Science and Religion in the Modern West
Silke Gülker

In early sociological debates, science was regarded as the primarydriving force behind secularisation. Over the course of subsequent
decades, multiple alternative theories on the causes behind and processes of secularisation were developed, and the relationship between
science and religion ceased to be the focus.
Recently, there has been renewed academic interest in this topic
for two reasons. Firstly, the influence of evangelical churches is growing in many countries, resulting in polarised conflicts between socalled ‘evolutionists’ and ‘creationists’. Secondly, there is new uncertainty about what science is, what a scientific fact is, and what thedifference between scientific and non-scientific knowledge might be.
This article sheds light on the historical roots of debates on therelationship between science and religion by looking at two underlying perspectives: the conflict thesis and the differentiation thesis.
Different as they are, both perspectives assume that science andreligion are two separate and clearly distinguishable fields. The sociology of science and the science and technology studies call into
question this exclusiveness of science and scientific work. Therefore,
these concepts are discussed here with regard to their underlying
ideas of the relationship between science and religion. Finally, theconclusion provides a suggestion for conceptualising the relationshipbetween science and religion without dichotomising the two fields.
The Conflict Thesis
The earliest and most prominent proponent of the conflict thesis
was Auguste Comte, whose ‘law of three stages’ posits that both individuals and humanity as a whole necessarily develop through a sequence of three stages: the theological, metaphysical, and, finally, theComte’s positivism

1
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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern Westpositive stage.1 While in the theological and metaphysical stages people need to refer to metaphysics to explain the world, the positive
stage is characterised by the ‘positive method’ that supersedes metaphysics. This method would be exclusively focused on phenomenathat can be observed in the physical world, as Comte put it:
Of this science it is even more true than of any of the preceding sciences,that its real character cannot be understood without explaining its exact relation in all general features with the art corresponding to it.2

Positivist “religionof humanity”

Scientists had to distancefrom religion

Comte’s philosophy was also a political programme. His aim was tolead humanity from the early metaphysics-oriented stages into thepositive stage. Religion was to be replaced by positive science. Science
was not only a method to explain the world but also a lifestyle philosophy: “The primary object then of Positivism is twofold: to generalize
our scientific conceptions, and to systematize the art of social life”.3 In
his later work, Comte identified himself as a founder of a secular religion, describing positivism as a “religion of humanity”, with “templesof humanity” being established in several countries.
Not all supporters of positivism accepted this idea of a secularreligion. John Stuart Mill, for example, who was an enthusiastic follower of Comte, strictly separated between the ‘good’ early Comteand his later writings on the ‘religion of humanity’.4 However, thekey ideas of the positivist philosophy were extremely popular, andthereafter, anyone wanting to be considered a serious scientist, had
to follow positivist ideas and distance themselves from all traditionalreligious ideas and organisations.
The conflict between science and religion became a narrative inthe history of science. In this narrative, the so-called Scientific Revolution between 1500 and 1700 was identified as a turning point whenscience liberated itself from religion. In 1873, the philosopher andscientist John William Draper published his widely anticipated book
History of the Conflict between Religion and Science.5 Examining the
1
2
3
4
5

2

Auguste Comte, A general view of positivism (London: Routledge, 1907 [1848]).
Comte, A general view of positivism, 2.
Comte 3.
John Stuart Mill, Auguste Comte and Positivism (Milan: CreateSpace Independent
Publishing Platform, 2016 [1865]).
John William Draper, History of the conflict between religion and science (Teddington: The Echo Library, 2007 [1873]).

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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern West

Scientific Revolution, Draper states substantial reasons for the inevitable conflict between science and religion: “faith is in its nature unchangeable, stationary; science is in its nature progressive”. Following
this line of thinking, anyone supporting progress must, by definition,
stand in opposition to religion. The popularising of this distinction
has had a long-lasting impact. When sociology was in its infancy inthe early 20th century, religiously motivated researchers were actively
excluded from the scientific community to ensure the discipline wasestablished as a serious science.6
In more recent work on the history of science, a number of contributions have called the conflict thesis into question. Most prominently, Brooke7 offers an alternative view of the relationship between
science and religion in the era of the Scientific Revolution. Not taking
an explicit position on the conflict thesis, he describes a history ofinteraction between science and religion, rather than considering
them as two wholly separate entities. He highlights that famous scientists of the time, such as Robert Boyle and Isaac Newton, explicitly
sought to prove the existence of God with their scientific work.
With this position, Brooke is in line with contemporary historical work, which acknowledges that historical perspectives are always
shaped by their historical environments.8 The specific environmentof the positivist era thus led to a specific construction of the historyof the Scientific Revolution as a story of conflict.9
Eric Voegelin10 developed a more philosophical theory regarding
the rise of secular religions like scientism. In his view, this rise wasdue to the ‘pathologies of modernity’ and modernity’s neglecting of
any outer-worldly transcendence, of anything that is beyond humancontrol. With the Enlightenment, all outer-worldly transcendence,

Draper: Religion
contrasts progress

Brooke: Interaction ofscience and religion

Voegelin: Secularreligions result frommodern relocating of
the absolute to the inner
world

6

M. S. Evans, “Defining the public, defining sociology: Hybrid science – public
relations and boundary-work in early American sociology,” Public Understandingof Science 18, no. 1 (2008).
7 John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion. Some Historical Perspectives (New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991).
8 See also the various contributions in Thomas Dixon, Geoffrey Cantor, and Stephen Pumfrey, eds. Science and Religion. New Historical Perspectives. (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010).
9 Margaret J. Osler, “Religion and the changing historiography of the Scientific Revolution,” In Science and Religion. New Historical Perspectives, ed. Thomas Dixon, Geoffrey
Cantor, and Stephen Pumfrey (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010).
10 Eric Voegelin, Die politischen Religionen, ed. Peter J. Opitz (Müchen: Fink, 1993 [1938]).
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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern West

Contemporary formof secular religion:
New Atheism

4

the absolute, the very reason for everything existing was relocatedinto the inner world. This process, Voegelin states, led to totalitarianideologies, like racism or Marxism, as well as to scientism.
The conflict thesis and Comte’s philosophy remained influential
throughout the 20th century and are still influential today. One more
recent example would be the scientism ordered by the state in theformer GDR with the purpose of supplanting all religious belief. Politically, the systematic implementation of a scientistic worldview inthe education system at all levels aimed at diminishing the influenceof Christian churches in GDR society.11
Today, the conflict thesis is present again within a contemporary
form of secular religion: New Atheism. The main protagonists of thismovement are Richard Dawkins, Daniel C. Dennett, Sam Harris,and Christopher Hitchens (who passed away in 2011). Over the last
15 years, they have published numerous books, and developed a public profile, with the explicit goal of liberating their readers from religion and teaching them the ideas of science. Their books have beentranslated into many languages and they have received broad publicattention. The main focus of this movement, though, is their opposition to the evangelical creationist worldview which is most powerfulin the United States of America.12
There is good reason to describe New Atheism as a secular religion, comparable to Comte’s religion of humanity: The authors campaign for their ideas with the zeal of missionaries. Richard Dawkins,
for example, publishes ‘Paragraphs of the Week’ on his website13
in the manner of a founder of a religion. There is also an Atheist
Church, attended by atheists every Sunday to sing and enjoy a sharedsense of community.14
11 Thomas Schmidt-Lux, Wissenschaft als Religion: Szientismus im ostdeutschen Säkularisierungsprozess (Würzburg: Ergon, 2008).
12 Tom Kaden, Kreationismus und Antikreationismus in den Vereinigten Staaten. Eine
konfliktsoziologische Untersuchung (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014); Tom Kaden
and Thomas Schmidt-Lux. “Scientism and atheism then and now. The role of science in the Monist and New Atheist writings,” Culture and Religion 17, no. 1 (2016).
13 See www.richarddawkins.net. In fact, these ‘Paragraphs of the Week’ do not appear every week, but rather irregularly, and since February 2018, there does notseem to have been any new entries.
14 See, for example: https://www.economist.com/erasmus/2018/05/16/the-elusivephenomenon-of-churches-without-god, The official website of American Atheists(www.atheists.org) lists more than 170 local affiliates. For an empirical investiga-

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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern WestIn sum, the conflict thesis has its roots in the philosophy of Comte’s
positivism and is still present in debates and worldviews today. However, the conflict thesis has more supporters in the Anglo-American
regions than in Western Europe, where the differentiation thesis is
more popular.

Conflict thesis more
prominent in AngloAmerican regions
than in Western
EuropeThe Differentiation Thesis
It must be noted, however, that the self-conscious tension of religion
is greatest and most principled where religion faces the sphere of intellectual knowledge.15

This is how Max Weber characterises the relationship between scienceand religion in his famous Intermediate Reflections. In this work, heidentifies inevitable tensions between religions of salvation and theworld in the course of rationalisation processes. In fact, he argues
that religions of salvation themselves follow a logic of rationalisation,
but that this logic conflicts with that of the ideal-typically distinguished political, aesthetic, erotic, and intellectual spheres of value.
Weber identifies the conflict between the religious and intellectual spheres of value (Wertsphären) as the most significant tension, as

Weber: tensions
between religion andrationalisation

Conflict between
religious and intellectual
spheres of value[in] principle, the empirical as well as the mathematically oriented
view of the world develops refutations of every intellectual approach
which in any way asks for a ‘meaning’ of inner-worldly occurrences.16

This ‘meaning’, however, is fundamentally important for every religion of salvation – the explicit function of such religions is to explain
the meaning and significance of everything that is in the world.
In stark contrast to Comte, however, Weber does not assume or
promote the decline of religion. Instead, he describes different possible reactions of religious leaders in response to these tensions. One
reaction is to prove their own dogmas to be true in the sense of positive scientific methods. Another, more important, reaction is to emphasise the principal differences between the two ways of knowing:
While science is able to explain existence, religion is able to explaintion of atheist communities, see Stephen LeDrew, The evolution of atheism. The
politics of a modern movement (New York: Oxford University Press, 2016).
15 Max Weber, Essays in Sociology, transl., ed., and introd. H. H. Gerth and C. WrightMills (New York: Oxford University Press, 1946 [1920]), 350.
16 Weber, Essays in Sociology, 351.
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5Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern West

Weber: Different
functions of religion
and science

Malinowski: Religion,
magic and science
as anthropologicalconstants

Science does not cause
decline of religion

6

the meaning and purpose of this existence. Tensions between scienceand religion remain inevitable, however, with his typification of different spheres of values, Weber does not conceptualise these tensions
as temporary, but as an enduring and stable part of modern societies.
To summarise Weber’s view, religion and science perform different functions in the modern world. As long as they limit themselvesto these functions – meaning that religions would not try to develop
holistic concepts about existence, and science would not develop moral imperatives – a peaceful coexistence would be possible.17 Weber’s
argument can be seen as an early precursor of the differentiation
thesis, which in the following decades became the most powerfulconcept for analysing modernisation in general and secularisationin particular.
Only a few years after Weber’s writings, Bronislaw Malinowski
developed an idea of functional differences between science, religion,
and magic.18 Malinowski had a different methodological perspective to Weber; he was a pioneer of anthropology and ethnographic
methods. From his participant observation in the Trobriand Islands,
he concluded: “There are no peoples however primitive without religion and magic. Nor are there, it must be added at once, any savage
races lacking either in the scientific attitude or in science, though
this lack has been frequently attributed to them”.19 This conclusion
was in strict opposition to the positivist idea of a linear and selfevident evolution from religion to science in modern societies. Science, Malinowski stated, was not a new phenomenon of the modern
period, but had been part of all cultures throughout history. Religion
and magic had also maintained a ubiquitous presence, coexistingwith science. Therefore, there was no reason to assume that scientificprogress should necessarily result in a decline of religion.
From his observations, Malinowski determined the distinction
between the functions of magic, science, and religion: According
to him, both scientific knowledge and magic provide solutions to
17 Friedrich H. Tenbruck, “Religion und Kultur – die Religion im Maelstrom derReflexion,” in “Religion und Kultur,” ed. Jörg Bergmann, Alois Hahn, and Thomas
Luckmann, special issue 33 of Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie und Sozialpsychologie (1993).
18 Bronislaw Malinowski and Robert Redfield, Magic, science, and religion (Glencoe:
The Free Press of Glencoe 1948).
19 Malinowski and Redfield, Magic, science, and religion, 17.

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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern West

practical issues; science addresses that which is subject to human influence, whereas magic addresses that which lies beyond or outsideof it. In contrast, religion is referred to in order to cope with fundamental individual or community crises in a moral way.
The concept of magic subsequently fell out of fashion in sociological research. The underlying idea of science and religion fulfilling
different functions, however, as was initially developed by Max Weber and later investigated by Malinowski, became the key theoreticalframework within which to interpret their relationship. Later works
by Talcott Parsons20 and Niklas Luhmann21 further develop the concept of functional differences, conceptualising science and religion
as distinct subsystems that generate different benefits for societies.
The differentiation thesis - supposing that secularisation does notcause the complete decline of religion but instead involves a partitioning of function such that religion’s focus is restricted to creating
sense of existence22 – ultimately became the consensus view. Westernsociology accepted this thesis unchallenged for decades, with the effect that the relationship between science and religion was not subject to much sociological investigation. Later secularisation theorists
suggested a number of other reasons for the assumed decline of religion, such as religious and social pluralisation and the resultant privatisation of religion,23 competition on the market of worldviews,24 orsocio-structural developments such as individualisation and urbanisation.25 The rise of modern science was considered only a minor
factor within these theories.
In recent years there has been a re-opening of the debate about
the relationship between science and religion, driven by reflections
on the nature of scientific knowledge and knowledge production on a

Parsons and Luhmannfurther develop idea offunctional differentiation

20 Talcott Parsons, The social system (New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1951).
21 Niklas Luhmann, Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp,
1992); Niklas Luhmann, Die Religion der Gesellschaft (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp,
2015 [2000]); Niklas Luhmann, Funktion der Religion (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp,
2016 [1982]).
22 Oliver Tschannen, “The Secularization Paradigm: A Systematization,” Journal for
the Scientific Study of Religion 30, no 3 (1991).
23 Thomas Luckmann, Die Unsichtbare Religion (Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1991);
Peter L. Berger, Der Zwang zur Häresie: Religion in der pluralistischen Gesellschaft(Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2000 [1980]).
24 Berger, Zwang zur Häresie.
25 Steve Bruce, Religion in Modern Britain (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995).
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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern Westmicro level. Apart from the macro-sociological idea of differentiation,
the question remains of the extent to which it is possible to clearly
distinguish between scientific and religious knowledge, between
knowing and believing. These questions will be discussed in the following, referring to work in the fields of sociology of science, andscience and technology studies.

Social embeddednessof science8

Sociology of Science, and Science and Technology Studies (STS)The aim of sociology of science, and that of science and technology
studies (STS) is to emphasise and analyse the social embeddedness ofscience.26 The founding of these fields, however, can only be understood against the backdrop of intense debates about the relationshipbetween science and religion.
Sociology of science, as was particularly evident in its early stagesof development as an academic field, has one clearly identifiable antagonist, that of positivism. Though support for Auguste Comte’s
more ideological version of pure positivism was decreasing, themembers of the Vienna Circle27 developed their theory of ‘logicalpositivism’ quite successfully. Their fundamental argument was that
26 For a detailed version of this section, see Silke Gülker, “From ‘Science and Religion’ to ‘Transcendence in Science’ or: What We Can Learn from the (Historyof) Science and Technology Studies,” in Science, Belief and Society: International
Perspectives on Religion, Non-Religion and the Public Understanding of Science, ed.
Stephen H. Jones, Rebecca Catto, and Tom Kaden (Bristol: Policy Press, 2019).
27 The Vienna Circle was founded in 1924 by Moritz Schlick and met and worked
until 1936. Famous members were, among others, Otto Neurath and Rudolf Carnap. In contrast to Comte, the members emphasised that there was a need forrationalising and verification, and that observation as such was not enough. In theearly 20th century, interdisciplinary groups and circles were founded in many cities
in order to promote the positivist idea. In Leipzig, for example, the psychologist
Wilhelm Wundt, the geographer Friedrich Ratzel, the historian Karl Lamprecht,
the physical chemist Wilhelm Ostwald, and the economist Karl Bücher met on a
weekly basis at the so-called ‘Positivisten-Kränzchen’ (Katharina Neef, Die Entstehung der Soziologie aus der Sozialreform: Eine Fachgeschichte (Frankfurt a. M.:
Campus, 2012), 78ff.; see also Roger Chickering, “Das Leipziger ‘PositivistenKränzchen’ um die Jahrhunderwende,” In Kultur und Kulturwissenschaften um
1900. II Idealismus und Positivismus, ed. Rüdiger vom Bruch, Gangolf Hübinger,
and Friedrich Wilhelm Graf (Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997)). For an introduction to the philosophy of positivism, see Ian Hacking, Representing andintervening. Introductory topics in the philosophy of natural science (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 1983), 41ff.). On the Vienna Circle, see Friedrich
Stadler, The Vienna Circle: Studies in the Origins, Development, and Influence of
Logical Empiricism (Wien: Springer, 2001).

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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern Westall scientific facts need to be rationalised on the basis of empiricalobservation. As with Comte’s positivism, the Vienna Circle made aclear and fundamental distinction between any form of metaphysicalbelief or religious dogma on the one hand and scientific knowledge
on the other.
Later work in philosophy of science questioned the assumptionof the possibility of ‘pure observation’. Karl Popper, who criticised
the Vienna Circle for its overtly empiricist view, was one of the firstauthors to take into account the scientist’s own perspective.28 He
stressed that scientists, before they make any observation, first referto particular theories. Observation in Popper’s view, thus, does notexist independent of researchers’ perspective. However, Popper stillemphasizes that scientific work is fundamentally based on logic andis thereby clearly distinct from all knowledge-making outside therealm of science.
In the 1930s, two books were published that called into question
this idea of the exclusiveness of science in different ways: Robert K.
Merton did so on a meso-level, Ludwik Fleck on a micro-level. Bothauthors deal intensively with the relationship between science andreligion.
In his early work on Science, Technology and Society in Early
17th-Century England,29 Merton emphasised the role of Puritanismin the rise of the so-called Scientific Revolution. The book is an empirical study on shifts in the vocational interests of intellectual elites.
Focusing on the 17th century, he identifies an increasing interest in all
aspects of science and a declining interest in religion. To explain thisshift, Merton neither refers to the secularisation thesis nor describes
science as the winner of a supposed conflict between science and religion. Instead, he argues that a value system particular to Puritanism
led to the rise of interest in the sciences. Thus, similarly to Max Weber’s thesis on the close connection between Protestantism and capitalism, Merton assumes a connection between Puritanism, particularly in England, and science. There are two aspects of the Puritan
ethos that Merton assumes to be responsible for this connection. On
the one hand, science was intended to praise God through discovering

Philosophy of science
rejects possibility of“pure observation”

Merton and Fleck:
Questioning the logicalexclusiveness of science

28 Karl R. Popper, The logic of scientific discovery (New York: Basic Books, 1959 [1934]).
29 Robert K. Merton, Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England (New York: Fertig, 1972 [1938]).
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Merton: Impact of
culture and individual
value systems onscientific work

Fleck: Distinction
between scientific andreligious knowledge is
not self-evident

Thought styles as
scientific reasoning are
pre-individual

10

the “true Nature of the Works of God”. On the other hand, science
may also concern itself with the “Comfort of Mankind”, and seek tosolve practical worldly problems.
Merton, in this early – indeed, arguably the first – work in sociology of science, denies the idea of science’s search for cognition
and truth being independent of any social environment. Instead, hestresses how deeply scientific work is impacted by the value systemsof the individual scientists as well as by the organisations that form
the institutional environment in which the research occurs. However,Merton’s theses remain at the organisational level of science: he focuses on the question of the motivations behind scientific work, in particular behind the choice of research focus. Once a particular topic
is chosen, even Merton would describe scientific work as an exclusive enterprise, which can operate separately from any non-scientificforce.
Ludwik Fleck’s book Genesis and Development of a Scientific Fact30
goes beyond this idea: He states that the distinction between scientificand religious knowledge cannot be defined theoretically, and can
only be investigated empirically. His main argument is that any cognition is collective in character. Against positivism and the Vienna
Circle’s philosophy of science, Fleck calls into question the very ideaof any individual cognition. For an individual to recognise anything,the individual always needs to build on an existing stock of knowledge. A community, which shares a particular stock of knowledge
and a particular ‘thought style’, Fleck names a ‘thought collective’.
The defining characteristic of a thought collective is that it produces binding or compulsive truth claims. Fleck describes the role ithas for an individual referring to Durkheim’s description of collective consciousness.31 The thought style is not accessible to the individual, but simply determines how they think. This, Fleck argues, istrue of any thought style and, thus, also true for scientific reasoning.
Communities in general, and the scientific community in particular,
have the power to create dogma-like knowledge. Through collective
reasoning, it can produce words that become magic, have a magical
30 Ludwik Fleck, Genesis and development of a scientific fact (Chicago: University of
Chicago press, 1979).
31 Emile Durkheim, The Division of Labour in Society (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013 [1893]), 31ff.

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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern Westpower, as Fleck puts it. Thought styles always imply something implicit, unconscious or transcendent to the individual. Fleck illustrates
this aspect with reference to the initiation into a thought style:
The initiation into any thought style, which also includes the introduction to science, is epistemologically analogous to the initiations
we know from ethnology and the history of civilisation. Their effectis not merely formal. The Holy Ghost as it were descends upon thenovice, who will now be able to see what has hitherto been invisible
to him. Such is the result of the assimilation of a thought style.32

With these arguments, Fleck was an early proponent of many ideasthat are found in much later work by both Thomas Kuhn and Bruno
Latour, as well as throughout the area of anthropological research in
STS. However, in contrast to later work in the STS community, Fleckexplicitly positions himself against the idea that there is a fundamental
difference between scientific and religious knowledge.
Fleck argues for comparative empirical work to be done in order
to illuminate different thought styles at different times and places.
If we consider the work in STS over recent decades, we notice that
his call for empirical investigation was widely heard and followed,
with laboratory studies aiming to reconstruct interaction within thelaboratory as an investigation of the underlying thought styles. Withher focus on different ‘epistemic styles’ Knorr-Cetina33, for example,
compares different modes of interaction, or, in Fleck’s terms, different
thought styles. We also find empirical analysis of different disciplines,
such as the social sciences34 or mathematics35. However, most of today’s anthropological work in STS remains within the realm of science, and there appears to be little interest in undertaking comparative research contrasting thought styles in science, religion, or otherthought collectives based on particular belief systems.

32 Fleck, Genesis and development of a scientific fact, 104.
33 Karin Knorr-Cetina, Epistemic Cultures. How Sciences Makes Knowledge (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999).
34 Michèle Lamont, Peer Evaluation in the Social Sciences and the Humanities Compared. The United States, the United Kingdom and France. Report prepared for theCouncil of Canada (Havard University: Cambridge, 2005), http://citeseerx.ist.psu.
edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.529.4425&rep=rep1&type=pdf.
35 Bettina Heintz, Die Innenwelt der Mathematik. Zur Kultur und Praxis einer beweisenden Disziplin (Wien: Springer, 2000).
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11Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern West

Differentiation within the field of science has also meant that disciplines have separated into many subdisciplines. As a result of thisspecialisation of focus, the sociology of religion avoids considerationof science, and the same is true of the sociology of science and consideration of religion.

Approaching religion
and science by researchon constructions oftranscendence andunavailability

12

Outlook
The relationship between science and religion was one of the mostimportant topics of dispute in the early years of sociological research.
With the conflict thesis on the one hand, and the differentiation thesison the other, two concepts were established early on, that retain theirinfluence as an analytical framework to this day. The conflict thesis
is more influential in the Anglo-American context and the differentiation thesis more in the Western European context. Both theses
mainly argue from a macro-sociological perspective. The fields of sociology of science, and science and technology studies question the
exclusiveness of scientific knowledge on a micro level. However, due
to the disciplinary division of labour, there has been little work on
the relationship between science and religion for many years. To renew the theoretical debate and empirical investigation, there is needfor interdisciplinary collaborative research. One possible avenue forovercoming the disciplinary separation could be pursuing a research
focus on constructions of transcendence and unavailability. Instead ofassuming science and religion to be distinct spheres, the analysis here
focuses on the question of how boundaries are constructed between
something that is available and something that is not available.
Starting from Schütz and Luckmann’s concept of small, intermediate, and great transcendence,36 the construction of transcendence
can be investigated empirically. Small transcendences refer to thatwhich is not currently perceivable for reasons of spatio-temporal
limits. Intermediate transcendences describe that which is presumed
to be fundamentally unavailable in another subject: No matter how
well I can imagine it, I will never be able to completely grasp what
another subject is feeling or thinking. Great transcendences are ‘otherrealities’ which are in principle unavailable to conscious access, forexample the world of dreams. Such great transcendences, which are
36 Alfred Schütz and Thomas Luckmann, The structures of the life-world (Evanston:Northwestern University Press, 1973).

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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern Westexperienced in an inner-worldly manner, according to Schütz andLuckmann, can also form a sense of the world as a whole.
I recently drew on this concept of transcendence when investigating the work of stem cell researchers in Germany and the UnitedStates of America.37 Unavailability in this field always has a double connotation: Something can be unavailable or transcendent fortechnical or practical reasons, and something can be unavailable for
ethical reasons. In the particular cases I investigated, the researchers
constructed their subject cells and animals as unavailable in the senseof intermediate transcendence. For most researchers, the cosmological idea of a species order remains unavailable in the sense of greattranscendence. However, the study also identified culture-specificdifferences in those constructions.
Thus, the construction of transcendence and unavailability isfundamentally important in both science and religion, as well as insocieties in general. Focusing on these constructions might help todevelop new interdisciplinary perspectives on the relationship between science and religion.

37 Silke Gülker, “Transcendence in Stem Cell Research: A Research Perspective beyond the Science versus Religion Dichotomy,” in “Science and Religion: Revisitinga Complex Relationship,” ed. Fernanda Alfieri and Kärin Nickelsen, special issue,
Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento 43, 1 (2017); Silke Gülker,
Transzendenz in der Wissenschaft. Studien in der Stammzellforschung in Deutschland und in den USA (Baden-Baden: Ergon, forthcoming 2019).
Leipzig University – HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, 2019www.multiple-secularities.de/publications/companion

13Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern West

Quoted and Further Reading

Berger, Peter L. Der Zwang zur Häresie. Religion in der pluralistischen Gesellschaft.
Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2000 [1980].
Brooke, John Hedley. Science and Religion. Some Historical Perspectives. New York:
Cambridge University Press, 1991.
Bruce, Steve. Religion in Modern Britain. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995.
Comte, Auguste. A general view of positivism. London: Routledge, 1907 [1848].
Chickering, Roger. “Das Leipziger ‘Positivisten-Kränzchen’ um die Jahrhundertwende.” In Kultur und Kulturwissenschaften um 1900. II Idealismus und
Positivismus. Edited by Rüdiger vom Bruch, Gangolf Hübinger, and Friedrich
Wilhelm Graf, 227–45. Stuttgart: Franz Steiner Verlag, 1997.
Dixon, Thomas, Geoffrey Cantor, and Stephen Pumfrey, eds. Science and Religion.
New Historical Perspectives. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Draper, John William. History of the conflict between religion and science. Teddington: The Echo Library, 2007 [1873].
Durkheim, Emile. The Division of Labour in Society. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2013 [1893].
Evans, M. S. “Defining the public, defining sociology: Hybrid science – public relations and boundary-work in early American sociology.” Public Understandingof Science 18, no. 1 (2008): 5–22.
Fleck, Ludwik. Genesis and development of a scientific fact. Chicago: University of
Chicago press, 1979.
Gülker, Silke. “Transcendence in Stem Cell Research: A Research Perspective
beyond the Science versus Religion Dichotomy.” In “Science and Religion:
Revisiting a Complex Relationship.” Edited by Fernanda Alfieri and Kärin
Nickelsen, special issue. Annali dell’Istituto storico italo-germanico in Trento
43, 1 (2017): 137–60.
Gülker, Silke. “From ‘Science and Religion’ to ‘Transcendence in Science’ or: What
We Can Learn from the (History of) Science and Technology Studies.” In
Science, Belief and Society: International Perspectives on Religion, Non-Religion
and the Public Understanding of Science. Edited by Stephen H. Jones, Rebecca
Catto, and Tom Kaden, 103–25. Bristol: Policy Press, 2019.
Gülker, Silke. Transzendenz in der Wissenschaft. Studien in der Stammzellforschungin Deutschland und in den USA. Baden-Baden: Ergon, forthcoming 2019.
Hacking, Ian. Representing and intervening. Introductory topics in the philosophy ofnatural science. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1983.
Heintz, Bettina. Die Innenwelt der Mathematik. Zur Kultur und Praxis einer beweisenden Disziplin. Wien: Springer, 2000.
Kaden, Tom. Kreationismus und Antikreationismus in den Vereinigten Staaten.
Eine konfliktsoziologische Untersuchung. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 2014.
Kaden, Tom and Thomas Schmidt-Lux. “Scientism and atheism then and now. The
role of science in the Monist and New Atheist writings.” Culture and Religion
17, no. 1 (2016): 73–91.
Knorr-Cetina, Karin. Epistemic Cultures. How Sciences Makes Knowledge. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1999.
Lamont, Michèle. Peer Evaluation in the Social Sciences and the Humanities Compared. The United States, the United Kingdom and France. Report prepared for
the Council of Canada. Havard University: Cambridge, 2005. http://citeseerx.
ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.529.4425&rep=rep1&type=pdf

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Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern West

LeDrew, Stephen. The evolution of atheism. The politics of a modern movement.
New York: Oxford University Press, 2016.
Luckmann, Thomas. Die Unsichtbare Religion. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 1991.
Luhmann, Niklas. Die Wissenschaft der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp,
1992.
Luhmann, Niklas. Die Religion der Gesellschaft. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2015[2000].
Luhmann, Niklas. Funktion der Religion. Frankfurt a. M.: Suhrkamp, 2016 [1982].
Malinowski, Bronislaw and Robert Redfield. Magic, science, and religion. Glencoe:
The Free Press of Glencoe, 1948.
Merton, Robert K. Science, Technology and Society in Seventeenth-Century England. New York: Fertig, 1972 [1938].
Mill, John Stuart. Auguste Comte and Positivism. Milan: CreateSpace Independent
Publishing Platform, 2016 [1865]
Neef, Katharina. Die Entstehung der Soziologie aus der Sozialreform: Eine Fachgeschichte. Frankfurt a. M.: Campus, 2012.
Osler, Margaret J. “Religion and the changing historiography of the Scientific
Revolution.” In Science and Religion. New Historical Perspectives. Edited byThomas Dixon, Geoffrey Cantor, and Stephen Pumfrey, 71–86. Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2010.
Parsons, Talcott. The social system. New York: Free Press of Glencoe, 1951.
Popper, Karl R. The logic of scientific discovery. New York: Basic Books, 1959 [1934].
Schmidt-Lux, Thomas. Wissenschaft als Religion: Szientismus im ostdeutschen
Säkularisierungsprozess. Würzburg: Ergon, 2008.
Schütz, Alfred and Thomas Luckmann. The structures of the life-world. Evanston:Northwestern University Press, 1973.
Stadler, Friedrich. The Vienna Circle: Studies in the Origins, Development, andInfluence of Logical Empiricism. Wien: Springer, 2001.
Tenbruck, Friedrich H. “Religion und Kultur – die Religion im Maelstrom derReflexion.” In “Religion und Kultur.” Edited by Jörg Bergmann, Alois Hahn,
and Thomas Luckmann, special issue 33 of Kölner Zeitschrift für Soziologie
und Sozialpsychologie (1993): 31–67.
Tschannen, Oliver. “The Secularization Paradigm: A Systematization.” Journal for
the Scientific Study of Religion 30, no 3 (1991): 395–415.
Voegelin, Eric. Die politischen Religionen. Edited by Peter J. Opitz. Müchen: Fink,
1993 [1938].
Weber, Max. Essays in Sociology. Translated, edited, and introduced by H. H.
Gerth and C. Wright Mills. New York: Oxford University Press, 1946 [1920].

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Leipzig University – HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, 2019www.multiple-secularities.de/publications/companion

Companion to the Study of Secularity – Silke Gülker: Science and Religion in the Modern WestThis text is part of the Companion to the Study of Secularity. The intent of the Companion is to give scholars interested in the concept of Multiple Secularities, who are
not themselves specialists in particular (historical) regions, an insight into different
regions in which formations of secularity can be observed, as well as into the key
concepts and notions with respect to the study of secularity.
It is published by the Humanities Centre for Advanced Studies “Multiple
Secularities − Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”. For as long as the HCAS
continues to exist, the Companion will be published and further expanded on the
HCAS’ website. Towards the end of Multiple Secularities project, all entries will
be systematised and edited in order to transform the Companion into a completed
Open Access publication.
Please cite as:
Gülker, Silke. “Science and Religion in the Modern West.” In Companion to the
Study of Secularity. Edited by HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West,
Beyond Modernities.” Leipzig University, 2019. www.multiple-secularities.de/media/css_ guelker_scienceandreligion.pdf

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Leipzig University – HCAS “Multiple Secularities – Beyond the West, Beyond Modernities”, 2019www.multiple-secularities.de/publications/companion