Imagining Progress Audiobook By Kristin Johnson cover art

Imagining Progress

Science, Faith, and Child Mortality in America

Preview

Try for $0.00
Prime logo Prime members: New to Audible?
Get 2 free audiobooks during trial.
Pick 1 audiobook a month from our unmatched collection.
Listen all you want to thousands of included audiobooks, Originals, and podcasts.
Access exclusive sales and deals.
Premium Plus auto-renews for $14.95/mo after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Imagining Progress

By: Kristin Johnson
Narrated by: Susan Hanfield
Try for $0.00

$14.95/month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy for $20.99

Buy for $20.99

Confirm purchase
Pay using card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions of Use and Amazon's Privacy Notice. Taxes where applicable.
Cancel

About this listen

Explores the intellectual history of Americans' divergent assumptions about God, nature, and science.

Humankind has always wrestled with the existence of suffering. For two centuries, many American ministers, physicians, and scientists believed that an omnipotent and omniscient God created the world such that people might relieve suffering through ingenuity and learning. Others responded to the new worldview introduced by the scientific revolution as a threat to the divine order. In Imagining Progress, Kristin Johnson traces the history of Americans' evolving relationship with science and religion at "one of its most dramatic places"—the bedsides of dying children. It's here that she illuminates diverging assumptions about God, nature, and history.

From Cotton Mather's campaign for smallpox inoculation to battles over teaching evolution in the 1920s, Johnson adroitly weaves an interdisciplinary history of medicine, science, theology, and activism. She follows a wide cast of characters from across theological, scientific, and political spectrums. What emerges is a portrait of diverse, often contradictory hopes and anxieties inspired by new theories of nature and human existence. Johnson also discerns a problematic pattern of invoking science to ameliorate the suffering of some children while ignoring the suffering of others.

©2024 the University of Alabama Press (P)2024 Tantor
History History & Commentary
activate_Holiday_promo_in_buybox_DT_T2

What listeners say about Imagining Progress

Average customer ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.