The way the people view the relationship between religion and science has been affected by many events over the years. One of the best examples of this is the release of Darwin's theory of evolution. The publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) is regarded as a landmark in nineteenth-century science. One popular account of the origin of species that was more readily supported by religious believers held that God had somehow created the entire world exactly as we now see it, this theory was heaving influenced by William Paley. This was not, however the biggest rival to Darwin's theory of evolution, the idea of the "fixity of species" was argued by Linnaeus, and said that the present range of species which can be observed in the natural world represents the way they were in the beginning and the way they will always be. It was Linnaeus' detailed classification of every species that 'proved' to many of his readers that nature was fixed from the moment of its origination. This fitted in well with the popular and literal reading of genesis. Similarly, Nicolaus Copernicus' Heliocentric model of the solar system published just before his death in 1543 argues that the sun was the centre of the solar system and that the earth and various other planets all revolved around it. At the time, this proved to be highly controversial, as there was still a continuing belief in the Ptolemaic model. The Ptolemaic model was, like the
The way the people view the relationship between religion and science has been affected by many events over the years. One of the best examples of this is the release of Darwin's theory of evolution. The publication of Charles Darwin's Origin of Species (1859) is regarded as a landmark in nineteenth-century science. One popular account of the origin of species that was more readily supported by religious believers held that God had somehow created the entire world exactly as we now see it, this theory was heaving influenced by William Paley. This was not, however the biggest rival to Darwin's theory of evolution, the idea of the "fixity of species" was argued by Linnaeus, and said that the present range of species which can be observed in the natural world represents the way they were in the beginning and the way they will always be. It was Linnaeus' detailed classification of every species that 'proved' to many of his readers that nature was fixed from the moment of its origination. This fitted in well with the popular and literal reading of genesis. Similarly, Nicolaus Copernicus' Heliocentric model of the solar system published just before his death in 1543 argues that the sun was the centre of the solar system and that the earth and various other planets all revolved around it. At the time, this proved to be highly controversial, as there was still a continuing belief in the Ptolemaic model. The Ptolemaic model was, like the