SCIENCE and RELIGION

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SCIENCE and RELIGION The war that wasnt
Neil Greenberg Departments of Ecology, Medicine,
and Psychology University of Tennessee, Knoxville
TVUUC FORUM April 6, 2008
Tiffany, Education (1890)
January 2008
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SCIENCE and SPIRITUALITY ORICL 471 Wednesdays at
1100, April, 2008
Neil Greenberg Departments of Ecology, Medicine,
and Psychology University of Tennessee, Knoxville
ORICL April 2008
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The WAR between SCIENCE and RELIGION
Neil Greenberg Departments of Ecology, Medicine,
and Psychology University of Tennessee, Knoxville
ORICL April 2008
Tiffany, Education (1890)
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WAR? What War?

• misconceptions about the traditional relationship
  of science and religion
• for example, that science doubts everything,
  religion accepts on faith.
• Test everything. Hold on to the
  good (I Thessalonians 521)
• I cannot praise a cloistered virtue (Milton)
• If a man shall begin in certainties, he shall
  end in doubts but if he will be content to
  begin with doubts he shall end in certainties.
  (Francis Bacon 1605)

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WAR? What War?
In his understanding of apparent contradictions
between faith and science, Galileo echoed Saint
Augustine,

• If it happens that the authority of sacred
  Scripture is set in opposition to clear and
  certain reasoning, the person who interprets
  Scripture does not understand it correctly.

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SCIENTIST or THEOLOGIAN ?
The archetype of the inductive scientific
genius Whewell in History of the Inductive
Sciences, 1837)
"I give myself over to my rapture. I tremble my
blood leaps. God has waited 6000 years for a
looker-on to His work."
Johannes Kepler in 1610 (laws of
planetary motion)
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SCIENTIST or THEOLOGIAN ?
Physicist, mathematician, astronomer, natural
philosopher, theologian, and alchemist
" God governs all things and knows all that is or
can be done."
Isaac Newton in 1689 (calculus,
gravitation)
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Nature and nature's laws lay hid in nightGod
said "Let Newton be" and all was light.
Isaac Newton by Blake 1795
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• In the late 18th century, the Enlightenment came
  to an end with a sudden outburst of hostility
  toward reason and science.
• This philosophic temper tantrum has a name
  romanticism. The leaders of the movement
  advocated the primacy of feelings over reason and
  sense perception, the rejection of logical
  analysis as anti-life, and the view that nature
  is an incomprehensible war of conflicting
  opposites.
• With Kant's Critiques providing the fertilizer,
  romanticism took root mainly in Germany. In this
  lecture, Mr. Harriman shows that the impact on
  German science was widespread and devastating in
  the early 19th century.

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Lamia
Do not all charms fly At the mere touch of cold
philosophy? There was an awful rainbow once in
heaven We know her woof, her texture she is
given In the dull catalog of common
things. Philosophy will clip an Angels
wings, Conquer all mysteries by rule and
line, Empty the haunted air and gnomed
mine-- Unweave a rainbow. (Keats, Lamia II,
229-237, 1819)
Lamia by Herbert Draper 1909
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At first glance, science and Romanticism might
seem at irreconcilable odds

• science advocates the rational, the empirical and
  the mental, Romanticism embraces the irrational,
  the metaphysical and the emotional.
• Science represents realism and tough-mindedness
  Romanticism, idealism and escapism.
• But this supposed incongruence seems only so to
  our early 21st-century sensibilities. As EG
  Wilson points out, the poets and scientists of
  the early 19th century thought of themselves as
  soul mates.
• EG Wilson, Professor of English at Wake Forest

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SCIENCE is done by SCIENTISTS
Scientia simply means knowledge but Scientist
coined in 1833 by Whewell -- referred to a
natural philosopher (rather than an intuitive
philosopher)
William Whewell (d. 1866 polymath, scientist,
theologian)
But see The Scientist in the Crib.
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SCIENTIST
Once the word was in place, it came to apply to a
special group of people who slavishly followed a
method that disallowed subjective experience.
William Whewell (d. 1866 polymath, scientist,
theologian)
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The climate of 19th century

• In the midst of change uncertainty can be
  intolerable (God does not play dice, Einstein
  would assert in the 20th C.)
• But even William James would be uncertain about
  uncertainty
• 1880 Philosophies of uncertainty cannot be
  acceptable the general mind will fail to come to
  rest in their presence, and will seek for
  solutions of a more reassuring kind.
• 1895 Objective evidence and certitude are
  doubtless very fine ideals to play with, but
  where on this moonlit and dream-visited planet
  are they to be found? . . . We must go on
  experiencing and thinking over our experience,
  for only thus can our opinions grow more true.

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The climate of 19th century

• The mystery that energizes the spiritual impulse
  was about to be solved. And in this
  post-enlightenment atmosphere, something dark was
  cooking in America
• Alien peoples and their religious faith with its
  allegiance to a foreign dictator were swarming
  our shores
• The Irish famines led to about 1.5 million
  deaths over 2 million fled about 1.5 million
  came to America
• for example, in 1847, 37,000 Irish showed up in a
  city of 115,000 Anglo-Saxon Protestants Boston
  there was an enormous anti-Catholic sentiment

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The climate of 19th century

• The Panic of 1873 sixty-five months during
  which
• in New York, construction was cut in half, both
  in terms of number of new buildings and their
  value.
• One hundred thousand people were thrown out of
  work, nearly one-quarter of the city's labor
  force.
• Ten thousand homeless roamed the city's streets.
• Those who still had work suffered a severe drop
  in wages, roughly 30 percent across the board.
  Socialism gained in popularity throughout the
  working-class neighborhoods of the city.

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• There was unprecedented and deeply resented Irish
  immigration

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Fear of Catholicism grows

• The First Vatican Council (1870) formalized a
  long-standing tradition as the Doctrine of
  Infallibility.
• To whom were the many new immigrants loyal?

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• John William Draper
• founder of NYU Medical School
• First president of American Chemical Society
• Believed in the positivism of Auguste Compte
  which held that civilization moves through stages
  of which science is the peak.
• Spoke of the expansive force of human intellect
  and the compression arising from traditionary
  faith.

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• John William Draper
• Wrote "History of the Conflict between Religion
  and Science (1874)
• using his beloved immutable laws that governed
  almost everything science, culture, history--
  in support of anti-Catholic sentiment.
• For example, it was the Catholic church that
  frustrated the law of nature that human
  populations should double every 25 years.

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• John William Draper
• Continually quotes authorities out of context
  most notably St Augustine
• Spiraled into a vitriolic rant against Romanism
• Regarded Protestantism as a sister of science and
  Islam, the Southern Reformation.

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• Andrew Dickson White
• Historian, Founder of Cornell, the first major
  secular university in America
• He hoped this would "an asylum for Sciencewhere
  truth shall be sought for truth's sake, not
  stretched or cut exactly to fit Revealed
  Religion."
• Deeply hurt by attacks on him by the religious
  right for founding a secular university

Andrew Dickson White honored at Cornell
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• Andrew Dickson White
• In response to attacks on him about Cornell, he
  wrote "History of the Warfare of Science with
  Theology in Christendom" (1896) to describe how
  pernicious the (Catholic) religion was.

• Andrew Dickson White, 1985

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• Andrew Dickson White
• Eventually, even Christian groups took White to
  task for perpetuating myths by his biases and
  cooking of the facts.
• misrepresented Augustine as holding beliefs
  contrary to understanding, when he actually held
  such beliefs up as examples of what must not be
  taken literally because they contradicted
  understanding.

• Andrew Dickson White, 1985

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• Andrew Dickson White
• White also misrepresent Columbus as having to
  fight against church-defended flat earth beliefs
• misrepresented the religious attacks on Darwin
  as being broadly supported by the authorities.
• apparently believed that the fight against the
  dogmatic critics who attacked him justified
  winning over being right.

• Andrew Dickson White, 1985

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Both these books are wretched history

• Drapers "History of the Conflict between
  Religion and Science (1874)
• Whites "History of the Warfare of Science with
  Theology in Christendom" (1896)
• Unacceptable by any reputable historian rife
  with well known fallacies and avoidable errors.

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But damage has been done

• In America, evolutionary theory is still viewed
  with doubt or suspicion