6 Science Religion and Reality 



III 



However this may be, there can be no doubt that the modern 

 man looks to science and not to reHgion to explain the world of 

 sense which lies about him. How then, so far as he is concerned, 

 can there be any cause of conflict between science and religion ? 

 If there be no world but the world revealed in sense experience, so 

 much the worse for religion. But science has nothing to complain 

 of. If, on the other hand, there be another world, how is science 

 injured, provided always it be left in undisturbed possession of its 

 own territory ? Peace in circumstances like these should surely 

 be easy of attainment. 



Now I believe that as a matter of fact peace on these terms 

 is far commoner than we are sometimes apt to suppose. Through 

 long periods of recorded history there has been little deserving the 

 name of a conflict between science and religion. Their frontiers 

 were too far apart. The claims of science were still too modest, 

 those of religion were still too vague, to make collision easy. So 

 that the disputes which really stirred the theological world were 

 either those dividing sect from sect, or those dividing philosophy 

 from religion. Even now, in a world where so much has changed, 

 there are, I suspect, countless persons sincerely accepting both 

 religion and science who never trouble themselves about any of 

 the incompatibilities, real or imaginary, which, in the opinion of 

 more contentious intellects, separate the two. 



IV 



Putting these easy-going, but not ill-advised, persons on one 

 side, can we determine the period at which the growth of science 

 first brought it into effective collision with the religious views 

 authoritatively held (for example) in Western Europe.? In the 

 third of the following essays Dr. Singer reminds us that during 

 the Middle Ages there was neither growth in science, nor conflict 

 between science and religion. Over what, then, did the first 

 direct collision occur ? We might naturally suppose that it was 

 occasioned by the great Copernican reconstruction of astronomy, 

 the most important first-fruits of the new scientific era. And to 

 this the ecclesiastical condemnation of Galileo no doubt gives 

 much support. Nevertheless, I cannot help thinking that its 



