Schmucker, Samuel Christian, 1860-1943 (or 1944)PhD (chemistry), Penn, 1893
Schmucker Science Center (or Bldg), West Chester University
Electrolytic separation of the metals of the second group.
[Philadelphia], 1893.
12 p.
Chemistry Penn dissertations.
Penn dissertations Chemistry.
Thesis (Ph.D. in Chemistry)--Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, University of Pennsylvania, 1893.
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Heredity and parenthood / by Samuel Christian Schmucker ..
New York, The Macmillan company, 1929.
x, 322 p. illus. 22 cm.
Man's life on earth / by Samuel Christian Schmucker.
New York : Macmillan Co., 1925.
xxix, 299 p., [4] leaves of plates : ill. ; 21 cm.
Includes index.
The meaning of evolution / by Samuel Christian Schmucker. --
New York : The Macmillan company, 1913.
298 p., [3] leaves of plates : front. ; 20 cm.
Includes index.
The study of nature / by Samuel Christian Schmucker ; with illustrations by Katharine Elizabeth Schmucker.
Philadelphia ; London : J.B. Lippincott Company, c1908.
315 p. : ill. ; 20 cm.
(Lippincott's educational series ; 7)
Through science to God. The humming bird's story, an evolutionary interpretation by Samuel C. Schmucker.
Chicago, 1926.
22 p. 15 cm.
Under the open sky : being a year with nature / by Samuel Christian Schmucker ; with illustrations by Katherine Elizabeth Schmucker.
Philadelphia : J.B. Lippincott, 1910.
308 p. : ill. ; 22 cm.
Partly reprinted from the Ladies' home journal.
Author was West Chester faculty member. (Schmucker Science Center)
The racial composition of the Pennsylvania Germans / S. C. Schmucker
Norristown, Pa., 1922.
p. 15-19 26 cm.
In Pennsylvania-German Society. Proceedings and addresses ... v. 33.
(Pennsylvania-German Society. Publications, v.33)
Selective mating among soldier beetles / by S.C. Schmucker.
Publisher: [S.l. : s.n.], 1933.
p. 93-102 ; 23 cm.
From Bulletin of the Wagner Free Institute of Science of Philadelphia, v. 8, no. 4, Nov. 1933.
About
"Fundamentalism and Folk Science Between the Wars." Religion and American Culture 5 (1995), 217-48.
http://www.messiah.edu/hpages/facstaff/tdavis/boxer.htm
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Abstract: Much recent historiography has underscored the shallowness, futility, and wrong-headedness of treating controversies involving religion and science simply as skirmishes in an ongoing, inevitable conflict between contradictory ways of viewing the world. But what about the phenomenon of antievolutionism, apparently a classic instance of warfare between religion and science? This essay argues that creation/evolution debates are best understood not as examples of "warfare" between religion and science, but as clashes between competing varieties of "folk science," philosopher Jerome Ravetz' term for the use of science to support one's world view, whether this is done by professional scientists or others.
The particular case in question is a 1930 debate between evangelist Harry Rimmer (1890-1952), the leading antievolutionist in America after the death of Bryan, and Samuel Christian Schmucker (1860-1943), a biologist with a national reputation as a populizer of evolution. We tell the story of that debate, sketch the lives and beliefs of the two principal characters, and argue that Rimmer's fundamentalist antievolutionism and Schmucker's evolutionary theism were competing varieties of folk science. Each man practiced folk science by using what he took for science in support of his own world view; each variety of folk science came with its own set of assumptions about knowledge, purpose, and the nature of God; and each was appreciated by a different segment of the population, one popular and the other more elite.
Rimmer and Schmucker both believed that religion and science ought to agree. They also believed that modern science had seriously undermined traditional religious beliefs among the youth of their day, but they disagreed how to respond to this state of affairs. Schmucker called for "a restatement of our religious faith in terms of our present thinking" and affirmed the importance of cultivating a sense of divine immanence for developing a new spirituality. But in his attempt to unite modern science and modern theology, he stripped God of transcendence and humanity of an inherently sinful nature. Rimmer, on the other hand, sought to show that "true" science and a literal Bible were always in agreement, but this could be done only by reigning in the scope of scientific theories and "discovering" modern scientific information in various Biblical passages. Sharing Bryan's deep suspicion of speculative hypotheses, Rimmer insisted that science dealt only with "facts" rather than "guesses." Thus, where Rimmer achieved harmony by taking hypotheses out of science, Schmucker achieved it by taking transcendence out of theology.
The author was Samuel Christian Schmucker, grandson
of the founder of the Lutheran Seminary at Gettysburg
(though an Episcopalian himself). Schmucker had a
doctorate in chemistry from Penn, but had established
himself as an authority in evolutionary biology,
especially on sexual selection. He was a nationally
prominent populizer of evolution and a leading
figure in the "nature-study" movement, an early
environmentalist group, serving as president at
one point. His pamphlet is entitled, "Through Science
to God: The Hummingbird's Story."
I'll cut to the chase and quote a passage
that makes my main point well.
The laws of nature were "not the fiat of almighty God," but
"the manifestation in nature of the presence of the
indwelling God."
I have looked in vain in Schmucker for a clear statement
of God's sovereignty over the laws of nature, for any
evidence of divine freedom relative to nature, for even
the faintest idea that God actually made nature. I can
find ONLY an immanent God in his voluminous writings.
I agree with you in rejecting this type of thing, but my
objections focus on a different matter, the whole idea of "From Science
to God." This is the belief that there can be such a thing as an
_independent_ natural theology. What I've called the "classic" view of
this is that such a natural theology can serve as a "preparation for the
gospel", but that we need revelation for knowledge leading to salvation
- Incarnation, atonement, &c. The "Enlightenment" view, though, takes
it farther & says that natural theology is all we need: Revelation is
ultimately superfluous. I.e., we don't really need Incarnation &
atonement. What you've quoted of Schmucker is solidly in that camp. He
is a precursor of Paul Davies & Frank Tipler.On the other hand, most ID work seems to assume the validity of
the classic view. But _in practice_ that views slides very easily into
the Enlightenment one. I think (with Barth & Torrance) that the whole
idea of independent natural theology (i.e., one which can gain knowledge
of God from science apart from revelation) is highly dubious. Schmucker
seems to have been a straggler from the devastation of classical liberal
theology by WWI & Barth.BTW, Schmucker's grandfather whom you mentioned was the leader
of the attempt in 19th century American Lutheranism to merge the
Lutheran church with mainline protestantism. His efforts extended to
producing a bowdlerized version of the Augsburg Confession, but it
didn't fly.
