The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge

Lightman, Bernard

The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge

In this Book

Additional Information

The Origins of Agnosticism: Victorian Unbelief and the Limits of Knowledge
Bernard Lightman
1987
Book
Published by: Johns Hopkins University Press
- View
View Citation
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.

Buy This Book in Print

summary

Bernard Lightman provides a reinterpretation of agnosticism and its relationship to science. He examines the epistemological basis of agnostics' learned ignorance, studying their core claim that "God is unknowable." To address this question, Professor Lightman reconstructs the theory of knowledge posited by Thomas Henry Huxley and his network of agnostics. In doing so, Lightman argues that agnosticism was constructed on an epistemological foundation laid by Christian thought. In addition to undermining the continuity in the intellectual history of religious thought, Lightman exposes the religious origins of agnosticism.