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Jews and the Natural Sciences: Natural Science

Understanding science in the widest possible sense, this guide offers resources for how Jews investigate, react to, and engage with the physical universe.

Natural Science

  • Berns, Andrew D.
    The Bible and Natural Philosophy in Renaissance Italy: Jewish and Christian Physicians in Search of Truth
    Cambridge University Press, 2014
    Van Pelt Library. BS476 .B475 2015

  • Cantor, Geoffrey and Mark Swetlitz
    Jewish Tradition and the Challenge of Darwinism
    Chicago : University of Chicago Press, 2006
    Van Pelt Library. BM538.E8 J49 2006

  • Charpa, Ulrich and Ute Deichmann
    Jews and Sciences in German Contexts: Case Studies from the 19th and 20th Centuries
    Tübingen : Mohr Siebeck, 2007
    Van Pelt Library. Q128 .J498 2007

  • Cherry, Shai
    “Three Twentieth-Century Jewish Responses to Evolutionary Theory,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 3 (2003) 247-290
    Katz Center - Stacks. BM538.S3 A447
    Van Pelt Library. BM538.S3 A447
    http://www.jstor.org/stable/40385774

  • Clark, Kelly James
    “Judaism and Evolution,” pp. 207-222 in, Religion and the Sciences of Origins: Historical and Contemporary Discussions (Basingstoke : Palgrave Macmillan, 2014) Kelly James Clark
    Van Pelt Library. BL263 .C53 2014

  • Efron, Noah J.
    “Jews and the Study of Nature,” pp. 79-90 in, The Routledge Companion to Religion and Science (New York:  Routledge, 2012) edd. James Haag, Gregory Peterson and Michael Spezio
    Van Pelt Library. BL240.3 .R685 2011
    http://hdl.library.upenn.edu/1017.12/1532546

  • Fontaine, Resianne
    “Meteorology and Zoology in Medieval Hebrew Texts,” pp. 217-229 in, Science in medieval Jewish cultures (New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011) ed. Gad Freudenthal
    Van Pelt Library. Q128 .S35 2011

  • Fontaine, Resianne
    “The First Survey of the Metaphysics in Hebrew,” pp. 265-282 in, Studies in the history of culture and science:  a tribute to Gad
    Freudenthal (Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2011) ed. Resianne Fontaine
    Katz Center - Stacks. BM538.S3 S78 2011
    Van Pelt Library. BM538.S3 S78 2011

  • Freudenthal, Gad and Mauro Zonta
    “Avicenna among Medieval Jews the Reception of Avicenna’s Philosophical, Scientific and Medical Writings in Jewish Cultures, East and West,” Arabic Sciences and Philosophy 22 (2912) 217-287
    Van Pelt Library. Q127.A5 A733

  • Glasner, Ruth
    “The Evolution of the Genre of the Philosophical-Scientific Commentary: Hebrew Supercommentaries on Aristotle’s Physics,” pp. 182–206 in, Science in medieval Jewish cultures (New York : Cambridge University Press, 2011) ed. Gad Freudenthal
    Van Pelt Library. Q128 .S35 2011

  • Glasner, Ruth
    “Two notes on the identification of two anonymous Hebrew commentaries on the Physics,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 9 (2009) 335-344
    Katz Center - Stacks. BM538.S3 A447
    Van Pelt Library. BM538.S3 A447
    http://www.jstor.org/stable/40385981

  • Goldish, M.
    “Newtonian, Converso, and Deist: The Lives of Jacob (Henrique) de Castro Sarmento,” Science in Context 10 (1997) 651-676
    Van Pelt Library. Q175.4 .S343

  • Harvey, Warren Zev
    “Nicole Oresme and Hasdai Crescas on Many Worlds,” pp. 347-359 in, Studies in the history of culture and science:  a tribute to Gad Freudenthal (Leiden ; Boston : Brill, 2011) ed. Resianne Fontaine
    Katz Center - Stacks. BM538.S3 S78 2011
    Van Pelt Library. BM538.S3 S78 2011

  • Johansson, Nadja
    Religion and Science in Abraham Ibn Ezra’s Sefer Ha-Olam (including an English translation of the Hebrew text)2009
    https://helda.helsinki.fi/bitstream/handle/10138/19224/religion.pdf;sequence=2

  • Jungnickel, Christa and Russell McCormmach
    Intellectual Mastery of Nature. Theoretical Physics from Ohm to Einstein, Volume 2: The Now Mighty Theoretical Physics, 1870 to 1925
    University of Chicago Press, 1990
    Van Pelt Library. QC19.7.G3 J86 1986

  • Kahana-Smilansky, Hagar
    “Moses Ibn Tibbon's Answers to Queries on Physics: Sources and Problems,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 12 (2012) 209-241
    Katz Center - Stacks. BM538.S3 A447
    Van Pelt Library. BM538.S3 A447
    http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.2979/aleph.12.2.209

  • Langermann, Y Tzvi
    Avicenna and His Legacy: A Golden Age of Science and Philosophy
    Turnhout :  Brepols, 2009
    Van Pelt Library. B751.Z7 A897 2009

  • Langton, Daniel
    “Jewish religious thought, the Holocaust, and Darwinism:  a comparison of Hans Jonas and Mordecai Kaplan,” Aleph 13 (2013) 311-348
    Katz Center - Stacks. BM538.S3 A447
    Van Pelt Library. BM538.S3 A447
    https://muse.jhu.edu/article/523713/pdf

  • Matt, Daniel
    God & the Big Bang : discovering harmony between science and spirituality
    Woodstock, Vt. : Jewish Lights Pub., c1996
    Van Pelt Library. BM723 .M384 1996

  • Murdoch, Dugald
    Niels Bohr's Philosophy of Physics
    Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987
    Math/Physics/Astronomy Library. QC16.B63 M87 1987

  • Nelson, David W.
    Judaism, physics, and God - searching for sacred metaphors in a post-Einstein world
    Woodstock, VT:  Jewish Lights Publishing, 2006
    Available via BorrowDirect from Yale, Princeton and Harvard Universities

  • Ochs, Peter
    “Judaism and Physics,” pp. 58-71 in, Judaism and Science, Special Issue of CCAR Journal: The Reform Jewish Quarterly (Winter 2012) edd. Philip Cohen and Hava Tirosh-Samuelson
    Katz Center - Stacks. BM197.A1 C2

  • Orlanda, Lucia
    “Physics in the 1930s: Jewish Physicists' Contribution to the Realization of the "New Tasks" of Physics in Italy,” Historical Studies in the Physical and Biological Sciences 29 (1998) 141-181 
    http://www.jstor.org/stable/27757806

  • Pear, Rachel S. A.
    “Differences over Darwinism:  American Orthodox Jewish responses to evolution in the 1920s,” Aleph 15 (2015) 343-387
    Katz Center - Stacks. BM538.S3 A447
    Van Pelt Library. BM538.S3 A447
    https://muse.jhu.edu/article/590706/pdf

  • Rigden, John S.
    “Copernicus comes to Brooklyn,” pp. 17-29 in, Rabi, Scientist and Citizen (New York : Basic Books, Inc., c1987)
    Van Pelt Library. QC16.R2 R54 1987

  • Romano D.
    “La transmission des sciences arabes par les juifs en Languedoc,” pp. 363-386 in, Juifs et judaïsme de Languedoc, XIIIe siècle-début XIVe siècle (Paris : Les Belles Lettres, 1977) edd. M.H. Vicaire M. H. and B. Blumenkranz
    Katz Center - Stacks. DS135.F85 L36 V53 1977

  • Rutman, Joel Yehudah
    Why Evolution Matters: A Jewish Approach
    London :  Vallentine Mitchell, 2014
    Research Annex (LIBRA). BM538.E8 R88 2014

  • Schweber, Sylvan S.
    “Physics, Community and the Crisis in Physical Theory,” pp. 125-152 in, Physics, Philosophy and the Scientific Community : essays in the philosophy and history of the natural sciences and mathematics in honor of Robert S. Cohen
    (Dordrecht ; Boston : Kluwer Academic, 1995) edd. Kōstas Gavrolglu, John Stachel and Marx W.  Wartofsky
    Research Annex (LIBRA). Q126.8 .P48 1995

  • Sela, Shlomo
    Abraham Ibn Ezra and the Rise of Medieval Hebrew Science
    Leiden ; Boston, MA : Brill, 2003
    Katz Center - Stacks. BM538.S3 S45 2003
    Van Pelt Library. BM538.S3 S45 2003

  • Sela, Shlomo
    Abraham Ibn Ezra, the Book of the World: A Parallel Hebrew-English Critical Edition of the Two Versions of the Text
    Leiden, Boston: Brill Academic Publishers, 2010
    Katz Center - Stacks. QB26 .I323513 2010

  • Shyovitz, David I.
    A Remembrance of His Wonders: Nature and the Supernatural in Medieval Ashkenaz
    Philadelphia:  University of Pennsylvania Press, 2017
    Katz Center - Stacks. BM316 .S59 2017
    https://www.degruyter.com/viewbooktoc/product/488735

  • Stachel, J.
    “Einstein’s Jewish identity,” pp. 57–83 in, Einstein from’ B’ to’ Z’ (Boston; Basel: Birkhäuser, 2002)
    Research Annex (LIBRA). QC16.E5 S73 2002

  • Unguru, Sabetai, ed.
    Physics, Cosmology and Astronomy 1300-1700:  tension and accommodation
    Dordrecht ; Boston : Kluwer Academic Publishers, 1991
    Research Annex (LIBRA). Q174 .B67 v.126

  • Wolfson, Harry Austryn
    Crescas' Critique of Aristotle: Problems of Aristotle's Physics in Jewish and Arabic Philosophy
    Cambridge : Harvard University Press, 1929
    Katz Center - Stacks. B485.C7 W6 1929
    Van Pelt Library. B485.C7 W6

  • Zadik, Shalom
    “Rabbi Ḫasdai Crescas' Critique of Aristotelian Science and the Lost Book of Abner of Burgos,” [Hebrew] Tarbiz 77 (2007) 133-155
    https://www.jstor.org/stable/23607180         

  • Zonta, Mauro
    “Two implicit sources of Judah Messer Leon's commentary on Physics 1-4,” Aleph: Historical Studies in Science and Judaism 12 (2012) 189-208
    Katz Center - Stacks. BM538.S3 A447
    Van Pelt Library. BM538.S3 A447
    https://muse.jhu.edu/article/472831

  • Zonta, Mauro
    “About Todros Todrosi’s Medieval Hebrew Translation of Al-Fārābī’s Lost Commentary/Gloss-Commentary on Aristotle’s Topic, Book VII,” History and Philosophy of Logic 32 (2011) 37-45
    Van Pelt Library. BC1 .H57
    http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01445340.2010.50609

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