The Academic Analysts of the Relationship Between Religion and Science

This chapter focuses on how the historians and sociologists who have examined the religion and science debate also reinforce the systemic knowledge perspective. Historians show, for example, that Victorian era scientists often thought they were investigating the details of God’s creation, and thus there was harmony in religious and scientific knowledge. Sociologists assume that the spread of scientific knowledge is a cause of secularization. This chapter also offers an explanation for the myopic focus of these disciplines. Historians only have records from elites and the debate of a century or more ago may well have been about knowledge. For social scientists their view was formed at the birth of the social sciences in the Enlightenment era, even though this perspective may not reflect contemporary society.