John Ruskin Quotes
If only the Geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful Hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verses.
Ruskin, John. Letter to Henry Acland, 24 May 1851. The Works of John Ruskin, edited by E.T. Cook and Alexander Wedderburn, vol. 36, George Allen, 1909, p. 115.
Vanderbuilt University was then under the Control of the Tennessee Methodist Episcopal Church and Bishop McTyeire served as the University President. Winchell, a member of the church, had written that man had been on earth long before that dates that hade been officially proscribed to Adam and Eve by most church theologians, The university asked for the Professor’s resignation (See {612709}), and when he refused, he was fired. There was no such thing as Academic Freedom at Vanderbuilt at the time. But this case was one of those that spurred its adoption throughout the country.
There have been a number of religious clerics over the years who have also studied science and a number of them were among the great scientists like Lemaître and Mendel. For them, there was no conflict between science and religion. Lemaître was even the person who showed the mathematics of the Big Bang. For these religious men, God was the creative force behind everything and the laws of modern science are what He chose as His instrument. This quotation is one of the earliest defending new science by a clergyman.
John Ruskin was the leading English art critic of the Victorian era, as well as an art patron, draughtsman, watercolourist, philosopher, prominent social thinker and philanthropist. He wrote on subjects as varied as geology, architecture, myth, ornithology, literature, education, botany and political economy.
