In these troubled times, when academics spend sleepless nights worrying about cost centres and ‘units of resource’, prizes of $10,000 are a veritable godsend. As the above advertisement indicates, the Templeton Foundation has offered substantial prizes for courses on science and religion. Winners of these prizes must be the envy of colleagues in other areas, since undergraduate courses on the eighteenth-century novel or on quantum mechanics do not qualify for such large cash bonanzas. Although the Templeton Foundation's munificence is to be welcomed as a way of directing scholarly attention to issues in the science and religion domain, it is clear from the advertisement that the Foundation is not prepared to fund any such course. The small print that follows the above caption specifies certain limitations: The course must be academically respectable; a ‘balance [must be struck] in the treatment of science and religion’ and ‘intellectual humility [must be achieved]—stressing optimistic, progressive, exploratory, and non-pejorative attitudes towards both science and religion’. These latter specifications are informed by the views on ‘humility theology’ previously published by Sir John Templeton.1

Some readers will be horrified and others delighted to hear that students at a number of universities, especially in Christian colleges in America, are struggling with such deep problems as the theological implications of modern cosmological theory and the bearing of both science and religion on the question of free will; problems that necessarily require knowledge of a range of disciplines and that also engage the students' personal religious beliefs. With our far more secular and aloof tradition in British universities some of the material offered by previous winners of Templeton awards may seem rather biased in favour of a theistic perspective. Yet one senior British academic has publicly applauded Templeton's initiative, adding, ‘Thus an increasing number of scientists and theologians will be taught that there is no conflict between science and religion, when both are properly understood.’2

Should outside bodies clearly committed to a theistic perspective (however broad-based) offer such hefty carrots to academics? Is this an unwarranted intrusion of religion into secular academe? Should universities teach courses that (according to the academic quoted above) so manifestly support ‘religion’? While not wishing to ignore these important value-laden questions we intend instead to focus on a closely related problem that we regularly encounter as historians teaching in British universities. What should we include in our own undergraduate courses on the history of science and religion? At an early stage in planning such courses a decision has to be made about how broadly to define both science and religion. This decision will, in turn, affect the scope of the science-religion domain. The assertion—quoted above—that ‘there is no conflict between science and religion’ is unhelpful since it imposes a simple and anachronistic rule on the past. Indeed, as a general claim it is as indefensible as the conflict thesis which we argued, in chapter 1, is an untenable master-narrative. The rider, ‘when both [science and religion] are rightly understood’, does not resolve the issue but merely raises further problems: Whose understanding of religion? Should we accept the views of foot soldiers attending a recent Christian Coalition meeting in Washington who cheered every speaker who lambasted evolutionary theory?3 Should we listen instead to the ministers of the Church—and if so, which ministers? (for they don't all speak with one voice). Or should we attend to the Dalai Lama? The situation in science may seem more straightforward, but although there is much that seems settled, it is worth remembering that many areas of profound but honest disagreement exist. The interpretation of quantum theory remains a live issue, with Bohm's hidden-variable version attracting renewed attention. Likewise, at the time of writing, scientists are far from unanimous on the pressing question whether BSE can be transmitted to humans in the form of CJD. Again, Daniel Dennett's recent attempt to ‘swat’ Steven Jay Gould and all liberal Darwinians reminds us of ongoing controversies over the specific processes responsible for evolutionary change.4 Indeed, contrary to the conventional emphasis on consensus in science, for some commentators the essence of the scientific lies in its challenge to the received wisdom, so that science becomes, in the late Karl Popper's apt phrase, an ‘unended quest’. Although science is, from Popper's standpoint, the most critically tested form of knowledge, it is also always tentative and open to revision.5

If we move from the present to times past, the problem of deciding what counts as a proper understanding of science becomes all the more complex. Science offered a very different understanding of the world in 1695, compared with 1795, let alone 1995. Even if we acknowledge what is accepted as science today, we are bound to distort the past if we interpret it through a presentist lens. The past needs to be accorded its own integrity. In this sense, Templeton's requirements of balance and intellectual humility have much to commend them. However, these very values raise some challenging problems for the historian; problems that we shall engage in the present chapter which aims to show that the perceived relation between science and religion depends on how both of these terms are defined, when and by whom.

It is important to stress that the historian is a Jekyll-and-Hyde character, leading a double life. Willi one loot in the present and one in the past, historians can—and usually do—study movements and views which they do not personally endorse. For example, one does not have to accept the truth of alchemy in order to study its history. Equally, a devout Protestant can make important contributions to the history of Catholicism; an example in our own field being the late Richard S. Westfall who contributed greatly to the study of Galileo and his clerical contemporaries. Indeed, historians must tread carefully when dealing with the history of their own religious denomination. While we cannot suspend our own religious beliefs and our present-day scientific understanding, they may inform but should not confine what we study in the past and how we study it. Hence, to the question Whose science?, one answer is ‘not necessarily ours’. The very same response should be given to the question Whose religion?

We shall return to these questions later after examining two specific examples that pose these questions in extreme forms, since they exemplify positions that almost all readers will reject outright. The first case study addresses Auguste Comte's attempt to create a religion based on science; the other is scriptural geology, which sought to create a science based on religion. These two examples make us confront the problems of interpreting both science and religion.

Scientism

Before proceeding we must introduce the term scientism which has often been used to describe the extension of science beyond its usual disciplinary boundaries. Scientistic imperialists argue that there is no limit to science and that all aspects of life can, and indeed should, be encompassed. One recurrent claim is that there is no room for Christianity, Judaism, Islam or any other traditional religion that is not based on scientific knowledge. In this sense scientism is profoundly opposed to our conventional understanding of religion. Yet paradoxically scientism also demands the replacement of traditional forms of religion by a science-based philosophy that in effect takes over many of the functions of religion and thus itself becomes a religion, or what the late nineteenth-century chemist Wilhelm Ostwald called an Ersatzreligion—a substitute religion. Why then did Ostwald develop his Ersatzreligion? Enthused by the scientifically-successful new field of thermodynamics, he sought to construct a complete world-view using its principles. Having earlier jettisoned the Christianity of his childhood, Ostwald loudly proclaimed that energetics would provide the key to understanding all aspects of life including the laws of sociology, the psychology of the individual and, of course, religion. Interestingly, some vestigial aspects of Christianity remained, although they were attributed with new and, in his opinion, proper scientific significance. Thus he advocated a form of meditative prayer which he considered psychologically efficacious since it enabled individuals to relax and recharge their batteries. He even preached Sunday sermons and retained Christmas as the festival of light. However the lights on the Christmas tree were stripped of their specifically Christian connotations and were instead interpreted physically as an energy source and as a reminder of the winter solstice.6

Viewed historically the roots of scientism can be traced to the Enlightenment with its ideology of progress and perfectibility.7 Yet many versions of scientism have emerged over the last three centuries. Like other anti-religious scientists of our day, Richard Dawkins has adopted a strong form of scientism based on the theory of evolution. Another familiar version assumes that there is a distinctive scientific method which is, moreover, the only legitimate means of gaining knowledge in all domains. For example, dialectical materialism, which Marx proposed as the basic process operating in history, has often been touted as the method governing both science and society, but also a method that undermines traditional religions. It is important to recognise that all forms of scientism demand a realignment of authority; science being accorded absolute authority.

Comte's Religion of Humanity

Although now widely rejected by professional philosophers of science, positivism has a long and honourable history. Put simply, positivism requires that all knowledge is empirical; that is, founded on observation, experience or experiment. While many positivists have deployed their philosophical creed to confute religion, the French Catholic Pierre Duhem can be cited as an important counterexample. Writing at the turn of the century Duhem insisted that science can only deal with constant conjunctions between observed events; the scientist is therefore restricted to mapping correlations but cannot offer a causal account of nature. This limited prescription for science enabled Duhem to retain a separate domain for religious truths, which are not empirical. Science and Catholicism could thus co-exist unhindered.8 While Duhem deployed a positivist philosophy of science to maintain the integrity of his religion, many other positivists—perhaps the majority—have advocated scientistic imperialism and rejected religious claims as non-empirical and therefore metaphysical and even meaningless. For example, one of the explicit aims of the highly influential Vienna Circle, whose members propounded logical positivism in the 1920s, was the repudiation of ‘metaphysics and theology’. Indeed, according to their demarcation criterion, all statements about God have to be rejected as meaningless.9

One of the best-known nineteenth-century positivists to adopt an anti-religious stance was the French social philosopher who coined the term positivism, Auguste Comte (1798–1857). According to his later reflections on his childhood, he grew up in an ‘eminently Catholic and monarchical’ bourgeois family that had managed to survive the Revolutionary period with its religious and social values intact. By his mid-teens he had rebelled against this traditional upbringing and had encompassed the Republican cause. He had also repudiated any belief in God and any adherence to Catholicism.10 In 1817 he began working for the Comte de Saint-Simon whose views on social and religious reform influenced him deeply. However, by the time Comte came to write about the Religion of Humanity in the 1850s he had rejected most of his earlier radical ideas and had aligned himself with a conservative backlash, even publishing in 1855 a work entitled Appel aux Conservateurs.

Despite the vicissitudes of his political views the adult Comte was consistent in his opposition to Catholicism, one of his crucial statements on theology being published in the first volume of his Cours de Philosophie Positive (1830). This work opens with his famous characterisation of the three historical stages through which each branch of human knowledge must pass: ‘the theological, or fictitious; the metaphysical, or abstract; and the scientific, or positive’.11 He briefly—and arrogantly—characterised the theological stage as the search for essences and for first and final causes. During this stage, phenomena in the natural world are ascribed to the actions of supernatural beings; thus thunder and lightning are due to the activities of the gods, while the attraction of material bodies (pace Newton12) result from the immediate imposition of God's will. For Comte, theology represented an immature stage through which civilisation had passed on the progressive road to the metaphysical stage and ultimately to positive knowledge.

Although in his earlier Cours de Philosophie Positive Comte appears to reject religion as an outmoded world-view, his writings of the 1850s, especially his Système de Politique Positive, were centred on constructing what he called the ‘Religion of Humanity’. As the name suggests this religion was an Ersatzreligion; a religion to replace traditional religions, especially the Catholicism of Comte's childhood that he rejected so vehemently. Considered politically, this project appears to have been a conservative reaction to the revolutionary movements that had inflicted so much disruption across Europe in the late 1840s and which were, in Comte's opinion, responsible for the breakdown of society and for undermining all stabilising institutions. He contended that a return to religion was required in order to bring an end to anarchy in the Western world.13 Yet he was not advocating Christianity in any form, but rather a new religion. As he frequently emphasised, the main function of religion is to enable people to live together in unity and harmony. This was the ultimate aim of his Religion of Humanity, which would presage the final triumph of science and positivism.

A major root of Comte's programme for a new social order was his positivist philosophy of science with its search for order—the laws of nature—and the rejection of an intervening, capricious God. The Religion of Humanity was Comte's practical prescription for the human condition in a world dominated by science. Through science we can discover the laws governing nature, man and society. As one of his most enthusiastic British disciples explained, he had been attracted to the Religion of Humanity because Comte was ‘the one thinker of the modern world professing to offer men a religion—a religion of love, poetry and service—founded on science’.14 It reaffirmed the Enlightenment ideal of extending rationality and science to encompass the human sciences and thus to create a social environment that united all people and also provided unity between humankind and nature.

One of the key documents for studying Comte's Ersatzreligion is his Catéchisme Positiviste, ou Sommaire Exposition de la Religion Universelle (1852; English translation, 1858). This remarkable text contains thirteen instructive conversations between a priest from the Church of Humanity and a woman—as we shall see, gender roles were of great importance for Comte. Through their dialogue the priest introduces the woman to the Positivist Church's beliefs, doctrines and practices and responds sympathetically to her questions. Based on the dialogue format of a traditional Catholic catechism, in which a priest satisfactorily answers the doubts of an aspiring (male) communicant, Comte's dialogue also provides an affective narrative for conveying the basic tenets of his Religion of Humanity and for answering standard objections.

In this and other later writings Comte adopted a sociological perspective. Acknowledging that human nature was not entirely fixed, he insisted that progressive social organisations must take full cognisance of the social and psychological laws governing human action. He particularly emphasised the role of the individual within three types of social organisation—(1) the family, (2) the state and (3) Humanity. Describing the function of state government as a ‘cohesive force… at once to combine and to direct’,15 he readily acknowledged that individuals are not all equal. He therefore envisaged the more powerful citizens and families directing the state apparatus for the public good. Each person would have to fulfil his or her own role—no matter how humble or how elevated—within society. Yet he considered that individuals could only live peaceably with one another if they acknowledged their relation to the collective Humanity. By considering the role of the individual within these social groups Comte produced a blueprint for a stable but manifestly hierarchical society.

Comte considered that morality was not only necessary for the smooth-functioning of social organisations but was essential for providing the individual with the psychological comfort necessary to live in a physical universe that science has shown to be impersonal and ultimately meaningless. Because religion had traditionally endowed people's lives with meaning and value, Comte conceived his Religion of Humanity as providing a similar support for citizens of his scientifically-organised society. He therefore prescribed an elaborate set of doctrines and rituals that, he claimed, would psychologically satisfy the individual and unite citizens into a stable society.16

In Comte's writings we find many examples of religious language, although necessarily redefined for his own purposes. Thus he stated that the soul is a ‘valuable term [to be used] to stand for the whole of our intellectual and moral functions, without involving any allusion to some supposed entity answering to the [same] name’. Likewise when he referred to the ‘Great Being’ or ‘Supreme Being’ he was not evoking the God of the Bible but Humanity, which he described as ‘the prime mover of… [our] existence,… [and] the centre of our affections’. Comte's definition of Humanity is surprisingly vague: within this term he included not only everyone alive today but also all past and future generations. Thus the ‘Great Being’ possesses the attributes of immensity and eternity that are traditionally accorded to God.17 He could even write in quasi-religious vein: ‘We adore her [Humanity],… in order to serve her better by lettering ourselves.’ In short, he substituted his goddess Humanity for the Christian God.18

Turning to ritual, the Positivist is expected to pray three times each day for a total of approximately two hours. Comte argued that the aim of prayer is ‘to give expression to [our] best affections… [our] fervent wish [being] to become more tender, more reverential, more courageous even’. Through prayer individuals rise above their introverted and selfish states in order to identify themselves with Humanity and its transcendental values. The highest good is necessarily social good. Poetry plays a particularly important role in private prayer: ‘Poetry’, wrote Comte, ‘is the soul of our worship.’19 While private prayer is of crucial importance for strengthening the moral powers, the intellect is also enhanced through acts of contemplation during prayer sessions. In this scheme prayer is essential for both moral and intellectual improvement.20

But worship also possesses a public dimension and here we find Comte adopting and adapting the Catholic sacraments. While some of his nine sacraments possess purely secular and social significance—such as maturity (men aged 42) and retirement (for men aged 63)—others bear a marked resemblance to the Catholic sacraments, but with the traditional meanings interestingly subverted. For example, at ‘transformation’—that is, death—the life of the departed is celebrated as ‘a just appreciation of the life that is ending’. The priest's role is to visit the remaining members of the family in order to express the sorrow of the whole community; in this way the family and society are united in grief.21

Clearly-defined gender roles are much in evidence. For example, in response to the woman's enquiry about her specific office, the priest answers: ‘The most important duty of woman is to form and perfect man.’22 Women, he asserted, should not pursue work outside the home but should devote themselves to serving the family. Marriage is portrayed as an altruistic ideal with the husband providing financial support and the wife, who possesses no wealth of her own, complementing the husband by taking responsibility for the moral sustenance of the family. It is clear that Comte held women in awe. He considered that women are endowed with naturally superior moral qualities and they therefore personify the noblest endowments of Humanity. Comte even claimed that women would fare far better in the Religion of Humanity than they did under either Catholicism or socialism! Ironically the priest drew on traditional Catholic iconography when he explained that the ‘symbol of our Divinity will always be a woman of the age of thirty, with her son in her arms’.23 In Comte's scheme Humanity was female.

This exemplary role for women is in sharp contrast to Comte's own brief and disastrous marriage to a self-willed prostitute named Caroline Massin, who refused to behave like his ideal woman.24 Equally important to Comte's biography was his infatuation with the attractive Clotilde de Vaux whom he transformed into his super-woman after her death in 1846 at the early age of thirty. Unlike Caroline, but like his idealisation of Clotilde, women in his exemplary society are loyal to their husbands and preserve social morality and stability. Women, then, become the moral guardians of the family and the three principal female relationships—mother, wife and daughter—are associated respectively with the qualities of veneration, attachment and kindness.25 In many respects Comte evoked a highly conservative vision of women and of their social roles. However, one aspect of his earlier more liberal views remained when he proposed that women should receive a similar education to men—that is, a scientific education.

One of the most remarkable aspects of the Religion of Humanity was its calendar which was based on the Catholic almanac, but rewritten from a positivist perspective. In rejecting the solar and lunar calendars Comte, like Napoleon, sought to rationalise and impose order on time. He therefore divided the year into thirteen equal months of twenty-eight days. The traditional names for days of the week were retained and Comte insisted that his calendar was more rational than the Gregorian calendar since any date always fell on the same day of the week. One extra day had to be added every year—which was to commemorate the Festival of the Dead, ‘happily introduced by Catholicism’.26 On leap years an additional day was included on which the Festival of Holy Women was celebrated. Each month possessed its proper educational theme marriage in the second month, women in the tenth month, the priesthood in the eleventh. There were to be festivals of science, art and inventors; of animals, fire, iron and the sun.

The days of the year were also occasions for implementing another part of Comte's grand design. Since the Religion of Humanity required the worshipper to contemplate the lives of those worthy paragons of Humanity who had lived in the past, a notable man (or occasionally woman) was celebrated on each day of the year. Thus the history of Humanity was recapitulated each year starting with the theocratic period—symbolised by Moses—and ending with the modern scientific era represented by the French histologist and physician Marie François Xavier Bichat (1771–1802). Comte's calendar is dated ‘Paris, Monday, 22 Charlemagne 67 (9 July, 1855)’—that is, the twenty-second day of the seventh month of the 67th year since the fall of the Bastille, which he considered the provisional start of the Positivist era. However, he also claimed that dates should properly be calculated from 1855, which he decreed was the formal start of the Positivist epoch.27

Every month is divided into four weeks, each associated with a subdivision of the month and with a leading personage who is commemorated especially on the Sunday of that week. Thus the month of modern science is divided between Galileo and other physical scientists, especially astronomers; Newton and fellow mathematicians; Lavoisier and other chemists; Gall and fellow physiologists. Each day of the year is devoted to the commemoration of the noble thoughts and deeds of a particular illustrious person (often with a substitute name for leap-years), while children born on that day would take the pertinent name. Although a few British men and women are memorialised, the list is dominated by the French. Also, perhaps surprisingly, several biblical characters and other religious leaders—including Abraham, Isaiah, Mohammed, and a bevy of saints—found niches in the Positivist calendar, although Jesus is noticeably absent.

Despite his Religion of Humanity being conceived in stark opposition to Catholicism, it is ironic how closely it parallels Catholic practices. As T. H. Huxley perceptively commented in one of his own Lay Sermons, ‘Comte's ideal… is Catholic organization without Catholic doctrine, or, in other words, Catholicism minus Christianity’. Huxley also dismissed Comte's views about scientific method as ‘a complete failure’.28 Many of the other leading scientists of the day likewise remained unimpressed.

However, Comte's writings attracted much attention in both Britain and France. Several of his works were translated into English and made a considerable impact on the intellectual life of the mid-Victorian period. Harriet Martineau, John Stuart Mill, George Eliot, Thomas Hardy and George Henry Lewes were among the leading philosophical and literary figures who took him and his philosophy seriously. Martineau even issued a two-volume highly-edited version of the Cours under the title The Positive Philosophy of Auguste Comte (1853). Moreover, a relatively small group of his followers openly espoused the Religion of Humanity. The stormy history of this cohort sheds remarkable light on the attraction of Comte's Ersatzreligion and some of the difficulties in implementing it.29

Like several of the other main figures in English Positivism its first leader, Richard Congreve, hailed from a strong evangelical background. Having attended Rugby School and Wadham College, Oxford, Congreve took holy orders in 1843 and, after a period leaching at Rugby, returned to Wadham in 1849 as a Fellow and tutor. By then he was already familiar with Positivism and came progressively under Comte's influence. Resigning his Fellowship in 1854 in order to marry, he moved to London and three years later—the year of Comte's death—renounced his orders. By this time he had dedicated himself to the Positivist cause, delivering regular lectures and publishing an English edition of the Catéchisme Positiviste in 1858. Nine years later he was one of the co-founders of the London Positivist Society. However, Congreve was not a charismatic leader and his lectures drew few auditors. He was also moody and difficult to work with. One of the ironies of the history of his Church is that far from achieving its ideal of uniting humanity it became a microcosm of schism and dissent.

A major source of disunity was the extent to which the Church should look to Comte and his writings as its final authority. Congreve exhibited this extreme position, asserting that the Church of Humanity must follow Comte's scriptures to the letter and requiring passive obedience from his followers. A hymn, written to commemorate the twenty-fifth anniversary of Comte's death, indicates this orientation:

We praise thee, Humanity, as for all thy great servants, so more especially on this day devoted to his memory, for thy greatest servant, Auguste Comte, through whose teaching Thou standest revealed to all future generations as the source to man of all good which through long ages of effort and suffering he has attained, and as the power by which throughout the rest of his existence on earth he may increase that good; and we pray that in proof of our gratitude we may become thy more willing and complete servants; that, guided by his teaching and influenced by his example, we may consecrate our lives more wholly to the carrying forward the work for which he lived—the attainment by man of that unity which has been the aspiration of all thy noblest saints, but which he alone has taught us how to reach. In his name, and through him, we praise and magnify thee as the Queen of our devotion, the Lady of our loving service, the one centre of all our being, the one bond of all the ages, the one shelter for all the families of mankind, the one foundation of a truly Catholic Church. To thee be all honour and glory. Amen.30

By contrast with Congreve's deification of Comte, his opponents considered that Comte had merely provided the basis for a religion so that individuals were free to develop their own insights in whatever way they chose. Moreover these dissidents eschewed a fixed liturgy and rituals, instead devoting their Sunday services to talk, readings, hymns, music and poetry, all of which were frowned on by Congreve and his followers.

The Positivist movement was not confined to London; branches were established in Birmingham, Leicester and Manchester while Churches of Humanity flourished in Liverpool and Newcastle.31 Never a large movement in Britain, the Religion of Humanity was in sharp decline by the opening decades of the twentieth century. Yet it provides a particularly instructive example of scientism; for Comte and his followers the Religion of Humanity was scientifically-based and replaced existing forms of religious life.

Scriptural Geology

Our second case-study is of scriptural geology, which has received a harsh press. Like its antagonists in the early nineteenth century and the opponents of Creationism in our own time, some historians have rounded on scriptural geologists as simplistic fundamentalists who defended an untenable and anti-scientific world-view. For example, in his 1951 book entitled Genesis and Geology the American historian of science Charles Gillispie chastised these ‘men of the lunatic fringe, like Granville Penn, John Faber, Andrew Ure, and George Fairholme, [who] got out their fantastic geologies and natural histories, a literature which enjoyed a surprising vogue, but which is too absurd to disinter’. Despite readily acknowledging the popularity of the genre, Gillispie made no attempt to explain why these books were written and why they commanded a not inconsiderable audience.32

To take another, more recent and less biassed example, scriptural geologists enter Martin Rudwick's impressive study of the Great Devonian Controversy only as dogmatic irritants opposed to the gentlemanly geologists who were trying to win public support for a secular, scientific geology. Yet in his more recent book on geological illustrations Rudwick has adopted a different approach. Concentrating on the illustrations in Johann Scheuchzer's Physica Sacra of 1731 he recognises two important continuities between the much maligned scriptural geologists and the scientific geologists to whom they have so often been opposed. Firstly, they were both concerned with time and sequence: however foreshortened the chronology of the Bible, it postulated a successive series of changes in the world's animal and plant populations, concluding with the creation of man. Much the same sequence was adopted by secular scientists during the nineteenth century to show the progressive changes in flora and fauna. Secondly, many of the pictorial conventions deployed by Scheuchzer and other scriptural geologists were carried over to later illustrations of the geological and organic changes, now seen as natural—rather than supernatural—developments.33 Thus, in contrast to Gillispie's demonisation of scriptural geology, Rudwick's more recent work indicates a possible means of accommodating it within geological history while (in his earlier book) accepting that rival programmes for pursuing geology remained opposed to one another.

Our principal concern here will be to show that by embracing a non-judgemental attitude we can appreciate scriptural geology as a legitimate subject for historical analysis and as one strategy for unifying science and religion that was widely adopted in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. We shall concentrate on a scriptural geologist named George Fairholme, who published A General View of the Geology of Scripture in 1833.34 The date is significant since the book appeared just when a vocal generation of geologists was striving to make their subject secular and to control the meaning of their science. In one sense his book represents the very antithesis of scientism, since rather than building a world-view on contemporary scientific ‘truths’ Fairholme was seeking to understand the physical world by using the truths contained in the Bible. Yet such a characterisation of Fairholme's book oversimplifies his argument and does not do justice to its complex mixture of history, biblical exegesis, empirical observation and appeals to the laws of nature.

We are apt to misunderstand Fairholme unless we interpret him primarily as an historian or antiquary. Thus he pursued his enquiry not only into the history of the earth but also devoted his final chapter to the origin of languages and sought to determine the history of the different tribes and races by drawing on Josephus's writings. Moreover, using a familiar biblical chronology he pronounced dates for both the Creation and the Deluge. In pursuing this programme he explicitly adopted ‘Mosaical History for my guiding star, to be kept constantly in view throughout my course’.35 As Nicolaas Rupke noted, scriptural geologists had grown up in the tradition of classical scholarship that prized written texts. Thus, ‘[q]uestions about the history of the world, its chronology, its periodization, even its major vicissitudes… were to be answered first and foremost from a study of… written documents, the most reliable of which was believed to be the Bible’.36 In a particularly illuminating passage Fairholme described his geology as ‘grounded on the Inspired History, and so strongly supported by the evidence of physical facts… [that] the current of the narrative runs smoothly along, and out minds feel satisfied, and at rest’. Thus he conceived his geology as providing a coherent account of the past that would satisfy the mind and leave it in a state of repose. On this account the truths contained in the Bible meshed smoothly with empirical information from a number of different sources, creating no dissonance to disturb the reader. By contrast, secular geological theories created a confused historical narrative that engendered feelings of ‘doubt and uncertainty’, leaving the mind in ‘a bewildered and uncertain state’ because, he claimed, they are ‘so repulsive to reason and common sense’.37

Throughout his book Fairholme was alert to the threat posed to religion by modern geological theories. Drawing on a long tradition of anti-speculative thought he—like present-day Creationists—charged many of his contemporary geologists with indulging in ‘the very excesses of hypothesis’. In place of the geologists' extravagant hypotheses he appealed to authenticated facts as the basis of both history and geology, since only a science founded on facts—including the facts contained in the Bible—would lead to truth and be proof against error. But his opposition to modern geological theories stemmed not only from their shaky foundations but also from their untenable moral implications. Thus he argued that the ‘great end of the study of geology ought to be a moral, rather than a scientific one’ and he conceived that the proper ‘coalition… between science and religion, will bid defiance to the utmost efforts of Infidelity and Scepticism’.38 Fairholme felt particularly obliged to respond to Charles Lyell's recently-published Principles of Geology and particularly Lyell's rejection of the Deluge as a major agent in the earth's history.39 The unlimited time-scale demanded by Lyell was not only preposterous but was based on a mistakenly low estimate for the quantity of mud eroded each day by the Ganges. If the empirically correct figures were adopted, claimed Fairholme, then a much shorter time-scale would suffice and Lyell's theory would be rendered false. This move legitimated a geological time-scale of a few thousand pears which cohered with his understanding of Mosaic narrative.40

Creationists have disagreed over whether the ‘days’ of Creation should be interpreted literally or as extended epochs—thus lengthening the pre-Adamic period considerably.41 Fairholme adopted the former position and insisted that God had created the world in six days, each of twenty-four hours duration. Indeed, the Creation was a specific divine act that had occurred in the past and to which a precise date could be assigned—4004 BC, in accordance with the biblical chronology devised by Archbishop Ussher in the seventeenth century. Likewise the Deluge was a real, well-authenticated historical event; its commencement being dated to 2348 BC. Moreover, the Deluge, which wrought havoc across the whole earth, occupied a definite timespan—one year and ten days according to Fairholme. Thus the key events in the history of the world could be uniquely located on a chronological chart, just like the annals of Noah's family or the descendants of the House of Stuart.

Despite his historical and antiquarian orientation, Fairholme shared a surprising amount with contemporary secular geologists, for although the Creation and the Deluge were manifestly miraculous events that transcend science, he insisted that throughout the remainder of its history the earth was shaped by natural causes. While he was careful to stress that such causes were, by themselves, inadequate to account for all geological evidence, he allowed the same laws of nature to operate in both the ante-diluvial and postdiluvial periods. Like most contemporaries—even those geologists he most opposed—he readily acknowledged the law-likeness of nature. However, he gave this familiar dictum a theological twist by claiming that ‘by the laws to which all things have been submitted by the Almighty, (to which we generally give the unmeaning name of the laws of nature), matter is constantly assuming a different form’. He also insisted that the term ‘laws of nature’ was a malapropism since these laws are really the laws of God; that is, laws that God framed and imposed on matter.42

Turning to geology, he claimed that the primary rocks were forged at the Creation, whereas the secondary formations were the result of law-like changes subsequently affecting the material comprising these primary rocks. One implication of this distinction was that only secondary rocks can contain fossil remains; indeed, he used the presence of fossils to help identify secondary formations. Most plants were likewise to be found growing on secondary formations. Yet to explain the existence of plants growing in regions comprising primary rocks, Fairholme was forced to postulate that primitive soil had been deposited at the Creation. Throughout its history the earth had been subject to the law of gravity and the laws affecting both the air and the seas. It is clear from this discussion that he was familiar with some of Newton's views, even citing extensive passages from David Brewster's Life of Newton on the shape of the earth and the action of tides.43 In accepting the operation of physical and chemical laws Fairholme incorporated into his Mosaic geology one of the basic principles of contemporary science.

But the common ground does not end there. Fairholme emphasised the role of facts—because facts firmly grounded science on the bedrock of truth. The facts, as he constituted them, included information gleaned from the Bible but also empirical evidence. Much of his book is filled with descriptions of observations made by himself and by others. For example, he described in some detail the stratigraphy displayed by a ridge in the Jura mountains, the geology of St Michael's cave in Gibraltar (quoting from a seaman who visited the Island in 1823–4), the plains of South America (published by Humboldt), the fossilised human bones from Kostritz in Germany (as described by Schlotheim in 1820), and the bones of hyenas discovered at Kirkdale in Yorkshire by the Oxford geologist William Buckland. The book also contains two plates—a geological cross-section of the chalk basin at Sandwich in Kent and a fossil tree discovered at Craigleith quarry near Edinburgh. Add to this his claim to have undertaken extensive geological fieldwork and we begin to appreciate that, like his opponents, Fairholme insisted on the importance of empirical observations in geology.

One interesting facet of Fairholme's (admittedly restricted) empiricism concerns his positioning of the reader. In contrast to the impersonal style adopted by many of his opponents, he sought to make his narrative coherent and psychologically acceptable by inviting the reader to witness events in the past. For example, when discussing the Deluge he wrote: ‘Let us imagine to ourselves, the whole vegetable kingdom of the earth deposited at various depths’. Again, ‘What a scene now presents itself to the mind's eye! for no human eye could look upon it.’44 In these and similar passages Fairholme sought to present to the mind's eye scenes derived from his biblically-based history of the earth. Although such scenes could not have been witnessed by any human observer he portrayed them as real and solid. Thus Fairholme offered not only authenticated facts from the Bible and from human observation but also a series of historical tableaux—as if the reader were a visitor to a museum displaying models of the earth and its inhabitants at different times. By contrast, he claimed that his opponents dealt in hypotheses that were both fanciful and erroneous.

In reacting against Gillispie and others who have simply dismissed scriptural geology as ludicrously unscientific, we have emphasised that like the gentlemanly geologists who controlled the Geological Society, Fairholme incorporated natural laws into his science and accepted empirical evidence as crucially important. Yet we must also appreciate the differences. Most importantly, the new-style geologists would not accept all of Fairholme's sources; they dispensed not only with the Mosaic account but also with citations from ancient historians such as Pliny and Josephus. They would not countenance a geology anchored in passages from the Bible, nor would they have endorsed his textual analysis of a passage from the gospels, which forms part of his chapter entitled ‘On the situation of paradise’. His chapter ‘On the origin of language’ also fell far outside their new programme for geology.

As historians have often noted, the 1830s was a decade of radical change not only in society but also in conceptions of science. Fairholme's topics and sources were no longer deemed legitimate by a new breed of geologist that had colonised positions of power and came to control the history of geology—thus further marginalising most scriptural geologists. Adam Sedgwick was doubtless speaking for an influential constituency when, in his Presidential Address before the Geological Society in 1830, he lashed at Andrew Ure's scriptural geology as confused and worthless: Ure's book, he insisted, was neither a contribution to geology nor a legitimate use of Scripture.45 Despite the numerous works on scriptural geology that were published in the 1830s and ensuing decades, the tradition was becoming increasingly marginal to mainstream science. This is apparent from the list of 534 subscribers prefacing Samuel Kinns's Moses and Geology (1882). Of these, 79 (15%) were in holy orders, of whom only two were listed as members of a national scientific society. But perhaps the most telling statistic is that only three Fellows of the Royal Society of London appeared on Kinns's list. By the time Kinns's book appeared, scriptural geology had become marginalised by the scientific community, although it still had a substantial following among religious non-scientists. Queen Victoria graciously accepted a copy from Lord Shaftesbury. Unfortunately her views on the book are not recorded.46

Whose Science?

With these case-studies under our belts let us return to the question, Whose science? Defining science is a notoriously difficult exercise. Some have tried to characterise it in terms of its theories, others by its methods, others still by its social organisation. Yet these attempts to define the essence of science are rarely of much assistance when we discuss the past. Moreover, the map of science has changed considerably. For example, Biology (as a discipline) originated early in the nineteenth century, Psychology dates from late in that century, and Physics has been variously dated from the early seventeenth to the late nineteenth centuries. The historian must also be prepared to depart from currently-accepted notions of science and engage those stances and theories that do not feature in the modern pantheon, such as alchemy, scriptural geology, phlogistic chemistry and phrenology. One of the challenges facing the historian is to study such subjects in a non-anachronistic manner, combining understanding and distance in appropriate measures.

The historical study of science and religion must encompass positions and views that would be entertained by few respectable scientists today—such as scriptural geology and Comte's Religion of Humanity. A further reason why such cases deserve study is because their questionable scientific status has been the subject of long-running controversies that shed light on changing conceptions of science. Thus we would argue that scriptural geology deserves inclusion in the historical study of science and religion since it represents a significant (if ultimately unsuccessful) attempt to construct a synthesis of science and religion (although both selectively defined). Even Charles Gillispie recognised the contemporary popularity of scriptural geology texts, but—owing to his deep aversion to their project—he did not pursue this topic.

Whose Religion?

Many of the issues encountered in defining science recur when we try to define religion. While some writers have emphasised its intellectual content by concentrating on theology, others have sought to interpret it socially and culturally. An example of the latter is Durkheim's claim that a religion is ‘a unified system of beliefs and practices relative to sacred things’. However, in contrast to most attempts to characterise science, religion is often conceived as possessing substantial individualistic, spiritual and transcendental dimensions. Thus in his celebrated analysis of personal religious experience an earlier Gifford Lecturer, William James, emphasised ‘the feelings, acts and experiences of individual men in their solitude, so far as they apprehend themselves to stand in relation to whatever they may consider the divine’.47 There is no consensus over the definition of religion. Moreover, as historians of religion have repeatedly stressed, definitions of religion have changed considerably over time. Thus what passes as religion depends on the historical context: for example, under the Roman Empire Christians were denominated ‘atheists’ since they did not accept the dominant belief system. The situation is further complicated if we move outside the Judeo-Christian tradition and confront non-Western cultures which often lack a word to describe what we understand by religion. That there is no universally-accepted definition of religion is all too apparent.48

One way of moving beyond this impasse is to try to specify the nature of religion by characterising its recurring elements. For example, Eric Sharpe has postulated four ‘modes’ of religion:

1. The existential mode which emphasises the experience and faith of the individual;
2. The intellectual, being principally the belief system or theology;
3. The institutional; and
4. The ethical, which is concerned with conduct.49

Such a functionalist approach is helpful in providing a check-list of parameters that the historian needs to address. Moreover, it is clear that the prominence given to each of these four ‘modes’ differs Considerably from one case to the next. Thus, to draw on the preceding examples, the institutional dimension of Christianity was largely irrelevant for Fairholme while it was crucially important in Comte's Religion of Humanity (some would say too important). We should also be sensitive to the diversity of religions and not be too hasty to exclude or belittle unusual or problematic cases. This is particularly important when moving outside the Judeo-Christian tradition. Indeed, one of the great challenges facing not only historians but also scientists and religious scholars is to extend the study of science and religion to include the many non-Western religions, especially Islam.

Cultural Relativism

Our problem of specifying the nature of both science and religion takes on a further level of complexity when viewed through a cultural lens. Some years ago the social anthropologist Robin Horton sought to capture both the similarities and the differences between two ways of understanding the world—first, the Western scientific approach and, second, the world-view accepted by traditional African communities.50 He argued that we fail to make much headway if we dismiss African belief systems as mystical or non-empirical (in contrast with the assumption that science is manifestly rational and empirical). Instead he stressed that, as with modern science, African cosmologies seek to bring order to the world: ‘Like atoms, molecules, and waves… the[ir] gods serve to introduce unity into diversity, simplicity into complexity, order into disorder, regularity into anomaly’. In this respect, at least, Western science and African cosmology are similar.

Despite finding such impressive functional similarities, Horton emphasised one fundamental difference. African belief systems are ‘closed’, in the sense that their theories are unable to change in response to empirical anomalies. Thus if the remedy prescribed by a diviner fails to work, the patient will conclude that the diviner is incompetent but will not cast doubt on the dominant medical theory. Although some philosophers and sociologists have attributed similar protective strategies to Western science, Horton views science as far more open to revision in the light of disconfirming empirical evidence than its African counterpart.

But Horton also emphasised another crucial issue. If we in the West usually experience no difficulty in drawing a sharp divide between science and religion, this is not so for the African. Our terminology breaks down if we try to decide whether an African diviner diagnosing a patient and offering a medical cure falls on the ‘science’ or the ‘religion’ side of the divide. Indeed, for Horton, this difficulty results from viewing their ‘closed’ system from the perspective of our ‘open’ one. At the outset we must acknowledge that the diviner's activity is not adequately captured by our conventional terminology. Thus the diviner would surely look at us uncomprehendingly if we were to ask him whether his science is in harmony or in conflict with his religion. From this other-cultural perspective both Western science and Western religion appear strangely parochial. Yet, it may be objected, this line of argument possesses limited applicability in our own culture because of the way we conventionally contrast science with religion. But, if we look closely, and particularly at the past, we shall also find many instances where religion and science cannot be so easily distinguished from one another—scriptural geology being one such case. Indeed, one of the enduring legacies of the conflict thesis is that we have continually to remind ourselves and our students that this is not the natural or necessarily valid way of conceptualising the relation between science and religion. Moreover, the very term ‘the relation between’ implicitly demarcates science from religion. Linguistic conventions seem to impose unreasonable restrictions on what we say, write and, perhaps, think.51

In introducing this anthropological perspective we also wish to emphasise that Western and Judeo-Christian notions of both science and religion become highly problematic when applied outside familiar territory. Recognising the cultural scope of our subject should make us appreciate this further problem in entering the science-religion domain, not least because the past often needs to be treated like another country, if not another culture.

Positioning the Historian

That both science and religion are susceptible to a wide range of definitions has direct implications for the historian. Firstly, in the light of this diversity there is unlikely to be any canonical thesis—any master-narrative—interrelating science and religion. The widely discussed theses of conflict, harmony, independence, dialogue and integration possess a high degree of relativism depending on how an individual conceives both science and religion. Thus for Fairholme—as for the senior academic cited earlier—science and religion have to be wedded into a unity; whereas in the 1830s the gentlemanly geologists in London sought to dissociate geology from the Genesis narrative. While one sought harmony, his opponents sought independence.

Secondly, the historian must decide which religion or religions to include in undergraduate courses on the history of science and religion. There is likely to be little disagreement over the inclusion If the main confessional traditions within Christianity, but what about the minority evangelical sects often regarded with suspicion by outsiders? What about Judaism and Islam? (In many Islamic countries the current engagement with science and technology is a matter of pressing concern and a source of political and religious controversy.) Should our courses include anti-religions or substitute religions like Comte's Religion of Humanity? Of the Templeton prizewinning courses to date, few appear to have stepped outside Christianity or included the many individuals and movements that have made extensive and often effective use of science to challenge traditional religious authority. Yet a rounded understanding of the subject surely demands the inclusion of these topics.

Whatever their intrinsic fascination to the historian, there are other, broader reasons why both scriptural geology and Comte's Religion of Humanity have legitimate places in the historical study of science and religion. Both of these cases exemplify more general and recurrent forms of engagement between science and religion. As indicated in chapter 1, one of the values of the historical approach is to pursue perspectives through which to understand Contemporary positions and controversies in the science-religion domain. Thus Comte's Religion of Humanity is not sui generis but provides an instance of scientism, which is a major and recurrent theme connecting Comte with Marxism, certain forms of humanism and Richard Dawkins' polemics. To appreciate the full richness of the past, the historian should be prepared to engage such topics and not be constricted by whatever passes today as mainstream theology. One of the obvious yet crucial features of history is that it engages people who are not ourselves and periods that are not our own.

Finally, we return to the problems raised earlier concerning the positions that historians of science and religion can adopt towards their material—the historian's position being particularly relevant to planning courses for students. Two familiar stances are outlined below and then an alternative is sketched.

History has often been used to bolster partisan religious positions and many of the scholars working in the science-religion area have written histories that promote their own religious beliefs and affiliations. Thus much recent scholarship—some of which achieves a very high standard—has been written by committed Christians who have sought to show that there is no essential conflict between science and religion. They find no shortage of scientists in the past who maintained harmony between their scientific and their religious views: the cases of Newton, Priestley and Faraday have proved particularly serviceable. But, one might object, there is surely a danger of bias in accentuating examples of manifest harmony while ignoring cases that don't fit this scenario.

A more specific example is the impressive scholarship of the late Reijer Hooykaas who argued that biblical theology, especially Reformed theology, was the crucial factor in transforming Greek science into modern science. In one of his books he put the matter rather more metaphorically: ‘whereas the bodily ingredients of science may have been Greek, its vitamins and hormones were biblical’. In identifying as pro-science such Calvinist themes as the glorification of God and His works, Hooykaas sought not only to rebut the conflict thesis but also to explain the relatively poor showing of Catholics in early modern science when compared with Protestants. Reading his work one is left in no doubt where his sympathies lay; indeed, there was no shortage of hormones or vitamins in his life since he was, he confessed, ‘an old-fashioned Calvinist’.52 Yet Hooykaas's thesis for the superiority of Protestantism over Catholicism in the promotion of the sciences is neither manifestly true nor so readily substantiated by the evidence.53

Turning to the other extreme, we find Adrian Desmond's recently-published biography of T. H. Huxley with the sub-title The Devil's Disciple. That Desmond chose to write on Huxley and that two of his previous books likewise centred on scientists' opposition to Christian authority doubtless reflects his personal views. Desmond clearly sides with the agnostic Huxley in such passages as the following:

[Huxley] was undercutting the spiritual sanction of a rival profession, reforming God's rotten-borough. Religion was not the problem: ‘My screed was meant as a protest against Theology & Parsondom… both of which are in my mind the natural & irreconcilable enemies of Science. Few see it but I believe we are on the Eve of a new Reformation and if I have a wish to live thirty years, it is that I may see the foot of Science on the necks of her [ecclesiastical] Enemies.’

Here we have not only an arresting statement by Huxley of the conflict between science and ‘Theology & Parsondom’ but also its deployment in an historical narrative that reiterates and supports Huxley's position.54

These examples indicate that while some historians use their history to accentuate harmony others revel in earlier conflicts between science and religion. Although both approaches are manifestly partisan, we must be clear that to label history as partisan does not necessarily condemn it as bad history. Indeed, much excellent scholarship has been written from sectarian positions. However, partisan history from whichever camp tends to downplay or distort opposing positions. Thus although Desmond's book has many strengths, appreciation of the arguments of Huxley's critics—such as Bishop Samuel Wilberforce or the Catholic St George Mivart—is not one of them. Yet as historians we do not have to align ourselves either with Desmond's atheism or with Hooykaas's Calvinism. There are many other positions that can be occupied in science-religion space.

A third possibility is to ‘stand far enough back’ so that one may appreciate the arguments of the protagonists and the contexts in which they operated. To help characterise this third position we shall evoke the writings of the lad from Kirkcaldy who became both a student and a professor at Glasgow University. Adam Smith postulated the ‘impartial observer’—the voice that dwells within every breast, the inner person who continually judges our conduct. For Smith those people who heed this ‘impartial observer’ live a wise, just and balanced existence, while those who do not are tossed by the storms of life.55 We wish to borrow (and somewhat modify) Smith's ‘impartial observer’ in order to develop this third position. Our impartial observer would insist that historians should use the following methodological rule: they should strive not to be partisan but instead should seek to understand all the protagonists and the historical nexus in which they operated. This does not strip us of our own personal views on either science or religion; indeed such a demand would be impossible. Historians are certainly not objective—for to be objective would, as it were, remove them altogether from the historical plane. Yet, like well-trained mediators or marriage guidance counsellors, they can achieve a degree of impartiality by consciously refusing to be aligned with any one party or protagonist. By not taking sides historians are better placed to appreciate the range of historical protagonists—to understand not only Galileo but also Bellarmine; not only Huxley but also Wilberforce. It might be argued that in this sense the third position possesses some advantage over the other two. Moreover, from this standpoint historians should be able to appreciate such ‘monsters’ as the scriptural geologists and those who advocated the Religion of Humanity.

But there is a price to be paid for adopting this liberal, irenic position. While many who adopt the other two positions espouse master-narratives that specify the nature of both science and religion as well as their interaction, the third option remains highly suspicious of such simplistic solutions. Instead, from this third perspective history becomes more complex and unruly; but, we would insist, also more exciting! Instead of imposing on the past the conflict thesis or any of its alternatives the historian will attempt to capture the richness and diversity of science-religion relations throughout history. The position we have been advocating leads to an open and challenging view of history that can—and should—inform contemporary debates on science and religion.