SCIENCE, RELIGION, AND CULTURE

The phrase “science and religion” has become widely used to denote a particular area of academic discussion. However, both key terms are seriously problematic. There have been huge historical changes in what has been meant by them, as Peter Harrison among others have pointed out (Harrison 2015). There is also a good deal of cultural variation in what is meant by both “science” and “religion.” We will here consider historical and cultural variations in what has been and is meant by these two crucial terms, and then discuss the implications for work on the interface of “science” and “religion.” The term “religion” in North Atlantic Western traditions has changed in its meanings quite radically in the nineteenth century. The problems associated with the term “religion” have been set out by scholars such as Wilfred Cantwell Smith ([1962] 1978) and Nicolas Lash (1996). As Lash points out, for Aquinas, and even for Calvin, a person's “religion” was their rule of life; it was only much later than that when it became a matter of private personal piety. A general distinction opened up in the nineteenth century between the public and private worlds, and religion increasingly came to be seen as a private matter. (Much of the work in secular studies and on the processes of secularization have focused their attention on the paradigmatic shift of “religion” from wholly public, a wider reaching consensus on the rule of life and that which rules it, to the private sphere as a consequence of the changing relational attitudes that one would have with their neighbor and community). There is debate about the early roots of this divide between public and private, though etymological data suggest that there was a crucial turn toward the subjective world at the end of the seventeenth century (Barfield 1953). Charles Taylor has reflected at length on this subjective turn throughout his career and synthesized his reflection in his A Secular Age (2007). He argues that this turn began in the sixteenth century during the Reformation when authority of scripture shifted from absolute control held by the clergy and into the hands of the layperson (Taylor 2007). This, Taylor claims, was the first step toward religion becoming private. Galen Watts (2022) has subsequently traced the historical roots of the self-focused “religion of the heart” that has become ubiquitous since the 1960s. Of course, theology was never happy with that, and has been struggling ever since to find ways of asserting its objectivity. Over the course of a few centuries, the fact remains, however, that, in the North Atlantic West, where science is most highly developed, religion is now widely regarded as being a private matter. For example, in as far as Donald Trump had any intellectual argument to support his statement that it was disgraceful for the Pope to question his credentials as a Christian, his point was that religion is a private matter and, as such, it was not something that the Pope was in a position to question (Wirzba 2016). However, theology has never been happy with the idea that religion is a private matter and has sought various ways in which it could be seen as objective, often taking revelation as playing a role in religion comparable to the role of data in science. Both are versions of foundationalism, though philosophers have been increasingly moving away from foundationalism altogether. “Religion,” while conjuring relatively uniform thoughts among individuals in the North Atlantic West, means different things in different faith and geographical contexts. The late nineteenth century was fascinated by taxonomies and liked to find overall categories under which it could give a list of examples. For example, the concept of emotion as we now understand it was an invention of the late nineteenth century and involved bringing together, under a single heading, things which had previously been differentiated, such as “passions” and “affections” (Dixon 2003). In fact, however, emotions proved to be rather disparate, and it became necessary for twentieth-century psychology to rediscover something like the old distinctions that had been lost. In a similar way, the nineteenth century invented the general category of “religions,” with a list of world religions. For example, the British stated Hindu-“ism” as a religion in an effort to gain a proper census of the territory. However, the various things listed under the category of religions again turned out to be very different from one another. Problems with the categories of “emotion” and “religions” turn out to be rather similar, and to reflect a general problem in the nineteenth-century approach to categorization (Watts 2019a). The problem about the concept of a series of world “religions” arises from the fact that if you ask a Jew, a Muslim, a Hindu, or even a Tibetan Buddhist, what his or her “religion” is, it is a very odd question. It is a question that arises from the prevailing view about what religion is in the post-secularized Christian West, rooted in a taxonomic tradition, a view that is to some extent shared by Western Buddhism, but not by other faith cultures. For the most part, “religion,” around the world, is intertwined with ethnicity and cultural identity. Christianity, and to some extent Western Buddhism, are much less matters of cultural identity, and—for those who freely have this as an option available to them—more a chosen spiritual path. Of course, this distinction is not an absolute one. Some people convert out of personal conviction to religions that are primarily a matter of cultural identity, and allegiance to particular forms of Christianity can be a matter of cultural identity, as in Ireland. However, the point remains that the so-called world religions are not all quite the same thing, and most are more connected with cultural identity than is Christianity. Identifying a series of world religions led to the problem, for Christian theologians, of how to approach the relationship between them. An early and relatively sophisticated attempt to grapple with that problem was F. D. Maurice's book on The Religions of the World and their Relations to Christianity (Maurice [1847] 1886). He quickly discarded the view that all religions are essentially the same, and also rejected the view that Christianity had nothing to learn from any other religion. He then set himself the demanding task, as a Christian theologian, of discerning exactly what was to be learned from each of the other world religions. It has been widely recognized by those studying religion in the human sciences that religion has various different components. There are many slightly different ways of making distinctions between different aspects of religion, but most make a distinction between experience, practices, and beliefs (Watts 2017). The significance of this in the present context is that the different religions emphasize different components. For example, Christianity tends to emphasize beliefs, whereas Judaism places more emphasis on practice. The mystical strand in most religious traditions place more emphasis on experience. It is probably the case that religions that place a strong emphasis on belief, such as Christianity, have tended to have a richer engagement with beliefs in science. “Spirituality” has always been a significant part of religious traditions but, in recent decades, people and groups committed to spirituality are increasingly to be found outside religious traditions (Heelas and Woodhead 2005). The contemporary turn to spirituality can be conceptualized in many ways, though it is reasonable to see it as a quasi-religious tradition, with its own distinctive approach to belief, experience, and practice. This leads to a distinctive way of connecting science with the spiritual worldview found, for example, in Ursula Goodenough's The Sacred Depths of Nature (1998). Wesley Wildman's engagement with science from the perspective of “religious naturalism” (Wildman 2014) in many ways embraces the world view of those who see themselves as “spiritual but not religious.” Again, science communication has had a role in shaping spirituality as something “not religious,” but as antithesis to religion. Science communicators such as Carl Sagan, Jacob Bronowski, David Attenborough, Neil deGrasse Tyson, Brian Cox, among others, have engaged in attempts to bring a spiritual quality to their science communication, able to share these messages with millions, and in some cases billions, of viewers through their respective programs. Common religious sentiments of transcendence, oneness, reverence, and an ethical imperative for care and stewardship over Earth and its inhabitants have all been directed toward fulfilling the need for ecologically minded renewal, co-habitation with nature (of which humans are descended from and part), and increased science literacy. The outcome of such narratives has been a sense of connection to the “spiritual but not religious.” It is debatable whether those who see themselves as “spiritual but not religious” are correct in regarding their viewpoint as nonreligious. It can equally well be argued that it blends spirituality with a different strand of religion, rooted in romantic liberalism (Watts 2022). It was in the latter half of the nineteenth century that the primacy of “science” in the public world began to be asserted very strongly, and as a result, according to theorists and historians of secularization, religion became increasingly cast into the private world. Substantial developments in scientific reasoning and experimentation, aided by the economic and political goals of England and Europe, became linked to notions of progress, and European dominance over their rivals and colonized lands and people. Two factors were critical to the increasing publicity of science and its relation to social structures. The first was the development of cheap printing. As Owen Chadwick (1975), James A. Secord (2000, 2014), and Bernard Lightman (2007) have shown, the development of cheaper printing technologies and access to more versatile materials (i.e., thinner, and therefore cheaper paper) was instrumental in bringing the most recent developments of natural history and natural philosophy to the masses. Best-selling books like Vestiges of the Natural History of Creation, published anonymously by Robert Chambers ([1844] 1994), and Other Worlds Than Ours (1870), by Richard Proctor, sold over 33 and 22 editions, respectively, while popular scientific, medical, and technical periodicals dramatically increased from 53 publications in 1800−1809 to over 400 in 1880−1889 (which includes both Chamber's Edinburgh Journal and Proctor's Knowledge). The second was the increased use of newly developed tools and technologies for science communication. Lightman has written at length on science popularization and communication during the Victorian era (2007), revealing not only how cheap publishing influenced science communication, but also how new discoveries in palaeontology and archaeology lent themselves well to novel technologies such as dioramas and the photograph. In Germany and France too, science communication shows were a popular way for the middle classes to stay informed while being entertained via new and wondrous means. The very idea of “science” as a set of practices and dispositions that could easily be identified by anyone was solidified during this time of public display and spectacle. There is a further issue about what is meant by science in different contexts—times, places, cultures, faith traditions, and so on. Science is widely regarded in the minds of the developed world as having transcended cultural context. However, such an understanding of science has been argued against in the social sciences of science for quite some time. Furthermore, that view is not universally shared from culture to culture, and such an ideal is in fact the product of a particular cultural tradition. From some cultural perspectives, present-day science looks very dominated by Anglo-American culture, and reflecting the cultural values of the context in which it has most flourished. Parallel to the belief that science has transcended cultural context is the widespread view that science is independent of metaphysical assumptions. However, philosophers of science, from the 1960s onward, have been increasingly emphasizing the extent to which science makes metaphysical assumptions (Harré 1986). In particular, it is often taken for granted that science necessarily makes secularist assumptions. However, anyone with a historical perspective would have to concede that scientists such as Isaac Newton made genuine scientific advances without making secularist assumptions. It could similarly be said for Albert Einstein's famous line written to Max Born that “He [God] does not play dice,” revealing the metaphysical position that he had against interpretations of the new quantum mechanics. Those engaged in work on the interface of science and religion have often emphasized the important role of metaphysics in science, and seen the theological engagement with science as largely mediated through metaphysics (Polkinghorne 2009). As Barry Barnes, David Bloor, and John Henry (1996) have argued, the metaphysical assumptions of contemporary science do not follow from scientific data, but reflect prevailing sociocultural presuppositions and practices. There is also a divergence of views about whether science should be understood primarily as a methodology for ascertaining the truth of things, or as a body of knowledge. In Western culture, “science,” popularly understood, is largely assumed to be the knowledge, know-how, and method that has emerged from contemporary scientific research. The Muslim majority world probably has a rather different understanding of “science,” though the Muslim public understanding of “science” has not yet been thoroughly investigated. However, there are positive changes occurring to rectify this (for example, see Malik 2021). There may be a divergence between a positive general view of science that is grounded in the Quran and in history (through metaphysics; Polkinghorne 2009) and a more negative view of contemporary scientific research, which is sometimes regarded as being unduly influenced by Western secularist assumptions. There are also divergent approaches to the authority of science, linked to different assumptions about whether or not contemporary science is likely to develop further, and to be subject to further paradigm changes. There is a tendency in some circles to think that present-day science has sufficient authority that some things can be ruled out because they are incompatible with present-day scientific assumptions. However, for those who think that we may be only at the foothills of scientific understanding, and that science may shift considerably in its assumptions as it progresses, present-day science cannot be accorded that authority. 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