Yep, I am a zealot, because I think Gould is only mostly right.
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Book Review:
Thou shalt not mix religion and science
S. NOMANUL HAQ
Rocks of Ages: Science and Religion in the Fullness of Life
by Stephen Jay Gould
Ballantine: 1999. 241pp
$18.95
CORBIS/HULTON-DEUTSCH
"I am inclined to look at everything as resulting from designed laws, with the details, whether good or bad, left to the working out of what we may call chance," Charles Darwin is quoted as having said in Gould's impassioned thesis on the age-old question of science and religion. It is in this remark that the kernel of Gould's thesis lies. There is no essential conflict between science and religion — in the fullness of life they are both vital, but they belong to two utterly different realms which do not overlap and cannot be synthesized.
Quite remarkably, this thesis is expressed and elaborated on in this petite volume in a highly personalized, colloquial parlance. It moves far and wide in the process — into the history of science, politics, biological evolution, and even classical poetry. He moves back and forth between the nature and scope of science, to the essence of religion. This is an ambitious synthesis, but it neither intimidates nor does it seem too far-fetched. Gould appeals to common sense, and deliberately sticks to that level.
Gould tells us that the "details" referred to by Darwin in the above quote are precisely and exhaustively the business of science. Details here mean empirical facts, in contrast to larger questions concerning the ultimate drift and meaning of the cosmos. And going beyond Darwin's remark, Gould adds that these facts exist for immediate, not transcendental reasons: reasons that are knowable through rational means and subject to scientific explanation. There was no "intended meaning in the fall of each petal and every raindrop" — this is what Darwin meant by "chance"; it meant "contingency" as opposed to some pre-ordained design. Science is a factual construction of the world, involving the development of theories that coordinate and explain nature's empirical data. Nature exists in "sublime indifference" to Homo sapiens, with "no preference for accommodating our yearnings", no matter how much we long, like the Persian poet Omar Khayyam, whom Gould quotes, to mould it to our shape.
But factual questions about the world, Gould explains, define both the scope as well as the limitation of science — its magisterium. Science has no business making moral pronouncements; factual truth cannot dictate moral truth. Questions of meaning and morals, of life's ultimate purpose and values, of human fellowship and ethical conduct — these belong properly to the institution called 'religion', embodying a different magisterium.
Just as science has its limitations, so has religion. If life's evolutionary history cannot resolve the riddle of life's meaning, so the religious belief concerning the creation of the world in six days, taken literally, cannot dictate or interfere with factual conclusions in the empirical realm of cosmology. Science and religion, then, embody two logically distinct magisteria, each having its own style of enquiry, its own set of standards and norms, and its own test of legitimacy. Neither of them encompasses all enquiry. Into this framework comes Gould's core declaration: science and religion embody two equally important but utterly different Non-Overlapping Magisteria, or NOMA.
Gould's NOMA, which is often reminiscent of Thomas Kuhn's paradigm, is at once a prescriptive principle and a historical representation. On the one hand, Gould says that scientists and believers ought not to violate the principle of NOMA. This would allow the two magisteria to coexist and flourish in a position of respectful non-interference, with one seeking inspiration and illumination from the other without the two fusing. To paraphrase: as scientists, we look into the palpable reality of the natural world; as believers, we look into our inner beings. In this way we fashion a quilt of understanding with distinct, non-overlapping patches — and we call this patchwork wisdom.
On the other hand, articulating some of the latest historical research, Gould claims that the principle of NOMA has been effectively respected throughout the history of science. In truth, there was no conflict between science and religion; the conflict existed only in people's minds, not in historical reality. Thus, on the authority of a contemporary historian, Gould points out that the famous trial and forced recantation of Galileo in 1633 was a political drama of a princely court, not a science-versus-religion fight. Similarly, on compelling historical grounds, Gould challenges what he considers a legend: that medieval church fathers in general taught the doctrine of a flat Earth, and that Columbus suffered in the hands of ecclesiastical authorities over this "non-issue".
Finally, recalling in detail the fierce and scandalous creationism versus evolution battle in the American courts, a battle in which Gould himself fought, and which has been recently revived, he tells us once again that this was a political phenomenon of a uniquely American kind, not science against religion.
It is hard to imagine reasonable minds having any quarrels with Gould's motives: deeply concerned about science, he wants to protect it from the attacks of naive and misguided religious zealots who understand neither science nor religion. At the same time, he wishes to instill confidence in scientific circles that human history is on their side, that religion in its essence is not an adversary, and that the persecution or rejection of scientists in the name of religion has always been rooted in non-religious reasons.
Here is Gould, an accomplished scientist, breaking what I call the 'contrariety myth' — that religion and science cannot subsist together and that one must feed on the arterial blood of the other. Here, a scientist, who introduces himself as an agnostic, pays tribute to religion, considering it to be vital in the fullness of life, and rehabilitating the believer in a position of utmost respect. Gould's motives are so glorious and his concerns so timely that one is tempted to support him even if his analysis turns out to be problematic in its "details".
Speaking of details, scholars of religion may raise the objection, for example, that the scientist Gould inflates the status of religion only to puncture it because he places fundamental limitations on God — and admits it. Fashion your God freely, he says, but do not attribute to Him the power to work miracles. But is this a theological position — or is it a violation of NOMA? Moreover, do we really think that believers will ever truncate their God in this way? Would it not destroy the very foundation of the concept of Godhead? Scholars may also object that Gould's analysis is too narrowly restricted to the Judaeo-Christian European milieu — what about Arabic science, which is an integral part of the history of the discipline as we know it? The secular-religious dichotomy blurs in the case of Islam, but then it had no 'Inquisition' and no official persecution of scientists took place: how do we explain this? And what then becomes of Gould's thesis?
Professional philosophers and historians of science may accuse Gould of stepping on their toes. They may say that his account of "facts" as something independent of a theoretical or metaphysical framework is oversimplified, that his neat distinction between the ethical and the factual is problematic. While historians may share his impatience with any contemporary agendas fusing science and religion, his logical thesis of the incommensurability of the two is not quite borne out by historical data, as he should be aware.
But Gould still comes out as the winner. He has not written this work for specialists; it is aimed rather at the general reader. It operates on a common-sense level and, ultimately, it makes sense. So, whatever issues one may legitimately have with its 'details', in its general thrust this small book is heftier than the volumes of inaccessible, jargon-wrapped material produced every year by some academic historians and philosophers. Rocks of Ages should be read not only in all our colleges, it should be read in our temples and mosques, in our churches and synagogues.
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