Are science and religion incompatible? Intellectually? Or just socially and politically?
Much of my book is an exploration of the origins of this “warfare” or “conflict” scenario that has become so widespread in modern thinking.
Lawrence M. Principe, highly regarded historian of science and chemist at Johns Hopkins University, spoke for most present-day historians of science when he asserted that the idea that the scientific and religious camps have for centuries been separate and antagonistic was built in the late nineteenth century upon a totally unreliable historical foundation.
Principe fingered two Americans, John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White, as the principal promulgators of the warfare scenario through their books in the late nineteenth century. It is a startling case study of how academic standing has been abused to advance socio-political agendas.
Draper had some excuse, in that he was a chemist, first president of the American Chemical Society—he was no historian. White had no such excuse; he was a past president of the American Historical Association. And much to my embarrassment for my alma mater, White was the first president of Cornell University. Even more embarrassing for our global culture is the enormous influence of Draper’s and White’s books.
Even so, the roots of the conflict extend further back in European history. There was conflict, yes. But not truly between science and theology, which can be seen as intellectual partners. It was a struggle between scientists and religious institutions, contending for social and political control. This was most prominent in Victorian England.
A. N. Wilson, in God’s Funeral, asked rhetorically why we often think of the Victorian Age as a battleground between science and religion. “The answer must partly lie in the brilliance of the anti-religious propaganda put out by the materialists; and partly, it must be said, in the boneheaded response to scientific development on the part of the louder Christian apologists.”[1] Without naming them, Wilson was certainly referring to Thomas Huxley (for the materialists) and Samuel Wilberforce (for the Christian apologists).
Following publication of On the Origin of Species, Charles’s closest scientific friends took it upon themselves to advocate for and defend against criticisms of what quickly became known as Darwinism. Charles himself shunned public confrontation and very often was ill enough to justify his predilection to let friends do the heavy lifting in public meetings and print. The most aggressive and energetic was Thomas Huxley. He clearly thrived on public confrontation, soon earning and relishing his public nickname, Darwin’s Bulldog.
Huxley’s most famous confrontation was in June 1860 at the Oxford meeting of the British Association for the Advancement of Science. Charles’s recently published book held center stage. At the standing-room-only height of the meeting, the Bishop of Oxford rose to speak. He was Samuel Wilberforce, son of the great abolitionist William Wilberforce and nicknamed Soapy Sam for his smooth rhetorical style.
The bishop seized the opportunity not just to criticize Darwin’s book but to make fun of it on the public stage by asking Huxley whether he was related to an ape on his grandfather’s or grandmother’s side (ignoring that Origin of Species had very purposefully avoided direct commentary on the origins of the human species).
Huxley was delighted by the bishop’s play to the crowd and struck back to hilarious effect. What he actually said was probably heard by few in the audience. What British society heard ever after was that Huxley would rather be a monkey than a bishop!
Parallel to his scientific work, Thomas Huxley made a sort of career of aggressively advancing science at the expense of religious and other traditional authorities perceived as blocking the growing ascendency of science in society. He joined with eight other like-minded and eminent scientists from various disciplines to form the X Club. Charles was never a member, but his close friend Joseph Hooker was, as well as his anthropologist neighbor John Lubbock and the philosopher Herbert (“survival of the fittest”) Spencer.
Charles lent them his name and enthusiastic support for their various initiatives in scientific politics. They in turn defended his perspective and good name. By the late 1860s, the X Club was well known as one of the closed cliques of scientists who tightly controlled London’s scientific community. The X Club was vulnerable to accusations that it enforced a quasi-religious Darwinian orthodoxy that forbade even reasonable dissent, especially from any religious perspective.
Charles Darwin was uncomfortable with his dear friend’s irreverent and combative style, but he exulted in every devastatingly effective blow Huxley landed on the opposition. Clearly, even before the books by Draper and White, Thomas Huxley and his X Clubbers, and Charles Darwin himself, thought of themselves as engaged in a war between science and religion. And they worked hard to convince their audiences in person and in print to believe the same.
[1] Wilson, God’s Funeral, 192.