The twin histories of science and religion have always been intertwined. Traditionally, this marriage has been viewed as an unhappy one. The received view is that science and religion have always been at war with one another. From the abjuration of Galileo in 1633 to the Huxley-Wilberforce debate in 1860 and the Scopes ‘monkey’ trial of 1925, all these events have in the past been used to highlight this perceived fight for dominance.
Nicholas Spencer rejects this view as entirely outdated and oversimplified. He argues that the phrase ‘the history of science and religion’ is itself a misnomer and that there is, in fact, no such thing as a history of science and religion, let alone the history of science and religion. Instead of a coherent narrative, what we’re in possession of is a confusing collection of interconnected tales. The blame for this can be laid at the feet of John William Draper, whose History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science (Appleton & Co., 1875) took aim primarily at the Catholic Church and not necessarily religion itself. It’s this argument that Spencer primarily concerns himself with, arguing that not only were religion and science not locked in a never-ending war with one another, but that for much of history, religion and science were in something of a symbiotic relationship. The former actively supported the latter, legitimising, preserving, and developing scientific ideas and activities.
Spencer begins by exploring quite a substantial period, from the fifth century through to the seventeenth. He begins with the murder of the celebrated female philosopher and mathematician Hypatia in Alexandria in 415, whom, he argues, was not so much a martyr for science as a casualty of the ferocious power politics inherent in Alexandrian society at the time. Spencer’s main argument is that the science of antiquity was very different to modern science: astronomy and mathematics (both of which Hypatia was an accomplished practitioner of) were part of a wider, philosophical search for truth. He argues that neither science nor religion, as we understand both terms today, existed in the classical or medieval European, Islamic, Indian, or Chinese worlds. It wasn’t until the nineteenth century that science became an independent discipline.
Spencer also examines the ‘Golden Age’ of Islamic science, covering individuals from Baghdad to Al-Andalus, as well as dedicating space to the attitudes of science in Judaism during the period in question, before exploring Christian Europe during the Middle Ages and how a ‘Dark Ages’ style misunderstanding obscures some lesser known, though undoubtedly scientifically minded, individuals. For instance, Robert Grosseteste, a bishop of Lincoln, had thoughts about matter and atoms that Tom McLeish, professor of polymer physics at Leeds, sympathised with. Everyone furthering medieval science was a member of the clergy, Spencer observes. However, he challenges the idea that Christian science was the sole preserve of Protestantism, exploring what he calls the ‘many births of science’, including Protestant science, Catholic science, and secular science in succession. Due to these many sciences, the idea of a singular scientific revolution in Europe becomes less tenable, and its start date of 1543 looks more arbitrary.
Several case studies are examined by Spencer to advance his claim that science and religion were more closely intertwined than the traditional narrative allows. Isaac Newton, for instance, had so many devout writings on various subjects that his followers tried to downplay them out of embarrassment. Furthermore, in the late seventeenth century, various philosophers developed versions of the design and cosmological arguments, relying on a scientific understanding of the complexity of the world to argue that a creation pointed to the existence of a creator. Spencer argues that science was religion’s first defence against atheism, and physico-theology was a powerful ally in this regard.
However, cracks began to show in the golden façade of religion and science’s great Enlightenment cooperation as the latter started to undermine certain tenets of the former. Doubts began to emerge of a great flood within the last six thousand years, or how the 5,600 species Linnaeus had identified could all fit on an ark. Philosophers weighed in on the ideas of human supremacy, innate truths, and the idea that nature was active and required no divine intervention. Abraham Trembley’s dissection of a polyp marked a materialistic turn in French thought. In France, ‘the soul…was lost’ (p. 193). While France produced a great many thinkers like Descartes and La Mettrie, the state itself was intellectually orthodox, and science had become a weapon in a philosophical and political battle ‘against monarchy and priestcraft’ (p. 195).
Spencer then enters the nineteenth century, exploring a period where science drifted further away from religion, sometimes amicably and at other times acrimoniously. The increasing public knowledge of geology (or ‘geologies’, plural) would prove to be a major point of contention, notably the arguments that the earth was far older than a few thousand years. Spencer cautions against taking this shift in belief about the earth’s age to mean that people went from believing the world was six thousand years old to believing it was millions of years old instead. This narrative, he argues, much like the larger story of science and religion in which it takes place, ‘obscures far more than it reveals’ (p. 210).
Charles Darwin stands as a fascinating case study of how science was beginning to divest itself of religion, particularly in the aftermath of the tragic death of his young daughter Annie in 1851. Yet even with the Origins of Species (John Murray, 1859), science didn’t always conflict with religion. After initial reviews proved critical of the work, Spencer points out that one of the earliest letters of praise Darwin received was from Charles Kingsley, who, among other things, was a clergyman. Furthermore, it was Christians who most ardently resisted phrenology, often establishing societies to further opposition to it. Finally, Spencer takes us all the way through the twentieth century where the spectre of Darwinism looms large – particularly with an examination of the Scopes ‘monkey’ trial of 1925. The trial, which began life as a scheme to boost the local economy, pitted the high school football coach and head of science at Rhea County High School against the state of Tennessee, which had banned the teaching of evolution. It ended with both science and religion claiming victory. The ripples from the trial were felt outside of the United States too: Marie Curie, for instance, signed a letter of protest about it.
Spencer’s narrative is very persuasive; the examples he chooses are interesting and do highlight that science, for most of its existence, has been done by the religious, often with the aim to further an understanding of the divine. That some of the best-known examples of conflict between religion and science are, at the very least, misunderstood or taken out of context and reduced to titbits. However, it’s questionable at times to what extent Spencer means religion rather than just Christianity, specifically Catholicism and Protestantism, and in Western Europe or the USA. At times, despite criticising him, Spencer even falls into the same trap that Draper did, taking aim for the most part at two specific branches of Christianity, rather than religion as a whole. While Islam and Judaism do feature in the book at times, Spencer’s analysis of Christianity is far stronger. For the most part, certainly as the book leaves medieval Islam behind, any contact with the wider world is all seen from the perspective of western missionaries, clergy, naturalists, and so on. The exchange of knowledge between said missionaries and China, for example, is not examined from the perspective of the Chinese. Russia prior to the USSR is mentioned in the context of Newton’s popularity, not due to Russian science or Tsarist attitudes to it, for instance. That said, condensing just shy of two millennia of history analysing the relationship between Christianity and science into one work is impressive, even if sacrifices in examining the other Abrahamic religions had to be made to achieve it.
Beyond slight problems with the scope of the book, there are deeper issues with Spencer’s argument. In particular, we’re not always convinced about his generalisations from particular historical episodes. For example, just because Darwin was initially able to square his scientific and Christian beliefs doesn’t mean that Darwinism and Christianity are theoretically compatible. Linnaeus considered himself ‘God’s registrar’, but that doesn’t mean he wasn’t undermining the empirical foundations for his own Christian beliefs. People hold many inconsistent beliefs, but this isn’t evidence that those beliefs aren’t inconsistent after all. If Spencer’s thesis – and therefore his lesson for us today – is that science and religion can in principle be happily married, then his evidence for this claim is weak. A mere historical claim about how the clash between science and religion has been overblown in traditional narratives would be much more defensible but much less novel. Historians of religion have recognised for a long time that the concept of the ‘Dark Ages’ is an overexaggeration and that it’s too simple to paint the Church as the enemy of science tout court. This unfortunately casts the academic value of Spencer’s book into doubt. Either his argument is bold but poorly supported, or he’s right but contributes little to the literature.
This doesn’t mean that there’s no value to Spencer’s work. On the contrary, it’s well written and is a much more comprehensive, nuanced introduction to the historical relationship between science and religion than many other books out there. Spencer does an admirable job of cutting through the mythos surrounding people and events like Galileo and his trial, trimming away the pop history stories and tales that are so well known they often overshadow the equally interesting truth behind them. If you’re looking for a starting point to examine the history of science and religion as they relate to one another, particularly in Western Europe, then this is a worthy contender for your time.
