Program / Course 19: Modern Challenges / Lesson 2.4
What you will learn
- Describe the conflict thesis as it was first put forward in the nineteenth century.
- Explain why historians of science have largely abandoned it as a general account.
- Give accurate accounts of the Galileo affair and the Huxley and Wilberforce exchange.
- Say what truth remains in the conflict story.
The big idea
The idea that science and religion have always been at war was spread in the nineteenth century by John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. It remains popular in public discussion, and most historians of science now consider it badly oversimplified. Famous episodes such as the trial of Galileo were real, but they were more complicated than the legend, and many scientists of every period were believers. The honest account admits both real conflicts and a long record of cooperation.
Key terms
- Conflict thesis
- The claim that science and religion are in permanent and necessary warfare, and that science has progressively overcome religious obstruction.
- Whig history
- A way of telling history as steady progress toward the present, in which people of the past are heroes or villains according to how they match current views.
- Heliocentrism
- The view that the earth moves around the sun. Geocentrism holds that the sun moves around the earth.
- Inquisition
- A church court of the Catholic Church, set up in the Middle Ages to deal with heresy, and later in Spain and Rome in different forms.
- Historiography
- The study of how history has been written and how interpretations change.
- Scientific Revolution
- The period roughly from the sixteenth to the seventeenth century in which modern science took shape.
Background
In 1874 the American chemist John William Draper published History of the Conflict between Religion and Science. In 1896 Andrew Dickson White, the first president of Cornell University, published A History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom. Both books told a story in which dogmatic churches resisted progress. They shaped popular belief for more than a century and still influence school textbooks, though White wrote partly in reaction to opposition to his new secular university.
In the later twentieth century historians of science, such as John Hedley Brooke, David Lindberg, Ronald Numbers and Peter Harrison, studied the sources again. They found that many of the conflict stories contained errors, some of them plain inventions. The collection Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion, edited by Numbers, gathers examples. These historians do not say that there were no conflicts. They say that the picture of constant war is false.
Step-by-step explanation
Step 1: Myths that have been corrected
Many people believe that medieval Christians held that the earth was flat. Educated medieval people knew the earth was a sphere, as Bede, Aquinas and Dante assumed. The idea that Columbus was opposed by churchmen for believing in a round earth was popularized by Washington Irving’s 1828 biography and is false. Another myth is that the church banned dissection of human bodies. The picture is more complicated, but medieval and Renaissance universities did dissect human bodies.
These errors persist because they make a good story. A student should ask where a claim about the past comes from, and whether a modern historian has checked it.
Step 2: The Galileo affair, told accurately
Galileo Galilei (1564 to 1642) defended the Copernican view that the earth moves around the sun. In 1616 the Roman Inquisition judged heliocentrism contrary to Scripture and Galileo was warned not to hold or teach it as true. In 1632 he published a Dialogue that appeared to ridicule the geocentric position, which was voiced by a character named Simplicio. In 1633 he was tried, found suspect of heresy, forced to recant and placed under house arrest for the rest of his life. He was not tortured and he was not jailed in a dungeon, though the trial was a real injustice by many modern judgments.
The causes were mixed. There were theological questions about how to read texts such as Joshua 10, personal quarrels, the politics of Pope Urban VIII and a weakness in Galileo’s evidence, since he lacked a proof of the earth’s motion that satisfied the best astronomers of his day. Many Jesuit astronomers admired his observations. In 1992 Pope John Paul II acknowledged that errors had been made in the case.
Step 3: Huxley, Wilberforce and Darwin
A famous legend says that at a meeting of the British Association at Oxford in 1860, Bishop Samuel Wilberforce asked Thomas Huxley whether he was descended from an ape on his grandmother’s or his grandfather’s side, and that Huxley crushed him. No full verbatim record survives, and the accounts were written later, often by Huxley’s side. Historians think the exchange took place in some form but that it was not the clear victory of science over religion. Wilberforce was a capable amateur naturalist, and some of his objections were scientific. Many churchmen, including some of Darwin’s own friends, accepted evolution soon after.
The Darwin debates had strong supporters and strong opponents among believers and unbelievers. They did not form a battle line with religion on one side.
Step 4: What remains true
Critics of the conflict thesis do not claim that religion has always been friendly to science. Real episodes of suppression and resistance occurred, and the Galileo case is one. The late nineteenth century and the twentieth century saw sharp fights in some countries over evolution in schools, the Scopes trial of 1925 being the most famous. Some scientists have been hostile to religion, and some religious groups have been hostile to science.
The fair conclusion is that the relation has been complex. Churches founded universities and supported astronomers, such as Jesuit observatories. Many leaders of the Scientific Revolution were devout. Religious motives sometimes encouraged science, and sometimes religious authorities restricted it. The relation depends on the time, the place and the topic. The claim that this thesis was thoroughly mistaken is also open to debate: some historians, such as Edward Grant, defended the medieval contribution, while others warn against replacing one simple story with another.
- Who first told this story, and for what purpose?
- What sources does the account rely on, and are they close to the events?
- Does the story name its villains and heroes too quickly?
- What did the other side say at the time?
- Would the facts support a milder conclusion than the one drawn?
- How would I check this claim before repeating it?
Examples
The flat earth legend
A student is told in school that medieval people feared sailing off the edge of the earth. She checks a history of medieval astronomy and finds that Aquinas, in his Summa, assumed a round earth as obvious. She concludes the textbook repeated a nineteenth century myth. (A constructed example.)
Galileo told two ways
One version says that a brave scientist was jailed by an ignorant church. Another says that Galileo was a quarrelsome man who lacked proof. The accurate version admits an injustice and also admits that several of the judges were learned and some of the issues were truly unsettled. (A constructed example.)
Different perspectives
Catholic
Catholic writers acknowledge that the Galileo case was a mistake, as John Paul II said in 1992, and they point to the Church’s long support of astronomy and the sciences. Jesuit observatories, the work of the priest Georges Lemaitre in cosmology and Gregor Mendel the Augustinian friar in genetics are often cited. Catholic historians also warn against portraying the Church as a monolith.
Orthodox
Orthodox history has a different shape. Byzantine scholars preserved and copied Greek works of science and philosophy, which later passed to the West and the Arabic world. Orthodox writers point to the lack of a Galileo affair in the East as showing a different relation, though the Orthodox world also had periods of scientific neglect under hardship and imperial change.
Protestant
Protestants can point to figures such as Kepler, Boyle and Newton, and to sociological theories, such as that of Robert Merton, which argued that Puritan values encouraged science in seventeenth century England. These claims are debated. Protestants also have their own conflict episodes, from Luther’s remark against Copernicus, recorded in table talk, to the Scopes trial.
Secular and scholarly views
Most historians of science today reject the conflict thesis as a general theory but not as a description of particular episodes. Some secular writers say that religious resistance did slow progress, and that the revisionists make too much of the exceptions. Scholars agree that sweeping slogans are unreliable and that each case has to be examined.
Why it matters
Many people decide that Christianity is at war with learning because of stories that have been corrected. Christians who repeat the same stories for their own side are equally misled. Learning the actual history lets a student concede real failures, such as the treatment of Galileo, and reject the legends.
Common misunderstandings
Misunderstanding: Medieval Christians thought the earth was flat.
Correction: Educated medieval Europeans overwhelmingly knew that the earth was a sphere. The flat earth story spread in the nineteenth century.
Misunderstanding: Galileo was tortured and imprisoned by the Church for his science.
Correction: He was tried by the Inquisition, forced to recant and kept under house arrest. There is no good evidence he was tortured. The trial was unjust, and it was also tangled with politics and personalities.
Misunderstanding: Revisionist historians say there was never any conflict.
Correction: They say the conflicts were local and specific, and not a general war. They accept that real disputes occurred.
Misunderstanding: Draper and White were neutral scholars.
Correction: Both had polemical aims, and their books contain many errors that later historians have noted.
Knowledge check
What is the conflict thesis and who popularized it?
It is the claim that science and religion are necessarily at war and that science progressively defeats religious obstruction. It was popularized by John William Draper in 1874 and Andrew Dickson White in 1896. Most historians of science today regard it as a gross oversimplification, though they accept that specific conflicts occurred.
Describe the Galileo affair accurately in three sentences.
Galileo defended the view that the earth moves around the sun. In 1616 the Inquisition declared this view contrary to Scripture, and in 1633 he was tried, forced to recant and kept under house arrest. Causes included theology, politics, personal quarrels and incomplete scientific proof. John Paul II acknowledged the errors in 1992.
Why do historians doubt the story of Huxley and Wilberforce?
No verbatim record survives, and the best-known accounts were written later by people on Huxley’s side. Historians think an exchange occurred but that it was not the clear victory it was said to be. Wilberforce made some scientific objections, and many churchmen accepted evolution soon after.
What truth remains in the conflict story?
There were real episodes of religious resistance to science, such as the treatment of Galileo and the twentieth century fights over evolution in schools. What is false is the claim that conflict is constant and necessary. Churches also supported learning, and many scientists were believers. Each case must be judged on its facts.
Think it through
- Which of these legends did you accept before reading?
- Why do stories of religion against science appeal so strongly?
- What stories do Christians tell that might be equally one-sided?
- Is it honest to concede the Galileo case, and what does it cost to do so?
Independent assignment
Checking a legend
In your notebook, choose one story about science and religion that you have heard (for example Galileo, the flat earth, or Huxley and Wilberforce). Write what you were told, then use at least two library or reference sources to check it. Write 400 to 500 words on what holds up and what does not. Do not post it.
Further study
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Religion and Science Read the historical sections.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Philosophy of History Read for the problems of writing history without bias.
- Justo L. Gonzalez, The Story of Christianity Read the chapters on the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries.
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Fallacies Use as a checklist for stories that rely on a villain and a hero.
- Joshua 10:12 The text about the sun standing still, central to the Galileo dispute.
- Psalm 111:2 The works of the Lord are great, sought out of all them that have pleasure therein.