In this seminar, co-sponsored by the Scripture and Secularism project and the Lund Centre for the History of Knowledge, we welcome Dr. Petter Hellström, senior lecturer at the Department of History of Science and Ideas, Uppsala University.

This paper argues that the evolutionary Tree of Life not only serves as an important metaphor and model in the modern life sciences, but that it has also, and more generally, become associated with a secular, scientistic worldview. Outlining the historical processes whereby the family tree was inspired by biblical prophecy in the Middle Ages, introduced into natural classification from the eighteenth century onwards, and named after the biblical Tree of Life by Charles Darwin, I demonstrate that this re-employment of the religious imagery was parallelled by the secularisation of that other Edenic tree, the Tree of Knowledge. Informed by the destinies of Eden’s two trees, I will argue that the historical study of images offers a powerful way to qualify the historical event of secularisation. Tracing the histories of religious images can, I think, help us make sense of the ways in which modern, secular conceptions of the world seem to simultaneously rival and harmonise with their religious predecessors.