Conflict thesis

The conflict thesis, also known as the warfare thesis, the warfare model or the Draper-White thesis, is an interpretive model of the relationship between religion and science. According to the conflict thesis, any interaction between religion and science almost inevitably leads to open hostility, with religion usually taking the part of the aggressor against new scientific ideas. The conflict thesis was a popular historiographical approach in the history of science during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but many historians of science and related academics consider that it has been superceded by subsequent historical research. It remains popular with a general audience, and is often invoked both by advocates of science and religion alike with stakes in making science and religion seem irreconcilable.

Origins

The most influential exponents of the conflict thesis were John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. In the early 1870s, Draper was invited to write a book on History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874). He directed his criticism primarily against Roman Catholicism, while assessing Islam and Protestantism as having a friendly relationship toward science. In 1896, White published the History of the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom, the culmination of thirty years of research and publication on the subject. His target was any form of restrictive, dogamtic Christianity. Historians of science David Lindberg and Ron Numbers have written that:

White's Warfare apparently did not sell as briskly as Draper's Conflict, but in the end it proved more influential, partly, it seems, because Draper's strident anti-Catholicism soon dated his work. . . (Lindberg and Numbers 1986, p. 3).

Most advocates of the conflict thesis, like Draper and White, have focused on the alleged hostility of Christianity toward science, though Islam has received some criticism of its own.

Criticism

Subsequent historical research indicates that religion has a much more complex and close relationship with science than the conflict thesis presupposes. Many scientific developments, such as Kepler's laws and the 19th century reformulation of physics in terms of energy, were explicitly driven by religious ideas, and religious organizations figure prominently in the broader histories of many sciences. Even the most prominent examples of conflict, such as the Galileo affair and the Scopes trial, were not purely instances of conflict between science and religion; personal and political factors also weighed heavily in the development of each.

Support

One reason for the current appeal of the conflict thesis is the existence of ongoing debates that seem to follow a pattern of religion versus science, or religion versus what some claim to be social progress, where this supposed progress is linked in some way to science or technology. Examples include the creation-evolution controversy and controversies over the use of birth control. For instance, the website religioustolerance.org, in their page on Religious Change And Past Religious Conflicts, while not entirely agreeing with White's attitude towards religion, writes that it gives a useful multistage model for understanding religious reactions to scientific innovations.

Origins

Criticism

Support

See also

External links

Further reading

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Origins

Criticism

Support

See also

External links

Further reading