A religious past to science: How Biblical stories have contributed to the construction of scientific knowledge

abstract

Stories captivate us by speaking to our imagination and by giving order and meaning to our world. Stories not only give us knowledge about society, but they can also shape our understanding of nature. In the Western world, Christianity has provided narratives that were used as references in scientific research for centuries. In this article I discuss two such examples, the Creation story and the story of Noah and the Great Flood, and explain their prevalence in scientific endeavors conducted in the West. These stories were only replaced by alternative ones when new scientific theories and concepts were given sufficient coherence to explain new discoveries.