“三位一体圈”探索了19世纪英国知识的创造，当时任何一个公认的现代科学概念都离它还有将近一个世纪的时间，宗教仍然渗透着精英们的各种知识，即使是那些否认其相关性的人也必须付出极大的努力才能做到这一点。根据英国国教批评家的说法，世俗信仰、政治激进主义、科学、商业和工业所体现的资本主义在这一时期的崛起破坏了这个精神世界，并用一个肤浅的物质世界来挑战它：一个以人为中心的理性主义社会决意通过利润、消费和流行的进步观念来实现可衡量的改善。在这里，威廉·J·阿什沃思将科学政治置于一个更具争议的环境中。通过关注由博学家威廉·惠威尔（William Whewell）从剑桥发起的三一学院圈子，他详细描述了既有教会与寻求改变主流社会等级制度之间正在进行的斗争。在新的思维方式有可能分裂英国乃至三一学院之际，他的研究提出了一种远未统一的科学和宗教观。
The Trinity Circle: Anxiety, Intelligence, and Knowledge Creation in Nineteenth-Century England
The Trinity Circle explores the creation of knowledge in nineteenth-century England, when any notion of a recognizably modern science was still nearly a century off, religion still infused all ways of elite knowing, and even those who denied its relevance had to work extremely hard to do so. The rise of capitalism during this period—embodied by secular faith, political radicalism, science, commerce, and industry—was, according to Anglican critics, undermining this spiritual world and challenging it with a superficial material one: a human-centric rationalist society hell-bent on measurable betterment via profit, consumption, and a prevalent notion of progress. Here, William J. Ashworth places the politics of science within a far more contested context. By focusing on the Trinity College circle, spearheaded from Cambridge by the polymath William Whewell, he details an ongoing struggle between the Established Church and a quest for change to the prevailing social hierarchy. His study presents a far from unified view of science and religion at a time when new ways of thinking threatened to divide England and even the Trinity College itself.
OR
