We might begin by marking an anniversary. One hundred and fifty years before we delivered the lecture series on which this book is William Thomson presented his first introductory lecture as Glasgow's new Professor of natural philosophy. Not that the lecture itself was a resounding success. Thomson confided to his friend George Stokes that it had been ‘rather a failure as I had it all written, and I read it very fast’.1 In order to expand his laboratory space this great enthusiast for precision measurement commandeered an unused wine-cellar in an old professor's house, the noise of the alterations producing predictable complaints from those preferring old bottles to new. It is doubly appropriate to refer to Thomson, or Lord Kelvin as he has become better known, because it is possible to detect in his thinking certain ways of relating science to theology that do not fit present-day preconceptions.

In a recent biography the connections between Thomson's research laboratory and industry are explored. The engineering career of his brother James encouraged William to examine technical concepts such as ‘work’ and ‘waste’.2 But connections of another kind are also underlined. These were theological and may have been reinforced by William's friendship with the great evangelical preacher Thomas Chalmers, whose services he attended. Chalmers himself had made connections between science and theology. His immensely popular Astronomical Discourses had been designed to rebut the allegation that the expansion of the universe and a concomitant plurality of worlds rendered Christianity incredible.3 In the case of William Thomson, the impress of a Scottish voluntarist theology can be seen in his thermodynamics. The principle of energy conservation was a reminder that only God could create and destroy the energy inherent in the universe, whilst the principle of energy dissipation was a potent reminder that the present form of the world was as transitory as Chalmers had deduced it to be from his reading of 2 Corinthians 4:18.4 In a preliminary draft of his ‘dynamical theory of heat’ Thomson wrote of a ‘tendency in the material world for motion to become diffused’.5 There was a ‘reverse of concentration… gradually going on’. In his own mind there was resonance with Psalm 102: ‘Of old hast thou laid the foundation of the earth: and the heavens are the work of thy hands. They shall perish, but thou shalt endure: yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment.’6

The point is not that Thomson's ‘science’ was at bottom a form of theology; nor that his theology was rooted in nothing but ‘science’. The example rather shows that key words, such as ‘conservation’ and ‘dissipation’ could mediate between scientific and religious beliefs. Statements about the technical workings of nature and statements within biblical texts could function as commentaries on each other, sometimes reinforcing deeply held convictions about human destiny. It is an example that could also be used to show that there may be separation of scientific and religious discourse on some levels but integration or overlap on others.

This last point deserves special attention. The most renowned diplomat for experimental science in the seventeenth century, Francis Bacon, warned about the dangers of mixing biblical exegesis with scientific practice. But to regard this as a complete detachment of ‘science’ from ‘religion’ would be simplistic because in Bacon's view there were profound religious sanctions for improving the natural sciences. Not only did their cultivation encourage the Christian virtue of humility, their practical application could help restore a dominion over nature that the human race had lost at the Fall.7 The need to talk about different levels in this way is crucially important. In his mechanisation of nature, Robert Boyle insisted on a clear separation of nature and God.8 Natural phenomena were to be explained in terms of the architecture and motion of particles. But on other levels, this very mechanisation reinforced an integration of natural philosophy and theology. The more mechanical the world, the more transparent that it had been the product of design. Machines simply do not spring into existence by themselves.

For the historian, Thomson, Bacon and Boyle are just three of an enormous gallery of thinkers whose science and theology were interrelated in interesting, unpredictable and extraordinarily diverse ways. To reduce religious beliefs to primitive forms of science, as Richard Dawkins among others has encouraged us to do, is to be unprepared for the richness and diversity in the engagement of science and religion. It would be to miss the moral sanction for altruistic science that in Bacon stemmed, at least in part, from his Protestant theology. It would miss the sense of awe at the beauty of nature voiced both by Boyle and Newton even when they could provide scientific explanations for the phenomena in question. It would even be to miss Charles Darwin's willingness, certainly for a while, to entertain the belief that the Creator creates through laws.9 It certainly misses the subtlety of a Thomas Chalmers or a William Thomson whose reconstructions of nature were informed by physical and intrinsically theological considerations. The many different levels on which theology has impinged on the scientific enterprise, and vice versa, should make us suspicious of reductionist claims and of the master-narratives that reflect them.

How Many Stories?

History is frequently used to defend polemical positions. Richard Dawkins states that he sees God as a ‘competing explanation for facts about the universe and life’10—competing that is with scientific theories. No sooner has he made that declaration than he adds in justification: ‘This is certainly how God has been seen by most theologians of past centuries and by most ordinary religious people today.’ By implication one could write a history to prove the point. The subservience of history to partisan interests is of course a familiar theme. We have all met those narratives in which the interpretation of historical events is controlled by a master-narrative that may reflect national or political interests. A typical example might be that curiously English view of Scotland which sees the Act of Union as a necessary step in subduing a troublesome and unruly people. Or it might be that curiously Scottish view of England which in looking down on the size of her mountains, also looks down on the quality of her educational system, on the lack of fortitude in matters spiritual and on the relative incompetence of the English to run their Empire.11 As the Scots mayor of the Australian colony of Victoria put it in 1885: ‘We want more Scots. Give us Scots. Give us the whole population of Glasgow.’12 One of the two nationalist views could, of course, be right; but we also smile because we recognise the mythological element in these master-narratives.

This subservience of history to partisan interests is just as conspicuous in the contested domain of ‘science-and-religion’. A century has now elapsed since Andrew Dickson White published the best known of the conflict narratives. His History of the Warfare of Science with theology in Christendom was in part a response to the clerical battering he had personally received after proposing a non-sectarian character for Cornell University. There had been widespread indignation that a university should be founded without the purpose of protecting the Christian faith. The prominence White gave to the sciences and his forthright view that ‘it shall not be the purpose of the Faculty to stretch or cut Science exactly to fit “Revealed Religion”’ had exposed him to censure as the architect of a Godless institution.13 He had been forced to conclude that there was ‘antagonism between the theological and scientific view of the universe and of education in relation to it’.14 Here was a thesis that could be turned into a riveting story—a tragi-comedy in which science had triumphed over obscurantism. White would count the number of bell ringers killed across Europe when their belfries were struck by lightning—and all because of a reluctance on the part of the clergy to interfere with providence by erecting lightning rods when the technology had become available. White's strictures against theological dogmatism have repeatedly struck a popular chord. It takes a little more discernment to see that much of the perceived conflict was not between science and theology but between competing forms of science in which theologians might have an interest or between competing forms of theology in which appeal might be made to the authority of science. White himself claimed that there need be no opposition between the spirit of scientific enquiry and the spirit of true religion.15 His enemy was dogmatic theology of the kind preached against him by the slighted Christian Colleges. His History, as he told Ezra Cornell, would teach them a lesson they would remember.16

One of the features of this kind of master-narrative is that it will ignore issues that might break the predetermined mould, or it will find ways of assimilating them within the single narrative. When Georges Cuvier, the eminent and powerful French zoologist of the early nineteenth century, opposed the evolutionary theory of his contemporary Jean-Baptiste Lamarck, he might be said to create problems for White's categories. Evolutionary theory in the later hands of Darwin was to mark for White the final triumph of science over dogmatic theology. But what is to be done when forward looking science is contested by one of the great scientific minds of the age? Cuvier, after all, did more than Lamarck to establish the fact that some species had become extinct.17 Wedded to the unilinear march of truth, White needed his controversies to be between science and theology, not between science and science. Hence the device: Cuvier, he claimed, was fighting in the name of science, but unconsciously for theology.

The single master-narrative has not always been structured around the theme of conflict. Science has sometimes been given a high profile in the secularisation of society not through a series of confrontations with religious authority but through the gradual displacement of spiritual sensibilities—much as Charles Darwin lost his resolve to become a clergyman during his long and enthralling voyage on HMS Beagle. Less flamboyant, less pervasive histories have also been written in the name of harmony and peace. Particularly in the physical sciences, belief in a world of order, of a pattern behind the appearances, had been clearly expressed by European natural philosophers. For example, there is no doubt that both Copernicus and Kepler based their reconstructions of astronomy on the premise that a greater harmony could be conferred on the heavenly motions If only a different vantage point could be found.18 To have the earth move created the sort of harmony one would expect from an intelligent Creator who, in Kepler's view, had equipped the human mind with the power to uncover the hidden mathematical patterns. In the mind of Kepler was a sense not of conflict between astronomy and religion but of union. When he articulated what we know as his third law of planetary motion (that which correlates the time it takes for a planet to complete its orbit with its mean distance from the sun) he reported that he felt carried away by unutterable rapture at the divine spectacle of heavenly harmony.19

We should note those words: rapture, divine, spectacle, heavenly, harmony. Each has a continuum of meaning which enables the scientific ‘discovery’ to be at the same time a religious experience. It was the view of A. N. Whitehead that modern science was an unconscious derivative of medieval theology in that the latter provided the crucial presupposition of an ordered and intelligible Creation.20 This basic idea has been developed in different ways. The Marxist historian of science Edgar Zilsel even insisted that the concept of physical law had religious origins.21 The founders of modern science had reconstructed nature by analogy with a human society. A divine legislator had impressed his Will on the world much as an absolute monarch might try to do for human subjects. The late Joseph Needham, in comparing the preconditions of science in Europe with cultural norms in China, noted the absence of a legislating God as one of a constellation of circumstances that conferred a different character on Chinese science.22

It has been possible, therefore, to construct a narrative very different in flavour from those preoccupied with conflict. For the Cambridge philosopher Michael Foster, writing in the 1930s, a Christian doctrine of creation had not only made the quest for laws of nature a rational pursuit. It had helped to purge classical theologies of nature of pantheistic elements that had obstructed the conceptual separation of the Creation from its Creator. Ingeniously Foster even suggested that a Trinitarian theology had played its part. His argument was that Plato had conflated two images of God's relation to the world—that of parent to offspring and artificer to artifact. Christian theology had then effected a conceptual clarification by transferring a father/son relation to the domain of Christology. This left the natural world as a created artifact, the artistry of which could be elucidated and appreciated.23

The story which makes modern science in some sense the offspring of a doctrine of Creation has gone through many variants and refinements. Foster, and later Francis Oakley, suggested that it was specifically a voluntarist theology of creation that produced the most auspicious presuppositions for the natural sciences.24 The point here is that a theology that emphasises the freedom of the divine will to make one world rather than another is a theology that makes it inappropriate to reason a priori about how the world must be. Empirical methods are necessary to discover which of the many possible worlds the deity might have made has in fact been made.25 There are indeed echoes of such reasoning in seventeenth-century natural philosophy. Marin Mersenne, who was at the nerve-centre of one of the first scientific correspondence networks, objected to Aristotle's claim that the earth must be at the centre of the cosmos. For Mersenne there was no ‘must’ about it. It was wrong to say that the centre was the earth's natural place. God had been free to put it where He liked. It was incumbent on us to find where this was.26

Mersenne was a Catholic, a member of the order of Minims; a minor embarrassment perhaps to another variant of the single narrative which would locate the preconditions of the scientific movement in the Protestant Reformation, in the freedom of thought which it supposedly unleashed, in the mercantile economies of those societies in which it gained most ground and in a new emphasis on the Bible. A distinguished historian of science and Gifford Lecturer, the late Reijer Hooykaas, argued that the Bible itself allowed a reconstruction of nature in which the residues of pantheism were swept away. He spoke of a de-deification of nature, visible in Calvinist theology and propitious for the sciences. Nature could be studied as a created system having its own integrity, dependent for its continued existence on an external Sovereign Will.27

At first sight it is difficult to believe that two such incompatible narratives could co-exist. In the one we have Christian theology and ecclesiastical institutions acting as a persistent obstruction to scientific progress. In the other—and it is often expressed this way—without a Christian doctrine of Creation there would have been no modern science. Both theses are vulnerable because they are selective in their use of evidence. They gloss over the diversity and the complexity of positions taken in the past. Each tends to assume that ‘science’ and ‘religion’ can be given timeless definitions and that there is some inherent, some essential, relationship between them.28 This last assumption is often on display when scientists and theologians meet for dialogue. High on conference agendas one finds papers with titles such as: ‘What is the best account of the relations between science and religion?’ Such a quest for the Holy Grail is worrying to the historian, because it assumes that a single account can be given of relations that have patently changed over time, that have been different in different societies and which continue to change. Many such attempts have been made in the past to construct an ideal model. The study of history is humbling because it shows how ephemeral most have been. This is a lesson that ought to be troubling to those who sometimes speak as if they have achieved the definitive account.

There may also be value in an historical approach if it alerts us to the way in which prior interests, political, metaphysical and religious, have shaped the models that have been sought. For an example we might take a truly fundamental issue: the epistemological status of scientific theories. Should we regard our physical models as candidates for a true description of the ‘real world’ external to ourselves? Or should we see them simply as sophisticated attempts to impose order and coherence on experimental data? On this second view a theory could be valued as an instrument of prediction, or an exemplar of coherence, without the question of truth or falsehood arising. In seeking some general model of the relations between science and religion, a question of this kind would have to be faced. Yet religious apologists have been drawn to both these positions.

The attraction of a realist view is that, with due caution, it allows the sciences to uncover the ‘real’ structure of God's creation.29 But the second, more instrumentalist, view has also appealed to vested religious interests. And it is not difficult to see why. It enables one to say of a theory that might look threatening to belief that it poses no problem because it is merely a hypothesis, merely a calculating device. The point is that there is no single story one can tell about this. Precisely because religious apologists have sometimes opted for the realist position, their opponents may surface among the instrumentalists, or among those positivists who may have rejected the use of theoretical entities altogether. One of the most vociferous secular scientists of the Third Republic in France was the chemist Marcellin Berthelot. One of his reasons lot rejecting the concept of atoms is particularly intriguing: ‘I do not want chemistry to degenerate into a religion; I do not want the chemist to believe in the existence of atoms as the Christian believes in the existence of Christ in the communion wafer.’30 A single tenseless model of the relations between science and religion would be unlikely to capture such niceties—in this case a misplaced scepticism towards a transcendent entity within science.

Henceforward we shall be avoiding master-narratives. We have many stories to tell and we hope that some at least will be instructive. There really are cogent reasons for not hoisting the big screen. Suppose one were to enquire about the impact of a particular scientific innovation, Newton's gravitational theory for example, on religious thought. It would be straightforward for the historian if there had been a consensus reached by religious thinkers about its implications. But reactions to Newton's theory were so diverse that to speak coherently of a unified impact becomes impossible. In Cambridge the gravitational force was welcomed by Richard Bentley and William Whiston precisely because it was non-mechanical. There was a sense in which it rendered visible the invisible hand of God. But for the philosopher Leibniz, a non-mechanical agency was either unintelligible or a perpetual miracle, and on either count to be dismissed. It may be tempting to speak of the implications of the new ‘mechanical philosophy’ of the seventeenth century when matter and motion became the primary variables for the explanation of natural phenomena. But for no two thinkers were they the same. To regard nature as machinery could constitute a programme for eliminating miracles. For some Catholic philosophers, notably Mersenne, it was a means of preserving them—by clarifying the boundaries between the natural and the supernatural.31 The absorbing question is why different individuals and social groups should be drawn to different interpretations and how far we may account for their predispositions.

How Should the Stories be Told?

We have been suggesting reasons why some definitive account of the relations between science and religion should not be expected. There are practical reasons for making the point. Those who enjoy discussing contemporary issues in this domain, whether scientists, philosophers, theologians or members of the public, often feel the need for historical perspective. Understandably they turn to a reputable source. The danger is that if only one historical account is consulted, it may acquire an authority for them that it probably should not have. In all historical writing there is so much by way of inference and reconstruction that to imagine the history of science, of religion, or of the relations between them as in some way ‘given’ would be an unfortunate mistake. Moreover, there is progress in historical research as in scientific research. As we shall see in chapter 4, a far richer understanding of the Galileo affair is possible now than a few years ago. Not only are there many stories that might be told. There are many ways of telling them. But how should they be told? In the remainder of this chapter we shall outline several different approaches that have been adopted in recent historical studies. We shall then be in a position to assess what value they may have.

The Contextual Approach

Before the discipline of the history of science became professionalised it was not uncommon to find histories in which there was little or no reference to the social and cultural context in which particular forms of scientific enquiry had been conducted. The history of science was simply the history of scientific ideas, of progress in the acquisition of truth. There was an inner logic to scientific development in that each generation inherited a set of problems; hypotheses would be designed to solve them, and in the process of testing these hypotheses, new theoretical knowledge would be forged and accumulate. This is, however, an inadequate picture, not least because it leaves out the manner in which scientific practice may depend upon the social or economic reasons why one project may take priority over another. It excludes matters of intellectual taste and fashion that may regulate the kind of theories that are acceptable. It certainly leaves out the political aspects of making a career in science—how scientists, for example, have had to cultivate a sometimes wary public. For these and other reasons there has been a shift away from the image of scientific knowledge as completely autonomous, gradually accumulating and floating above the sites in which it took shape.

One effect of this shift of sensibility has been to create a greater interest in religious parameters, because they, after all, have been constitutive elements in many of the contexts in which science has been pursued. A contextual approach turns out not to be a luxury but a necessity. This can be illustrated with a brief reference to that famous episode in the engagement of science and religion—the condemnation of Galileo by the Roman Catholic Church. This is such a celebrated case that it will be more fully examined in chapter 4. For the moment let us consider statements made by two of the actors. The first goes like this:

I say that if there were a true demonstration that the sun is at the centre of the world and the earth in the third heaven, and that the sun does not circle the earth but the earth circles the sun, then one would have to proceed with great care in explaining the Scriptures that appear contrary, and say rather that we do not understand them than that what is demonstrated is false.

The second actor, by contrast, has this to say:

In the learned books of worldly authors are contained some propositions about nature which are truly demonstrated, and others which are simply taught; in regard to the former, the task of wise theologians is to show that they are not contrary to Holy Scripture; as for the latter (which are taught but not demonstrated with necessity), if they contain anything contrary to the Holy Writ, then they must be considered indubitably false and must be demonstrated such by every possible means.

Despite the reference to contrast, the two statements are very similar. Both seem to say that if there were a demonstration that the Copernican system were correct, then it would be necessary to reconsider the exegesis of certain biblical texts. In fact it makes a nice game to ask which is Galileo and which Cardinal Bellarmine, who had the task in 1616 of admonishing him. In some respects it is the second statement that looks the more reactionary. Our second speaker is prepared to say that an undemonstrated proposition must be deemed false if it goes against the grain of Scripture. The first seems perfectly liberal in allowing that if there were a proof of the Copernican system, it would be no great shakes—just a bit of biblical reinterpretation and all would be well. But the author of that seemingly liberal statement was Bellarmine;32 the person who gave the Bible jurisdiction over dubious science was actually Galileo.33

The point of this game is simply to show that when texts are lifted from their contexts one's understanding is immediately impoverished. Inspecting these statements alone one would find it difficult to see why Galileo should have come into conflict with his Church. Place them in the political context of the time, however, and they take on a different complexion. Galileo behaved as if he had got decisive proof of the earth's motion. Neither Bellarmine not Pope Urban VIII could bring themselves to believe that such a proof would be possible.

As a corollary of the contextual approach, historians of science have come to appreciate the importance of local circumstances in encouraging a scientific career or in shaping intellectual attitudes.34 Biographies of scientific or religious leaders have to be rooted in place as well as time. As recent research has shown, representatives of one and the same doctrinal tradition have evinced different attitudes towards the same scientific theory according to where they happen to be. Geographical co-ordinates therefore assume a greater importance than one might imagine.

The research we have in mind concerns the reception of Darwinism in Belfast and Princeton. In both places there were Calvinists who opposed Darwin's theory; but the resistance in Belfast was to prove the more enduring. The reason has to do with local circumstances. There was nothing at Princeton to compare with the notorious Belfast Address of the physicist John Tyndall. When Tyndall delivered his Presidential Address at the 1874 meeting of the British Association he had gone on the offensive in more ways than one. His return to Ireland concentrated his mind on the refusal of local Catholic institutions to allow the sciences a place in their curricula—a refusal he deplored. In retaliation he offered a more completely naturalistic account of Darwinism than Darwin himself, pledging that science would wrest from theology the entire domain of cosmological theory. This coupled with a rebuke meted out by the Association to the theologian Robert Watts so soured feelings within the Presbyterian camp that Darwinism would henceforward be associated with intolerant materialism. Watts had prepared a paper for the meeting in which he urged conciliation between Christianity and science. The rebuke had consisted in a refusal to give it a place in the programme. The point, as David Livingstone has stressed, is that in exploring the historical relations between Calvinism and Darwinism it is not enough to focus on doctrinal issues. Local circumstances must be considered. His comparative study yields a telling contrast. Whereas in Belfast traditional Calvinism was used to refute both the science and metaphysics of evolution, at Princeton, under the leadership of James McCosh, just the opposite was occurring. While Watts in Belfast was campaigning against evolution as subversive of the Westminster Confession of Faith, Princeton's Benjamin Warfield would evolutionise human origins and claim Calvin as the intellectual precursor of Darwin.35

It is not the purpose of this book to dissolve the great issues that have been debated under the banner of ‘science and religion’ into fragments of local history; but there surely is value in reflecting on the extent to which our own attitudes to the big questions have been shaped by exigencies of both time and place.

A Functional Approach

In the scientific and theological literature of the past there has often been an interpenetration of ideas about nature and ideas about God. We have already seen examples of this in Kepler and Newton. In the literature of natural theology, the interpenetration was often so complete that one and the same book could be read as a work of scientific popularisation or of contemporary theology.36 As long as the natural sciences could supply evidence of design, the prospect of some kind of union remained. An approach that historians have found useful here is to ask what function the theology may be playing within the science and vice versa. In either case attention must also be paid to historical context.

It is not always appreciated, for example, that religious beliefs can function as presuppositions of science. Beliefs about the uniformity of nature have been grounded in the constancy and fidelity of God. Thomas Chalmers certainly thought in those terms. On another level, religious belief could be presented as a sanction for science as it was by Francis Bacon: the altruistic application of scientific knowledge would be for the glory of God and the relief of man's estate. Religious convictions could even provide motivation for science if one happened to believe, with Boyle or Newton, that the more one uncovered of the intricacies of nature the greater the evidence of divine intelligence. There might be the motivation too to accept one theory rather than another if by so doing one could score a point or two against a theological opponent! On yet another level religious beliefs have materialised in the discussion of scientific methodology. In evangelical circles there has often been a moratorium on the speculative hypothesis, a favourite text being Newton's famous ‘hypotheses non fingo’: I frame no hypotheses. In selecting between rival theories religious beliefs have intruded both consciously and unconsciously. Enthusiasm among religious leaders for evolutionary theories was in pretty short supply until the case for them became difficult to resist. Religious beliefs have also been invoked to reinforce aesthetic criteria in theory selection. Why do scientists opt for the most elegant equations? Why does nature seem to respond to them? Religious meaning has often been accorded to the ideas of simplicity, elegance and harmony that have so often regulated theory choice.37 Werner Heisenberg could say of his equations that it was as if he had been lucky enough to ‘look over the good Lord's shoulder while He was at work’.38

A functional approach need not be confined to the internal content of natural theology. One may also ask what wider purposes texts on natural theology fulfilled both for those who wrote them and for their audiences, both real and presumed.39 The contrast here might be with a more conventional philosophical approach, which seeks to expose the logical structure of the design argument. The aim of a functional analysis would be to uncover the uses to which natural theology was put. For example it would help to unify what might otherwise be disparate scientific and religious interests.

Appeals to design in nature might assist in the promotion of the sciences themselves, pre-empting criticism that might be born of theological suspicion. Design arguments might assist the religious apologist in attacking the atheist. They might even help to establish common ground in the context of missionary encounters with other cultures. They might gain a high profile, too, in contexts where it was diplomatic to play down doctrinal differences within the same confessional tradition. The design argument could be used as a means of corroborating a pre-existing faith or even of assuaging religious doubts that might be occasioned by disturbing scientific disclosures. The Cambridge geologist Adam Sedgwick once reassured a friend that he had nothing to fear from geology: ten thousand creative acts were recorded in stony tablets.40 Similarly, an essay of William Whewell casting doubt on a plurality of worlds was addressed to the perplexed believer.41

It is instructive, too, to consider the political functions of natural theology. When, in 1838, Adam Sedgwick addressed some three or four thousand colliers on Tynemouth beach he explained how the existing social order was also a natural order. According to John Herschel, Sedgwick had ‘led them on from the scene around them to the wonders of the coal-country below them, thence to the economy of a coal-field, then to their relations to the coal-owners and capitalists, then to the great principles of morality and happiness, and last to their relation to God, and their own future prospects’.42 To make sense of Sedgwick's moralising we need both a contextual and a functional analysis. He was speaking during a meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science at Newcastle, where coal-mining was vital to the local economy. In weaving science, industry and Christian morality into a seamless web, he was at the same time inculcating both resignation and deference to authority in those whom he addressed. There was clearly more to natural theology on this occasion than the bare bones of the design argument.

A Linguistic Approach

A contextual and functional analysis can be enriched by a third approach. This involves a closer study of the language in which claims about the relations between science and religion are expressed. Recent scholarship has shown that scientific texts perform rhetorical functions and that these can be fruitfully analysed.43 It must be emphasised that the word ‘rhetorical’ here is not being used in the disparaging sense of merely rhetorical. The question ‘Who is the author trying to persuade?’ and the question ‘What techniques of persuasion are being used?’ are both of central importance. What one is prepared to say may depend rather crucially on one's audience. As a defendant on trial Galileo, initially at least, claimed that he had not privileged the Copernican system in his discussion of the ‘two chief world systems’.44 But to a trusted correspondent he confessed that his book was ‘a most ample confirmation’ of the Copernican doctrine.45 Even the most technical scientific report is an exercise in communication and persuasion. But a report written for one's peers is very different from an exercise in popularisation.

The kind of rhetoric employed in statements that link nature to God may also depend on the particular role adopted by scientist or theologian. Scientists, for example, have written as investigators of nature, as reporters of their findings, as popularisers of science, as philosophers and as preachers. A theologian may write as an exegete, as an evangelist, as an apologist, pastor or preacher. These roles can of course overlap, but the language in which the arguments are couched is likely to be differently nuanced according to audience and occasion. Simply to lift statements linking nature and God, or science and religion, from the texts in which they were embedded can be a flat, two-dimensional exercise. To study the tropes, the metaphors, the linguistic structures employed by authors in winning over their audiences can bring the issues to life.

As an example let us take the famous case of Charles Darwin. References to a Creator do appear in the privacy of his transmutation notebooks. In the late 1830s he had as yet no reason to reject the belief that the Creator might create through laws.46 But one is immediately aware of a problem because in these same notebooks Darwin is deliberately calculating on how best to present his insights. In his metaphysical notebook, explicitly marked ‘private’, he issued instructions to himself: ‘to avoid stating how far, I believe, in materialism, say only that emotions, instincts, degrees of talent, which are hereditary are so because [the] brain of [a] child resembles [the] parent stock’.47 Given that self-conscious calculation, is it surprising that Darwin scholars should stress the ambiguity of his God-talk?48

In studying Darwin's project and its presentation, it is impossible to avoid the study of metaphor. At the heart of his theory was the concept of ‘natural selection’. In the struggle for existence was a filtering process, the better adapted variants within a species having the better chance of survival and of leaving progeny at the expense of their competitors. But where did the metaphor of ‘selection’ come from? Darwin was thinking of the familiar processes of artificial selection—the breeding of more productive cattle or fancier pigeons. In order to develop the desired characteristic the breeder would select the most promising individuals for mating. For Darwin it was a helpful analogy in reaching his audience. But as with all metaphors and analogies it also created ambiguities. In the case of artificial selection human intelligence intervened to accumulate the favoured characteristics. Did this mean there was a divine intelligence working through nature? The metaphor at the heart of Darwin's theory was also at the heart of the ensuing theological debate.49 One of the reasons why Darwin's use of language has remained an absorbing subject for study is that he was apt to ignore or forget the metaphorical basis of his model. When he wrote in the Origin of Species that ‘natural selection is daily and hourly scrutinising, throughout the world, every variation, even the slightest; rejecting that which is bad, preserving and adding up all that is good’, he was moving beyond analogy, attributing to natural selection the characteristics of an active being?50 In many of the classic texts on natural theology the admission of design had been supposed to rest on reason. As we show in chapter 6, an historical approach to those texts can be especially valuable if it is sensitive to the linguistic techniques employed by their authors to persuade their readers.

Underlying any discussion of the engagement of science and religion is the question of authority: how it is constituted and exercised. The linguistic approach can be particularly helpful here because it helps us to see how techniques employed in sermons, for example, would enable the clergy to exercise power and influence over their congregations, enlisting support for their message. Scientists have had to establish and sustain their authority in similar ways. It is no coincidence that when T. H. Huxley set out to boost the authority of the scientific expert he treated his audiences to what he called ‘lay sermons’.51 There was deliberate irony in the label, but the point remains. Scientists can and do behave as preachers. As one Frenchman observed of Humphry Davy: ‘You may foresee by a certain tuning or pitching of the organ of speech to a graver key, thrusting his chin into his neck, and even pulling out his cravat, when Mr. Davy is going to be eloquent.’52

A Biographical Approach

If the investigation of linguistic techniques sounds rather impersonal, there is another approach that is emphatically not. This is to shift the site of enquiry to the biography of particular individuals. A good biography will show us how its subject coped with the hopes and fears, the anxieties that are part of what it is to be human. If the subject happens to be a scientist who thought deeply about religion, the biographer may be able to bring alive the issues as they were played out, not merely in philosophical texts, but socially and, more intimately, in the inner life of an individual.53 An innovative biography of Darwin has helped us to appreciate how the illness of which he incessantly complained may have been primarily psychosomatic. We are shown what it meant to live through the consequences of harbouring in secret a theory that, if published, was likely to bring social stigma.54 Biographies can also be enthralling because they show us a life in flux. In the case of Darwin we now have poignant accounts of how the last vestiges of his faith were destroyed—not by some new scientific insight but by the shattering experience of bereavement. The death of his father in February 1849 was followed by the loss of his favourite daughter Annie early in 1851. In different but profound ways they tested beyond endurance his will to believe in the God he associated with Christianity. His heterodox father did not deserve eternal damnation; his angelic daughter had not deserved to die.55

The spiritual odyssey of Darwin's contemporary John Ruskin would also illustrate the value of a biographical approach. In his intellectual formation a love of the observational sciences as well as Romantic poetry contributed to his identity as an artist. His interest in geology is reflected in his membership of the London Geological Society. His intellectual biography is one in which, initially at least, there was a harmonious union of his artistic, scientific and religious interests. Operating with the concept of God's two books he saw himself supplying the spiritual dimension lacking in neutral, scientific descriptions of nature. Yet the more he learned of biblical criticism, the more he read the latest geology, the greater his hidden doubts became. His private frustration was confessed to Henry Acland in a letter that has often been quoted: ‘You speak of the flimsiness of your own faith. Mine, which was never strong, is being beaten into mere gold leaf, and flutters in weak rags from the letter of its old forms; but the only letters it can hold by at all are the old Evangelical formulae. If only the geologists would let me alone, I could do very well, but those dreadful hammers! I hear the clink of them at the end of every cadence of the Bible verse.’56 By focussing on ever-changing perceptions, a biographical approach can reveal more of the subtlety in the way that scientific and religious considerations may combine. The historical sciences clearly corroded Ruskin's convictions. Nevertheless when he spoke of his de-conversion the final straw had more to do with art than science. In one of his own accounts he could pin-point the exact moment:

I was still in the bonds of my old Evangelical faith; and, in 1858, it was with me, Protestantism or nothing: the crisis of the whole turn of my thoughts being one Sunday morning, at Turin, when, from before Veronese's Queen of Sheba, and under quite overwhelmed sense of his God-given power, I went away to a Waldensian chapel, where a little squeaking idiot was preaching to an audience of seventeen old women and three louts, that they were the only children of God in Turin; and that all the people in the world out of the sight of Monte Viso, would be damned. I came out of the chapel, in sum of twenty years of thought, a conclusively unconverted man.57

The examples of both Darwin and Ruskin suggest that to focus only on the proverbial ‘relations between science and religion’ may not be the best way of understanding how an individual thinker came to construct them. A biographical approach may show that, in some cases at least, piety and a commitment to the investigation of nature could co-exist in one and the same person. It may reveal anxiety, even torment, as new ideas were assimilated. It may reveal a whole range of strategies worked out by a particular individual to preserve a living faith and a scientific integrity. Or again, it may reveal impiety and hostility towards established religions. It may reveal fluctuations in the strength of one's convictions, of the kind that Darwin recorded: ‘As you ask,’ he replied to one correspondent, ‘I may state that my judgment often fluctuates.… I think that generally (and more and more as I grow older), but not always,… an Agnostic would be the more correct description of my state of mind.’58

A Practical Approach

An exclusive preoccupation with the relations between scientific and religious ideas can be attacked from another angle. It is surely important to examine practice as well as theory. With the history of science specifically in mind, it has been said that ‘knowledge is the product of human actions’.59 What kinds of action are involved in the practice of science? How do they compare with religious practices? As soon as the questions are transposed in this way, the methods of the social scientists assume an immediate importance.60 There can be anthropological studies of how scientists behave in their laboratories,61 sociological studies of how scientific communities control knowledge claims,62 and social histories of science in which changes in the status of the practitioner are explored.63

To dwell on practice rather than theory may well intensify our sense of two different language games and of a chasm between them. It is not immediately obvious, for example, how the experimental methods of laboratory life have any parallel in the practice of prayer, meditation, or worship. Indeed, when science and religion are sharply distinguished it is often through contrasting statements about practice. For example, it is sometimes said that scientists make predictions that can be rigorously tested whereas the forms of religious prophecy seem to belong to another world, sometimes in more senses than one. Nevertheless, there have been bridges in the past and the social historian may see some that would otherwise be missed.

Today we take the value of an experimental methodology more or less for granted, despite problems that can arise in the replication of results.64 In the seventeenth century what became known as the ‘experimental philosophy’ had to establish its credentials. The problem in a nutshell was why the report of an experimental result should be believed in preference to statements about nature derived from authoritative texts such as Aristotle and the Bible. Studies of Robert Boyle, one of the most ardent defenders of experimental enquiry, have disclosed the various techniques used to gain the trust of his audience. Experiments were described in ways that drew the audience in, as ‘virtual witnesses’. Or there might be reference to some unimpeachable dignatory—a clergyman, for example—present when the experiment was performed, who could testify to the veracity of the report. Above all, in conferring authority on an experimental result it helped if the reporter, and in this Boyle had his advantage, was an honourable, and Christian, gentleman. Questions of social standing and religious respectability could be relevant to substantiating claims for scientific truth.65

The study of religious, as well as scientific, practices can be equally revealing. The case of Michael Faraday provides a striking example because one can ask how Faraday's commitment to a biblical Christianity was manifest in his daily life. What did it mean in practice to be a member of a minority sect, the Sandemanians, whose beliefs implied a withdrawal from the rewards of this world? It clearly meant a life of moral discipline, of regular attendance at the meeting house—on Wednesday evenings as well as most of Sunday. The Sunday service involved hours of prayer, Bible study and exhortation. Following a simple meal, known as the ‘love-feast’, the service would resume, culminating in a celebration of the Lord's Supper. Faraday became an elder in the Church and certainly delivered exhortations. In these, biblical texts were in the foreground, minimising the distortion of God's word that might come from the human voice.

Living by the Bible also meant pastoral duties, ministering to the sick and dying. Faraday was conspicuous in supporting other Sandemanian fellowships outside London. He would visit elders in Glasgow, Edinburgh and Dundee. When schism threatened he would be active as a diplomat. His religion made stern practical demands, a life of discipline within a framework of moral law. It is possible to see a parallel with his role as a disciplined scientist, investigating the God-created, lawlike universe.66 There was even a sense in which Faraday ‘transferred the Sandemanian social philosophy to science’.67 His vision of the scientific community was one in which there should be no avarice, partisan interests or personal disputes. In the practice of science, as in the practice of religion, he mistrusted earthly rewards. He mistrusted the entrepreneurial spirit and interventionist forms of patronage that would detract from the purity of scientific investigation. The scientist was a moral agent whose knowledge was for sharing and for edification.68

The Value of the Historical Approach

Central to this chapter is the question whether the historical approach is of value. It has been important to raise this issue because, as a resource, history is infinitely fickle. If one believes in some inherent conflict between criteria of truth in the domains of science and religion, histories can be constructed that will reinforce that belief. If one prefers to assert the theistic roots of modern science there is no shortage of histories to oblige. Isaac Newton, with whom we began, was arguing some three hundred years ago, that science had only nourished in monotheistic cultures.69 So often when historical case-studies are made subservient to a philosophical thesis, the history is selectively reconstructed to do the necessary work. The value, however, may consist precisely in the fact that there is multiplicity—both in the stories to be told and in the manner of their telling. And this can be of practical value if it induces a little humility in those who habitually pronounce as if the issues are cut and dried.

If the study of philosophy can be justified because it helps us to recognise bad philosophy, the same is true of history. Once on a visit to Belfast one of the authors was asked if he would take part in a radio interview. He agreed on the condition that he would not be asked any loaded questions of a partisan nature. The condition was readily granted. Then the first question came. Did he believe that Catholics or Protestants had made the greater contribution to science? But the real point of this anecdote is that, in his introduction, the presenter, broadcasting loud and clear, announced that ‘we all know’ that Galileo got into trouble for believing the earth was round! It may be the most rudimentary service history can perform but popular understandings clearly remain in need of correction.

‘We all know’ that Huxley defeated Wilberforce. Yet it is far from clear that, on the day, Huxley enjoyed the victory that posterity has awarded him. Joseph Hooker reported that Huxley's voice had not carried and that he had not carried the audience with him. One convert to Darwin in the audience, Henry Baker Tristram, was apparently de-converted on witnessing the exchange.70 Instead of seeing this event as a typical confrontation in some timeless battle between ‘science’ and ‘religion’, it may more usefully be seen as reflecting an ulterior social transformation taking place in Britain at the time. The clergy were losing their power as cultural leaders and arbiters of knowledge.71 Huxley and others of his generation urged the claims of a scientific meritocracy, whose high professional standards demanded respect. In Huxley's view they were standards that a clerical amateur could no longer meet. This is not the whole story but this social transformation, associated with the increasing professionalisation of science, has to be taken into account when examining the fate of natural theology.

How might the case for the value of historical work be extended? Principally, it helps us to break out of the tired moulds in which treatments of science and religion are routinely cast.72 If we are used to thinking only in terms of harmony, it can deliver uncomfortable shocks. If we are used to thinking in terms of polarity between extreme positions, it can be liberating to discover other options through the many thinkers who have occupied middle ground and sought conciliation. Anecdotes about apes and bishops can give the impression that in 1860 one had to be either a committed Christian or a committed Darwinian. One might never suspect that during the Oxford meeting of the British Association another Anglican clergyman spoke out and expressed opinions very different from those of Bishop Wilberforce. This was Frederick Temple, headmaster of Rugby School and future Archbishop of Canterbury. In a sermon preached on the first of July he argued that the finger of God could be seen at work in the laws of nature. Too often, he explained, religious apologists had tried to make capital out of scientific ignorance. There was no need to oppose the extension of natural law into new territory. In saying this he was tacitly creating the space for Darwin's science. He did so confidently because he believed that proof of the existence of natural laws served to reinforce belief in the existence of moral laws.73

There is value, too, in the realisation that we should not talk about either ‘science’ or ‘religion’ as if they are things in themselves. The word ‘scientific’ is often used indiscriminately to describe bodies of knowledge, methods of enquiry, forms of reasoning and even institutions. Historians and philosophers of science cannot help but see scientific activity in dynamic terms as a multi-faceted and ongoing process. But in that process, and in the different branches of science, many different-even conflicting—methods have been practised. And they have been practised by men and women not by that phantom presence who enables it to be said that the test tube was heated. The scaffolding by which our modern knowledge has been produced Mars the marks of the cultures in which it was erected. And the scaffolding itself, as in the case of Newton's science, sometimes left an enduring mark on the edifice. The instability of the solar system was associated by Newton with the belief that occasional ‘reformations’ were required, under the guiding arm of Providence. In the later science of Laplace, the inherent stability of the system with its self-correcting powers tied in perfectly with the more secular culture of the Revolutionary era in France.74 It is instructive to see that scientific knowledge has both shaped and been shaped by religious belief. There has been two-way traffic and, in some contexts, there still is.

We cannot, in the last analysis, keep history at arm's length. It is ultimately inescapable because we are all part of the same stream, albeit tossed by different currents. Because the present depends on the past, there will always be a symbiotic relationship between our understanding of the one and of the other. Despite, or rather because if, the complexities that they bring to light, the historical approaches we have identified in this chapter should be pursued with redoubled vigour. Those who follow them find so much that is enriching in the process of exploration. No-one should doubt that it is possible to gain inspiration from the great minds of the past, many of whom (Immanuel Kant for example) wrote with greater sophistication than one frequently finds today. This is not the same as saying that we should scour the history of philosophy for that ‘best account of the relations between science and religion’. If we are asked to provide that, we can only ask in return, ‘whose science and whose religion?’