Science and Religion

The belief that the relationship of religion and science has historically been one of conflict emerged during the eighteenth-century Enlightenment, with its hostility to religion and its valorization of science. In the last three decades of the twentieth century, several influential historians of science have provided a systematic reevaluation of the conflict thesis. This chapter discusses the perspective that science and religion are not hostile to one another but complementary. Together they provide a comprehensive understanding of the world in which humans live and of their relationship to that world. Debate among Christians and even among non-Christians over Darwin’s theory of natural selection continued throughout the nineteenth and well into the twentieth century. Social Darwinists adapted Darwin’s theory to cultural and social issues, which came to dominate colleges and universities. From about 1895, modern physics began to deal with issues that went beyond those of classical physics, particularly quantum mechanics and special and general relativity.