterodox and holistic tendency of the Japanese intellectual and religious environment, which has had positive and negative outcomes for scientific thinking. It also reveals the importance of power structures, and of the social division of labour and knowledge, in the shaping of the Japanese intellectual and religious history.

Abstract Despite the wide diversity of beliefs, personalities and geological expertise of 10 ‘clerical geologists’ of varying Christian denominations who worked in Australia, mainly during the nineteenth century, there is little indication that they saw any contradiction between a belief in a divine being and the pursuit of geology. There was a continuity of these attitudes throughout the century, within the changing social and professional geological environment as Australia moved from being a set of independent colonies to a federation. Four of the ‘clerical geologists’, Johannes Menge, W. B. Clarke, J. E. Tenison Woods and Walter Howchin, made significant contributions to geological science, which deserve to be better known internationally.

Abstract The Reverend Charles Wilton arrived in the colony of New South Wales, Australia, in 1827 to take up an appointment as chaplain in an outer Sydney parish. His interest in the natural sciences, particularly in geology, led him to undertake many excursions to study and describe the largely unknown natural features of his adopted country. A transfer to the then small town of Newcastle to the north of Sydney gave him the opportunity to carry out more detailed and scientifically well-reasoned studies of such geological curiosities as the ‘Burning Mountain’, initially thought to be a volcano, the giant concretions along the Hunter River, and also of the coal measure sequence cropping out along the nearby coast. Wilton felt a strong need to communicate his discoveries, both for the benefit of science and the enlightenment of the general public. He achieved this by contributing to a short-lived journal he had founded and through many scientific publications and newspaper articles. His main purpose, however, was to demonstrate that there was agreement between science and religion. This conviction led him to criticize other naturalists who explained natural features and processes by accepting some latitude in the literal interpretation of the biblical account of the creation and of Noah's Flood. Some of his actions and behaviour, following his arrival in the colony, met with disapproval and censure from his superiors. However, he atoned for his early errors by the subsequent conscientious fulfilment of his clerical duties and by the communication of his work in the natural sciences.

Abstract Franz X. Mayr (1887–1974) was the spiritual father of the Jura-Museum. After studying science and completing a doctorate in botany he worked as a secondary school teacher. In 1921 he decided to become a priest. After a shortened study of theology he was ordained in 1923 and subsequently appointed professor of natural history at the College of Philosophy and Theology in Eichstätt. In this function he made an important contribution to the research into the Solnhofen lithographic limestone. By his collecting activities he created the basis of the Jura-Museum. Mayr was also a teacher of the general public through popular articles, lectures and field trips, and was a committed conservationist. The source of all his activities was his spirituality. Strongly influenced by scholasticism and idealistic morphology, Mayr was a moderate creationist assuming the direct intervention of God at least twice: at the genesis of life and of man. This very conservative belief does not correspond to the view of modern Catholic theology and is outdated especially considering the reflections of Karl Rahner.

Abstract Abich and Barth came from a North German bourgeois background and received a strict religious education. Later, when studying at the University of Berlin, both came under the strong influence of the geographer Carl Ritter and of his Pietist family. Abich became the doyen of Caucasus geology, and engaged in intensive and often perilous fieldwork in the region between 1842 and 1876. The help he received during his first two years in the field convinced him that it was God's will for him to bring this work to completion. His trust in the Bible was so firm that, after setting foot on the summit of Mount Ararat, he asked himself where exactly Noah's ark might have landed. Barth's most outstanding achievement was the exploration of the central Sahara and southern Sudan between 1849 and 1855. Here he worked mostly alone. In relationship to Muslims, he demonstrated an uncompromising and therefore convincing Christian faith. He survived the dangers of the desert and various illnesses with resilience, which he attributed to his unshakable faith.

Abstract The point of departure for this study of the debate on links between sciences and religion is a church newspaper that appeared in Vienna after the revolution of 1848. In it we find the arguments of a particularly conservative journalist and priest (Brunner) who attacked scientific topics, such as evolution and the position of Franz Unger (1800–1871), who was a professor at the University of Vienna and who is a well-known figure in the history of science, because of his numerous contributions to cellular biology, plant physiology, biogeography and palaeobotany, and most of all because of his surveys of pre-Darwinian evolution theory. He was one of the first scientists who tried, in 1852, to suggest the temporal development of the natural world in a visual form. I propose here that the controversy between conservative clergy and liberal academics was invigorated not least because Unger was capable of using Catholic culture to communicate his concepts and representations of evolution and the Earth's development and to make them understandable. In return, Brunner understood how to exploit Unger's work and use Mosaic geology as a counterpoint for his strengthening of Catholic orthodoxy. This debate proves not to be a permanent conflict between religion and science, but to lie within the Viennese Catholic culture within which the protagonists took their stance.

Abstract During the second half of the nineteenth century and in the early years of the twentieth century the debate on the Darwinian evolutionary theory also involved the Italian scientific community. One of the lesser known results of the controversy there was the defence of creationism, often supported by the resort to the biblical Flood, in some Italian publications on geological sciences. The authors of such writings were naturalists and geologists, but also clerics and parish priests interested in the Earth sciences. They published a wide range of books, booklets and papers, particularly between 1870 and 1905. The aim of this paper is to analyse some interesting examples of this ‘submerged’ and heterogeneous literature, so as to understand the possible extent of its influence on the general public, as well as the level of integration between scientific knowledge, geological practice and reference to the Bible, during a period that is usually regarded as a time of separation between Genesis and geology.