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This dissertation analyzes the ways in which scholars talk about the relation between religion and science.  In the late 1980s, the physicist and theologian Ian Barbour proposed that we approach this massive scholarship through the lens of a fourfold typology: scholars tend to conceive of the religion-science relationship (RSR) as one of Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, or Integration.  This model, though acknowledged as problematic, still dominates the field of religion-and-science---an interdisciplinary field with hundreds of specialists drawn from philosophy, history, and the natural and social sciences.  Extant work which analyzes the discipline as a whole either extends or slightly modifies Barbour's four original categories.  In my dissertation, I propose an entirely new way of approaching the religion-and-science literature, by focusing on the methods that scholars employ to reach their conclusions about the RSR rather than focusing on the conclusions themselves.  Doing so, I argue, will help to resolve the current widespread feeling that scholars are talking past one another and also help public readerships of the literature clarify what is actually going on in the literature by highlighting the modes of reasoning being used.I identify four main methods that scholars tend to use when characterizing the RSR: conceptual analysis, (historical) case studies, deconstruction, and fieldwork.  Conceptual analysis focuses on the definitions of `religion' and `science,' and seeks to derive their relation logically from those definitions.  The method of case studies instead proceeds by first surveying a variety of of historical encounters between religion and science and then arguing, via induction, for some general characterization of the RSR.  Deconstruction, on the other hand, emphasizes the contingency of the concepts ``religion" and ``science", either historically or cross-culturally, and explains the emergence of the current RSR on the basis of that contingency.  Finally, scholars employing fieldwork extract their characterization of the RSR from empirical data gathered from scientists and religious folk themselves.  Although these different methods often draw from particular disciplinary backgrounds, they can be---and are---used by scholars in any discipline.  Each of these methods faces unique issues and challenges which I discuss and further develop, proposing recommendations for those who use these methods in light of the critiques.  I argue that no method is better ``on the whole" than any other, for such a determination will depend essentially on the aims, goals, and values scholars and other readers may have in trying to understand the RSR.  Thus, I also explain what kinds of audiences may find the different methods relevant, with an especial focus on non-academic audiences.Throughout the dissertation, I pay especial attention to scholarship in public-facing contexts.  Hence, the main sources I consider are academic, book-length tracts written by scholars with public-facing aims.  The various critiques I discuss also focus on the public-facing nature of the works examined.  An issue all of the current scholarship faces, which has so far gone unrecognized in the literature, revolves around the question, ``Whose `science,' whose `religion'?"  Scholars almost always focus on religion and (especially) science as practiced among elites.  Standard treatments of science, for instance, draw on the large-scale theories produced by famous scientists, or examine the personal beliefs of scientists employed at prestigious research universities.  Left out are the vast majority of practicing scientists which members of the public may interact with (or be), many of whom work in non-research, non-theory-oriented spaces.  This leads to a sense in which prevailing accounts of the RSR work with notions of science which fail to accurately reflect the nature of science as practiced in the world.  I thus show how the religion-and-science scholarship can be improved by taking these non-research, non-theory-oriented sciences seriously---not only will it make the work more relevant to the publics scholars often wish to reach, but it will also open up new avenues of research in understanding how religion and science are related by real-world actors, not just in the minds of academics. Overall, my dissertation provides a novel approach to the field of religion-and-science by providing a high-level, overview analysis of the methods used in the literature on the religion-science relationship

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UC IrvineUC Irvine Electronic Theses and DissertationsTitleMethods in Religion-and-SciencePermalinkhttps://escholarship.org/uc/item/2nn633pqAuthorChin, AdamPublication Date2024Copyright InformationThis work is made available under the terms of a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial License, available at https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertationeScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital LibraryUniversity of CaliforniaUNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA,IRVINEMethods in Religion-and-ScienceDISSERTATIONsubmitted in partial satisfaction of the requirementsfor the degree ofDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPHYin PhilosophybyAdam J. ChinDissertation Committee:Professor Jeremy Heis, ChairDistinguished Professor Emeritus Penelope MaddyAssociate Professor Lauren RossAssociate Professor Renee Raphael2024Portions of Chapter 1 ©2023 Adam J. ChinPortions of Chapter 2 ©2024 Adam J. ChinAll other materials © 2024 Adam J. ChinTABLE OF CONTENTSPageLIST OF FIGURES vACKNOWLEDGMENTS viVITA viiiABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATION x0 Introduction 10.1 Religion-and-Science, a Brief Overview . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40.2 Scope of the Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90.2.1 The Authors . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 90.2.2 The Medium . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110.2.3 What this Dissertation is Not . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120.3 Overview of the Project . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 141 A Typology of Methods 181.1 Types of Typologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 201.1.1 Conclusion-Oriented Typologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 211.1.2 Concept-Oriented Typologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231.2 Using Typologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 271.3 The Aims of Typologies (in Their Second-Order Use) . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331.3.1 Barbour’s Aims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 331.3.2 Three Other Aims . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 361.3.3 Explaining Public Uptake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 391.4 A Typology of Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 421.4.1 Conceptual Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 441.4.2 Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 461.4.3 Deconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 471.4.4 Fieldwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 481.5 A Typology of Methods and the Aims of Typologies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 491.5.1 Illuminate Effective Engagement . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 501.5.2 Public Uptake . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 521.5.3 Guide for the Public . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53ii1.6 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 562 The Method of Conceptual Analysis 582.1 Varieties of Conceptual Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 592.1.1 Some Exemplars from the Past . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 632.1.2 Some Exemplars from the Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 692.2 Some Problems with Conceptual Analysis and its Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . 762.2.1 Monolithism . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 772.2.2 On Essentializing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 862.2.3 Whose Science, Whose Religion? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 942.3 For Whom Is Conceptual Analysis Useful? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1192.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1283 The Method of Case Studies 1293.1 The Method of Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1313.1.1 Some Exemplars Past and Present . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1383.2 A Critique of Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1513.2.1 Some Classic Problems with Enumerative Induction . . . . . . . . . . 1523.2.2 Is the Past Relevant? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1573.2.3 The Proper Level of Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1623.2.4 Whose Science? Whose Religion? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1683.3 The Motivational Use of Case Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1883.4 For Whom Are Case Studies Useful? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1923.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1994 The Method of Deconstruction 2014.1 Deconstructing Deconstruction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2024.1.1 Exemplars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2104.2 Some Problems with Deconstruction and Its Use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2184.2.1 Erecting Borders . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2184.2.2 Discovering Jade . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2354.2.3 Whose Religion, Whose Science? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2454.3 A Conflict of Methods . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2544.4 For Whom Is Deconstruction Useful? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2574.5 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2655 The Method of Fieldwork 2685.1 The Method of Fieldwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2695.1.1 Some Exemplars . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2735.2 A Critique of Fieldwork . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2805.2.1 Perhaps the People Are Wrong . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2825.2.2 Whose Religion? Whose Science? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2855.3 For Whom Is Fieldwork Useful? . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2995.4 Conclusion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 303iii6 Conclusion 305Appendix A The Exemplars 331ivLIST OF FIGURESPage1.1 Drees’ Typology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 242.1 Elite–Quotidian Matrix . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1053.1 Re-Visualization of Brooke and Cantor’s Typology . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1394.1 Static Map-Territory Analogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2224.2 Dynamic Map-Territory Analogy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2335.1 Scantibodies Laboratory, Inc. Logo . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 291vACKNOWLEDGMENTSSome seven years ago, I enrolled in an STS seminar on science and pseudo-science. It wasled by Kerry McKenzie. I arrived to the first day of class late, having missed the bus due tofalling for a scam call and having to run some mile and a half to campus. Bursting into theroom, red with embarrassment (and some exhaustion), I found that I had missed the usualintroductions and so was asked to share my research interests. Luckily I had a ready reply:I was mostly interested in quantum ontology. After my breathless ten-second answer Kerryasked, “And don’t you also have interests in science and religion?” Such had never occurredto me! But bewildered, nervous, and very much feeling the pressure of being both the onlyundergrad and the only late student in the room, I quickly agreed.Looking back, I can’t help but be impressed by the parallels between this one encounter andmy journey through graduate school—and by my blindness. If when I had started my gradschool journey someone had told me that I would write a dissertation on religion-and-science,I would not have believed them. As a first-year grad student, I knew exactly what I knewin that seminar: I was interested in quantum ontology and that’s what I would write about.Or if not that exactly, then something at least in the realm of philosophy of physics! Nevercould I have imagined pivoting to religion-and-science.But here we are. This dissertation, of course, does not concern quantum ontology; it concernsreligion-and-science. I won’t detail the twists and turns of my research trajectory here, butI must acknowledge that the shift was not due entirely to me—there were many who guidedand supported me along the way.Perhaps chief among those was Jeremy Heis who, when confronted by a rather grumpy third-year agreed to supervise a dissertation on a topic with which neither he nor I had muchfamiliarity. Despite that, Jeremy was, as with seemingly any topic, a veritable treasure troveof useful suggestions and deep insights. I am especially thankful for his kindness and supportthroughout an incredibly (and yes, I use that term specifically!) difficult time in his life.I also want to thank the other members of my committee—Lauren Ross, Pen Maddy, and Re-nee Raphael. These brilliant women opened innumerable opportunities for me and providedmuch-needed advice and guidance.Producing this dissertation, of course, took more than academic guidance. I would not havemade it through my time at UC Irvine without the supportive community I found amongthe Philosophy and LPS grad students. I want to especially acknowledge my cohort: JasonChen, Margaret Farrell, David Freeborn, Nathan Gabriel, Saira Khan, David Mwakima,and Jingyi Wu. These seven philosophers were the strongest bond which kept me in gradschool—and helped me through it. Many others gave me strength (and sometimes food)along the way including Elliot Chen, Matthew Coates, Jessica Gonzalez, Kevin Kadowaki,Rebecca Korf, Charles Leitz, Curtis Mason, Helen Meskhidze, Chris Mitsch, Stella Moon,Jeffery Schatz, Ellen Shi, Nick Smith, and Evan Sommers.viJoshua Norton was especially instrumental in turning my vague interests in religion-and-science into something more. Sorry for sneaking into your office without knocking.Others I also want to thank include Seth Hart for randomly popping into my life and beinga wonderfully kind human being to an atheist like me; Stefano Bigliardi for discoveringmy appreciation of goats and opening door after door for me in the realm of new religiousmovement studies; Brianne Donaldson for her encouragement and kind counsel; Mike Fortunand Mei Zhan for helping me see that I should have been an anthropologist; and BrianFrastaci and Robert Butchko for finding me and finding the time to read with me—ourlittle reading group has significantly shaped this dissertation. Special thanks go to KerryMcKenzie; she has had a much greater impact on me than I suspect she knows.And of course none of anything I have done would have been possible without the love andsupport of Mom, Dad, Andy, Ali, Leo, and Jaehyun. Thank you for always being there.This work has not been supported by any external funding nor is it written with any religiousor non-religious intent.Portions of Chapter 1 of this dissertation are an adaptation of the material as it appears in”The aims of typologies and a typology of methods” (2023) in Zygon: Journal of Religionand Science, used with permission from Wiley Periodicals LLC (CC BY-NC 4.0).Portions of Chapter 2 of this dissertation are an adaptation of the material as it appearsin ”On the method of conceptual analysis in religion-and-science” (2024) in Zygon: Journalof Religion and Science, used with permission from the Open Library of Humanities (CCBY-NC 4.0).And although Brian Frastaci very generously provided copy-editing for the entire disserta-tion, I cannot deflect blame for any errors and mistakes onto him; all are due to my ownfailings.viiVITAAdam J. ChinEDUCATIONDoctor of Philosophy in Philosophy 2024Emphasis in Medicine, Science, and Technology StudiesEmphasis in Medical HumanitiesUniversity of California, Irvine Irvine, CAMaster of Philosophy 2021University of California, Irvine Irvine, CABachelor of Arts in Philosophy and History 2018University of California, San Diego La Jolla, CATEACHING EXPERIENCEAssociate Instructor, Religious Studies Spring 2024University of California, Irvine Irvine, CAAssociate Instructor, Logic and Philosophy of Science 2022, 2023University of California, Irvine Irvine, CAviiiREFEREED JOURNAL PUBLICATIONSNew Religious Movements and Science: What Now,What Next, Where To2024Religion Compass, 18:4; with Stefano BigliardOn Conceptual Analysis in Religion-and-Science 2024Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 59:1The Aims of Typologies and a Typology of Methods 2023Zygon: Journal of Religion and Science, 58:3REFEREED CONFERENCE PRESENTATIONSWe Should Think of Science Like We Think of Race July 2024Korean Society for Philosophy of ScienceTaking the Non-Research-Oriented Sciences Seriouslyin Religion-and-ScienceSept 2023Science and Religion ForumPhilosophy of the Non-Basic Sciences: Thinking withthe 76%July 2023Lisbon International Conference on Philosophy of ScienceA Typology of Methods in Religion and Science (Poster) Nov 2022Philosophy of Science AssociationA Typology of Methods July 2022Ian Ramsey Center Conference in Honour of Alister McGrathSome Puzzles in Empedocles’ Theory of Perception(Poster)March 2018American Philosophical Association, Western DivisionixABSTRACT OF THE DISSERTATIONMethods in Religion-and-ScienceByAdam J. ChinDoctor of Philosophy in PhilosophyUniversity of California, Irvine, 2024Professor Jeremy Heis, ChairThis dissertation analyzes the ways in which scholars talk about the relation between re-ligion and science. In the late 1980s, the physicist and theologian Ian Barbour proposedthat we approach this massive scholarship through the lens of a fourfold typology: scholarstend to conceive of the religion-science relationship (RSR) as one of Conflict, Independence,Dialogue, or Integration. This model, though acknowledged as problematic, still dominatesthe field of religion-and-science—an interdisciplinary field with hundreds of specialists drawnfrom philosophy, history, and the natural and social sciences. Extant work which analyzesthe discipline as a whole either extends or slightly modifies Barbour’s four original categories.In my dissertation, I propose an entirely new way of approaching the religion-and-scienceliterature, by focusing on the methods that scholars employ to reach their conclusions aboutthe RSR rather than focusing on the conclusions themselves. Doing so, I argue, will helpto resolve the current widespread feeling that scholars are talking past one another and alsohelp public readerships of the literature clarify what is actually going on in the literature byhighlighting the modes of reasoning being used.I identify four main methods that scholars tend to use when characterizing the RSR: concep-tual analysis, (historical) case studies, deconstruction, and fieldwork. Conceptual analysisfocuses on the definitions of ‘religion’ and ‘science,’ and seeks to derive their relation logi-xcally from those definitions. The method of case studies instead proceeds by first surveyinga variety of of historical encounters between religion and science and then arguing, via in-duction, for some general characterization of the RSR. Deconstruction, on the other hand,emphasizes the contingency of the concepts “religion” and “science”, either historically orcross-culturally, and explains the emergence of the current RSR on the basis of that con-tingency. Finally, scholars employing fieldwork extract their characterization of the RSRfrom empirical data gathered from scientists and religious folk themselves. Although thesedifferent methods often draw from particular disciplinary backgrounds, they can be—andare—used by scholars in any discipline.Each of these methods faces unique issues and challenges which I discuss and further develop,proposing recommendations for those who use these methods in light of the critiques. I arguethat no method is better “on the whole” than any other, for such a determination will dependessentially on the aims, goals, and values scholars and other readers may have in trying tounderstand the RSR. Thus, I also explain what kinds of audiences may find the differentmethods relevant, with an especial focus on non-academic audiences.Throughout the dissertation, I pay especial attention to scholarship in public-facing contexts.Hence, the main sources I consider are academic, book-length tracts written by scholars withpublic-facing aims. The various critiques I discuss also focus on the public-facing natureof the works examined. An issue all of the current scholarship faces, which has so fargone unrecognized in the literature, revolves around the question, “Whose ‘science,’ whose‘religion’?” Scholars almost always focus on religion and (especially) science as practicedamong elites. Standard treatments of science, for instance, draw on the large-scale theoriesproduced by famous scientists, or examine the personal beliefs of scientists employed atprestigious research universities. Left out are the vast majority of practicing scientists whichmembers of the public may interact with (or be), many of whom work in non-research, non-theory-oriented spaces. This leads to a sense in which prevailing accounts of the RSR workxiwith notions of science which fail to accurately reflect the nature of science as practiced inthe world. I thus show how the religion-and-science scholarship can be improved by takingthese non-research, non-theory-oriented sciences seriously—not only will it make the workmore relevant to the publics scholars often wish to reach, but it will also open up new avenuesof research in understanding how religion and science are related by real-world actors, notjust in the minds of academics.Overall, my dissertation provides a novel approach to the field of religion-and-science byproviding a high-level, overview analysis of the methods used in the literature on the religion-science relationship.xiiChapter 0IntroductionImagine a college freshman. She is excited to start her new life, eager to explore the variousopportunities available to her. As a gen ed, she’s forced to take a biology class and isimmediately hooked. She wonders, “Can I be a scientist?” A shadowy doubt flickers in theback of her mind: isn’t being religious and a scientist incompatible?To our surprise, she goes to the university library where she finds, to her own surprise, awhole section of books dedicated to the relation between religion and science. The sectionis not only large (and many of the books voluminous), but as she inspects the books a bitmore closely, the student realizes that they represent a wide array of approaches to theirsubject. It isn’t just that some claim religion and science to be eternal enemies, others thatthey are life-long allies. She finds that. But perhaps more interestingly, she finds that somestart by declaring science to be X, religion Y; while others declare there are no such thingsas religion or science. Yet others contain lists of numbers and statistics, others interviews,and still others seem like biographies. With so much variety and (sadly) so little time in theterm, where should she start?Imagine four years later, our student applies for grad school—and gets in. Elated, she starts1thinking and planning—when suddenly the thought comes: Will she thrive there? Will herreligious identity pose problems for her? Will she be treated differently—poorly—becauseof it? And what will her coreligionists think? Will they accept her still? Back to the libraryshe goes, wondering again which books will be useful.Many years later, our student looks back on her life and wonders, How can I inspire otherwomen like me to be scientists? What can I say that will help them decide and navigate forthemselves the relation between religion and science? Yet again she returns to the library,to the shelves she remembers, and flips through the tomes—some old, some new—for ideas.Other lives intertwined with our student’s also run into questions about religion and itsrelation with science. A professor on an admissions committee might notice the studentidentifies somewhere in her package as an active member of a particular religious traditionand they have a slight ping of worry: Aren’t religion and science incompatible? Will a studentlike this be able to do the work required in the lab? A potential employer may come acrossour student’s resume: PhD in biology, publications in the relevant field, excellent letters,identifies as highly religious. Wait. Can a religious person—especially of this particularfaith—do this kind of science? Like their prospective student or employee, the professor oremployer may also go to the library. In front of the books on books on books, where shouldthey start?These cases can be multiplied ad nauseum. In each case, the protagonist’s question is thesame: what’s the relation between religion and science? But in each case the question isasked in a slightly different way. For in each case the protagonist has a different set of valuesand driving concerns in asking and finding an answer to their question. As an undergrad,the student might be concerned about “fitting in”; as a grad student, she may worry abouthow she’ll be treated; as a distinguished scientist, she may wonder about inspiring others ofher faith. These values and interests may overlap—or they may not.2Regardless of their values, however, each protagonist finds themselves in front of the shelves.Facing the immense collection of work, what should they read? They cannot read everything.So where should they start? Are some of those tomes more relevant for their particularinterests and concerns than others are?In this dissertation, I aim to address these questions. I answer the final question in theaffirmative: Yes, some of the books will be more relevant than others for the protagonist’sparticular situation. That is not to say that some books are not relevant at all—perhaps thereare readers, with a different set of values and concerns, who will find them relevant. What isit that I mean by “relevant”? Relevance here does not simply mean “in line with the reader’sexpectations.” My point is not that books which claim religion and science compatible aremost relevant to religious students interested in science or that books claiming the oppositeare the best fit for skeptical PIs. Indeed, this dissertation is to a large extent not concernedwith the claims and conclusions of the books on the shelves. Instead, it is concerned with howthe books are structured—with the methods the authors use to arrive at their conclusions.As a dissertation in philosophy, it is primarily concerned with the form of the argumentsauthors construct to convince their readers.By “relevant”, then, I mean “fit to purpose”—some methods of argument will be bettersuited to some interests and concerns than others. And this dissertation seeks to uncoverwhat is relevant for whom. It aims to provide a guide for our protagonists as they standbefore those shelves in the library.But more than that, this dissertation also aims to provide a guide for the authors of thosebooks shelved in the library. Many scholars who write on religion and science hope thatsomeone like the protagonists above will pick up their book—and be convinced. Manyscholars write not just for other scholars, but for the public, and they write not just topursue and share knowledge, but to enact social change. And if that is their aim, then thisdissertation aims to help them better engage with their readers. In just the same way that3it aims to help readers find the books relevant to their interests, so too does this dissertationaim to help authors find the methods relevant to addressing their readers.0.1 Religion-and-Science, a Brief OverviewThe field of what I will call religion-and-science1 has its more-or-less official origins in thelate nineteenth century. In 1878, John William Draper—president of the American Chemi-cal Society, producer of the first lithograph of a woman and of the moon—turned amateurhistorian and published A History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science. A bit lessthan two decades later, in 1896, proud ex-congressman, first president of Cornell, and dis-tinguished historian Andrew Dickson White published his History of the Warfare of Sciencewith Theology in Christendom. Together, these three-named men are cited by historians tothis day as the originators of what is called the Conflict Thesis.According to the Conflict Thesis, religion and science are in irreconcilable tension with oneanother, at odds in a zero-sum game of control for cultural influence. Both Draper and Whitearrived at their conclusions by combing through the history of science and dragging to thesurface literally hundreds of encounters between religion and science—sometimes in the formof encounters between religious folks and scientists2, or scientists and religious institutions,or theologians and scientific theories—which they interpreted as showcasing that tension.As Draper put it, “the history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is anarrative of the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellecton one side, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the1To my knowledge, no other scholar terms the discipline “religion-and-science.” More often one encountersit as “science and religion”—in that order and without the hyphens. I use the hyphen both to reducegrammatical ambiguity (i.e. to differentiate between references to a field of study and a pair of humanactivities) and to reinforce the idea that the field does not on the one hand treat of religion and on the othertreat of science, but rather treats them together. And I choose to use the order religion-and-science becauseas an atheist with a personal history of significant misgivings about religion, I find it useful to give it priorplace as a reminder that it is something to be taken seriously. And besides, R comes before S.2Or people whom Draper and White label as religious and/or scientists.4other” (Draper 1874, Preface).The Conflict Thesis structured not only the emergence of history of science as a discipline(Ungureanu 2019, 249–256), but also the in-some-ways companion discipline of religion-and-science, as scholars argued for and against the works of Draper and White. And even tothis day, scholars take themselves to be responding to these two long-dead Americans, andwhoever works in religion-and-science works in the shadows of their (by modern standard)admittedly rather shoddy historical work and controversial conclusions. Indeed, few scholarsof religion-and-science today embrace the Conflict Thesis propounded by Draper and White,despite its continued prevalence in public discourse.3 Instead, the discipline has shifted, ifnot to the opposite conclusion—that religion and science are eminently compatible—then toa certainly more positive view of how religion and science interact which allows for there tobe non-conflict-laden relations.Representative of this trend is Ian Barbour (1923–2013), whose foundational 1966 Issues inScience and Religion—foundational because this text can be seen as birthing the contem-porary discipline of religion-and-science. Barbour was one of the first—and certainly themost widely read—to systematically discuss the ways in which religion and science could berelated, beyond simple platitudes towards conflict or harmony. Barbour himself, trained as aphysicist and writing as a theologian, was an advocate of a more positive characterization ofthe RSR—religion and science could and should be in fruitful dialogue, mutually informingand advancing each other. Barbour’s work heralded a flurry of other, increasingly nuancedwork unpacking the ways in which religion and science had interacted both historically andinto the present. Within the past three or so decades, it has become increasingly common tosee endorsement of something called the Complexity Thesis as a kind of alternative to the3Or at least such is often said. I am not aware, however, of any systematic study of the religion-and-science literature or its contributors showing that the Conflict Thesis (or modern revisions of it) is indeed aminority position. There have, however, been studies of public views on the matter. In the US, for instance,a Pew study found that a majority of people think that “science often is in conflict with religion”—thougha slightly larger majority of people do not think that science conflicts with their own religious beliefs (Funk2015).5Conflict Thesis. The general idea is that relations between religion and science are complex:they go beyond simple labels of conflict or harmony or independence.But the discipline of religion-and-science today is far more than just a motley assortment ofresponses to the Conflict Thesis. As may have been suspected from the histories of Draperand White themselves, historians and scientists—and scientists-turned-historians—are majorcontributors to the field. But they are joined by philosophers, sociologists, anthropologists,religious studies scholars, theologians, cognitive scientists, rhetoricians, media scholars, andmany others. Twenty-first-century religion-and-science has dedicated journals (Zygon: Jour-nal of Religion and Science and Theology and Science), multiple major annual conferences,and hundreds of specialized researchers. Beyond the specialized researchers, many non-academics also contribute to the general body of religion-and-science work—they sometimesattend (and even present at) the conferences (e.g. the annual conference of the Institute onReligion in an Age of Science, organized by Zygon) and regularly publish books and othermedia on the topic.The topics explored under the rubric of religion-and-science are manifold. Some seek generalcharacterizations of “the” religion–science relationship (RSR)—where “religion” and “sci-ence” are general, universal categories. Others try to sketch more specific relations betweenparticular sciences and particular religions. Some get even more specific, focusing on particu-lar scientific theories (especially quantum mechanics and evolution) or particular theologicalpositions (like divine action). Some of the literature is apologetic in nature—in defense ofreligion in general or of some religion in particular or of non-religion; some is not. Somefocuses on the past, some on the present—and some even looks to the future.Historically, much of the literature was produced in the West—in Western Europe and theUS. And this circumstance has had the usual consequences. As is often lamented (seee.g., Kim 2015), reading work in religion-and-science can often feel like reading work inChristianity-and-science, even if the author purports to analyze the RSR in general. Likewise,6the figures who appear in the literature—as historical figures or as interlocutors—are moreoften than not drawn from the Western tradition: Kepler, Newton, Darwin, Einstein. Insome ways, the overly Christian/Western-centric focus is the result of linguistic selectionbias. There is, and has been, for instance, a thriving body of Islam-and-science literaturewhich is widely consumed in the Arabic world. But while some of this has been translatedinto English, much of it remains inaccessible to the largely English-speaking and English-publishing discipline. By another line of thought, the over-representation of Christianity isin fact a non-issue, for the whole idea of some relation between religion and science wasreally possible only in the Christian context—for the ideas of religion and of science onlyemerged organically in such contexts, and had to be invented in others (see e.g. Josephson2012 and Harrison 2015 for this way of thinking).Regardless of what we think about the place of Christianity in religion-and-science, morerecent years have witnessed more and more religious traditions entering the literature. Brookeand Numbers’ edited volume, Science and Religion Around the World (2011), for instance,represents a push towards globalizing the field. And increasingly work is being publishedwhich explores religion-and-science in Asia (see e.g. Keul 2015).The reasons behind the extensive engagement with religion-and-science also derive a widevariety of places. On the apologetic side, the Dali Lama provides generous funding forcognitive scientists to research meditation. The Templeton Foundation, one of the mostwell-endowed sources for academic funding pours millions each year into projects in physics,biology, and theology which might in some way be sympathetic to its Evangelical roots.4But there are also more secular motives: historians might be interested in religion simplyfor the sake of telling better histories of science; sociologists may be interested in how thepolitical tensions built around religion and science might be eased.4I myself have received funding from the Templeton Foundation in the form of a teaching prize wonthrough the Science Engaged Theology (SET) Foundations grant. The money was used to support theteaching of a new course on religion and philosophy of science which did not directly impact my research.7Indeed, with all the activity, the religion-and-science literature is growing to be not onlydiverse but immense. This dissertation aims at making sense of some of that diversitywithin immensity.It is not the first project that has done so. Ian Barbour famously outlined four “headings”under which we might classify both religion–science relations themselves and the positionsof various authors and their scholarship: Conflict, Independence, Dialogue, and Integration(see e.g. I. G. Barbour 1997). This classic typology dominates the literature. Even ifscholars take issue with it—as overly simplistic, as conceptually misleading, as internallyconfused—the language of these four headings (sometimes with the addition or substitutionof “Harmony”) can be found in the vast majority of both scholarly and non-scholarly work.But while Barbour’s fourfold typology may have its uses, I find it not especially illuminatingof the religion-and-science literature. I thus propose a different kind of typology, one basedon the methods used by scholars in their attempts to characterize the RSR. This typology is,like Barbour’s, fourfold and highlights what I will call the methods of conceptual analysis,case studies, deconstruction, and fieldwork. By looking to how scholars reach their conclu-sions rather than just looking to the conclusions themselves, this method-oriented typologyhighlights the argumentative strategies at play in the literature. This can be useful both forscholars, for it can help them understand how their work relates to other scholarship andclarify how to best respond to particular authors; as well as for public non-scholarly readersof the literature, for it can help them find work which proceeds in a way that speaks to theirinterests in puzzling out the RSR.While my project is not the first to try to systematize the religion-and-science literature, itis the first to engage directly with the need for such systematization and the first to proposea focus on scholars’ methods rather than their conclusions. And it is the first to do so withthe specific aim of understanding how to make the literature easier to navigate by membersof the public.80.2 Scope of the ProjectGiven the size of the religion-and-science literature, this dissertation does not purport toattempt to cover the entire discipline. Instead, I limit my analysis to particular areas ofthe literature and to particular kinds of sources. Specifically, this dissertation focuses onscholar-produced public-facing books whose authors aim at characterizing the RSR (or therelation between some particular religion and science) and are neither natural scientists northeologians. Let me say a few things about these self-imposed limits and a few of theirconsequences.0.2.1 The AuthorsFirst, the authors. Although the contributions to the religion-and-science literature comefrom a wide range of backgrounds, I focus only on works produced by scholars from thehumanities and social sciences. I choose scholar-produced works rather than works producedby non-academics in large part because my ultimate interest is in the arguments foundin such works. I expect that the arguments presented in scholar-produced works will notonly be clearer—and therefore make for easier exposition and careful analysis—but alsomore sophisticated—and therefore make for more compelling examples which highlight thevirtues of the different methods. Of course this is only an expectation—scholarly work canalso be dense and far less clear than works produced by academic lay folk! But given myexplicit interest in methods, I think it is a fair expectation to have, especially since care inmethodology is often a prerequisite for attaining the title of (academic) “scholar.”There is another reason, which comes from scholarly circles themselves, to focus on theacademic literature. In a recent collected volume tackling the persistent public belief inthe Conflict Thesis, the historian Ronald Numbers (1942–2023) complained that “four or9more decades of revisionist scholarship has not trickled down very far into popular culture,especially in North America and Western Europe” (Numbers 2019). This desire to havepublic impact is shared by many other scholars—and not all of whom wish to disabuse thepublic of the Conflict Thesis! As a scholar who is himself interested in producing workwith potential public impact, I, too, want to understand how to make scholarly work moreinfluential in the public arena. I thus focus on thus, I focus on public-facing work by scholarssince this provides an opportunity for reflection on how to make such work more relevantand available to the publics we scholars wish to address.But I do not draw my examples from all the possible public-facing scholarly-produced works.In particular, I limit my sources to those produced by scholars in the humanities and socialsciences. Thus, although scholars such as Fritjof Capra (a physicist), Richard Dawkins (abiologist), and Christoph Schönborn (a theologian) have a relatively large public presencein the religion-and-science literature, they will not feature as my exemplars of the variousmethods. This is not because natural scientists and theologians do not use the methods Idiscuss—they certainly do! However, given their disciplinary backgrounds, I expect that workproduced by philosophers, historians, and social scientists are likely to be more sophisticatedin their use of the four methods, seeing as the methods have their roots in those disciplines.This, of course, like my expectation about scholar-produced work in general, is a fallibleexpectation. But again, I do not think it is unreasonable, especially since the philosophers,historians, and social scientists who contribute to the religion-and-science literature oftenmake their entire scholarly careers in the discipline.5 Furthermore, scholars in the humanitiesand social sciences often produce works that are at the same time public- and scholarly-facing.That is, it is normal for scholars in these disciplines to publish public-facing work which isconsidered part of their “normal” scholarship—a practice that is not normal in the naturalsciences.5I should also note in particular that I do not draw on the cognitive science of religion (CSR) literature,for most work in CSR does not aim to provide characterizations of the RSR—though CSR could do so.100.2.2 The MediumSecondly, I focus on books rather than articles. I do this in large part because my ultimateinterest is in members of the non-scholarly public who interact with the scholar-producedliterature. I assume that most such individuals will likely encounter the religion-and-scienceliterature in book form rather than as papers published in specialized journals. Althoughmany academic disciplines are now shifting towards papers and away from books, publicreadership is still a book-culture.6 That said, I will still refer to journal articles through-out the dissertation. However, my primary examples will all be book-length manuscriptsproduced by academics and meant for a public audience.How is public-facing intent determined? I have used three main criteria: 1) the presenceof public-facing language in the introduction/preface, 2) the existence of reviews in popularoutlets (e.g. the New York Times), and 3) inclusion on lists of recommended literature putout by public-oriented religious or scientific organizations (e.g. the American Academy forthe Advancement of Science). In addition to these criteria, I have also included works whichbegan their life as public lectures, e.g. the Terry Lectures given in the US and the GiffordLectures given in Scotland. A complete list of books taken as exemplars, and justificationof why they were included, can be found in Appendix A.Beyond books and articles, however, there is a plethora of other media created by scholarsof religion-and-science which are indeed consumed by the public. These might include in-terviews, podcasts, documentaries, blog posts, magazine articles, tweets, pamphlets, films,opinion pieces, and popular lectures. One could even argue that these other kinds of mediaare more likely to be consumed by public audiences than books are!However, the sheer amount of such literature would have exploded the scope of the project6It is not entirely clear if this is the direction religion-and-science is heading, perhaps in large part becauseeven specialized work in the discipline is often of interest to public audiences which crave books.11beyond reason. I have thus limited myself to books—and then only those written in thetwenty-first century (especially since these are the books contemporary publics are morelikely to encounter) and not by natural scientists or theologians. In future work, I plan toexplore other media and the ways they enable and constrain scholars to present particularcharacterizations of the RSR.Finally, due to my own linguistic limits, my sources are drawn almost exclusively fromEnglish-language publications (although in some cases, e.g. Gingras 2017, the works aretranslated).0.2.3 What this Dissertation is NotThis dissertation is both quite abstract and at the same time aims to be practical. As such,it is likely useful to clarify not only what the dissertation is—as discussed in the previoussubsections—but also what it is not.In the first place, this dissertation is not an attempt to characterize the RSR. Instead, itanalyzes the ways in which others have tried to characterize the RSR. As such, I do notadvocate any positive thesis about the RSR. Further, I have tried my best to remain neutralwith respect to other scholars’ conclusions about the RSR. My focus, after all, is not onauthors’ conclusions about the RSR, but on their methods.That said, however, this dissertation is also not an attempt to determine the “best” methodfor characterizing the RSR. Rather than advocating for a particular method, I offer a sys-tematic analysis of the different methods which dominate the scholarly literature aiming tocharacterize the RSR. Ultimately, I think the different methods are useful for different pur-poses and may be more or less relevant to particular readers—both scholarly and not—basedon their particular interests in the RSR.12In this vein, my dissertation does not employ the methods it discusses. This is for the almosttrivial reason that the methods I discuss are specifically geared at characterizing the RSR.In some sense I make use of conceptual analysis: I unpack the conceptions of religion andscience scholars use, identify the kinds of limitations they impose, and suggest ways thoseconcepts could be altered or expanded. But this is conceptual analysis of a different kind,one might say at a different level, from “conceptual analysis” as featured in the religion-and-science literature. There, as we will see in much more detail in Chapter 2, conceptual analysisfocuses on the definitions of religion and science, and the logical relation between those twodefinitions. Insofar as I employ something which we might call “conceptual analysis,” it isnot centered around definitions and their logical relations.This dissertation does, however, make use of philosophical methods, perhaps more so thanmethods from any other discipline. After all, this is a dissertation “submitted in partialsatisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in Philosophy”! Thetools I employ revolve around conceptual clarity and ends-means analysis. I use philosophicaltools to isolate the particular argumentative structures employed in the scholarship I analyzeand to determine if those argument forms are actually sufficient for drawing the conclusionsscholars wish to draw.Thus, one might say that this dissertation falls, rather than into the discipline of religion-and-science itself, into the discipline of philosophy of religion-and-science. For just as aphilosopher of physics may study the arguments and concepts employed by physicists withoutthemselves contributing to the experimental process of physics, so too do I analyze themethods of scholars embedded in religion-and-science without making a claim as to thenature of the RSR. However, just as a philosopher of physics’ insight may be helpful inclarifying the scope of a physical theory or in identifying new areas of research, so too do Ithink my own work in philosophy of religion-and-science may be useful to those who do wishto characterize the RSR—and to their readers.130.3 Overview of the ProjectAs said above, this dissertation aims to bring some order to the vast religion-and-scienceliterature. By focusing on the methods public-facing scholars use in trying to characterizethe RSR, I provide a way of systematizing the literature which will be useful for not onlyscholarly readerships but also—and especially—non-scholarly ones.In Chapter 1, I discuss the typologies currently in use in the religion-and-science literature. Ifirst propose a distinction between conclusion- and concept-oriented types of typologies andthen offer a further distinction between how typologies are used in the literature, either asfirst-order classifications of the logically possible ways religion and science may be relatedor as second-order classifications of scholars/their scholarship. With these distinctions onthe table, I proceed to a discussion of the aims scholars might have in proposing a typology.Finally, I propose my own fourfold method-oriented typology and show how it achieves thevarious aims discussed. In particular, I argue that thinking through the religion-and-scienceliterature with a methodological lens can help scholars identify places where various authorstalk past one another and better understand why some works receive more public uptake thanothers. Further, and perhaps more importantly, this kind of typology can help both scholarsand non-scholars assess how relevant a certain work might be for a particular reader—itallows us to determine how fit-for-purpose a given work is for a reader with a particularset of values, concerns, and interests in the RSR. The following chapters then unpack themethods—conceptual analysis, case studies, deconstruction, and fieldwork—in more detail,offering critiques, recommendations for improvement, and a discussion of what publics mightfind the method most relevant.Chapter 2 focuses on conceptual analysis, roughly the method which proceeds by first defining“religion” and “science” before deriving the RSR logically from those definitions. Thismethod has faced heavy criticism for encouraging monolithic and overly essentialist ways of14thinking about religion and science. However, I argue that such criticisms, where they arein fact well founded, can be avoided as long as authors take care to properly delimit thetemporal (and sometimes geo-cultural) scope of their claims about the RSR.In Chapter 3, I turn to the method of case studies. This method comes in two “flavours”:one focused directly on accurately describing the RSR, the other aimed more at facilitat-ing identity formation. The former employs a kind of enumerative induction: an array ofhistorical episodes of encounter between religion and science are brought together to actas a basis for an induction to a general characterization of the RSR. On the other hand,the latter flavour of case studies simply showcases particular encounters to highlight waysreaders might conceive themselves as fitting into—or potentially altering—a larger narrativeabout the RSR. It is important to distinguish between these two flavours because objectionsto one may not apply to the other. For example, one of the major critiques of real-worldimplementations of the method of case studies—that they fall prey to cherry-picking andoften fail to have sufficiently representative inductive bases—apply only to the inductive-descriptive flavour. Further, different public audiences may find one of these uses of casestudies more appealing than others. I thus address both how scholars might revise theirpractices to address objections to their use of historical case studies and point to who mightfind case studies-based scholarship useful.Chapter 4 discusses another historical method: what I have termed the method of decon-struction. Deconstruction proceeds by tracing the contingent processes by which our conceptsof religion and science have emerged, usually by appeal to particular historical or culturaltrajectories. A particular characterization of the RSR is then generated based on an anal-ysis of those historical and/or cultural forces. This method is conceptually more complexthan the others—and for this reason is perhaps the least successful in appealing to publicaudiences. That said, however, I argue that there are in fact some publics—for instancepolicymakers—who may benefit from deconstructive work. In this chapter, I also explore an15interesting tension between the method of case studies and the method of deconstructionwhich has hitherto been ignored.Finally, Chapter 5 unpacks what I call the method of fieldwork. “Fieldwork” encompassesa range of methods with origins in the social sciences, the most frequently encounteredof which are ethnography, interviews, and surveys. This group of methods aims to derivea characterization of the RSR empirically by extracting the RSR directly from the voicesof the people studied—typically religious folk and scientists. Because the method takesseriously the views and practices of the folks studied, it must overcome several more-or-lessstandard challenges facing the measurement of attitudes or beliefs in general and religiosityin particular. As the only method which relies so heavily on self-reporting, it must also dealwith objections regarding the relevancy of those reports: what if those studied are simplywrong about the RSR? These challenges, if not entirely defeasible, can at least be defused,and I offer suggestions as to how scholars may deal with them and still produce work thatis relevant to a range of audiences both scholarly and public.Throughout the dissertation, a common objection I will develop centers around the questions“Whose religion?” and “Whose science?” As will be argued in the context of each method,scholars have generally failed to pay proper attention to these questions in light of theirpublic-facing goals. The upshot is that scholarly work almost always focuses on elite formsof religion and science, which are not representative of the kinds of religion and science publicreaders are likely to encounter in their day-to-day lives. This is especially the case when itcomes to science: university-bound theoretical physics and evolutionary biology dominatediscussions of science in the scholarly literature. But such fields form only a tiny sliver ofactually practiced science which members of the public are likely to interact with. I thusencourage scholars, regardless of the method they use to characterize the RSR, to open theirinvestigations to more forms of science which their public readership may encounter, likethe biology practiced at genome sequencing companies, the chemistry in pesticide factories,16and the geology featured in the oil industry. Incorporating these other forms of science intoscholars’ general analyses will not only improve their scholarship in general by ensuring anactually representative discussion of the S part of the RSR, but also improve the relevancyof their work to the publics they wish to address.The chapters have been arranged in order of my own initial familiarity with the methodaddressed. However, the chapters are largely self-contained and can be read in any order,although I do suggest that Chapter 3 (on the method of case studies) be read before Chapter4 (on deconstruction).Ultimately, my dissertation makes two main contributions to scholars of religion-and-science.First, it offers recommendations for improving the general scholarly quality of their work, i.e.how they can make their cases stronger and their arguments more well founded. Second, itoffers further recommendations for how they can increase the relevancy of their public-facingwork to the audiences they seek to reach. Inversely, my dissertation also provides a roughguide for publics facing the library shelves: Chapters 2–5 each end with a discussion of whatpublics will find the method useful.Ultimately, I do not think that any method is better than another. Each simply providesdifferent ways of exploring the RSR. But for particular readers with particular interests andparticular reasons for being interested in the RSR, some methods may be more relevant thanothers. Scholars, however, should continue to employ each method—and perhaps exploreand create new ones.17Chapter 1A Typology of MethodsConsider our freshman biology major facing the library shelves. As she gazes up at thebooks, she wonders how to start, how to find something relevant to her concerns. There arethe flashy titles, the gold-embossed spines. But of course she understands that such featuresare of no real use to her. The books are organized, as they should, by the Dewey DecimalSystem. But unfortunately that is not especially useful for our student’s current quest.But could the books be organized in some way that would be useful for the student?Perhaps one could organize by subtopic. But of course that presents challenges—how doesone divvy up the subtopics? Should it be by particular religion? Particular science? Geo-graphic location? Perhaps instead one could sort the books by their conclusions—how theyultimately characterize the RSR.In this chapter, I propose an alternative way of organizing the books which I think ourstudent—and many others interested in the RSR—would find useful. I propose that we sortby the methods the authors use to characterize the RSR.18For almost thirty years, participants in the field of religion-and-science have widely employedIan Barbour’s fourfold typology of ways of relating religion and science. It structures text-books used in introductory courses to the subject (e.g. A. E. McGrath 2020), organizesscholarly dialogues (e.g. Copan and Reese 2021), and even shapes the way scholars discussnon-Western religions (e.g. Aukland 2015). The terms Conflict, Independence (or sometimesSeparation), Dialogue, and Integration (or sometimes Harmony) thoroughly permeate thediscourse.But despite its wide presence, many scholars complain of Barbour’s typology. It is toorestrictive and ought to be expanded (e.g. Stenmark 2010); it relies on overly rigid notions of“religion” and “science” (Shin 2016); it doesn’t capture the richness of individuals’ particularways of relating religion and science (G. Cantor and Kenny 2001). Surprisingly, despiteall these issues—some of are considered quite major—scholars seem quite happy to makeuse of the fourfold typology. I take Alister McGraths’ comment (versions of which arefound in many of his works) at the start of his popular religion-and-science textbook to berepresentative: “despite its limitations, the framework set out by Barbour remains helpfulas a means of approaching the field of science and religion studies” (A. E. McGrath 2020).Some scholars have proposed alternative typologies: John Haught (1995), Willem Drees(1999), Mikael Stenmark (2004, 2014), and Shoaib Ahmed Malik (2021, 2022) for exampleexpand upon Barbour’s typology. But none of these have truly caught on—perhaps they aretoo complex for a typology.1 And in a sense they are all doing the same kind of thing: theycarve out the space of logically possible/plausible ways or dimensions in which religion andscience could be related and then categorize various scholars (and non-) into those niches.They are all based on classifying the proposed relationships between religion and science.On the other hand, there is a conspicuous lack of discussion about typologies, their use(s),1Indeed, one of the criticisms of Barbour’s typology is that it is too simplistic—but in a sense that isthe whole point of a typology: to simplify the complex (a point noted by Barbour himself (I. Barbour 2002,348))!19and their aims in religion-and-science in general. In this paper, I aim to fill this gap. Further,I sketch a different kind of typology from those “relationship-based” ones currently on offer.This typology is based on the methods that scholars employ in coming to their conclusionsabout the religion-and-science relationship (RSR) rather than on the particular form ofrelation the scholars endorse. It centers, then, not on the relationship itself but on therelating done by scholars. In particular, I focus on methods often associated with (butby no means limited to the disciplines of) philosophy, history, and the social sciences: theuse of conceptual analysis, case studies, (cultural and historical) deconstruction, and (quitebroadly) fieldwork.I’ll start (§1) by reviewing several major typologies currently on offer by grouping themas conclusion-oriented and concept-oriented. I then (§2) examine two major ways in whichtypologies are actually used (and critiqued) in the discipline: as first-order categorizationsof how religion and science could themselves be related and as second-order taxonomies ofscholars and/or their contributions to the literature. In §3, I consider what aims/goals wemight want a typology to achieve, reviewing those offered by Barbour and proposing threeof my own. I then (§4) propose and unpack a typology of methods, different in kind fromthe concept-oriented typologies, and argue that this kind of typology retains all the virtuesof a concept-oriented typology—and some. I conclude (§5) with a summary.1.1 Types of TypologiesMany alternatives to Barbour’s fourfold typology have been proposed. However, scholarshave not adequately theorized typologizing in religion-and-science: as far as I am aware,there has been no 1) synthetic discussion of the different kinds of typologies nor—perhapsmore surprisingly—2) much discussion of what exactly typologies are meant to be usefulfor. In this section, I focus on the first of these, identifying two major kinds of typologies20currently used in the literature: conclusion-oriented and concept-oriented. When assessingthe RSR, conclusion-oriented typologies start with religion and science as monolithic entities,directly asking about their relationship. Concept-oriented typologies, on the other hand,nuance the relationship and start with the question, “What aspects of religion and scienceare we relating”? Despite their differences, both kinds of typologies are relationship-based;that is, they are based on the particular configurations of the relationship between religionand science. (This distinction will be of more importance later in §4, when I propose analternative type of typology.)In what follows, I lay out the two major kinds of typologies, citing Barbour and Haught asexemplars of conclusion-oriented typologies and Drees, Stenmark, and Malik as exemplarsof concept-oriented typologies.1.1.1 Conclusion-Oriented TypologiesThe most commonly cited typology, that of Ian Barbour, is a conclusion-oriented typology.Perhaps most famously enunciated in Religion and Science (I. G. Barbour 1997), Barbour’stypology is constituted by four possible religion-science relations: Conflict, Independence,Dialogue, or Integration.2 These four views are typically glossed in something like the fol-lowing manner: Conflict means religion and science are opposed, and only one is legitimate;Independence means they deal with entirely different phenomena/aspects of human life; Dia-logue means they pursue similar questions or have similar methodologies; Integration meansthey can be assimilated for a single purpose (see e.g. Shin 2016 for a similar characterization).Barbour himself, however, does not provide such straightforward characterizations of his“ways of relating.” In fact, aside from Independence, the other three ways are actually called2As pointed out by Berg 2004, in earlier work Barbour actually referred to a fivefold typology borrowedfrom H. Richard Niebuhr’s (1892–1971) Christ and Culture (1951). In this system, which focused on theethical relationship between religion and science, religion could be against, under, above, separate from, ortransformative of science.21“headings” under which rather different views of the relationship are categorized. ThusBarbour recognizes two kinds or modes of Conflict: scientific materialism (science wins theopposition) and biblical literalism (religion3 wins). Likewise, “Dialogue is a diverse groupof views,” including that religion and science engage in a back-and-forth over each oth-ers’ explanatory limits, that they share in each others’ methods, and what Barbour terms“Nature-centered Spirituality”: responses “to nature in personal and experiential ways”(I. G. Barbour 1997, 95). What unites these three views together and separates them fromIntegration is that they “[start] from general characteristics of science or of nature rather thanfrom particular scientific theories.” In taking the latter course, one can arrive at three dif-ferent versions of Integration: natural theology (theological doctrines inferred from nature),theology of nature (scientific theories shape theological doctrines), or systematic synthesis(“both science and religion contribute to the development of an inclusive metaphysics” (ibid.,98)).4 In total, then, Barbour provides nine ways of relating religion and science—thoughthese can be grouped under four headings.Haught 1995 also offers a fourfold typology. As with Barbour, his system includes Conflictand Separation (re-labeled “Contrast,” perhaps so that all headings in the typology beginwith C). But the other two categories differ because “I do not find a sufficiently crisp logicaldistinction between his third and fourth types, ‘dialogue’ and ‘integration’” (Haught 1995,9 fn. 1). In their place, Haught provides “Contact” (science and religion have implicationsfor one another and thus ought to adapt as either changes) and “Confirmation” (“religionsupports and nourishes the entire scientific enterprise” (ibid., 9)). It seems to me that thereis a bit of an asymmetry hidden in Confirmation: Haught understands it only as religion(qua theology) supporting science; “[s]uch an approach does not look for or expect in returnany scientific endorsement of religion” (ibid., 22). It seems, though, that there is nothing3Or “theology”; Barbour often slips between these two, a frustrating move not uncommon in the literature(see e.g. White 1896, Haught 1995). One also sometimes finds authors conflating theology with religiousstudies—e.g. Zehnder 2011.4I should note that in my summaries of these views I have generalized from Barbour’s focus on Christianity,which would otherwise limit the categories to e.g. theistic religions.22in principle ruling out such a return or expectation, and there are clear cases where such areturn is thought to exist—for instance those who take scientific confirmation of particularclaims in the Qur’an to reinforce the truth of Islam (a tradition known as i‘jaz ‘ilmi) andthose who believe Buddhism to be “true” because of its consonance with modern evolutionarypsychology (Wright 2017).I should also note that in addition to the four C’s, Haught discusses a fifth C, Conflation (seee.g. pp. 13-14, 17), although he does not include this among his main “headings.” Conflationcollapses religion and science into one another, as we might see in those who claim Buddhismto be a form of science (see, again, Wright 2017; see also Winter 2015 on Kōfuku no kagakuand Hubbard 1950/2007 on Scientology) or in those who embrace Science (with a capital S)as their religion (e.g. the Religious Naturalists (Goodenough 1998)). Why Haught holds toa fourfold typology and only implicitly recognizes Conflation is not clear.In any case, what is common to both Barbour and Haught’s typologies is their orientationtowards the general relationship between religion and science: the two relata are in Conflictor are in Contact or what have you. When applied to particular scholars, the typologyfocuses exclusively on their general conclusion. In a sense, the character of this kind oftypology is holistic: religion and science are related in total or all at once in one way oranother.1.1.2 Concept-Oriented TypologiesIn contrast to these conclusion-oriented typologies are concept-oriented ones. These focus onparticular aspects of religion and science and how those particular aspects are related. Thus,when approaching the question, “What is the RSR?” through a concept-oriented typology,one must first ask: “What concepts, ‘religion’ and ‘science,’ are we talking about?” Onemight say that concept-oriented typologies are more fine-grained than conclusion-oriented23ones, though, again, they have different starting points.5Drees offers a nine-fold typology in this vein. He begins by canvasing three kinds of “chal-lenges to religion” that have historically been generated by science: those related to newbits of knowledge (like the age of the earth); ones concerning epistemology, or how we un-derstand knowledge (as in the transition from a purely deductive model of science to aninductively inflected one); and finally ones regarding “our appreciation of the world” (e.g.the emergence of the possibility of a meaningless world) (Drees 1996, 39–41). This trio ofchallenges is accompanied by three ways of understanding the nature of religion: cognitive(akin to systematic theology), experiential (à la Schleiermacher), and as traditions (whichDrees associates with “languages and forms of life”) (ibid., 42–3). By crossing the challengesand conceptions, we obtain a nine-member matrix of “areas of discussion in science-and-religion.” Scholars who engage in a particular area of discussion will thus tend to focus on aparticular kind of challenge posed by science to a particular conception of religion—thoughauthors can, of course, engage in multiple areas of discussion at once.Character of religionChallenge 1. Cognitive 2. Experience 3. Tradition1a. New knowledge 1a. Content:2a. Opportunities forexperiential religion?Religious experienceand the brain.3a. Religious tradi-tions as products ofevolution.i. Conflictii. Separationiii. Partial adaptationiv. Integrationb. New views ofknowledge1b. Philosophy of sci-ence and opportuni-ties for theology.2b. Philosophical de-fences of religious ex-periences as data3b. Criticism and de-velopment of religionsas ‘language games’.c. Appreciationof the world1c. A new covenantbetween humans andthe Universe?2c. Ambivalence ofthe world and implica-tions for the conceptof God3c. Religions as lo-cal traditions withoutuniversal claim?Figure 1.1: Drees’ 3x3 classification of “Areas of Discussion,” adapted for space. Notice howBarbour’s categories are contained within Drees’ matrix. Adapted from Drees 1996, 45.5In a sense, concept-oriented typologies are also conclusion-oriented: ultimately they are used to discussconclusions about the RSR, even if they are more specific conclusions than what is permitted in Barbour-like typologies. The important distinction between these typologies is their starting point: do they goimmediately to the relationship itself or begin by clarifying the particular conceptions under examination.24As Drees points out, most conclusion-oriented typologies are focused on “the way cognitiveclaims in religion (theology) and in science are related”—which is only one “column” ofDrees’ taxonomy (see Figure 1.1). Further, it is not just the typologists who ignore therelevance of the experiential and traditionary aspects of religion, but the scholars beingclassified themselves; they too tend to focus on one particular aspect of religion despite thefact that “debates do not stand in isolation, but require consideration of other views ofreligion and other views of the challenges” (ibid., 45).So Drees’ typology cross-cuts other conclusion-oriented typologies by slicing along the con-ceptions of religion (and of science6) at play. In fact, Drees claims that Barbour’s typologycan be found distributed within particular areas of his nine-fold typology (ibid., 45).7 Inthat sense, it is more fine-grained than Barbour’s and Haught’s: religion and science are notrelated wholesale but along particular dimensions.An even more sophisticated typology which takes this dimensional approach further is de-veloped by Stenmark 2004 (see also Stenmark 2010). The typology begins with three basicdistinctions familiar to conclusion-oriented typologists: religion and science might be entirelyseparate endeavors, overlap some, or be unified. But Stenmark points out that really quitedistinct views are wrapped up in the overlap and unity positions: one might think that thereis more or less overlap, or that science wins in the overlap (scientific expansionism), or thatit loses (religious expansionism), or that science may come to totally encompass religion(the complete scientific expansionist view), or that science may instead eventually be just asubset of religion (the complete religious expansionist view) (see especially Stenmark 2004,6 It is not clear to me why Drees’ “vertical” axis is not “Character of science” rather than “Challenge”—itseems to me as if each challenge is itself picking up on a different aspect of science (propositional, epistemic,social). Labelling the axis “Challenge” also seems to belie a latent Conflict thesis in a way that I expectDrees would like to avoid.7Although I agree that Barbour’s typology can be “contained” in Drees’ in this way, Drees seems overlyrestrictive of that containment. For instance, Barbour’s Conflict is supposedly only to be found in theCognitive-New knowledge area—though it seems clear that there could be “conflict” in any of the three“challenge” rows within the Cognitive column (see, again, Figure 1). In fact, as mentioned in fn. 6, bylabelling the rows “challenge,” it seems like Drees is implicitly committed to the possibility of Conflict in allareas of his matrix.25251–259).Further, what is separated/overlapped/unified are often not just single things, Science orReligion with capital S and capital R—these two human endeavors are, after all, not mono-lithic phenomena but complex social practices. To that end, Stenmark outlines a numberof dimensions along which one might evaluate the RSR: the social, teleological (i.e. thegoals of the practices), epistemological, and theoretical—though importantly this list is notmeant to be exhaustive. Further, within each dimension are wrapped up a number of whatone might call sub-dimensions (though Stenmark does not use that phrase). For instance,when thinking of the teleological dimensions of religion and science, one might think at thecommunity level—what religious congregations or groups of scientists aim at achieving—or at the individual level—what particular religious practitioners or scientists seek. Andthe degrees of overlap may differ along different dimensions as well: one might be a teleo-logical community-level separatist (or “restrictionist”) but a methodological unitarian (anadmittedly rather practically implausible position which is nonetheless logically possible).In all, this highly nuanced typology allows for something on the order of 64 possible char-acterizations of the RSR. Notice that just as with Drees’, Stenmark’s typology cross-cutsconclusion-oriented typologies: those who might have been labeled Conflict theorists (likescientistic New Atheists and biblical literalists), might be classed as scientific or religiousexpansionists; or historical interactions between Religion and Science which have appearedto represent Conflict or Harmony (e.g. the Galileo Affair and the early reception of Dar-win in England), might instead both be categorized as instances of, say, theoretical overlap.Again, what separates Stenmark’s typology from conclusion-oriented ones is his focus on theparticular conception(s) of religion and science at play.Operating in a different cultural landscape, Malik also offers a concept-oriented typology,albeit one constrained to the relationship between Islam and human evolution rather thanbetween religion and science more generally. Rather than focusing on different aspects of26Muslim/scientific practice, Malik zooms in on particular understandings of scripture and thetheory of evolution—it is in fact explicitly unidimensional (Pear and Malik 2022, 632). Thus,Muslim perspectives on evolution are typed according to their understanding of that theory:as entailing that all animals were produced via evolution, that only non-human animals wereso produced, or that at least Adam (the first human) was not generated by evolution. Thesegroups all believe that Islam and evolution are compatible, in contrast to the “Creationists”who reject the evolutionary origins of any animals whatsoever (Malik 2021, p. 111; Pear andMalik 2022, 632).This focus on conceptions of evolution is motivated, similar to Drees and Stenmark’s focus, bya critique of conclusion-oriented typologies as inadequately nuanced. However, rather thanexpanding to a multi-dimensional model, Malik specifically proposes a unidimensional systembecause it 1) “helps avoid confusing and mixing religious and scientific beliefs or attitudes”and 2) “can clearly demarcate between what individuals accept regarding evolution versuswhy they accept or reject evolution” (Pear and Malik 2022, 632; emphasis original). Thus,a concept-oriented typology is thought to be more useful than a conclusion-based one, anidea I will come to later.1.2 Using TypologiesAt the start of the previous section, I noted that scholars have neither distinguished betweenthe various kinds of typologies on the market, nor talked about the particular uses of ty-pologies. In this section, I show that typologies in religion-and-science are used in (at least)two distinct ways: 1) as classifications of how religion and science are themselves relatedand 2) as a way of taxonomizing scholars and scholarly contributions. These two uses canbe found simultaneously appealed to by the same authors and at times even in the samework. I should note that Andrew Loke 2023 actually does explicitly recognize these two uses27(which he glosses, respectively, as “perceived” vs “expressed”). But one gets the impressionthat he takes such a distinction to be unique to his typology (into which the distinction isbuilt) rather than recognizing the two as ways in which any typology can be used.For my purposes, call the first usage “first-order.” Here the goal is to characterize the spaceof logically possible RSRs and then sort particular religion–science interactions within thatspace. For instance, in using Barbour’s (fourfold) typology, one might say the Galileo Af-fair represents a Conflict between religion and science—or conversely one might understandNewton’s career as exemplifying Integration (e.g. Iliffe 2017). Were we to use Stenmark’stypology instead, we might say that the Galileo Affair represented a period of epistemologicaloverlap.That typologies are indeed expected to have this use is further demonstrated by the critiqueslaunched against them. Consider, for instance, Cantor and Kenny’s critique of Barbour’sfourfold typology (G. Cantor and Kenny 2001). As they explain, “The first point to noticeis that these [four options] are the only viable alternatives—the only shows in town—andthey must therefore cover all cases” (ibid., 766): Barbour is interpreted as offering a first-order characterization of how religion and science could possibly be related. But, as Cantorand Kenny argue, this typology over-essentializes the categories of religion and science,presuming that they are diachronically definable and stable concepts. “As historians,” theytake grave issue with this presumption: “neither science nor religion (nor the conjunction‘science and religion’) possesses clear historical continuity” (ibid., 771), and thus typologieslike Barbour’s are ill founded. Regardless of whether or not one agrees with Cantor andKenny’s historicizing criticism, what is clear is that they interpret Barbour’s typology in afirst-order manner: if Barbour were not understood to be specifying the logically possiblerelations between religion and science, then it wouldn’t make sense to problematize thecategories “religion” and “science.”88Stenmark agrees with this first-order critique of Barbour—thus implicitly accepting the first-order useof typologies. He defends himself (or at least tries to) from Cantor and Kenny’s historicizing critique by28Likewise, in a much less antagonistic manner, Shin 2016 objects to the typologies of Barbourand Haught on the basis that they fail to adequately capture how religion and scienceare understood and related in East Asia. The East Asian context is different in at leastthree major respects: historically the categories “religion” and “science” were introduced toEast Asia via Western cultural imperialism (see also Josephson 2012); those categories areunderstood through a nondualistic, Yin-Yang approach/worldview; and East Asian religionsemphasize practice rather than “theoretical knowledge” (Shin 2016, 205). These differencesmean that the RSR is understood (according to Shin) in a radically different way in EastAsia than in the West. Thus, it is problematic that “typological categories tend to be seenas representing some unchanging reality like a fixed idea, rather than as provisional conceptsin which the boundaries are loose and flexible” (ibid., 217)—a tendency that can supposedlybe dissolved by adopting an East Asian way of thinking. Clearly this kind of critique ismotivated by a first-order understanding of the typologies: they haven’t successfully carvedout the total possibility space—there are other ways that religion and science might berelated, but which have been missed due to cultural assumptions surrounding the nature ofreligion and science.In a rather different manner from G. Cantor and Kenny 2001 and Shin 2016, Latour’s critiquein his “Thou Shalt Not Freeze Frame” (2010) also belies a first-order conception of typolo-gies. As Bigliardi explains, Latour believes that Barbour and Stenmark have fundamentallymisunderstood the natures of religion and science, which leads them to mischaracterize thepossible relations between them (Bigliardi 2014b, 893, 896–897). In particular, the typolo-gists fail to realize that religion and science are simply engaged in different language games,and so there cannot be any real contact between the two: Barbour and Stenmark have thusimproperly carved up the space of possible relations—there can be only one (trivial) rela-tionship, not four or more. Again, this kind of criticism only makes sense if we understandemploying a dynamic, multi-dimensional understanding of the RSR (though interestingly not of religion andscience themselves; Stenmark 2004, 257).29typologies in a first-order manner, as speaking about the “on-the-ground” relationship be-tween religion and science, where both are understood as (abstract, perhaps social) objectsinteracting in the world.Typologies, however, are also used in another way which tends to avoid the kinds of cri-tiques offered by Cantor, Kenny, Shin, and Latour. This other way is often presentedalongside the first, although neither is distinguished from the other. In the second-ordermode of employment, typologies aim to classify scholarship on religion and science as man-ifesting/representing some particular view of the RSR. That is, rather than focusing on the“actual” RSR itself, these typologies focus on work produced about the RSR. Thus, usingBarbour’s typology, we might classify Galileo himself as a proponent of Dialogue (Blackwell1991) and out Andrew Dickson White’s History of the Warfare of Science with Theology inChristendom as endorsing Conflict (White 1896; though as we will see, this traditional char-acterization is largely mistaken). Likewise, someone like Stenmark would want to classifyscientific materialists like Dawkins as scientific expansionists rather than as “mere” support-ers of Conflict.This understanding of the use of typologies actually better matches Barbour’s own self-description in Religion and Science than the first-order use, for he explicitly admits that“particular authors may not fall neatly under any one heading” (I. G. Barbour 1997 77;my emphasis).9 He then goes on to sort particular authors according to his headings. Inintroducing his 3x3 classification scheme, Drees likewise explains, “in practice, most authorsfocus on one area, a single column, or a single row, or at least have a characteristic emphasisthere” (Drees 1996, 44; my emphasis). And Malik, for his part, explicitly employs histypology to classify Muslim thinkers (Malik 2021, 113). We can even understand thesescholars’ typologies as directly trying to expand the ways we can classify the scholarship byoffering more nuanced niches into which scholars fit.9Barbour in fact cites this same line in defending himself against Cantor and Kenny’s critiques (I. Barbour2002).30Likewise, there is, in fact, a whole industry within the discipline of sorting various historicalfigures into the Barbourian categories. For instance, Arther 2001 tries (and fails) to fit PaulTilich into the typology; Bigliardi 2012 too attempts (and fails) to fit a host of more-or-less contemporary Islamic scholars into the categories (though he finds more success withStenmark’s; Bigliardi 2014a); Qidwai 2019 does much the same. The examples go on andon.Just as we saw with the first-order use, the critiques also highlight the expectation. Forinstance, Stenmark presumes the second order use of typologies in his critique of Barbour’sDialogue model. “Irrespective of which of [Barbour’s] science-religion views we hold,” Sten-mark explains, “we could argue that its advocates ought to get engaged in a dialogue witheach other and thus drop the polemics or stop ignoring each other. ... It is therefore in-felicitous to call one science-religion view the ‘dialogue view’ because it is desirable thatpeople—regardless of whether they accept the conflict view, the contact view, or the inde-pendence view—should at least sometimes try to become involved in a dialogue with eachother and listen carefully to what people with differing views think about these issues.”Stenmark in fact calls on us to “immediately stop talking about a dialogue view” (Stenmark2004, 253; emphasis original). Clearly this kind of talk conceives of dialogue (and possiblycontact, overlap, and independence) as a view had by people, rather than (or in additionto) an on-the-ground (possible) fact about the RSR. That is, Stenmark, at least in thisparticular critical passage, understands Barbour’s categories in a second-order fashion: theyclassify people rather than concepts.This second-order focus is also evident in Stenmark’s broader critique of Barbour’s typology.Consider, for instance, the case of Dawkins. According to Barbour, Dawkins is a Conflicttheorist. But Stenmark points out that Dawkins doesn’t think that all of science is inconflict with all of religion. Unlike a true (monistic) Conflict theorist like E. O. Wilson,Dawkins doesn’t think science can totally replace religion—religions are supposed to “help31us deal with our existential questions and offer us ethical guidelines,” and since Dawkins(according to Stenmark) doesn’t think science can do the latter, he doesn’t believe sciencecan replace religion (ibid., 255–256). Stenmark takes this to show that Dawkins is in fact aproponent of Overlap, not (monistic) Conflict; the realms of religion and science overlap butare not identical. He goes on to point out that other writers similarly fail to fall neatly underBarbour’s headings (see also Stenmark 2010). The point of all this is to show the inadequacyof Barbour’s model in its second-order usage: it fails to properly categorize participants inthe religion and science literature.So typologies are used in (at least) two main ways in the literature: to characterize the spaceof logically possible RSRs and to classify the scholarship. When employed in the first-ordermanner, typologies are thus typologies of the RSR; when employed in the second-order mode,they act instead as typologies of scholars’ views of the RSR.10 These two uses are possibleregardless of whether the typology in question is conclusion-oriented or concept-oriented,although concept-oriented typologies are perhaps most naturally used in the second-orderway (since they are developed according to the concepts of religion and science at play).Before proceeding, it will be helpful to clarify the two sets of distinctions I have madeabove. There are, on the one hand, two types of typologies: conclusion-oriented and concept-oriented. On the other hand, there are two ways in which typologies—of any kind—can beused: first-order and second-order. In the rest of this chapter, although I will talk of bothtypes of typologies, I will focus on the second-order usage of typologies. Despite this focus,I should note that I do not think we should stop using typologies in the first-order manner;that use has its time and place. However, I focus on the second-order usage of typologiesbecause it is far more prevalent in the scholarly literature. Later, in §4, I will introduce a10One might think that, somewhat trivially, the second mode of employment is derived from the first:scholars are typed based on their characterization of the religion–science relationship. But this need notbe the case; as we will see below in the typology of methods, we have a typology meant to be used in thesecond-order manner which does not depend or even bear on the possible ways in which the RSR could beconfigured.32third type of typology specifically suited for second-order use.1.3 The Aims of Typologies (in Their Second-OrderUse)So far, we have only looked at how typologies are actually used in the literature. We havenot, however, talked about what typologies might aim or aspire to do. In general, this topic isalso neglected in the literature. One of the rare places where it has appeared is in Barbour’sdefense of his own typology against Cantor and Kenny’s famous attacks. In this section,I review Barbour’s aims, and then outline three other goals we might wish a second-ordertypology to obtain.1.3.1 Barbour’s AimsRecall that conclusion-oriented typologies all refer to the same thing: the conclusions schol-ars draw about the RSR. But of what use is this kind of typology? That is, in what way is ithelpful to class the scholarship in this fashion, typing scholars and their work by their con-clusions? One defense, offered by Barbour against Cantor and Kenny, is that such typologiesserve a pedagogical function: “Typologies might still be useful in introductory courses. ...Especially in dealing with contemporary thought students need to be aware of a wide rangeof alternative views that would be difficult to treat... in the time that is usually available”(I. Barbour 2002, 347–348). And indeed, as we saw above with e.g. A. E. McGrath 2020,this is how many introductory textbooks, and so presumably syllabi, are in fact structured.But it’s important to note that this kind of consciousness-raising aim is more sensible for atypology in its first-order, rather than second-order, use. Yes, explaining to students that,say, Conflict, is not the only configuration of the RSR might be useful. But what about33classifying scholars as proponents of Dialogue vs. Integration? It’s not clear to me that thiscontributes to raising awareness “of a wider range of alternative views” beyond what theycan get from the first-order classification. In any case, once we move past the introductorycontext, consciousness-raising doesn’t seem a proportionate justification for the widespreadappearance of Barbour’s typology in the scholarly literature.Another, more second-order-focused reason cited by Barbour is that these kinds of typolo-gies offer maps of the religion-science literature: “A broad overview of a range of possiblerelationships can be helpful to readers new to this interdisciplinary field, even though anoverview inevitably oversimplifies the complexities of the real world. A guidebook to anyterritory is not intended as a substitute for firsthand exploration but is intended to helppeople find their way around” (ibid., 348). Likewise Stenmark: “the aim of developing atypology is primarily to give a map which sorts out the main positions regarding how torelate science and religion” (Stenmark 2004, 262). True enough; the literature is vast, and amap/guidebook would surely be useful. But not all maps are useful. Just because one cantrace the territory along certain contours does not mean that the resultant sketch will aidyou in any way. What I find peculiarly missing is any explanation of how exactly slottingscholars into categories like “Conflict” or “Independence” is actually useful for the scholar.In a sense, conclusion-oriented typologies are almost trivially true: yes, Dawkins is indeed aConflict theorist and Gould embraces Independence—we can get all that on the first page(or sooner). But so what? What can a scholar (or a lay reader) do with that kind of infor-mation?11 The literature does not explain. That said, ultimately this cartographic aim isnot unfounded, and in the next section I will revisit this aim and unpack it further.Barbour, however, draws a more sophisticated justification for typologies from the socialscientific literature. Citing Weber and others, he points to the idea that classification schemes11One might think that classifying scholars on the basis of their conclusions can help predict their concep-tions of religion and/or science, or even the general arguments they might use. As we’ll see below, however,this is not the case; conclusions underdetermine both the methods (§4 in general) and concepts (§4.1) used.34are useful for highlighting the complexity of individual cases, for only very rarely will aparticular case fall perfectly into the scholarly categories. Typologies thus help us to compareindividual cases to one another by providing a kind of metric: approximation to the idealizedcategory (I. Barbour 2002 p. 348). I think this is an admirable aim of typologies, butunfortunately it does not appear as if this is how typologies, at least in the religion-and-science literature, are actually used. They are far more commonly used to eliminate nuanceddifferences—as in the case of scientistic atheists and biblical literalists in Barbour’s ownsystem. Be that as it may, I think Barbour is right to think that typologies should aim toclarify, or highlight the unique contributions and views of particular authors and how theyrelate to others. What is not clear, or argued for, I think, is whether conclusion-orientedor concept-oriented typologies do this better or worse or simply in different ways. Basedon the critiques given of Barbour’s typology (as with Malik’s above), I would suspect thatconcept-oriented typologies believe their typologies obtain this goal better—theirs provide amore refined metric.The above aims are ones which I take any scholar would wish a typology to achieve. I mustacknowledge, however, Barbour’s over-arching aim in presenting his typology: to advocatefor Integration. The point of laying out Conflict, Separation, and Dialogue, and in thatorder, is didactic; it enables Barbour to highlight the issues facing these characterizationsof the RSR and thus build a case for Integration. Drees glosses the purport of the typol-ogy slightly differently, as a way of representing alternatives to Conflict in an increasinglysecular world (Drees 2010, 1). Richard Olson likewise takes this to be an important useof Barbour’s typology, and explicitly explains that a major reason for proposing typologiesis their use in countering/defusing a simplistic form of Conflict which has great hold onpopular imaginations (Olson 2011). I have chosen to leave out these kinds of aims, however,because they are partisan. Since typologies are analytic tools used by scholars across thespectrum of first-order positions regarding the RSR, I limit discussion to those aims thatcan be recognized by scholars no matter their particular view of the RSR.351.3.2 Three Other AimsIn this sub-section, I consider three other aims we might wish a typology to achieve inits second-order usage: 1) illuminating the ways in which contributions in the field do/donot effectively engage with one another, 2) explaining why particular pieces of scholarshipreceive more public uptake, and 3) providing a useful public guide to the literature based ontheir values/reasons for being interested in the RSR. Along the way, I’ll comment on whenconclusion- and/or concept-oriented typologies achieve those goals.Effective EngagementThe religion-and-science literature is notoriously rife with authors talking past one another.As such, we might want a typology to help identify when scholars are doing so—a develop-ment of Barbour’s third goal above. Concept-oriented typologies seem especially well-suitedto doing this. By calling attention to the concepts at play, they can help us see when par-ticular authors are effectively engaging with one another—and when they are not. Ideally,effective engagement would involve the same concepts of religion and science being deployedby all involved. Unfortunately, however, this is not always the case; the literature is filledwith authors with sometimes radically different conceptions of religion and science, all ofwhom take themselves to be discussing the same subject. While in some sense this is true—they are talking about religion and science—it can be misleading since they are often talkingabout different conceptions, or forms or aspects, of religion and science. But since authorsdo not typically explicitly state what conception of “religion” or “science” they are workingwith, it appears to their readers that their discussion is of singular, monolithic entities whichare understood in the same way by other scholars, which, of course, is simply not true.For instance, imagine that someone understands religion (and science) along the “cognitive”line in Drees’ typology—they think that “religion... is an attempt to grasp the true, ultimate36nature of reality” (Drees 1996, 42). On the basis of this conception of religion (and science),they conclude that the two are incompatible; religion and science employ different methodsbut aim at the same thing; and ultimately, as the philosopher Tiddy Smith has recently said,“the methods of science out-compete the methods of religion” (T. Smith 2019, 1). It seemsremiss to object to Smith’s argument by pointing out, like sociologist John Evans, that ordi-nary folk simply do not conceive of religion (and possibly science) as “knowledge structures,”but rather, see it as a kind of therapeutic experience; they see religion as something usedrather than something assented to (J. H. Evans 2018 esp. Ch. 5). This objection seems tomiss the mark because Smith and Evans seem to be talking about different things: Smith istalking about an intellectualized, scholarly conflict between religion and science while Evansappears to be focused on public perspectives. Smith’s retort is easily anticipated: “I am notconcerned with what the public think but rather with what religion truly is about—(at leastpartially but significantly) knowledge.” Likewise Evans’ response would likely be somethinglike: “But what is most important is the way in which the public understands their religionand its relation to science!” By insisting that they are engaged in the same debate, Smithand Evans would find themselves talking past one another without realizing it; it is onlyonce we take the time to carefully think through the notions of religion and science theyhave in mind that we can see how the two fail to effectively engage.Perhaps a stronger example of this comes from the many responses to the Conflict/Warfaretheses of Draper and White. Many of the objections stem from assuming Draper andWhite conceive of religion as a monolithic entity which is in eternal conflict with science—supposedly they support a general, rather than a nuanced, form of Barbour’s Conflict (e.g.Numbers and Hardin 2018). This is perhaps understandable in the case of Draper who titledhis book History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874), but it is a bit morepuzzling in the case of White, who writes in the introduction to his History of the WarfareBetween Science and Christian Theology, “[Draper] regarded the struggle as one betweenScience and Religion. I believed then, and am convinced now, that it was a struggle be-37tween Science and Dogmatic Theology” (White 1896 Introduction; my emphasis). Indeed,White takes great pains to clarify that his opposition is to systematic/dogmatic theology,not religion itself—in fact, White understood his work as helping to strengthen Christianreligion by detailing the negative impacts of theology on “true” religion: “Thus, in this field(Geography), from the supremacy accorded to theology, we find resulting that tendency todogmatism which has shown itself in all ages the deadly foe not only of scientific inquiry butof the higher religious spirit itself, while from the love of truth for truth’s sake, which hasbeen the inspiration of all fruitful work in science, nothing but advantage has ever resultedto religion” (ibid. Ch. II P. V).Even in the case of Draper, however, it is far from clear that he also embraced a broad formof Conflict, assuming that religion—rather than some particular form of it—is opposed toscience as a whole. For instance, Draper gives a rather rosy account of the relationship be-tween Islam and science (Draper 1874 Ch. IV), and shows great enthusiasm for emanationistversions of Christianity (ibid. Ch. V). Scholars have thus more recently come to understandDraper as employing “religion” as a front for “Catholicism,” hence understanding his argu-ment as concerning not religion as a whole but instead the Catholic Church in particular(Ungureanu 2019, 12).As Ungureanu points out, there is an irony in the fact that Draper and White employ thesemore specific conceptualizations of religion since “the actual conflict Draper and Whiteenvisioned is remarkably similar to how [modern] historians have sought to redefine theidea of ‘warfare’ or ‘conflict’ between science and Christianity as one within religion” (ibid.,13; original emphasis). Thus, recognizing the particular conceptions of religion Draper andWhite had in mind threatens to disrupt the many historical objections that have been raisedagainst the two. For instance, the rather common practice of pointing to religious scientists(past and present) as problem cases for Draper and White’s Conflict thesis12 loses its teeth12E.g. Qidwai 2019; Connor 2004.38once it’s realized that Draper and White object not to religion no matter its manifestationbut instead one particular form/aspect of it—Catholicism or dogmatic theology.Had scholars instead thought of Draper and White through the lens of a concept- rather thanconclusion-oriented typology, perhaps they would have avoided this mischaracterization andthus engaged more fruitfully with the actual arguments of these nineteenth-century figures.13By calling our attention to the particular concepts in use, concept-oriented typologies helpus understand when different scholarly works are actually relevant to one another’s theses—something we might miss by focusing overmuch on the conclusions those scholars reach.1.3.3 Explaining Public UptakeHistorians have recently raised a puzzle: why do certain works on the RSR receive morepublic uptake than others? Ronald Numbers, for instance, laments that “four or moredecades of revisionist [anti-Conflict-Thesis] scholarship has not trickled down very far intopopular culture, especially in North America and Western Europe” (Numbers 2019). Thispuzzlement is shared by others (see e.g. Hardin, Numbers, and Binzley 2018). Severalyears before Numbers’ lament, Richard Olson explicitly demanded that typologies be able toanswer this question, criticizing conclusion-oriented typologies because “they offer no helpin trying to figure out why certain patterns of interaction dominate within particular groupsat particular times and places, nor do they suggest how the dominant patterns change overtime in any culture” (Olson 2011, 70–71).14To explain why particular works, especially those that support Conflict, have a stronger holdon the public imagination, a number of explanations have been proposed. One is rhetorical:13To be fair, Drees does this in Drees 1996, 67f.14Olson’s “dynamic model” does go some way in explaining these processes by focusing our attention onparticular subgroups within “Religion” and “Science,” and the rhetorical moves members of those subgroupsmay make in response to competitors. However, this is not so much a feature of Olson’s particular typology,but instead a consequence of his recognition that “Religion” and “Science” are not monolithic, but are rathercomposed of often competing/interacting subcultures.39many of the works supporting the Conflict thesis are polemical, and as is well known, polemicssell. It’s not difficult to find examples; open Harris’ The End of Faith (2004) and you’ll findblatant Islamophobia within two pages—and you don’t even need to open Dawkins’ The GodDelusion (2006) to understand the tone within. Likewise, Rodney Stark’s works are bothpolemical and widely read, though he is an advocate of Harmony not Conflict (see e.g. Stark2003). But rhetoric by itself can’t explain why these particular works are New York TimesBestsellers—one can find polemics almost everywhere in the religion-and-science literature;people engage in the topic because they care deeply about the two relata of the RSR, whichalmost certainly guarantees a substantial amount of fiery language.So rhetoric alone can’t be the full story; the content itself must also be relevant, if the salescharts and narratives in popular media are anything to go by. In this vein, several recentscholars have suggested that particular religion–science narratives (especially Conflict) playinto larger public/political social narratives, and because of this cozy connection they areabsorbed and perpetuated (Harrison 2015; J. H. Evans 2018; Numbers 2019). This kind ofthinking can make sense of the popularity of works like Hitchens’, Harris’, and Dawkins’which are explicitly Islamophobic—they were all published in the aftermath of 9-11.Focusing on political context has a further advantage in that it can also go some way inexplaining smaller-scale trends—like the popularity of Plantinga’s apologetic work or RodneyStark’s relatively good sales among Evangelicals. These works, which argue against theConflict Thesis in favour of something like Harmony, appeal (as we’d expect) to particularsegments of society.Note that the narrative focus is derived from conclusion-oriented typologies: such a taxon-omy provides the categories by which we distinguish the narratives. So conclusion-orientedtypologies (or at least ones such as Barbour’s) can, contra Olson, achieve this goal.However, narrative paired with political context doesn’t prove very satisfactory in explaining40why only particular works get traction—why Dawkins’ work and not Yves Gringas’? And itdoesn’t explain why, despite the emergence of a vocal Christian Right, authors like Harrisonand Numbers—or even the more polemical Plantinga—haven’t entered the public limelightin the same way as their New Atheist predecessors, even in religious circles.We might expect a more nuanced view of the question of uptake to be provided by concept-oriented typologies, which, again, draw our attention to the particular ways in which scholarsconstrue religion and science. Perhaps the understanding of religion, and of science, offeredby more popular authors is simply more consonant with the conceptions held by their layreaders. Thus, for instance, maybe Dawkins is so popular because he speaks to a form ofreligion and a form of science that is easily accepted by the lay public—whereas a worklike Peter Harrison’s The Territories of Science and Religion (2015) gets much less publicitybecause it explicitly tries to explode the everyday concepts of religion and science.A Guide to the PublicA third feature we might wish a typology to provide is a guide to the (vast) religion-and-science literature for the public—an elaboration of Barbour and others’ “map” aim. Concept-oriented typologies can provide such a map. The main idea behind this kind of guidanceis simple: it is likely that the works which will be most relevant to readers will be thosewhich employ understandings of religion and science similar (if not identical) to those ofthe reader. The typology highlights the particular conceptions of religion and science in aparticular work, so we can easily (we hope) sort through the literature to find what is likelyto be most relevant for our reader. The guidance scheme would then look like this: “If youconceive of religion in way X, and science in way Y, then read works A, B, C...”Imagine, again, our freshman biology major standing before the library shelves. She standsthere wondering, “Can I flourish as a religious biologist?” But with all the books on religion-41and-science before her, where should she start? According to the guide offered by concept-oriented typologies, she should proceed by considering how this student conceives of religionand science, or ask “what conception(s) of religion and science are relevant to your situation?”Perhaps our student is more disposed to understanding (her) religion as a “personal relation-ship between herself and God”—more along the lines of Drees’ “experiential” conceptions ofreligion. In that case, the guide would recommend biographies like Iliffe 2017 and Hunter2010 over, say works like T. Smith 2019 or Plantinga 2011, which take a much more intel-lectualized, “cognitive” approach to religion. On the other hand, if our student is worriedabout what appears to them to be a difference in epistemic standards between religion andscience, then Dennett and Plantinga would be better recommendations.Thus, concept-oriented typologies can be useful to the public: they can be used to gen-erate guides for navigating the vast religion-and-science literature. This is something theconclusion-oriented typologies of Barbour and Haught cannot do; they are simply too coarse-grained. Further, even if such typologies became more fine-grained, more nuanced, it isunlikely that the guides they produced would be desirable—confining recommendations toviews of the RSR the reader already accepts seems at best stifling, at worst nefarious; pre-sumably a map ought not generate an echo chamber.1.4 A Typology of MethodsAbove, we’ve seen how the typologies currently on offer fulfill various goals we might wishtypologies to fulfill in their second-order usage. In this section, I develop another kind oftypology, a method-oriented typology, which fullfills those goals in novel ways. This typologyis based not on the (possible) RSR, whether in the broad conclusion-oriented manner ofBarbour and Drees or in the more particular concept-oriented manner of Drees and Stenmark,42but rather on the process by which scholars arrive at their conclusions about the RSR. Itis thus not relationship-based.15 Importantly, this kind of typology is essentially of second-order use: it classifies scholars and scholarship rather than the “on-the-ground” RSR.A method-oriented typology builds on some of the insights behind concept-oriented typolo-gies: it demands greater attention to the ways in which scholars frame their discussion of theRSR. My typology, however, focuses on the arguments scholars employ, not just the conceptsthey use.In what follows, I outline four main methods which are widely used in the religion-and-scienceliterature and with which I believe that literature can be usefully typed: conceptual analysis;(historical) case studies; deconstruction;16 and, very broadly, fieldwork. This is not meant tobe an exhaustive list of all the logically possible methods scholars may use. This quartet ofmethods was chosen because I think they together span a majority of the religion-and-scienceliterature, are largely orthogonal to each other, and do not generate an overly complicatedtypology. Further, I should stress that authors can, of course, use several (perhaps all) ofthese methods—both across their careers and within particular works.17 However, I thinkthat many scholars and most scholarly works tend to employ one of these four methods atleast a majority of the time.I should also note two more points. First, although the methods sketched below derive fromand are most often used by scholars housed within particular disciplines (e.g. the method ofcase studies is largely used by historians), they are by no means limited to those disciplines.15It might be the case that there are other kinds of typologies aside from typologies of methods whichalso are not relationship-based. In that case, we might understand method-oriented typologies as just onespecies of a more general class of “relating-based” typologies.16In Chin 2023, I labeled this method “relativizing.” I discuss the shift in terminology in Ch. 4.17McGrath offers a nice example of this kind of methodological blending. For instance, in his Twilightof Atheism (2004), McGrath mostly employs the method of case studies to refute Dawkins’ claims aboutscience (A. E. McGrath 2004, 95), while in Dawkins’ God (2005), he instead takes a more conceptual analyticapproach (A. McGrath 2005, 53). In other works, like The Foundations of Dialogue in Science and Religion(1998), we find a blend of historical case studies, deconstruction, and also sociological studies all employed todemonstrate the complementality of religion and science—likewise in the much more recent The Territoriesof Human Reason (2019).43For instance, although conceptual analysis may most naturally find use among philosophers,it is also used by anthropologists like James Frazer (discussed below).Second, this taxonomy cross-cuts relationship-based typologies like Barbour’s: if one sowished, one could classify a scholar who employs the method of case studies as a proponent of(restricted) Conflict (for instance White 1896), while another supporter of Conflict (restrictedin a different way) could make use of conceptual analysis (for instance T. Smith 2019). AsI shall argue in §4, however, I believe that typing scholars according to the methods theyuse rather than the particular position they support or the concepts they employ is moreilluminating and ultimately useful—to both other scholars and to those members of thepublic who often consume this kind of literature.So, the methods.1.4.1 Conceptual AnalysisA common way of determining the relation between religion and science is via conceptualanalysis. Conceptual analysis, of course, has been conceptualized in a wide variety of ways.For my purposes, what I mean by the method of conceptual analysis in religion and science isthis: one first determines definitions18 of “religion”—or particular religions—and “science”—or (less commonly) particular sciences—, and then one logically deduces their relationshipon the basis of those definitions.We see this method employed by, for example, Stephen J. Gould: science and religion are bothhuman endeavors, but they have very different “magisteria.” In fact, those magisteria are sodifferent that they do not overlap—and thus there can be no conflict between them (Gould18Some readers might find “definitions” too strong a term. While in some cases I do think that scholarsemploy full-blown definitions, I only intend here some kind of formal characterization of the terms involved.If the reader would like to think about “explications” or “conceptualizations” or even just “analyses” insteadof “definitions,” they are welcome to do so.441998). Reaching a very different conclusion using the same method is Tiddy Smith: religionand science do in fact overlap in their explanatory target (the world and its happenings), butthey employ radically different epistemologies—religion makes use of highly individualisticevidence, while science respects only intersubjective evidence. Given this, the two inevitablywind up in conflict (T. Smith 2019). Yet again, Alvin Plantinga reaches a conciliationistview through conceptual analysis: “there is superficial conflict but deep concord betweenscience and theistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science andnaturalism” (Plantinga 2011). He gets to the concord by characterizing science as a particularkind of enterprise which requires that: 1) the world be regular, predictable, and constant(in its operations) and 2) we as humans/scientists believe in that regularity (ibid., 282–283).Since “theistic religion” gives reason to expect 1) and 2) (due to the nature of God andhumans being created in His image), science and (theistic) religion are compatible. In asomewhat similar vein, Wright tries to show that Buddhism just is a particular kind ofscience, based on a certain narrow definition of Buddhism as a set of meditative practicesaimed at distancing the self from emotional and material constraints (Wright 2017).It should be pointed out that the particular way in which a conceptual analysis is conductedmay vary greatly between scholars. One might, like Tolstoy (Tolstoy [1879] 1987; Tolstoy[1902] 1987), simply intuit the notions of religion and science a priori. On the other hand,one could instead arrive at conceptions of religion and science more empirically: JamesFrazer, for instance, does this in his famous and widely influential The Golden Bough: thatreligion makes appeal to Wills/agents while science appeals to regular Laws is a conclusion(supposedly) reached by induction over many cases (Frazer 1922, Ch. 4). So too GregoryDawes (2021) arrives at conceptions of science and of religion via this kind of method.But regardless of how they determine the definitions of “religion” and “science,” the aboveauthors all arrive at their characterization of the RSR by comparing the definitions. This isthe method of conceptual analysis.451.4.2 Case StudiesPerhaps the most common method employed in the literature, however, is what I’ll call themethod of case studies. Here, rather than comparing definitions, one performs a kind ofinduction over some number of historical episodes of religion–science interaction. The goalis that such an induction will reveal the RSR.Exemplars of this method go back to the early history of religion-and-science as a discipline:the works of John Draper and Andrew Dickson White. In their now rather infamous histo-ries, Draper and White enumerated dozens (perhaps hundreds) of historical episodes (somefabricated) on the basis of which they made claims like: “The history of Science is not amere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrative of the conflict of two contending powers,the expansive force of the human intellect on one side, and the compression arising fromtraditionary faith and human interests on the other” (Draper 1874, Preface).Working at a perhaps more modest scale, historians like David Hollinger and Marwa Elshakryhave pushed for Harmony on the basis of their studies of twentieth-century Jewish scientists(Hollinger 1996) and the reception of Darwin in Islamic cultures (Elshakry 2013).These kinds of “positive”, or “constructive” inductive projects can be contrasted with more“negative” projects of a “debunking” nature. Indeed much of the historical work from thepast five decades has focused on debunking the narratives of the classic Conflict theorists(Lightman 2019 calls it “myth-busting”). Ronald Number’s aptly named Galileo Goes toJail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (2009) is representative, as are John Heil-bron 1999’s revisionist account of the Galileo Affair and a number of recent religion-focusedbiographies of scientists19 of eminent scientists—like Rob Iliffe 2017’s Priest of Nature: TheReligious Worlds of Isaac Newton. In all these cases, particular historical episodes or thinkers19Cantor and Kenny cite biography as a genre/method of particular importance (G. Cantor and Kenny2001, 779). I take biography to be one form that the method of case studies can take: the case study is thelife of a scientist, or an episode in their life, rather than a broader group/societal experience.46are consulted to make a broader claim about the RSR: it should or shouldn’t be characterizedin such and such a way.1.4.3 DeconstructionA closely related but quite distinct method is what I will call “deconstruction.” While themethod of case studies engages with historical actors and their actions, deconstruction en-gages with the history of the concepts at hand. It comes in (at least) two flavours: culturaland historical (i.e. “historicizing”).The general idea is this: take the concepts expressed by the terms “religion” and “science”in use today and show (or assert) that they either did/do not exist, or had/have radicallydifferent meanings in different times/places. On the basis of this, one argues for some partic-ular characterization of the RSR. Often, deconstructions conclude that one cannot provide auniversal and/or diachronically stable characterization of the RSR—any such attempt musteither fail or be hyperlocal (temporally and/or culturally).20In religion-and-science, the roots of historicizing lie in the work of John Hedley Brooke(especially J. H. Brooke 1991), in some sense the originator of the “Complexity Thesis.”But I think the historicizing approach is best exemplified in the work of Peter Harrison,especially in The Territories of Science and Religion (2015), wherein he demonstrates howvarious socio-historical contingencies from the sixteenth century til now set the parametersfor how we in the West understand the RSR. Had things turned out differently (e.g. had theProtestant Reformation not happened or Aristotelian virtue ethics been maintained), hadour notions of “science” and “religion” taken slightly different forms, we may not have evenbeen able to conceive of religion and science as being related in one of the four Barbourian20See Josephson Storm 2021 for a “formula” for such deconstructions across the humanities and socialsciences. (Josephson Storm 2021, 69–71). I should also note that these methods are frequently used inreligious studies as well as the history and philosophy of science.47ways. James Ungureanu’s recent work (Ungureanu 2019) likewise highlights how the notion ofconflict between religion and science emerged from a very particular socio-historical momentin nineteenth-century Victorian England.21On the other hand, a good example of cultural-relativizing is found in Jason Ānanda Joseph-son’s The Invention of Religion in Japan (2011). Josephson contends that prior to the MeijiRestoration and the US’ forceful “opening” of Japan’s ports, there was no native Japaneseconception of religion—or of science. Instead, this concept was invented (quite explicitly)by a number of scholars and political figures in order to appease the foreigners’ demand for“religious freedom”: what they found was that “religion” was simply Christianity (Josephson2012, 78–79, 92)—which itself was understood as a heretical form of Buddhism (ibid., 22–23,84)! The moral of the story (if taken to heart) for the RSR is that we ought not generalizeour characterization of it temporally or spatially; the things related are so radically different(perhaps even non-existent) in different times and places that we cannot usefully provide ageneral account of the RSR.221.4.4 FieldworkThe final method I consider encompasses a range of methods drawn from the social sci-ences, and which I broadly call “fieldwork.” This embraces methods such as survey work,interviews, and ethnography. What distinguishes these methods from the above in thereligion-and-science literature is their explicit focus on the “everyday,” quotidian experi-ences of/encounters with “religion” and “science.” The essential idea behind fieldwork isthat the proper characterization of the RSR is to be found reflected in the responses or21See also Turner 1978. Although Turner cites sociological data, note that his conclusion about the RSR(that it ought not be characterized by (simplistic) Conflict) is outside the data: he does not claim that theproper characterization of the RSR is reflected by the sociological data. For this reason I classify scholarlyworks like Turner’s as historicizing rather than instances of fieldwork.22See e.g. Lopez 2008 and Shin 2016 for similar cultural-relativizing arguments about the RSR in EastAsia.48actions of everyday, ordinary scientists and religious folk.The classic example of this is Leuba’s (1916) survey of those listed in the American Men ofScience, a directory of scientists first produced in 1906. Observing that only about 30% ofthe “greater men” (marked as “eminent” in American Men of Science) among his sampleindicated belief in a prayer-granting God, Leuba claimed a basic incompatibility betweenreligion and science, anticipating that future scientific communities would be even less reli-gious. Leuba-esque studies have been repeated several times in the intervening century-plus,with varied interpretations (Larson and Witham 1997; Larson and Witham 1998). A muchmore complex instance of fieldwork can be found in the work of Elaine Howard Ecklund,sometimes in collaboration with Christopher Scheitle. In addition to surveying hundredsof academic scientists and everyday religious folk, Ecklund has also performed an exten-sive sleuth of interviews with university scientists and immersed herself in various religiouscommunities across the United States (Ecklund 2010; Ecklund and Scheitle 2018).1.5 A Typology of Methods and the Aims of Typolo-giesAbove, I sketched three goals we might wish typologies to obtain. We saw that conclusion-and concept-oriented typologies achieve these aims to varying degrees in various ways. Here,I revisit those aims and show how a typology of methods obtains them in its own uniqueway.491.5.1 Illuminate Effective EngagementAs with concept-oriented typologies, a typology of methods can illuminate how particularworks engage, or fail to engage, with one another—and can indicate how to most effectivelyengage with others. By calling explicit attention to the methods used by scholars, thetypology encourages us to address the arguments rather than the conclusions found in theworks to which we respond. The different methods outlined above clearly employ differentkinds of evidence—for instance, the method of case studies does not rely on the firsthandreporting of everyday laypersons, as does fieldwork. To try to use fieldwork-based evidenceagainst a scholar employing the method of case studies might thus be illegitimate. On theother hand, actually recognizing that different scholars are using different methods in arguingagainst (or with) each other could be immensely generative.To see these two cases, consider some of McGrath’s early responses to Dawkins (brieflydiscussed in fn. 17 above). In The Twilight of Atheism (2004), McGrath counters Dawkins’claim that science and religion have distinct methodologies (one uses faith, the other doesnot) by employing historical case studies of religious scientists (A. E. McGrath 2004, 95).But Dawkins reaches his conclusions via conceptual analysis, which could offer an “easy”out: perhaps McGrath’s religious scientists are simply mistaken about the nature of religionand science, and thus are not good judges of their relationship. Theoretically Dawkins couldalways evade McGrath’s criticism in this way.However, I think that if the different sides recognized that they were using different methods,they could fruitfully advance their discussion. For instance, Dawkins could acknowledgeMcGrath’s examples and try to refine his analysis of “science” and “religion” in light ofthem—after all, conceptual analysis can be done in various ways, as we saw with e.g. Frazerabove. Likewise, McGrath might choose his examples differently, using Dawkins’ conceptionsas a way of isolating relevant historical examples.50Unfortunately, discussion of scholars’ methods is generally lacking in the literature. One placewhere the (possible) dangers of talking past one another as a result of different methodologiescan be found in Tiddy Smith’s The Methods of Science and Religion (2019). Right at thestart, he clarifies that he is speaking of an epsitemic conflict between religion and science,not a historical one:... I will argue in the course of this book that the conflict between science andreligion is quite real, and further, that the conflict has a clear victor. The methodsof science out-compete the methods of religion. I must emphasize from the outsetthat I do not dispute what has already been said by [historians]: the historicalrelationship between science and religion has been complicated. ... But this bookis not about history. This book is about epistemology: the theory of knowledge.And the questions that this book seeks to answer are primarily about knowledge,not history. (T. Smith 2019 p. 1)The message is clear: he believes it is simply not relevant to bring up historical case studiesas objections to his account—religion and science are here understood as particular kinds ofintellectual endeavours employing particular kinds of evidence to explain particular, over-lapping classes of phenomena, and thus are by very definition bound to conflict with oneanother, at least at some point (and in such a way that science will always come out on top).By drawing our attention to the scholarly methods used in favour of a particular characteriza-tion of the RSR, a typology of methods can thus help determine what kinds of objections willbe relevant to particular authors and their works. It can also point to potentially surprisingplaces of disagreement—where we might have expected agreement. We see this perhaps moststarkly in the case of historicizing and the method of case studies: if we fully embraced thehistoricizing method and all its implications, then we would not even permit the lumping-51together of distinct historical episodes to form the base for a case-studies induction.23 Onthe other hand, focusing on methods can also highlight ways in which particular authorsshould, perhaps, alter their methods to better accommodate/acknowledge their critics—aswe saw with the imagined Dawkins–McGrath dialectic.1.5.2 Public UptakeWe saw above that both conclusion- and concept-oriented typologies provide some traction onthe question, “Why do some pieces of scholarship receive more public uptake than others?” Atypology of methods provides a another take on the issue. Parallel to the schema derived fromconcept-oriented typologies above, the idea is simple: some methods are easier to understand,follow, and digest than others. The method of deconstruction, in particular, is itself quitecomplex, and doesn’t lend itself easily to public exposition or, when that is achieved, touptake. Other methods, however, are more liable to absorption by the public. At leastsome forms of conceptual analysis, for instance, are amenable to sloganization—“Scienceuses Reason, Religion uses Faith”—which can help their conclusions stick. Likewise, thenarrative style employed by some instances of the method of case studies lends itself topublic remembrance: who can forget the great struggle between Galileo and the Church orthe burning of Bruno?Notice that, this is a distinct way of approaching the issue from that suggested by concept-oriented typologies. Its explanatory power comes from focusing on the ways various publicsdigest information rather than on their particular conceptions of religion and science.Much work, of course, is still to be done in exploring exactly how this methodological strandof analysis can contribute to resolving the question of public uptake—and surely in the end23Oddly, this tension between historicizing and the method of case studies has not, to my knowledge, beenacknowledged in the field—and very often historians, especially, are quick to endorse both simultaneously(in particular as ways of criticizing the Conflict Thesis; see e.g. Lightman 2019, 5–6). We will return to thisin Ch. 4, §3.52it isn’t just method or rhetoric or politics,24 but a blend of all (and others) which do theexplaining. But focusing on how the methods used appeal/fail to appeal to particular publicscan offer fruitful insight into the issue.1.5.3 Guide for the PublicA typology of methods’ greatest strength, I believe, lies in its ability to provide a guide to thepublic in navigating the religion-and-science literature. We saw above that concept-orientedtypologies do this by asking what concepts of religion and/or science the subject has anddirecting them to literature which employ those same conceptions. In this way, concept-oriented typologies can help consumers (scholarly or not) find work that is actually relevantto them. A typology of methods can provide a similar guide, but one that is, I think, evenmore useful to the subject.A methods-oriented guide builds off the idea that different methods are likely to appealto different readers. Now, it’s important to note that the consumers of the religion-amd-science literature are a highly diverse group. Readers have all kinds of different reasons fordelving into the work on the RSR: some seek ways to defend their faith, others seek ways toattack others’ faith; some have purely academic interests in the RSR, others a much morepersonal investment; some are embedded in a particular faith tradition, others are not. Andthe particular set of circumstances which lead readers (and researchers) to the literaturecontribute to the kinds of evidence they will find relevant (and convincing). Since differentmethods employ different kinds of evidence, it follows that the different methods will bemore or less well-equipped to deal with different particular readers’ concerns/interests inthe RSR. By isolating what kinds of methods are best suited to which kinds of concerns,a typology of methods can thus help direct members of the public (and scholars!) to those24I should also point out that the slowness/reluctance of high school history and social science textbooksto change their presentation of the RSR (especially in their characterization of the Enlightenment) is surelyrelevant (see Aechtner 2019 for more on this strand).53works which would be most relevant to them. Schematically, the guidance would look likethis: “Readers with concerns X should read works Y and Z because they use method A.”This focus on values rather than concepts results in real, pragmatic differences. Recall,for example, our freshman biology student considering which books to read about the RSR.What kind of guidance could a typology of methods give? It might well be that what concernsthis student most is whether she can fit herself into a narrative of religious biologists (orreligious biology). Given that, it would make sense to direct her to the case-study literature,perhaps to the work on Darwin’s reception in Victorian England and in the US (e.g. Moore1981)—rather than to historicizing work like Harrison 2015, or even conceptual analytic worklike Plantinga 2011, which our student may find too abstract. Likewise, this kind of studentmight be interested in how she will be treated as an academic biologist who is also deeplyreligious, in which case fieldwork-esque studies will be the most relevant.Now consider a case with broader social implications: a politician navigating her, say, Muslimconstituents’ opposition to stem cell research. The politician in this case wants to under-stand the root of the opposition, and thus find ways of defusing it or communicating it toher colleagues. Here, again, fieldwork studies, like the work done by the Pew Foundation(pew21; Pew Research Center 2009) or Everhart’s study of Muslim physicians (Everhartand Hameed 2013), will be more appropriate rather than historical case studies or conceptualanalyses.Note the difference in how this case is treated by a methods-oriented guide rather than aconcept-oriented guide. Using concepts, we would ask after the politician’s conceptions ofreligion and science, or perhaps about their constituents’ notions. But it’s easy to see howthis might not lead to a result that is actually useful for the politician. For suppose thatboth the politician and her constituents understand religion and science as competing formsof knowledge production about the natural world. We would then suggest that she readworks from, again, T. Smith and Plantinga. But it is not clear how those works would lend54themselves to actionable recommendations for the politician’s actual situation: How does ithelp to know that indeed the methods of science out-compete the methods of religion or thattrue science is really compatible with true religion? Would this help our politician addressher constituents’ concerns? Instead, fieldwork studies which indicate how lay religious folkactually interact with science seem more likely useful—regardless of the politician’s ownunderstanding of what religion and science are. 25 Such studies can give the politician abetter sense of what is “really” at issue in Muslim opposition to stem cell research because itbuilds on actual studies of on-the-ground individuals rather than abstract, idealized concepts.In the above cases, we have seen recommendations against the use of conceptual analyticworks. This is an artifact of the examples, not an indication of the methods-oriented guide’sopposition to conceptual analysis. Consider, for instance, a Buddhist apologist in the West.To the extent that they see a need for legitimizing their religion in a Christianity-dominatedsociety, such a person might indeed find the conceptual analytic literature more relevant. Ifit is indeed the case that religion, and Buddhism in particular, is such-and-such a thing, andthat it is in fact compatible with science (as properly understood as such-and-such), thenthat seems to be a strong reason to take Buddhism seriously (given that we take scienceseriously). Likewise, if it is actually the case that Buddhism is a type of science (c.f. Wright2017), then this is even better fuel for the apologist.26Again, notice that this recommendation side-steps the concepts of religion and science thatthe apologist holds and instead cuts directly to their values and situation. The question amethod-oriented guideline asks is “Why do you care about the RSR?” rather than “How doyou understand ‘religion’ and ‘science’?” And in fact, asking this latter question is irrelevantto the apologetic purpose of the Buddhist (or politician). It might be relevant to understandhow their opponent conceives of religion and science. However, if their opponents are a25In a sense, we might say that the politician’s conceptions of religion and science are irrelevant to theissue at hand; what matters is how her constituents relate the two in their actual lives.26Historically, conceptual analysis has in fact been strategically employed by Buddhists to resist Christiancolonizers and to win legitimacy for the religion worldwide (see especially Lopez 2008).55diverse bunch, with many conceptions of religion and science present, then the recommen-dations from a concept-oriented guide will quickly get out of hand: read everything!1.6 ConclusionIn this chapter, I have done four main things. First, I proposed a taxonomy of typolo-gies in the religion-and-science literature: some are conclusion-oriented while others areconcept-oriented. I then considered the ways in which typologies are used—as first-orderclassifications of the RSR and as second-order taxonomies of scholars and their works re-garding the RSR. This put me in a position to talk about what we might want typologies todo; I reviewed the reasons proposed by Barbour and then outlined three further goals (someof which were elaborations of Barbour’s): 1) highlighting effective scholarly engagement; 2)explaining the public uptake of particular scholarly works; and 3) providing a useful guide—or map—of the literature for the public (and for scholars). Finally, I proposed a differentkind of typology, one based on the methods used by scholars in their studies of the RSR,and discussed how this typology achieved the goals I outlined.I should emphasize that my purpose in outlining this typology has not been to argue infavour of any one of the particular methods. As discussed above, the different methods havetheir different uses: depending on one’s reasons for entering into the religion-and-scienceliterature, one will find particular methods more or less useful. Perhaps the worried studentfinds solace in case-study biographies; perhaps the politician is better helped by fieldwork;and perhaps the apologist (or the philosopher) is more interested in conceptual analysis.For what it’s worth, I tend to find fieldwork studies to be the most relevant; I come tothe literature interested in relatively mundane issues related to religious tolerance—whatmatters most to me is what “everyday” people think now regardless of how odd I think theirconceptions of “religion” or “science.”56I should also reiterate that my typology of methods is not meant as a replacement forrelationship-based typologies, whether they be conclusion-oriented like Barbour’s or concept-oriented like Stenmark’s. This is so for two reasons. First, these different typologies cross-cut one another; they are often mutually compatible. If one so wished, one could findConflict theorists within the category of Conceptual Analyzers just as much as they couldfind Historicists within the category of Neo-Harmonists. But second, a typology of methodsis focused only on classifying scholars (or other authors) and their works. Relationship-basedtypologies can also be used in the first-order way as a means of categorizing ways in whichthe RSR could be itself configured. Method-oriented typologies simply cannot do this; theyare not typologies of the RSR, but of those who discuss the RSR. In that sense, a typologyof methods cannot replace relationship-based typologies; their uses are not identical. And Ishould emphasize, again, that I think the first-order use of typologies has its place. However,given that the second-order use is more prevalent in the literature, it was high time to discussjust what we want from such typologies.In the rest of this dissertation, I will flesh out this typology of methods by examining eachof the four methods in more detail. The chapters will take each method in turn, clarifyinghow I conceive of them, reviewing their problems, proposing improvements, and highlightingthe publics for which they are most relevant. A central theme throughout my critiques ofthe methods revolves around the questions (sometimes asked in the literature, but I thinknot adequately incorporated): Whose science? Whose religion? In particular, I unpack thedisconnect between academic conceptions of these endeavours/institutions/practices and howthey are encountered in particular contexts, whether they are everyday or academic.57Chapter 2The Method of Conceptual AnalysisShe takes a chance and pulls a book at random from the shelf. It starts off blandly enough—science is about the natural world, religion is about ethics, so there’s no conflict betweenthem. Our undergrad pauses, “But is that really all there is to say?” she wonders. She pullsanother and learns that really science employs empirical methods to learn about the worldwhereas religion uses something else—faith—to learn about that world, and that meansreligion and science are constantly in tension. Something about this surprises her. It’s notthe conclusions, but rather the starting places. How do these authors find these definitions?Oddly there aren’t many scientists or religious figures being quoted in the books. Andhow is there even disagreement about the definitions in the first place? How can there bedisagreement about what science is? Doesn’t everyone know that science is... Her thoughtstrail off as she tries to recall what her textbooks had said.But she snaps out of it and realizes that there’s something else odd about these books. Thesedefinitions—where do they come from? Do they just come from the authors’ imaginations?And are the science and religion featured in these books, defined in this way, actually relevantto her own life and experience?58In this chapter, I consider the method of conceptual analysis as it is used in the public-facing religion-and-science literature and in particular the attempt to characterize the RSR.I begin by specifying what I mean by “conceptual analysis” and highlighting what I take to beexemplars of the method in the literature past and present. I then consider several problemswith the method and its common implementation. Many of these problems derive from afailure of scholars to ask the question: whose concepts of “religion” and “science” ought tobe analyzed? I argue that most scholars over-emphasize the theoretical aspects of scienceat the cost of ignoring the social-embeddedness of science and the much more widespreadindustrial practices of real-world scientists—that is, scholars generally characterize scienceas a theory-oriented knowledge-producing enterprise, which fundamentally mischaracterizesthe vast majority of professional scientists. Another way of putting this is that too muchattention has been given to “basic” science rather than “applied” science. Given that thesescholars are engaged in a conceptual analysis of science in order to make socially relevantclaims about the RSR (by virtue of being public-facing scholars), this focus is problematicfor it ignores a large majority of science actually pursued in modern society, which is therelevant concept for analysis. I conclude with a discussion of what kinds of readers mightfind conceptual analytic studies useful.2.1 Varieties of Conceptual AnalysisBy “conceptual analysis” in religion-and-science, I mean the method which proceeds (roughly)as follows:11To be clear, this definition of conceptual analysis is not supposed to be a standard definition of theeponymous, possibly distinctly philosophical method—though it is, of course, similar. In particular, I do notthink this method is the same as that “conceptual analysis” which forms the ancestry of modern “analytic”philosophy.The “conceptual analysis” I discuss here seems broader than that particular method, and allowsfor the analysis (the process of definition) to proceed in any number of ways.59Conceptual Analysis: 1) define ‘religion’ (or a particular religion) and ‘science’(or a particular science), then 2) on the basis of those definitions, derive theirrelationship.For instance, one might define ‘religion’ as “a system of knowledge about the world whichrelies on faith” and ‘science’ as “a system of knowledge about the world which relies onempirical observation”. Given these definitions, one might then claim that religion andscience are in conflict since they are both systems of knowledge about the world but relyon conflicting methodologies (granting, of course, that ‘faith’ and ‘empirical observation’ areantithetical; as we’ll see, this is essentially the argument of T. Smith 2019).There are a number of things to note in this characterization of conceptual analysis. First,1) involves definitions. In some philosophical circles, ‘definitions’ carry significant baggage—the provision of necessary and sufficient conditions. For our purposes, I do not require the‘definition’ in 1) to satisfy any stringent requirements—if the reader would prefer to replace‘define’ with ‘analyze’ or ‘characterize,’ they are free to do so. In the literature, however,many authors do go so far as to provide definitions. Rodney Stark, for instance, does this(Stark 2003, 4, 124). Furthermore, many authors talk of defining ‘religion’ (or a particularreligion) and ‘science’ (or a particular science) at the start of their works, even if they donot provide a “proper” definition or even attempt to at all. Here are a couple examples:How can one speak about the relationship between science and religion, eitheras practices or as systems of belief, without first defining terms? It is possibleto go only so far in meeting this objection. ... Too restrictive a definition can,however, be counterproductive because it may exclude too many questions beforethey have been asked. If the study of history is to be instructive, it is importantnot to establish foregone conclusions through the rigidity of definitions. (J. H.Brooke 1991, 6; my emphasis)60Before looking more closely at how Christianity and science relate, we shouldbriefly define these terms as we are using them in the introduction and con-clusion, as well as how our contributors understand them. (Reese 2021, 12; myemphasis)Thus, in what follows, I will adhere to the conventions of the literature and typically referto authors’ “definitions,” without the more sophisticated connotations of especially pickyphilosophers.Second, 1) can proceed in any number of ways. “Conceptual analysis” often implies an apriori method; one might think of the canonical armchair philosopher pontificating on thenature of things from their ivory tower. But conceptual analysis can be done in a varietyof ways and need not be done by philosophers. Although some—like Leo Tolstoy (1828–1910)—do indeed employ a priori methods when defining ‘religion’ and ‘science’, many donot. The anthropologist James Frazer (1854-+1941) provides a good example of an empiricalform of conceptual analysis. After surveying ancient forms of worship, Frazer felt that hecould extract a general characterization of religion as an explanatory system of the naturalworld that appeals to agential wills (Frazer 1922 Ch. IV). Gregory Dawes employs a similarempirical method in his much more recent Deprovincializing Science and Religion (2021).The analysis, of course, can isolate different aspects of religion/science (or their species);the definitions arrived at by different scholars can differ quite radically. As we saw above,Smith focuses on the methods he takes to be characteristic of religious and scientific ways ofknowing. But one could instead focus on the social structure, endorsed propositions, or aimsof religious/scientific communities, just to name a few. Furthermore, a conceptual analyzercould also generate definitions which mix these various aspects, as suggested by Stenmark2004, whose work and recommendations I’ll discuss below.One more note on 1): the qualifiers are important. Some scholars do talk of Religion and61Science as capitalized, global, seemingly monolithic categories; others instead discuss muchmore local species. Interestingly, whether a scholar analyzes religion in general or someparticular religion in specific seems to be highly correlated with the aims of the scholar, andultimately their view of the RSR. The trends seem to be as follows: Those with a negativeview of the RSR (e.g. Conflict theorists) tend to take a more global approach; we saw this,again, with Smith and Frazer. Also in the globalizing camp are Separatists like Stephen J.Gould (1941–2002) and Michael Ruse. On the other hand, apologists tend to focus on theirreligion in particular—Alvin Plantinga, for instance, is only concerned with (a particularform of) Christianity. This global/local focus does not often spill over to the science side,however: Even when authors offer definitions of particular religions, they tend to still seeka general definition of Science. There are a few exceptions, of course: evolutionary biologyis often singled out for discussion (as in Plantinga 2011), as are relativity and quantummechanics. No one, though, seems to be interested in chemistry, environmental science,agricultural science, or any of the “non-theory-oriented” sciences (like genome sequencing,cosmetic chemistry, and conservation biology). We’ll return to this lacuna later on when Idiscuss general problems with the current use of conceptual analysis in the field.Regarding 2), I should clarify that the “derivation” involved is strictly (purportedly) logical.It is not empirical. Thus, after Frazer has arrived, empirically, at his definition of ‘religion’and (via some other process, perhaps armchair pontificating) ‘science,’ their relation is ar-rived at logically : religion appeals to wills, science does not, and so they are in conflict sincethey try to explain the same thing (Frazer 1922 Ch. IV). Frazer does not present us withhistorical examples of religion–science interaction and then arrive at their relationship viainduction (this would be a instance of the method of case studies, to be discussed in Chapter3).Finally, the “then” between 1) and 2) need not be explicit. That is, the definitions in 1)need not be laid out plainly for the reader to see; they may instead be implicit. The key,62however, is that the derivation in 2) is made on the assumption of the definitions in 1), evenif there is no formal location where those definitions are spelled out clearly.So the method of conceptual analysis proceeds by defining the terms and “then” derivingtheir relationship based on those definitions. The method is used widely by philosophers,historians, social scientists, and scientists alike (among others). I’ll now turn to some actualexamples past and present, then proceed to a critique of the method.2.1.1 Some Exemplars from the PastFrazer, Tolstoy, and D.T. Suzuki (1870–1966) all published explicitly public-facing works onthe RSR which enjoyed some amount of popularity. Frazer’s The Golden Bough: A Studyin Comparative Religion was first published in 1890 as an enormous two-volume study ofthe Greek cult of Diana, though this main target served as a stocking horse for a largerdiscussion of the roots of religion in general. In subsequent years, Frazer first expandedthe work into three volumes in 1900 (when it was retitled The Golden Bough: A Studyin Magic and Religion), then into twelve volumes published over 1906–1915, and finallypublished a much-condensed, single-volume version totaling only(!) about nine hundredpages in 1922.2 The condensed edition was widely read by both academic and popularaudiences in its day and continues to remain a key text (if only for historiographic reasons) inthe study of religion, especially in anthropological circles. On the other end of the spectrum,Tolstoy’s works on the RSR are quite short. Here, I only discuss “A Confession” (1879)and “Religion and Morality” (1893), wherein he explicitly discusses the RSR in his reflectiveessay style. The first of these essays was originally censored (in an attempted publicationof 1882), but was eventually published in Geneva in 1884 and in Russia by 1906—in bothcases appearing in literary journals. “Religion and Morality” (1893) on the other hand wasoriginally written for an ethical society based in Germany, though it was printed in the2It is this condensed version which I draw from below, cited as Frazer 1922.63“magazine of thought” Contemporary Review in 1894. Finally, D. T. Suzuki, writing in aquite different cultural context, wrote extensively on the RSR in his early career. Manyof his works are explicitly apologetic in nature: They were presented in order to defendthe legitimacy and sophistication of Asian religion against a climate of Western religiouschauvinism (Lopez 2011, 220). This is the case with his seminal Outlines of MahâyânaBuddhism (1908), written specifically for a Western (English-speaking) audience, which Idiscuss below. Though these writers all employ the method of conceptual analysis, they doso in very different ways.As discussed briefly above, Frazer’s approach is (perhaps arguably) empirical. In the GoldenBough, Frazer reconstructs the practices of dozens of ancient and medieval cultic forms ofworship (mostly European and Middle Eastern). It is presumably on the basis of this vastamount of research that Frazer then generates his definition3 of ‘religion’ as “a propitiationor conciliation of powers superior to man which are believed to direct and control the courseof nature and of human life.”4 As Frazer points out, his definition of religion is twofold,containing a “theoretical” (belief in superior powers) and a “practical” (propitiation of saidpowers) element.5 An implication of this definition is that “the course of nature is to someextent elastic or variable”; propitiationary acts can alter “the current of events from thechannel in which they would otherwise flow.”Frazer’s conception of science is more difficult to pick out; he never explicitly defines it ashe does with religion. However, from his discussions of magic, something of an intermediate“stage” between religion and science—reminiscent of August Comte’s metaphysical spiritwhich lies between the theological and positive/scientific ages of humanity’s development—,3Frazer himself calls it a definition, although he cautiously acknowledges that “there is probably nosubject in the world about which opinions differ so much as the nature of religion, and to frame a definitionof it which would satisfy every one must obviously be impossible. All that a writer can do is, first, to sayclearly what he means by religion, and afterwards to employ the word consistently in that sense throughouthis work” (Ch. IV).4All quotes from Frazer here are taken from Ch. IV “Magic and Religion” in Frazer 1922.5Incidentally, Frazer distinguishes religion from theology on this basis: theology lacks the practical ele-ment.64we can piece together a Frazerian science. As in magic, so too in science “the succession ofevents is assumed to be perfectly regular and certain, being determined by immutable laws,the operation of which can be foreseen and calculated precisely; the elements of caprice,of chance, and of accident are banished from the course of nature.” But whereas magicmisapplies the (rather Humean) “fundamental laws of thought, namely, the association ofideas by similarity and the association of ideas by contiguity in space or time,” sciencedoes not.6 So Frazerian science, like Frazerian religion, involves both a theoretical aspect(assumption of the regularity of events) and a practical one too (proper application of thelaws of thought).Once Frazer has erected his conceptions of religion and science (the definition of religionactually comes after his discussion of science and magic), he then moves on to assess theRSR: the “implied elasticity or variability of nature [in the definition of religion] is directlyopposed to the principles of magic as well as of science, both of which assume that theprocesses of nature are rigid and invariable in their operation, and that they can as littlebe turned from their course by persuasion and entreaty as by threats and intimidation.” Soreligion and science disagree in both their theoretical and “practical” parts—a classic caseof Barbourian Conflict. But the locus of disagreement can be more accurately pinpointedin the explanations they offer. Frazer goes on to explain that the real distinction between“the two conflicting views of the universe turns on their answer to the crucial question, Arethe forces which govern the world conscious and personal, or unconscious and impersonal?”Religious explanations feature the former, scientific the latter. We thus have, in Frazer,epistemic methodological conflict between religion and science.Tolstoy reaches a very different kind of conclusion, but also arrives at his characterizationof science and religion via empirical means, although Tolstoy’s are much more “personal”than Frazer’s. In A Confession (1879), he writes, “I searched everywhere and thanks to6In this way, magic and science lie on the same spectrum, and “were [magic] ever to become true andfruitful, it would no longer be magic but science” (Frazer 1922).65a life spent in study, and to my connections with the world of learning, I had access toscholars of various disciplines. I was not denied insight into their erudition, both throughbooks and in conversation with them, and I learnt everything that knowledge has to answerto the question of life” (Tolstoy [1879] 1987, 34). After talking with many scholars, Tolstoythen concludes, “Experimental science only has to be introduced to the question of finalcauses for it to turn into a nonsense. ... [It], therefore, only deals with positive knowledgeand reveals the greatness of the human intellect when it does not introduce the questionof ultimate causes into its inquiries” (ibid., 38). So science does not address questions ofultimate concern. Religion, however, Tolstoy discovers, does address these questions, butdoes so in a non-intellectual—in fact pre-intellectual—way, as stated more explicitly in hislater work.Later on, in “Religion and Morality” (1893), Tolstoy responds to a set of questions posed by a“German ethical cultural society” (Tolstoy [1893] 1987, 129fn. 47): “(1) What I understandby the word ‘religion’, and (2) Do I consider it possible for morality to exist independently ofreligion, as I understand it?” (ibid., 131) This answer is quite direct: “The essence of religionlies solely in the answer to the question: why do I exist, and what is my relationship to theinfinite universe that surrounds me” (ibid., 134). Tolstoy then provides a kind of definitionof religion as “the relationship a person recognizes himself to have with the external world,or with its origin and first cause” (ibid., 137). This characterization of religion is arrivedat by a priori (possibly unintentional) introspection, or “revelation.” As he explains, “thisunderstanding is not acquired through any study or effort on the part of any particularperson, or people, but only through acceptance by a person, or people, of the manifestationof infinite reason which is gradually revealing itself to mankind” (ibid., 140). Thus, Tolstoyarrives at his definitions of religion and science in different ways: the former via “revelation,”the latter via personal empirical means.Once he has his conceptions, however, the nature of the RSR becomes clear. Since religion is66simply the “relationship established between [man] and the infinite, never-ending universe,its origin and first cause,” insofar as the sciences depend on a particular understanding ofthe relationship between the individual and the world, they must come after religion “sincereligious knowledge is the thing on which all else depends...” (Tolstoy [1893] 1987, 140).7Science and religion are thus incommensurate: science is some intellectual endeavour seekinganswers to particular questions about the universe, while religion is “simply” the relationshipone feels to that universe. A far cry from Frazer’s competing explanatory systems!While Frazer and Tolstoy speak of religion in a global, general sense, Suzuki limits himself toa more local discussion of Buddhism in relation to science (which he, like Frazer and Tolstoy,also takes in a global sense). Although he wrote extensively on Zen Buddhism and is perhapsmost known for popularizing Zen in the West, I will here discuss one of his earliest works,Outlines of Mahâyâna Buddhism (1908). This book is explicitly intended for a Westernaudience of varied intellectual background: “It is popular in the sense that it tries to exposethe fallacy of the general attitude assumed by other religionists towards Mahâyânism. Itaims to be scholarly, on the other hand, when it endeavours to expound some of the mostsalient features of the doctrine, historically and systematically” (Suzuki 1908, v). It thus isalso both advertisement and apology: Mahayana Buddhism has been widely misunderstoodin the West, in part because there have been so few translations of its major texts, and so“it is a great pity that so few of the precious stones contained in the religion of Buddha areobtainable by Western people” (ibid., vii).This apologetic angle frames Suzuki’s subsequent discussion of the RSR. Like Tolstoy, Suzuki7This sentence actually continues with, “... we cannot define it because we have no instruments withwhich to make the definition” (Tolstoy [1893] 1987, 140). He goes on, of course, to then define “religion”quite explicitly. The key thing to note is that the “definitions” Tolstoy speaks of are ones made within anintellectual pursuit, in particular an analytic pursuit which requires categories, or concepts (instruments),for breaking down terms. But religion is pre-intellectual: all intellectual endeavours are only possible withinthe framework of religion qua the understanding of the relationship between man and the universe. Thus itis that the nature of religion can only be known through revelation—as opposed to science or philosophy.In my terminology, this characterization of ‘religion’ still counts as an act of ‘defining,’ as laid out in mydefinition of ‘conceptual analysis’ in §1.67thinks that religion operates where “the intellect” fails (ibid., 25–26). But unlike Tolstoy,Suzuki’s religion does not undergird intellectual endeavours; instead “it must work in perfectaccord with the intellect... religion must guard herself against the unrestrained flight ofimagination” (ibid., 26). And in fact, science itself, as a form of intellectual activity (thoughSuzuki sometimes uses it as synonymous with the “intellect”), must also work with religion:“Religion and science, when they do not work with mutual understanding, are sure to beone-sided,” leading to an unhealthy “imbalance” (ibid., 26). Thus Suzuki denounces “thosepious religious enthusiasts who see a natural enemy in science and denounce it with all theirenergy” as well as “those men of science who think that science alone must claim the wholefield of soul-activities as well as those of nature” (ibid., 26).Further, Suzuki emphasizes that neither is religion entirely divorced from rationality norscience from imagination—though they are still different. What differentiates them is “theirrespective fields of activity” (ibid., 27)—the well-known doctrine of Separate Spheres, orBarbourian Independence. It is not just a difference in subject, however; Suzuki conflatesexplanatory form with subject matter: “Science is solely concerned with things conditional,relative, and finite. When it explains a given phenomenon by some fixed laws which are inturn nothing but a generalisation of particular facts, the task of science is done...” (ibid.,27). According to Suzuki, religion picks up where science leaves off because the soul is notsatisfied: it yearns for teleological explanations, final causes which science cannot—or doesnot allow itself to—provide. So we have here something of a mixture of Frazer and Tolstoy;both the territory and the method used to investigate it are brought in to characterize‘religion’ and ‘science,’ and ultimately derive their relation. The conclusion drawn, though,is different from both: Suzuki does not see inevitable conflict as a result of differing methods,perhaps because religion and science operate in different domains. But Suzuki also does not,like Tolstoy, think that one domain is the foundation for the other; Suzuki’s religion iscomplementary to his science; they are co-equal partners.68What is important for us to note here is not the particular conclusion Suzuki reaches, ofcourse, but the method by which he arrives there. Religion and science are defined, and theirrelationship falls out from comparing these definitions—conceptual analysis. But how doesSuzuki construct his definitions? There is no evidence that he surveyed either the sciences orscientists—or religions and the religious. Instead, it seems that the definitions were arrivedat through personal introspection: “the human heart never gets tired of its yearning anddemands satisfaction” beyond what the intellect (qua science) can provide (ibid., 25). Sohere we have a case of purely a priori conceptual analysis.2.1.2 Some Exemplars from the PresentI now want to turn to more modern applications of conceptual analysis to the RSR. Themethod itself has not changed since the early twentieth century. Nevertheless, it will beinstructive to see how twenty-first-century authors have conceptually analyzed the RSR sothat I can offer a critique of the method as well as recommendations for how it ought to bealtered, or refocused, in order to make it more relevant to modern discourses surroundingreligion and science.I’ll focus on four authors, most of whom have published public-facing work on the RSR: AlvinPlantinga, Michael Ruse, Rodney Stark, and Gregory Dawes (the only one whose work isnot explicitly intended as public-facing). As in the previous century, so in this one theform taken by particular instances of conceptual analysis varies: some are empirical, somea priori. The authors examined here were chosen because of their popularity and clarityof expression, though I recognize that others could have served as well.8 Finally, I shouldnote that although these authors have written extensively on the RSR across many works,I will focus my attention on select book-length works which I take to be representative of8See §2 of the Introduction for a discussion of the criteria used in my selection of the public-facingliterature examined in this and subsequent chapters.69their author’s view; in most cases, the instantiation of conceptual analysis found in one ofa scholar’s works is essentially the same as that found in another of their works (thoughexceptions will be noted).So, the authors.I’ll start with Alvin Plantinga’s widely read Where the Conflict Really Lies (2011), basedon his 2005 Gifford Lectures. As an Evangelical Christian, Plantinga seeks to demonstratethe compatibility of Christian faith with science, and further advances the controversialclaim that science is in fact incompatible with philosophical naturalism. The overarchingslogan of the book is “there is superficial conflict but deep concord between science andtheistic religion, but superficial concord and deep conflict between science and naturalism”(Plantinga 2011, e.g. 265)Plantinga’s thesis is at once both local and global. Although he talks at times of (theistic)religion as a whole, he is clear that he means Christianity in particular, and a very particularform of Christianity at that. On the other hand, when he speaks of science, he seems tospeak of science writ-large—the total institution of modern science—although he focuses onparticular cases from the special sciences (especially quantum mechanics and evolutionarybiology). Regardless, the argument is straightforwardly conceptual-analytic: he defines histerms and derives their relationship. Plantinga’s Christianity is “defined or circumscribed bythe rough intersection of the great Christian creeds: the Apostle’s Creed, the Nicene Creed,and the Athanasian Creed, but also more particular creeds such as the Catholic BaltimoreCatechism, the Reformed Heidelberg Catechism, the Belgic Confession, and the AnglicanThirty-Nine Articles” (ibid., 8). His science, on the other hand, is a bit more nebulously de-fined, but is related to the method it employs; it is that enterprise which takes as its startingplace 1) that the world be regular, predictable, and constant (in its operations) and 2) thatwe as humans/scientists believe in that regularity (ibid., 282–3). Once these definitions areon the table, the argument for Plantinga’s positive thesis is relatively straightforward: The70prerequisites of science are eminently compatible with the beliefs of Christianity—in fact,those religious beliefs offer justification for the preconditions of science since “theistic reli-gion” gives reason to expect 1)—given God’s character—and 2)—since humans are createdin God’s image. Thus, there is “deep concord between science and theistic religion.” Theconceptual analytic form of the argument is clear.Likewise, Rodney Stark provides a similarly clear example of conceptual analytic argumen-tation to reach a different—though possibly compatible—conclusion in his earlier For theGlory of God (2003).9 The definition of ‘science’ is quite explicit: “Science is a method uti-lized in organized efforts to formulate explanations of nature, always subject to modificationsand corrections through systematic observations” (Stark 2003, 124; emphasis original). Inso defining ‘science,’ Stark limits its scope: “there are entire realms of discourse that scienceis unable to address, including such matters as the existence of God” (ibid., 125). And since“religion consists of explanations of existence based on supernatural assumptions and includ-ing statements about the nature of the supernatural and about ultimate meaning” (ibid.,4; emphasis original), science and religion occupy different spheres, and so do not conflict.Thus we have a kind of separate spheres argument via conceptual analysis.10That said, it’s important to note that Stark defines ‘science’ as a certain kind of methodused to generate explanations, while ‘religion’ is defined as some collection of explanations.These definitions allow for some kind of interaction between religion and science, even if theygenerally speak of different phenomena (the supernatural or the natural). This is importantfor Stark as he ultimately argues that religion, and Christianity in particular, actually ledto the rise of science. Thus, even if religion and science are separate endeavours, “Christiantheology was essential for the rise of science” (ibid., 123; emphasis original). To get there,however, Stark also appeals to a mix of historical case studies—to be discussed in future9I should note that Stark provides case study-based arguments as well, as will be discussed in Chapter 3.10In fact, the classic example of the separate spheres view—Stephen J. Gould’s Non-Overlapping Mages-teria, or NOMA—is also the result of conceptual analysis (Gould 1998).71chapters. But what enables Stark to come to this conclusion at all is his conceptual analysis:religion and science are such that, even if they occupy different realms of discourse, theformer can impact the latter in important ways.Stark’s conceptions of religion and science appear to stem from different roots. His definitionof science appears to be a priori ; we are given no justification of why we should conceiveof science as a particular method used to formulate explanations of nature. On the otherhand, the conception of religion as a set of explanations based on supernatural assumptionsis supposed to be generated empirically: after surveying a wide variety of religions/religiouspractices, this emerges as a unifying trait.The philosopher of biology Michael Ruse has also written extensively on the RSR, sometimesin general terms, more often focusing on evolutionary biology (“Darwinism”) and Christian-ity (see e.g. Ruse 2001), and, like Stark, arguing for a separate spheres characterization.Here, I will focus on the picture Ruse presents in his contribution to Zondervan Publishing’sCounterpoints series entry Three Views on Christianity and Science (2021). The series isexplicitly public-facing, with the aim to “[provide] a forum for comparison and critique ofdifferent views on issues important to Christians.” In this particular volume, the editorsasked contributors to respond to the questions, “How do you view the relationship betweenScripture and science?” and “In what ways does God act in the world?” (Reese 2021, 18).Ruse seems to have generalized this question (before coming back to these more particularones) and begins his entry by phrasing it, “What is the relationship between Christianityand science?” (Ruse 2021, 19 ) The method he employs in addressing that question is, ashe points out in a footnote, the same (at least in broad strokes) as in his previous work(ibid., fn. 1), and so I take it to be a fine representation of Ruse’s methods (especially in hispublic-facing work).The overarching message throughout Ruse’s rather meandering—and often tongue-in-cheek—contribution is that religion is about faith, which is about God—and science is not. So, in72talking of natural theology as a possible convergence of religion and science, he concludesthat “What it does not do is lead us to God, and most certainly not through science. Thatis the exclusive role of revealed religion. Faith” (ibid., 34). Science, on the other hand, isnot God-oriented; it does not involve faith. Instead, it seems to concern regular naturalphenomena—though Ruse notably does not lay down an explicit definition. Thus, scienceand religion11 are entirely separate: as defined, they just cannot interact and either be inconflict (as Dawkins, his common target, would like) or converge (as a natural theologianmight desire). They may complement each other, but neither religion qua religion or sciencequa science can aid the other in its unique endeavour.How Ruse arrives at these characterizations of religion and science, he does not state. Hemost certainly does not derive it by surveying the views of those classed as religious andthose as scientists—for he is comfortable saying that Young Earth Creationists and scientistslike Richard Dawkins overstep their categorical boundaries: Creationists improperly usereligion to try shaping science and Dawkins draws conclusions beyond the ken of science. Hisdefinitions come from elsewhere. And Ruse’s argument does not proceed by first consideringhistorical interactions between religion and science or reviewing what others have to sayabout the RSR, and then concluding something about the nature of the RSR. He insteadbegins with nascent definitions of religion and science and then proceeds to discuss particularpossible encounters on the basis of his definitions—classic conceptual analysis.The final author I’ll discuss is the philosopher Gregory Dawes. Although Dawes’ workisn’t public-facing itself, it serves as an excellent and clear example of conceptual analysis.In his recent Cambridge Element (2021), Dawes argues that we cannot provide a generalcharacterization of the RSR,12 but only particular, “conditional” characterizations of theform “if the religion [in] question is of kind x, and the [science] in question is of kind y, then11Although Ruse at times seems to speak just of Christianity, I think Ruse, in focusing so much on faith,takes himself to talk of all religions.12Elsewhere Dawes does argue for a general incompatibility between religion and science; see Dawes 2016.73they will be related in manner z” (Dawes 2021, 12). This conditional approach is in starkcontrast to the other authors discussed above, and Dawes’ analysis is in many ways a modelfor how conceptual analysis may be fruitfully done. Indeed, Dawes’ analysis is much morecomplex than the previous authors’, and his definitions seem to be crafted with several ofthe critiques we’ll discuss below in mind.Despite the conditional approach, however, Dawes still postulates overarching definitions ofwhat he characterizes as two ways of thinking about the natural world (elsewhere he callsthem “forms of understanding,” e.g. ibid., 2). He glosses the distinction on the first page asfollows:A first way of thinking about the natural world explains its functioning by ref-erence to a set of principles, which are derived from observations of the way theworld regularly operates. (“Why did the stone fall when released from my hand?”“Because all objects fall toward the center of the earth when not otherwise sup-ported.”) The other interprets and explains the natural world by reference towhat we may call “metapersons”—gods, spirits, and ancestors—who inhabit arealm inaccessible to ordinary perception and who have qualities and powers hu-man beings lack. (“Why was the city destroyed by an earthquake?” “BecauseGod was punishing its inhabitants.”) (Dawes 2021, 1)This first gloss of the distinction is only the beginning, and the definitions of ‘religion’ and‘science’, the latter of which he re-terms “scientia” in the hopes of casting off some of ourmodern preconceptions, are refined later on. Thus, he defines ‘scientia’ as “a communaltradition of inquiry whose aim is to create a systematic account of the principles governinga set of regularly observable phenomena within the natural or human world” (ibid., 6).‘Religion’ is likewise defined in terms of its aims as a community endeavour: “a communaltradition of ritual action that seeks to make contact with a hidden realm of metapersons74and powers and whose goal is to bring this-worldly and/or other-worldly benefits to theindividuals or community in question” (ibid., 8).Rather than discussing religion and scientia all at once as monolithic entities, however,Dawes makes a point to localize his discussion to three different periods and locations inwhich religion and scientia are manifested in different ways. Thus, on the scientia side,he focuses on “integral cosmology” in ancient China (roughly 400BCE–the first centuryCE), “natural philosophy” in early modern Europe and the medieval Muslim world, and“modern science” from the nineteenth century onward (ibid., 6-7). On the religion side,he considers “diffused,” “institutionalized,” and “privatized” forms of religion (ibid., 10),which typically align respectively with the time periods of the different forms of scientia,though this alignment does not always hold. Further, Dawes focuses his attention on fourdifferent “dimensions” of religion and scientia: the cognitive, teleological, organizational,and epistemic.13Once he has relativized to a particular kind of religion, x, a particular form of scientia,y, and—to add on a nuance he discusses but does not include in his general formula—a particular dimension, d, Dawes then derives possible ways in which the RSR could becharacterized, z. Importantly, however, Dawes sees the definitions, and their particularmanifestations, as what enable one to draw tentative conclusions about the RSR: because‘integral cosmology’ is defined in such a way with particular aims, and because ‘religion’in ancient China is defined as diffused in some particular sense, they therefore were not inconflict.Dawes’ argument is an exemplary application of conceptual analysis which avoids many ofthe issues I discuss in the following section. It can thus serve as a kind of aspirational modeltowards which employers of conceptual analysis should aim, although as we shall see it can13This “multifaceted” approach is inspired by Mikael Stenmark’s “multi-dimensional” approach (as Daweshimself notes; Dawes 2021, 4), which will be discussed in §2.1.75still be improved in an important respect if scholars would like to use conceptual analysis inpublic-facing work.Now that we have laid out several exemplars of the method of conceptual analysis in thereligion-and-science literature, we are in a position to consider some critiques of that method.In doing so, I aim to provide concrete recommendations for how to improve applications ofconceptual analysis. So, while I will discuss shortcomings of the method of conceptualanalysis—both those pointed out by others as well as novel issues of my own—my aim is ul-timately constructive: by outlining the shortcomings, we can see how the conceptual analyticapproach may be strengthened. Though it faces significant problems as currently practiced—especially in public-facing contexts—conceptual analysis should not be abandoned; whenappropriately improved, it can still be useful to several publics concerned about the RSR.2.2 Some Problems with Conceptual Analysis and itsUseThe method of conceptual analysis has been widely critiqued in the religion-and-scienceliterature. In this section, I want to bring together the various heads of the critical hydraand discuss their merits and drawbacks. Some critics of conceptual analysis claim that themethod is hopelessly mired with difficulties and so ought to be abandoned. I think thatthis is overstating the situation. While I do agree that conceptual analysis in the style ofmost extant scholarship is in need of improvement, I do think that the method has its place;conceptual analysis really is relevant in some situations where the RSR is of real publicconcern (see §3 of this chapter). That said, if public-facing scholars wish their conceptualanalyses to be of more utility, that is, if they wish to reach a wider general audience, or at76least reach particular public audiences more meaningfully, then I believe greater attentionneeds to be paid to the particular conception(s) of religion and science being analyzed.In particular, I think scholars have (in some cases knowingly) ignored the industrial, non-academic sciences which, I will argue below, form a large part of many publics’ contact withscience as a social institution. Thus, in order to make their analyses more proportionate tomany publics’ understanding(s) of science, scholars ought to focus on these other (from mostscholars’ standpoint) less familiar sciences.This critique builds on the general observation, made often in the literature, that greaterattention needs to be paid to the questions, “Whose science? Whose religion?” While manyscholars have indeed begun to pay more homage to the variety of religions and the distinc-tion between lay and “academic” religion (i.e. theology), or between religious practice andreligious belief, insufficient work has been done exploring the other, scientific side, of theRSR.The general worry around current implementations of conceptual analysis is that they fea-ture problematic cases of synecdoche: they illicitly take the part for the whole. This canplay out by taking a singular aspect of religion/science as representative of the whole (mono-lithism), supposing that there is a singular stable feature defining ‘religion’/‘science’ (over-essentialism), or taking particular religions or sciences as representative of the entire family ofpractices captured under the heading of “religion” or “science.” In the following subsections,I’ll address each of these three forms of synecdoche in turn.2.2.1 MonolithismOne issue facing many conceptual analytic accounts is their focus on only a single aspect ofreligion and/or science (often both). That is, many employers of conceptual analysis treatreligion and science as monolithic entities rather than as complex social phenomena. Paul77Tyson puts it this way:It is typically assumed that this mode of philosophising can bring clarity andprecision to the discussion and provide a neutral bridging language that fa-cilitates conversation between [religion and science]. But for this very reason,the approach of some analytic philosophers has the potential to exacerbate thedistortions inherent in the categories themselves, often reducing “religion’ and“science” to their propositional contents or their approaches to knowledge, andthereby disembedding them from their real-life contexts. (Tyson 2022, 4)Given that religion and science are both dynamic, multifaceted institutions, monolithic treat-ments may simply fail to engage with reality—the conclusions reached are conclusions aboutscholarly constructs rather than real-world entities. Even when the aspects discussed arereal features of religion and science, however, it is problematic when scholars want to claimthey have reached general conclusions about the RSR full-stop.Aside from Dawes, each exemplar discussed in §1.2 of this chapter is open to this kind ofcriticism. Each of them reduces religion (or Christianity) and science to some particularaspect: realms of discourse for Stark, methods for Ruse, and some combination of both forPlantinga. Conceptual analysis, however, need not focus on just one element of religionand/or science, let alone an epistemic one. Mikael Stenmark has proposed several ways inwhich analyses of the RSR can be broadened so that the constituents—and their relation—are understood in a dynamic way representative of their actual complexities. Stenmark’saim is actually much broader than sharpening up conceptual analysis; he argues for a moregeneral methodological change across the discipline: scholars (and non-scholars) should tryto relate religion and science along particular dimensions rather than wholesale as monolithicentities. This recommendation, however, is especially relevant to employers of conceptualanalysis, and his system can be used as a template for doing conceptual analyses well,78providing guidelines for the kinds of things to which scholars should be more attentive.In his A Multi-Dimensional Approach (2004), Stenmark outlines four main aspects, or di-mensions (or “levels”), of religion/science which might be relevant to their analysis: social,epistemological, teleological, and theoretical. This list is not meant to be exhaustive, but itis intended to represent elements of religion/science that are important to their existence ascomplex social institutions. As such, it is worthwhile exploring these dimensions in a bit ofdetail—and considering what further dimensions might be added—with an eye towards howthe method of conceptual analysis could be better executed.The label “dimensions” actually belies the fact that wrapped up in each of Stenmark’s fourare a number of what we might call “sub-dimensions” (though he does not call them such).In the case of the social dimension, Stenmark has in mind those features of religion/sciencewhich concern the process by which new members are enculturated. The particular socialaspects he focuses on are trust in authorities and diversity of practice. Trust in authority isa central feature of both religion and science. It’s required in order for the institutions tooperate; if there were no trusted authorities in science, for instance, very little progress couldbe made in any research area: current work must build upon the mountains generated bypredecessors, and there are too many previous results for each scholar to independently eval-uate. As such, scientific initiates undergo extensive education in fundamental methodologicaland theoretical principles, many of which they are to accept on the basis of authority alone;likewise in religion. Of course, the role that authority plays in either institution may not beidentical, but identifying and exploring those differences along this particular dimension islikely to be more fruitful than approaching religion and science in toto.The other social sub-dimension Stenmark explores concerns what he terms “the diversityof practice” among religious folk and scientists. By this he means the fact religion andscience are practiced 1) on an individual and a collective level and 2) by diverse populations.Thus, discussions of the RSR sometimes concern the practice of individuals—why certain79scientists accepted certain theories, or why certain religious folk rejected others. On theother hand, religion and science are often talked about as coherent group practices, unitedby common methods (which are perhaps ideals striven toward by individuals).14 Whilecollective practices might very well differ from particular individual practices, Stenmarkpoints out that collective practices sometimes change in response to particular individuals—and this may occur in both religion and the sciences. Thus, understanding the ways in whichindividual practices can impact broader collective activity in both religion and science mightbe worth examining/paying attention to.Beyond this, it is also important to note that religion and science contain a diversity ofpractices in the sense that each captures many particulars: religion encompasses Christianity,Buddhism, Hinduism; science physics, biology, (possibly) sociology. Each of these particularsmay differ from their co-categoricals in any number of ways, and so, “it is therefore sometimesbetter to focus on how to relate a particular religion, like Christianity, to a particular science,like biology” (Stenmark 2004, 24). More importantly Stenmark points to the fact that thereis an asymmetry between religion and science in that scientific practitioners are practitionersof a “discipline.” Among the religions, we might have a correlate of this in theologians,15but there are many lay religious folk who do not undergo anything like the kind of extensiveprofessionalization/training needed to become the religious correlate of a “scientist.” On theflip side, “in science... we have nothing similar to ordinary believers” (ibid., 25).16 Scholarsmust, therefore be careful to specify whether they are relating religion and science or theology14It’s interesting to note that whether a scholar focuses on individual or collective activity might berhetorical: individuals seem to feature much more prominently in critical remarks—for instance, pointing outthat Newton or Darwin or Einstein (supposedly) believed in God, or that Augustine or the Pope (supposedly)opposed heliocentrism. The activity of groups, however, tends to underlie more constructive arguments: ingeneral, scientists use these methods, religious folk these methods, and so... insert conclusion. Payingattention to the level of activity discussed might thus be especially illuminating when we try to understandthe social-rhetorical role of work in religion-and-science.15Though Stenmark points out another disanalogy: “The task of the scientists is normally not to reflecton the life and commitments of the scientific community; it is rather to reflect on the natural world. ...Many theologians, on the other hand, take this to be their key occupation” (Stenmark 2004, 25).16I’ll return to this asymmetry below in §2.3.2 and discuss what it might look like to discuss the scientificcorrelate of ordinary religious believers.80and science—something our exemplars above are often lax in doing. I will return to theseforms of “diversity of practice” in §2.3.We should note that Stenmark’s social dimension is an internal dimension. That is, it focuseson social aspects within religion and within science; it does not consider religion and sciencein their wider social context. But the external social dimensions of religion and sciencealso seem like relevant points to consider. Different social forces operate to push potentialinitiates into religious circles than they do into scientific ones, forces which may operatenot just based on the internal form of religion and science themselves, but on their publicperception. Understanding how general conceptions of religion and science lead individualsinto them might be relevant to understanding how the two are related, just as understandingthe ways in which popular racial conceptions lead to class differentiation can help us betterunderstand racial relations.17The focus on the individual–collective distinction appears again in Stenmark’s discussion ofthe goals of religious and scientific activities—his “teleological” dimension. Scholars’ atten-tion tends to center on the collective goals the idea being that religious folk and scientistsas communities aim at some particular goal(s). Indeed, Dawes explicitly defines his concep-tions of science and religion around community-level goals: they collectively aim at the sametype of thing, explaining natural phenomena. Other writers are less explicit about it. Forinstance, although he doesn’t outright say so, it becomes apparent that for Ruse, scienceas a whole aims at explanations of natural phenomena, religion as a whole at expressingfeelings and understanding God, and so they are separate. And when scholars outside thereligion–science literature discuss the “goals” of science, they also typically talk about com-munal goals: Merton’s famous four norms, for instance, are supposed to be ideals held by17As an example, because Blacks are popularly understood to be, say, less educated, they are less likelyto obtain white-collar jobs. This then results in disproportionate representation of Blacks in lower socio-economic brackets compared to their White peers. This economic divide then drives further tensions betweenBlack and White communities. Again, the point here is that these tensions are much better understood ina larger social context by taking into account more general racial perceptions.81the scientific community (Merton 1938).Of course, individual goals might be radically different from the group’s goals. A particularscientist might simply aim to make money rather than to share knowledge; another mightbe invested in saving a particular species of endangered goat rather than in the objectiveproduction of knowledge. Likewise, a convert to Christianity might do so to save theirown soul while their community may instead aim to bring God’s kingdom to Earth. Forthe most part, these individual-level goals can coexist with community-level goals, though,as Stenmark points out, investigating the ways in which individual- and community-levelgoals may be brought into tension—either within religion/science or between religion andscience—might shed interesting perspectives on the RSR (Stenmark 2004, 29).In addition to the individual-collective sub-dimension, Stenmark discusses two others: theepistemic-practical and the latent-manifest. As canvased above, the recognized goals of reli-gion/science can exist on a spectrum from purely epistemic (generation of objective knowl-edge) to purely practical (making money). Likewise, those goals might be held explicitly,expressed on websites, in grant statements, or in conversations; or they could be “latent,”revealed perhaps in actions but not in words—Stenmark’s example is patriarchalism in Chris-tianity: “after empirical studies we may come to understand that Christianity also has theimplicit goal of maintaining a patriarchal relationship between men and women in religionand society” (ibid., 49).18 This last example points to the fact that manifest and latent goalsmay be in tension: Christians purportedly hold to the collective manifest practical goal ofaiming “for the mutual respect and love of all human beings,” which might be in conflict withthe collective latent practical goal of maintaining patriarchal relations in society. We can alsosee this rather clearly in the history of science: presumably, medical researchers employed byBig Tobacco embraced the collective manifest epistemic goal of producing intersubjective,uninterested knowledge—while they in fact also had the collective latent practical goal of18Surely we should limit this from “Christianity” to “certain Christian communities”!82producing results which demonstrated the safety of tobacco consumption (see e.g. Conwayand Oreskes 2010).Stenmark brings up the teleological dimension of the RSR to argue that much scholarlydisagreement about the RSR is a result of disagreement over the aims of religion and science:“I have suggested that scholars who write about the relationship between religion and scienceshould address certain teleological questions. ... The reason why they sometimes come todifferent conclusions and seem to be talking past each other is often that they are, in fact,committed to different accounts of the goals of religion and science, which are not clearlystated” (Stenmark 2004, 50). Stenmark further faults scholars not only for failing to beexplicit about their own conceptions of the aims of religion/science, but also for failing tobe explicit whether they believe those aims are static (ibid., 47).Our exemplars above, however, seem rather committed to the stability of the aims ofscience—at least when they mention those aims. Again, Ruse and Stark, seem to thinkthat there is a unique thing at which religion and science aim, and none of them providetemporal (or, for that matter, cultural) indices. Even Dawes, although he does speak ofparticular times and cultures, still thinks that scientia and religio as manifested in thoselocales, aim at “creat[ing] a systematic account of the principles governing a set of regularlyobservable phenomena within the natural or human world” (Dawes 2021, 6) and “mak[ing]contact with a hidden realm of metapersons and powers and whose goal is to bring this-worldly and/or other-worldly benefits to the individuals or community in question” (ibid.,8), respectively. We’ll come to this issue in the next subsection.To return to the larger picture, Stenmark finds it important to pay attention to the teleo-logical dimension because the goals scholars acknowledge for religion and science shape theway they define religion and science—and thus at least partly shape the characterization ofthe RSR at which they arrive. By being clear about what goals they focus on, scholars cannot only sharpen their definitions, but by taking seriously the actual goals of their intended83audience, they can make their work more relevant.I come now to Stenmark’s last two dimensions—the theoretical and epistemic. These are, ina sense, less interesting than the social and teleological dimensions, since extant scholarshipis often more attentive to these more cognitive dimensions. The theoretical dimension isperhaps the most discussed in public-facing literature; it centers on the propositional contentpromulgated by religion/science. Interestingly, Stenmark does not offer a decomposition ofthis dimension—it appears to be flat; science might make certain claims about, say, theorigins of life, and religion might make claims which differ from or are compatible with thoseclaims. But Stenmark seems to miss that not all propositions are the same. For instance,religion and science (or specific religions/sciences) make both general and particular claims.A biologist might claim that speciation occurs by a process of random genetic mutation pairedwith natural selection (a general claim) and that the seahorse and pipefish diverged becauseof differential foraging behaviours (a specific claim19).20 Likewise, a religious individual mightclaim that all aspects of one’s life can be explained via karmic law (a general claim) and thatmy own current existence as a human being is the result of my good works in my immediatelyprior life (a particular claim). Often, particular claims are derived from, or backed up by,general claims—and often particular claims can be a motivation for discovering some generalclaim which unifies them (or the existence of a general claim can motivate the discovery ofparticular claims via application of the former to particular bounded conditions). Beingmindful of this distinction could be useful in discussing the RSR, for it might be the casethat analyses along the theoretical dimension could differ based on the kinds of propositionsconsidered. For example, perhaps scientific particular claims are more often compatible withreligious claims—be they general or particular. This kind of nuanced analysis, however,is not often found in the literature; our exemplars above think of religious and scientific19See e.g. Van Wassenbergh, Roos, and Ferry 2011. Thanks to Jaehyun Lee for this example.20These examples should make clear how the general–particular distinction is not the same as the universal–existential distinction: even if the general character of evolutionary explanations can be expressed as auniversal, the particular evolutionary story of the seahorse cannot be cashed out as an existential claim.84claims as homogeneous collections—for Ruse and Stark they concern different phenomena,for Dawes they try to explain the same types of things, but they make no distinction betweengeneral and particular claims.In contrast with the theoretical dimension, Stenmark identifies several sub-dimensions be-neath the label “epistemic.” For example, Stenmark defines the “epistemology of religion/science”as “the attempts to understand and explain how belief (in science, typically, theory) forma-tion and regulation is conducted within religion or science and to assess whether these beliefformations and regulations are acceptable and successful ways of carrying out one’s cognitiveaffairs in these realms of human life, and, if they are not acceptable, to propose alternativeways for conducting religious or scientific belief formation and regulation” (Stark 2003, 52).So, when considering the epistemic aspects of religion/science, a scholar might focus on beliefformation, belief regulation, and/or belief reformation.21 Stark’s conception of science, forexample, gets at both belief formation and reformation: we generate scientific beliefs and“subject [them] to modifications and corrections through systematic observations” (ibid.,124; emphasis original).Stenmark’s overarching goal in How to Relate Religion and Science is to explain how weshould relate religion and science. Of course, “how we should relate religion and science” isambiguous. On the one hand, it could be a first-order claim about the proper characterizationof the RSR. One the other hand, it might be a second-order claim about how we should goabout determining that characterization. And both hands have two possible sides: normativeand descriptive. In fact, Stenmark embraces the normative side of both hands: he walksthrough how we ought to proceed and then provides his own first-order characterization ofthe RSR (they ought to be seen as, on the whole, compatible along all dimensions). Above,we’ve focused on this first step and tried to extract lessons which can be used to bolster the21In Stenmark 2010, Stenmark expands upon this reforming dimension.85method of conceptual analysis. The way to proceed is to think multidimensionally, ratherthan monolithically, to think of religion and science as multifaceted, complex phenomena.By nuancing our conceptions of religion and science in this way, not only will we be able toderive more accurate characterizations of the RSR—because we pay attention to the actualnature of religion and science—but we will be able to do so in a way which is adaptablefor different audiences—and so more applicable to the groups we public-facing scholars wishto reach. Recognizing that religion and science are multidimensional and that they areunderstood differently in different contexts can better help us understand what is reallyat stake in public discussions of religion-and-science—and thus point towards how to mostfruitfully engage with that discussion.2.2.2 On EssentializingOne of the most frequently encountered critiques of conceptual analysis in the religion-and-science literature is that it relies fundamentally on overly essentialized notions of religionand of science. There are stronger and weaker versions of this critique. The weaker versionsimply points up the difficulty of finding satisfactory definitions of ‘religion’ and ‘science’that will unify our intuitions about the various cases they’re supposed to cover. Perhaps onecould generate relevant and useful definitions of the terms of the RSR. But, these authorsmaintain, such would be very difficult (requiring more effort than, presumably, past andpresent scholars have employed), and so our time might be better spent using other methodsto investigate the RSR.It is true, of course, that the conceptual analytic route may be difficult. But the difficultyof a task is not a sign that it should not be undertaken, nor an indictment of the productproduced. So this weaker critique has no real bite against conceptual analysis.On the other hand, the stronger version of the anti-essentializing critique would do just that,86challenging conceptual analysis before it even begins. This stronger form is also present inthe literature. Here, for instance, is one part of Geoffrey Cantor and Chris Kenny’s famousattack on Barbour’s fourfold typology and the use of the “copula” “religion and science”:[N]either science nor religion (nor the conjunction “science and religion”) pos-sesses clear historical continuity... in spite of the unbounded and fluid extensionsof the categories, science and religion, many writers treat them as distinct classeswith fixed, temporally independent, and self-evident meanings. ... We suggestthat [historical episodes] cannot be analyzed in terms of the interactions be-tween broad categories—for example, between science and religion—no matterhow subtly we redefine the boundaries between them.” (G. Cantor and Kenny2001, 771–773)The problem is stated even more explicitly by Stephen P. Weldon:The greatest problem is that the very terms ‘science’ and ‘religion’ encouragean essentialist approach to history, an approach that tries to describe all eventsin the past in terms of the two modern categories of science and religion. Yetthese terms are inadequate to describe the nature of the historical topics that arecovered under that rubric because both terms refer to Western institutions andideas that assumed their current form after 1800. (Weldon 2017, 3)Weldon’s characterization of the issue indicates two separate strands of the essentialist cri-tique: historicism and cultural relativism. The idea seems to be this: ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩are neither diachronically nor cross-culturally stable concepts. But these kinds of stabilityare necessary for a concept to be usefully analyzed in a way allowing broad and repre-sentative claims to be made about the RSR. Thus, conceptual analysis cannot contributeusefully to an understanding of the RSR because we cannot—and could not—successfully87generate definitions of ‘religion’ and ‘science’ which are representative across time periodsand cultures.22The historicizing critique is, I think, best exemplified in the “After Science and Religion”project spearheaded by Peter Harrison and John Milbank. As Paul Tyson states in theintroduction to the inaugurating collection After Science and Religion, current “genres” ofreligion-and-science literature“share a common commitment to the idea that ‘science’ and ‘religion’ are valid,trans-historical categories that capture more or less perennial features of humanculture. If it is true that science and religion, albeit in various guises, havebeen the chief lenses through which the world has been interpreted, then posingthe question of how they relate to each other makes good sense. But what ifit is not true? The guiding principle of the present collection is that we caninitiate a much more fruitful discussion if we begin by questioning these twobasic categories that frame and delimit the current conversation about how tointerpret the world. After Science and Religion is thus an exploration of howthe discussion might be changed if we were to relinquish, or at least criticallyexamine, these two categories ‘science’ and ‘religion.’” (Tyson 2022, 1)23Harrison has argued for this view for across numerous works especially in the last two decades.In his The Territories of Science and Religion (2015), for example, Harrison claims that“science and religion are not natural kinds; they are neither universal propensities of humanbeings nor necessary features of human societies... the fact that science and religion are notnatural kinds means that there are no firm criteria for adjudicating what should or should22The way I have presented these two relativizing critiques is adapted from Josephson Storm 2021. Thesecritiques also form the basis of a different methodological approach to characterizing the RSR, which I call“Deconstruction.” I consider this method in more detail in Ch. 4.23To be clear, Tyson and Harrison’s critique is not limited to conceptual analysis; they are pointing toan issue they take to be pervasive throughout the religion-and-science literature, regardless of the methodsused.88not be included in the concepts” (Harrison 2015, 194–95)—the application of conceptualanalysis to the RSR is thus misguided. He arrives at this conclusion by considering the waysin which the notions of religion and science have changed over the past 1500 years in theEuropean West. In particular, he focuses on the fact that both religion and science usedto be understood as virtues, whereas now they are seen as bodies of knowledge.24 When‘religion’ was ‘religio’ and ‘science’ was ‘scientia,’ they could not possibly have been inconflict—in fact, the question of their relationship would never have arisen at all.25 It isonly because they have slowly morphed into radically different things, through a long and—quite importantly—contingent process, that we now speak of their relationship. But if ourcapacity to think of the RSR is so dependent on historical accident, the argument goes, howcan we think that there is such a thing in the world such as the RSR that can be deducedfrom definitions of the constituent terms? Not only are those terms themselves Protean, butthe relating act itself is suspect.If taken seriously, this strong form of anti-essentializing does pose a problem for conceptualanalysis—not just within religion-and-science, but more generally. For ‘religion’ and ‘science’are not unique in having varied ancestries; almost all concepts which we might subject toanalysis have diverse, often tortured histories. But this very universality of the critiqueultimately calls into question its applicability.Consider, for example, the concept ⟨fish⟩.26 Today we understand ‘fish’ to apply to creaturesof the classes Agnatha (the jawless fish), Chondrichthyes (cartilaginous fish like sharks), andthe superclass Osteichthyes (bony fish). But the term has a long history in the Englishlanguage and has been applied to a much wider variety of species. For instance, up untilquite recently the concept included mammals like dolphins and whales (hence the name24Interestingly he doesn’t consider them as social institutions, or even social phenomena in general.25Of course, virtues can be in tension with one another. Honesty and kindness, for instance, may comeinto conflict—perhaps even often. But Harrison does not seem to think that the intellectual virtue of scientiacould ever compete with the moral virtue of religio.26In what follows, I use brackets to denote concepts.89“blackfish” for orcas). Further, ‘fish’ has been used by a wide array of English speakers,from scientists-proper to fishermen to politicians. In these different contexts, ‘fish’ hashad different valences, ranging from “creature in the sea” to “thing with gills and fins”to “member of the classes Agnatha, Chondrichthves, etc.” In a famous California wildlifeconservation case, even insects such as bees were categorized as ‘fish’ (Almond Alliance v.California Fish & Game Commission (2022))—though surely no fisherman worth her netwould call a bee a fish!Given this variety, a historicist might wish to claim that we cannot meaningfully discuss suchtopics as the conservation of the ocean’s fish, for the concept ⟨fish⟩ is simply too slippery:it has no stable form throughout time and place. I take this to clearly go too far; surely wecan meaningfully discuss ⟨fish⟩ despite its rather strange history. What we must do, though,is pay careful attention to the local contexts in which that term gets used.A much more discussed example can be found in race. ‘Race,’ like ‘science’ (and ‘religion’)has been used in a variety of incompatible ways since its origins as a technical “biological”term in the late seventeenth century. Whether there were three, five, seven, or more racesdepended heavily on time and place (Darwin 1871, 226).27 The particular attributes saidto constitute or follow from membership in a specific race also varied significantly: at onetime, Jews’ superior performance in basketball was said to follow from racial traits; now thesame is said of members of the Black race (see, e.g., Sclar 2008, Ch. 4). On this basis, thehard-line historicist would dispute the cogency of discussions of ‘race,’ let alone relationsbetween different “races”—neither, say, ‘White’ nor ‘Black’ refer to diachronically and/ortransculturally stable groups!27The passage from Darwin’s Descent of Man (1871) reads, “Man has been studied more carefully thanany other organic being, and yet there is the greatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether heshould be classed as a single species or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five(Blumenbach), six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent),sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as sixty-three, according to Burke” (Darwin1871, 226).90Clearly, however, this is not a feasible claim! It is true that, for all the reasons listedabove and more, scholars (for the most part) have concluded that ⟨race⟩ has no biologicalbasis; it is instead a social construct. And like all social constructs, ⟨race⟩ can change,often quite significantly, based on the social groups which construct it. But its status assuch does not mean that ⟨race⟩ is, in general, an empty concept. Race still has real-worldeffects. Witness differential health care treatment and policing experience in the US (seee.g. Macias-Konstantopoulos et al. 2023 and Pierson et al. 2020, respectively). Even if raceis not biologically real, it is still socially real (and very much so). And because of this, it isstill quite meaningful to talk of race, and even the relationships between different races.So too with ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩. Even if there are not meaningful diachronic character-izations of the concepts, religion and science still exist as entities in contemporary discoursethat have actual impacts on real-world actors. Medicines get given to patients when theyare backed by the label ‘science;’ institutions receive money for doing, or producing ‘science;’organizations get special tax treatment for being ‘religious’ (at least in certain countries).And if ‘religion’ and ‘science’ can have real influence in these ways, it is not clear how anti-essentialist critiques can do away with analyses of ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩—or subsequentdiscussions of their relationship(s).Some may balk at this kind of deflationary response. If ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are notstable concepts, is there anything at all in the world beyond mere use that their terms pickout? And if there are no referents, then how can we even have definitions, let alone deriverelations on the basis of those definitions? Readers with these worries may be comforted byrecent work in social ontology by Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm. Seeking a kind of middleground between over-blown essentialism and socially irresponsible deconstruction, JosephsonStorm offers a new way of conceiving social kinds like race—and religion (Josephson Storm2021). ‘Race’ and ‘religion,’ it is argued, are best understood as referring to process-power-clusters: they refer to clusters of powers (the ability to impact/change something), but what91particular powers are always subject to change. Those changes are due to dynamic socialforces—“anchoring mechanisms”—which cause groups to settle on/select different powersas relevant at different times (Josephson Storm 2021, 118–26). Understanding ‘race’ and‘religion’ in this way allows us to still speak of the concepts ⟨race⟩ and ⟨religion⟩ as uni-fied, existing concepts, but is responsive to the fact that they are unstable. And we canstill refer to their real relations with other social kinds—and real world-effects—since theyare “anchored” by real social forces. Thus, when we speak of the RSR, we can understandourselves as referring to particular underlying social forces—e.g. the professionalizing ofcertain endeavours—which led contemporary discourse to conceive of ‘religion’/‘science’ asit does, a move which seems quite in line with Harrison 2015. That said, Josephson Storm’s“metamodernist” take on social kinds faces some issues—for instance whether the anchoringmechanisms are themselves best understood as process-power-clusters, and what might an-chor those (personal communication)—but it does provide a reasonable middle ground forproductively thinking with social concepts. Of course, if using this account, we will be forcedto stay away from universal, global characterizations of the RSR—but that does not meanwe cannot use conceptual analysis to arrive at our characterization.This aligns with an issue with the strong version of the anti-essentialist critique which emergesfrom the relevance of ⟨race⟩, ⟨religion⟩, and ⟨science⟩ to ordinary folk today. While it mightbe true that these concepts cannot be analyzed in a way which reduces them to diachronicallystable and still-useful cores, that does not mean we cannot analyze the concepts at all, andin particular that we cannot analyze our concepts now (whether or not we accept JosephsonStorm’s account). In fact, historicists like Peter Harrison (see especially Harrison 2015 andthe “After Science and Religion” project it started (Tyson 2022)) are still committed tothere being concepts-at-a-time which are stable enough to compare diachronically; this morepiecemeal approach still requires distinct pieces to examine! That is, Harrison must becomfortable isolating, say, science1800s and science2000s, for he must be comfortable claimingthat they are not the same; analyzing either term is a precondition for determining their92difference. So why can a conceptual analyzer not simply talk of science2000s and its relationto religion2000s? And similiarly for the cultural-relativizing branch of the critique: why notanalyze religionWestern/scienceWestern? The anti-essentialist critique does not seem to posea problem for this much more local discussion. It does, of course, limit the scope of anyconclusions drawn about the RSR. But local discussions are useful nonetheless. In fact,to a large extent, local discussions are the most useful discussions we could have: insofaras the authors we have been discussing as exemplars of conceptual analytic methods arepublic-facing, their goal is to talk to local audiences, folks who live in a particular time—thenow—and place—for the authors, the Anglophone West. Such authors presumably hopeto influence current opinions concerning the RSR to enact (or resist) real change in theways people interact with religion/religious folk and science/scientists, be it as everydaylay individuals, as members of religions/scientific communities, or as policymakers. To thatextent, limiting discussion to religion2000s, Western and science2000s, Western to make a claimabout the RSR2000s, Western seems eminently reasonable; those are the forms of religion andscience with which people living in the 2000s in the global West are actually engaging.So the strong anti-essentialist critique should not force us to abandon conceptual analysis.Of course, recognizing the historical/cultural contingency of our concepts is important; animportant lesson conceptual analyzers could learn is to explicitly localize the analyses and beclear about having done so, or at least be upfront about the limits of the analysis presented.We should note that this more piecemeal approach to the RSR is not giving up on themethod of conceptual analysis. Limiting oneself to a particular place-time does not meanthat one cannot start with definitions of ‘religion’ and ‘science’ and derive the RSR, logically,from those definitions. It simply means that the concepts examined are more confined, morespecific. So moving from universal, general conclusions about the RSR to more piecemealones is not abandoning the method; it is simply changing the kind of conclusion we make.But even if it were the case that we could make some claim about how religion and sciencehave been related, on average, since the beginning of time throughout the world (which is93doubtful), we would need a further argument that this fact is relevant to the RSR as itis here-now, i.e. that our current concepts are not unique. But as far as I can tell, nosuch further argument has been offered. None of this, again, rules out a discussion of thecontemporary RSR based on our contemporary concepts ‘religion’ and ‘science.’ We oughtnot essentialize overmuch, but we can still talk—and usefully at that—about concepts andtheir relations at a particular place-time.2.2.3 Whose Science, Whose Religion?Above, we’ve considered two general issues with traditional scholarly conceptual analysis:monolithism and essentialism. We saw that monolithism is an inaccurate characterizationof the many dimensions of religion and science; our analyses must pay close attention to thenon-epistemic features of both institutions if they are to more accurately capture them asthey are actually practiced in the world. The lesson from anti-essentialism is that conceptualanalysis would be better served sticking to temporally (and culturally) local analyses ofreligion and science. The advocates of these critiques in some sense build on each other, yetin another sense also talk past one another. On the one hand, Stenmark’s account focuseson singular entities, Religion and Science, but complicates them by insisting on their multi-dimensionality. Anti-essentialists, on the other hand, insist that we must consider multipleReligions and Sciences across time periods and cultural places, although in Harrison’s caseone gets the feeling that each of those temporal-cultural-indexed Religions and Sciences arethemselves singular: they were “just” virtues, but now are bodies of knowledge claims.In this section, I will consider a different set of critiques which takes takes the key insightsfrom anti-monolithism and anti-essentialism, and builds upon them. While these previouscritiques focused on “internal” features of religion and science, the critique developed herewill emphasize “external” ones; that is, it will consider the ways in which religion and94science interact as a result of their being institutions embedded in broader social contexts:the recommendation is that we consider the multiple multi-dimensional entities, religion andscience, which operate in the same time period and same cultural place. A pithy way ofputting this is that scholars ought to pay greater attention to just whose ‘religion’ and whose‘science’ is being analyzed.Calls under similar headings have been sounded many times by scholars within the literature(and not just as a critique of conceptual analysis). For instance, J. H. Brooke and G. N.Cantor 2000 entitle one of their chapters “Whose Science? Whose Religion?” and Glennan2007 does the same. These scholars, however, have in mind very different kinds of possibleresponses to the questions. On the science side, Brooke and Cantor simply wish to callattention to specific sciences that may have been prominent in the past but may be left outof our modern “map of science.” They thus suggest that scholars “engage those sciences andtheories that do not feature in the modern pantheon, such as alchemy, scriptural geology,phlogistic chemistry, and phrenology” (J. H. Brooke and G. N. Cantor 2000, 62). On thereligion side, Brooke and Cantor, as well as Glennan, call on scholars to realize that there ismuch disagreement about what religion is—either because non-Judeo-Christian religions arequite different from Judeo-Christian ones (ibid., 63–64) or because within particular religioustraditions there is extensive disagreement about fundamental claims (e.g. the nature of faithor the sacredness of scripture; Glennan 2007).But these calls to consider “whose science” and “whose religion” still leave out a large andvery important swath of—to recall Stenmark’s term—“diverse practices” resulting from thehistorico-cultural context of religion and science. For instance, surely, the lay Buddhistconceives of Buddhism differently than the theologian does (an expert–lay distinction), justas the industrial chemist may conceive of science differently from her research-universitypeer (a theory-oriented–or-not distinction). Addressing these other distinctions is especiallysalient for public-facing work since, by its very nature, it aims to engage with the RSR as95an object of public concern. Insofar as this is really the case, greater attention must be paidto how various publics actually conceive of religion and science.The sociologist John Evans has recently critiqued many “elite” scholars for doing just this:focusing on “elite” conceptions of ‘religion’ and ‘science’ which do not align with everyday,quotidian versions of those concepts. In particular, Evans argues that academics and mostpopular media in the United States portray religion and science as competing knowledge-producing enterprises, which can thus be in conflict over the generation of knowledge claims(or over particular claims themselves). However, according to data obtained by re-examiningthe 2012 General Social Survey (GSS) along with the results of several interview studies,Evans claims that most Americans do not understand religion or science in terms of knowl-edge, but in terms of morals—that is, insofar as Americans are concerned with religion andscience, they are concerned with them as competing moral systems. Thus, opposition to, say,evolutionary accounts of humankind by, say, conservative Evangelicals, is due to concernsabout the moral implications of such accounts rather than concerns about the reliability ofthe evidence (J. H. Evans 2018, 77).Evans is surely right to focus on public conceptions of religion and science—especially if hisfocus is on public-facing work on the RSR. In the rest of the section, I will first (§2.3.1) discussin more detail the over-emphasis on “elite” views which Evans criticizes. Second (§2.3.2),I will unpack an asymmetry that is often noted in how science and religion are treatedby conceptual analyzers: often the focus is on academic science in contrast to everydayreligion. I’ll look at how this argument relates to our exemplars and point to some ways inwhich this asymmetry could be resolved. Finally (§2.3.3), I then turn to a distinction that isalmost always ignored on the science side of the relationship: the distinction between theory-oriented science and non-theory-oriented science. I argue that the public is much more likelyto encounter and interact with the latter type of science—in the form of people (industrialscientists are a much larger population), products (e.g. cosmetics or food), and processes96(e.g. environmental agencies)—and so conceptual analysis must pay greater attention tothese sciences. I provide a start in this direction, although fleshing out the philosophy ofnon-theory-oriented sciences is beyond the scope of this dissertation, especially since it hasnot been developed elsewhere.28Experts, Experts, EverywhereEvans’ basic argument, put forth in J. H. Evans and M. S. Evans 2008 and most explicitlyin J. H. Evans 2018, is that were we to consider non-elite conceptions of religion—and ofscience—then we would see that (insofar as there is conflict) religion and science are notin epistemic conflict, but in moral conflict (e.g. J. H. Evans 2018, 2). This has signifi-cant implications for how we should approach the RSR in public spaces. In particular, theknowledge-deficit model, by which concerned scientists attempt to address religious oppo-sition to particular scientific facts, must be understood to be ill founded. If the issue isnot epistemic, then public education campaigns which focus on better informing the publicabout the details of, say, evolutionary theory, are misguided. Instead, outreach should involvedemonstrating the moral compatibility of scientific evolution and traditional worldviews.29Evans’ argument, however, is a bit more nuanced than this general picture—and that nuancedemands several qualifications to the overarching critique. In the first place, Evans at leastpurportedly has a particular conception of “elite” in mind—those with outsized influence:“an elite is anyone who has a social role that allows them to influence the views of otherpeople beyond their immediate acquaintances and family members on the issue under de-bate. So, obviously all academics are potentially elites, as are scientists, politicians, clergy,theologians, church officials, journalists, pundits, TV and movie producers, and leaders ofsocial movements” (J. H. Evans 2018, 6). Although this definition is a bit vague, it’s easy28Although I should note that I plan to develop this in subsequent work.29This is similar to the way in which Maya Goldenberg has recently argued that vaccine hesitancy is nota matter of knowledge-deficit either, but is instead a moral matter (Goldenberg 2021).97to make it more precise by thinking about social networks. Consider a given network. Anelite is a node which contains, say, an order of magnitude more connections than the averagefor any given node of the network. As we will see, however, this conception of an “elite”(even when left in its original vague form), leads to several issues with the details of Evans’arguments.In the second place, Evans acknowledges both a strong and a weak form of epistemic conflictbetween religion and science (ibid., 7–9). The strong version (which he labels “systematicknowledge conflict”) claims that religion and science (in toto) are always in conflict becausethey are the products of competing knowledge-generating systems. The weaker epistemicconflict only claims that there are particular, proposition-by-proposition disagreements be-tween religion and science (hence it is referred to as “propositional belief conflict”). Evansargues that the stronger version fails to actually exist while the weaker, to the extent thatit does exist, is generally toothless (see ibid., Ch. 5).30His argument against strong epistemic conflict centers on what he calls “knowledge-structures.”These are formal ways of representing how an individual relates the various knowledge-claims she embraces. Elites, Evans claims, generally see religion and science as consistingin knowledge-structures, essentially foundationalist epistemologies in which basic scientificclaims (facts) form the justificatory foundation for higher-level beliefs. Since this is how elitesstructure their own knowledge claims, and they think that both religion and science makeknowledge claims, they consequently assume religious and scientific claims exist in compet-ing structures. Given the chains of justification linking higher-level beliefs to foundationalones, disagreement between the religious and scientific structures at a high level necessarilyentails deep, foundational disagreement. Thus, disagreements between religion and scienceare deep. We see this way of thinking in, for example, Dawes: religion and science are both30I should note that labeling systematic knowledge conflict and propositional conflict “strong” and “weak”respectively is my own convention. Evans, however, does use the strong–weak distinction in discussing twoforms of systematic knowledge conflict: the stronger form assumes metaphysical naturalism, while the weakerform does not. (J. H. Evans 2018, 9–11)98knowledge-producing endeavours which, because they employ radically different forms ofevidence/knowledge-generation, are in necessary conflict. “Ordinary” folk, however, do notthink of religion and science in terms of knowledge-structures, at least according to Evans.That is, “folk beliefs” (in religion and science) are not structured in a top-down hierarchyof justification and so disagreement about “high-level” claims does not belie deep-seatedconflict. As an example, Evans considers American conservative Evangelical opposition tohuman evolution (i.e. the idea that Homo sapiens evolved from some other non-humanspecies). Operating under the assumption of knowledge-structures among the public, elitesexpect this disagreement over human origins to belie a larger disagreement between conser-vative Evangelicals and the whole edifice of scientific knowledge. But, as Evans points out,such religious individuals are perfectly fine with many, if not most, other scientific claims—for instance that the Earth revolves about the Sun or that abortion ends pregnancy (e.g.ibid., 132, 145–146). Where these individuals take issue with scientific claims is when theyhave, or are thought to have, moral consequences. The ties between human evolution andeugenics (and in particular the Nazi program), for instance, fill the anti-evolution rhetoricof conservative Evangelicals. The fact that anti-abortion platforms self-identify as “pro-life”also indicates that opposition to abortion is ethically motivated. Thus, an elite picture ofthe RSR fundamentally mischaracterizes the relationship as understood and experienced bynon-elites: insofar as there is conflict, Evans maintains, it is about morals, not knowledge.We can understand Evans’ critique as a critique of the method of conceptual analysis, atleast as it is often used in the religion-and-science literature: scholars have employed eliteconceptions of religion and science and thus missed the actual way in which they are re-lated by members of the public—scholars over-emphasize the epistemic aspects of the two,neglecting the moral.There are a number of issues, however, facing Evans’ critique. First, Evans seems to beinconsistent in his conception of “elite” sources. As discussed above, an “elite” is first defined99as someone with outsized influence relative to the average member of the elite’s network.But Evans quickly slips into talking about academics rather than “elites” in general: itis academics whose knowledge-structure conceptions are misleadingly projected onto thepublic. This is especially surprising since one might have thought that the average academicdoes not have an especially large influence! He also cites religious elites (like pastors and thePope) as sources for supposedly non-elite views (ibid., 89, 110). Thus, we have a conflation ofpopular notions of elite social status with what started as a more technical notion. Further,if an elite is simply someone with outsized relative influence, we might expect that socialmedia influencers (e.g. on TikTok) should qualify—and it is by no means obvious that suchindividuals’ conceptions of religion or science would be knowledge-structure-based!31Second, Evans has been criticized for “failing to acknowledge the diverse ‘publics’ that com-prise the U.S. religious landscape” (Ecklund, Mehta, and Bolger 2019, 637). While he isclear from the start that his focus is on religion in the United States, and so Christianity inits various forms will be his model religion (J. H. Evans 2018, 13), the diversity of Christian-ity in the US is often glossed over. For instance, he ignores the ways in which race mightimpact the kinds of conflicts—moral and otherwise—particular religious communities mightencounter with particular sciences. Further, Evans’ analysis centers on individual-level viewsof moral conflict between religion and science rather than on moral communities, which arearguably the “spaces where view of science and morality are often formed” (Ecklund, Mehta,and Bolger 2019, 640).Third, we might worry that Evans’ focus on the moral dimension may obscure meaningfulepistemic tensions between religion and science even among the everyday Americans hestudies. For while it may be the case that what “truly” motivates religious opposition toscience are particular moral qualms with the particular sciences involved, such opponents31Elsdon-Baker makes a similar critique of Evans, although the point is that Evans has not explained fromwhere the public gets its conceptions or religion and science—and it may very likely be from internet sourceswhich Evans does not examine (Elsdon-Baker 2019).100may truly believe that the opposition is more than moral. And, in fact, opponents of,for instance, human evolution do cite epistemic reasons for opposition to human evolution.Common apologetic moves include, for instance, questioning the reliability of radiocarbondating and citing the supposed inability of step-by-step evolutionary processes to account forcomplex structures like the human eye. Evans may be right to point out that the selection ofthis particular point of opposition may well be driven by moral concerns. But that does notmean the epistemic aspect is not important, especially when the arguments against humanevolution are couched in knowledge-oriented rather than morality-oriented language; thecontext of discovery does not make the context of justification irrelevant. And recognizingthis fact is important.Consider, again, the case of race. Even if racist actions are “really” not motivated by par-ticular biological beliefs, but instead are motivated by a combination of social and economicfactors, it is still eminently relevant that racists understand themselves as justified in theiractions by biology. Indeed, countering these false biological narratives is a key part of de-fusing racism. Of course, it is also important to recognize the non-epistemic reasons whyracists are racist, and non-knowledge-related interventions may even prove more effectivethan knowledge-dumping ones. But we should not be so caught up with the moral-socialdimension that we neglect the epistemic. Telling everyday conservative Evangelicals thattheir knowledge-oriented arguments about missing fossils and fluctuating constants miss themark, and that all they really care about are the moral aspects of evolution simply addsfuel to conservative Evangelical anti-intellectualism. As public-facing scholars, we need to beable to meet people where they’re at—which seems to be Evans’ overarching point anyway.Despite all these issues, Evans’ criticism of the elite discourse surrounding the RSR is stillinsightful. Unpacking it as a critique of conceptual analysis highlights the ways in whichthat technique can be misapplied in public-facing contexts. Evans calls on scholars to lookat the actual social scientific data on public perceptions of science and religion, and argues101that doing so will help to decenter the epistemic aspects of science and religion and lead toa more relevant discussion of their relationship. This does not mean we need to abandonconceptual analysis—and indeed we might cite Ruse as an example of a scholar who doespay close attention to the moral dimensions of religion—but Evans is right that concep-tual analysis would benefit from closer attention to the actual conceptions at play amongeveryday/popular audiences.Before moving on, I want to point out that Evans’ criticism can be seen as a modern extensionof the “God of the philosophers” criticism which has existed for several centuries. Philoso-phers, so it is claimed, often discuss a “God” which is almost entirely divorced from the“God” of everyday religious practitioners (see e.g. Harrison 2006, 101). And yet, those verysame philosophers ultimately want to make claims that fit into the folk religious framework.A more generalized version of this critique can be found launched against employers of con-ceptual analysis, especially those who work in the tradition of Analytic philosophy (thoughthey are not always philosophers). Rather than limiting themselves to God-talk, however,these analyzers talk of religion writ large, though in a form alien to actual religiosity. In mostcases, the critique takes the form of claims like the following: “some analytic philosophers...often [reduce] ‘religion’ and ‘science’ to their propositional contents or their approaches toknowledge, and thereby [disembed] them from their real-life contexts” (Tyson 2022, 4). Thisis similar to Evans’ point above that academics and the popular media too often present‘religion’ and ‘science’ as systems of knowledge generation. Actual on-the-ground religiousfolk, however, do not think of either side of the RSR as just a collection of propositions oreven as the total propositional output of a particular methodology—religion and science arein fact much more complicated phenomena, irreducible to knowledge claims and methods.That said, there is danger in taking this argument too far: even if religion and science arenot ultimately reducible to collections of propositions, propositions certainly do matter to102religious and scientific folk. Attention must be paid, however, to why particular proposi-tions matter. In fact, Evans’ point is that particular propositions become salient loci forreligion–science conflict because they have moral implications. Thus human evolution butnot heliocentrism is considered problematic among twenty-first-century conservative Evan-gelicals.Beyond this, however, we must also recognize that there are non-propositional ways forreligion and science to relate to one another, and I take this to be the main point folks likeTyson are trying to make. Perhaps the most obvious and most discussed is the “worldview”that tends to come along with the packages of propositions associated with “religion” and“science.” Thus Plantinga takes great pains to demonstrate that naturalism qua materialismis not an essential part of science (Plantinga 2011, esp. Ch. 10). That very effort makes clearjust how easily a particular materialist worldview can attach itself to the sciences (at leastin twenty-first-century Western contexts) and thus set the stage for friction with religiousimmaterialist worldviews. We might even say that the effort shows how deeply entrenchedin the traditional, everyday conception of “science” a naturalistic worldview is.But there are even more mundane ways (moving even farther from the philosophers’ concep-tions) in which non-propositional, even non-moral, factors related to religion and science canaffect their relationship. Above, we saw Stenmark recommending that scholars pay attentionto the internal social structures of religion and science. But scholars should also consider theexternal social contexts in which religion and science are embedded. I mean this not only inthe Harrison-esque sense of understanding how religion and science have co-constructed oneanother (Harrison 2015), but in a much more everyday sense. When a young adult entersthe wider world, they must make decisions about what to do with their life. Many forcescompete for their time, and though perhaps religion and science are never really in zero-sumcompetition, the mere fact that they are separate institutions does pose a resource-allocationproblem. And this competition plays out at many levels: Should they take more physics103study sessions or attend more bible studies? Should they attend grad school for chemistryor go to seminary? Should they go on a mission or take up the post-doc? Scientific jobs canbe demanding on one’s schedule in ways that are essential to the scientific process (whateverthat might be), but not clearly in opposition to religious practice in particular. Consider,for instance, a biologist who must take care of her cells every day, including Saturday: sucha career is closed to conservative Orthodox Jews and Seventh Day Adventists. Or considera cognitive scientist who must “sacrifice” mice—no (traditional) Jain could do such a thing.Yet, I find it hard to accept that these states of affairs point to any hard incompatibilitybetween religion and science, or even between some particular religion and some particularscience. But even still, we must recognize that individual cases like these do contribute toa larger impression of a tension between religious and scientific commitments. The point,though, is that these tensions have more to do with the fact that religion and science arenot the same social institutions than any fundamental incompatibility: other forms of em-ployment pose these same kinds of resource-management problems both for religion and forscience—as do familial obligations.Along these same lines, it is also worth considering the ways in which religious and scientificidentity are not all-encompassing identities: they intersect with many others. What barriersand bridges might exist between particular religious and scientific identities as a result ofthis intersectionality? For instance, it has been widely documented that women tend to bemore religious than men (see e.g. Pew Research Center 2016). Yet it is also the case thatwomen are underrepresented in most fields of science. One might wonder if these two factsare related: perhaps women are discouraged from entering scientific fields partly becausethey identify as religious but sense a hostility towards religiosity in those disciplines—whichonly then fuels the general perception that women and the religious are incompatible withscience. More work in this area is certainly needed.When discussing the RSR in public contexts, conceptual analysis would do much better to104take all of these non-epistemic aspects of religion and science more seriously. We mightsum this up rather pithily: Leave your ivory towers, scholars! Come and view the world ofconcrete and asphalt!The Elite and the QuotidianSo far, I have only discussed one small part of the “concrete and asphalt” world, using Evansas a guide. Interestingly, the criticism that the religion-and-science discourse overemphasizeselite perspectives exists alongside another criticism which pushes in the opposite direction.In many works, there is an asymmetry in the treatment of religion and science in thatscientists—scientific experts—are used as the exemplars for the science side, while everydayreligious folk—religious non-experts—are taken as the representatives for the religion side.32Thus, for instance, Dawkins famously refuses to consider the works of theologians, “engaging”only with popular conceptions of Christianity and Islam (see e.g. A. McGrath 2005, 83,99). Much more mildly, Dawes, as we saw, considers everyday religious folk in contrast toacademic scientists (Dawes 2021). Instead, critics argue, scholars need to present equal-statusrepresentatives on either side: bring the religion up the tower and compare the science ofscientists with the religion of theologians, or defenestrate the science and compare the religionof everyday folk with the science of the masses.Figure 2.1: Matrix of conceptions of religionand science. Solid red arrows indicate rela-tions most commonly discussed in the litera-ture; dotted blue arrows indicate those whichhave been neglected.What this criticism points out is that thereare really four possible general relation-ships we might talk about when discussingthe religion–science relationship, as depictedin Figure 2.1: elite–elite, elite–quotidian,quotidian–elite, and quotidian–quotidian.3332See e.g. Boespflug forthcoming; paper presented at the Ian Ramsey Center Conference in Honour ofAlister McGrath, July 2022.33Of course, I acknowledge that the distinction between elite and quotidian is not absolute but spectrum;105Most discussion focuses on the quotidian–elite relationship. Often, those who believe that there is tension between religion and science(e.g. Dawes) or that the two are entirely separate/non-interacting (e.g. Ruse) focus on thisrelationship. By contrast, the elite–elite relationship tends to feature in apologetic works inwhich scholars try to demonstrate the compatibility (often going beyond non-interaction) oftheir religion with science writ-large or some particular sciences (e.g. Plantinga). However,the elite–quotidian and quotidian–quotidian relationships are almost never discussed.There are no in-principle reasons for this emphasis on elite conceptions of science. But espe-cially in public-facing work, it would seem relevant to consider more quotidian conceptionsof science. That is not to say, however, that considering the quotidian–elite RSR is funda-mentally misguided; it is surely of interest whether there is tension or harmony or whateverbetween quotidian religion and elite science, if only because that can reveal deeper insightsinto the general expert–lay divide, which is especially important (and perhaps recently ex-asperated) in the contemporary US where there are often especially strong political dividesbetween the two groups. But it is also worth our time paying attention to the other vec-tors in the space—not only on their own, but also in comparison to each other. Evans hasalready pointed to the benefits of paying attention to the quotidian–quotidian relationship:we see that whatever tensions exist seem to be moral in nature, an observation which mightthen inform policy surrounding science education. But imagine putting this alongside ananalysis of the elite–elite relationship. Perhaps we’ll find, as Plantinga does (and coinciden-tally in opposition to Evans), that there is actually no tension between elite-religion andelite-science. This might be highly relevant to the scientist with a quotidian conception ofreligion: perhaps they’ll be motivated to brush up on their theology rather than throw outand I think trying to provide clear definitions of elite and quotidian conceptions is not only doomed to failurebut also not relevant to this project. What matters is that there is not just one religion or science concept atplay in the wide religion-and-science discourse which encompasses university-entrenched academics, temple-tied religionists, and ordinary baristas. Dividing the concepts into general classes of “elite” and “quotidian”is certainly a simplifying device, but it is nonetheless useful for highlighting the fact that there are reallyquite different conceptions at play (and besides, makes for much smoother reading).106their religion—or their science. So exploring the rest of the matrix in Figure 2.1 and beingexplicit about the particular conceptions analyzed helps make clear what exactly is at stakein discussions of the RSR. And it can also point the way to conceptual reform.Now, how are we to go about determining the quotidian conception(s) of science? It is admit-tedly much easier to come to armchair conclusions about the elite conception(s) with whichwe as academics have been inoculated in the process of becoming scholars. But to reallyget at the on-the-ground, asphalt-view understandings of science, I think we must engage insome amount of empirical investigation. This need not mean that conceptual analysis mustadopt wholesale the social scientific methods which I collectively call “fieldwork” (and whichwill be discussed in more detail in Chapter 5)—the quotidian is not invisible to conceptualanalysis. Indeed, we have already seen instances of empirical investigations used to build upthe definitions from which we logically deduce the RSR, as in Frazer and Dawes. These pre-vious scholars, however, have mostly relied upon elite sources to determine their definitions.Instead, to get at quotidian ideas, one must consult quotidian sources: conduct interviews,hold surveys, open up K–12 textbooks, read Tweets, scroll through posts, comb blogs, watchYouTube—and read the comments. We already see at least some of these sources analyzedin experimental philosophy, although that relatively new discipline still also often focuses onelites and their concepts. But those tools can be easily directed at non-elite groups. Anddoing so, I maintain, could greatly enhance conceptual analysis of the RSR.3434For those who still have reservations about taking folk conceptions of science seriously, let me makeanother analogy with race: While conceptual analyses of race may explode folk conceptions, it would be illadvised to entirely dismiss those folk racial conceptions. After all, it is the popular understanding of racewhich is at work in most people’s everyday lives. And so even if we know that the folk idea of race asdiscrete biological kinds packaging particular mental and social traits is entirely unsubstantiated—and evenincoherent—we cannot dismiss it; in fact, we would be worse off ignoring it (see e.g. Bonilla-Silva 2003).So too with folk conceptions of science. Elite, academic conceptions of science are not the conceptions withwhich those on the asphalt think or interact. And if we would like our conceptual analytic work to haveimpact outside the academy, then we must engage with these folk conceptions of science.This is not, again, to say that we cannot, or should not discuss and analyze elite conceptions of science—weshould not stop doing philosophy of race. And we can also hope to reform folk conceptions of science justas we hope to do with race. But for our message to take root, we need to be willing to meet the folk wherethey are at.107So where do we start? Within the US context, one place could be the Bureau of LabourStatistics (BLS), which compiles employment data across most sectors of the country’seconomy—including scientific ones. The information they compile can give us one win-dow into the types of scientists a randomly selected US citizen might encounter—and so givea sense of what the quotidean conception of science might be.Theory or NotBefore getting into that data, however, there is one more feature of the traditional treatmentof science which I would like to discuss which widens the gap between ivory-tower-science andasphalt-science (and so will be useful for understanding the BLS’ numbers). This is a distinc-tion between what I term the “theory-oriented sciences” (TOSs) and “non-theory-orientedsciences” (NTOSs).35 This distinction is quite similar to the basic–applied distinction withwhich most scholars are likely familiar. But while by “theory-oriented science” I mean moreor less the same as “basic science,” my category of “non-theory-oriented science” is broaderthan the usual conception of “applied science.” These divides also exist alongside the veryclosely related academic–industrial divide. But my divide between TOS and NTOS is alsonot identical to this divide: the academic–industrial divide has to do with institutional af-filiation, while my divide is based on the goals and actions of the scientists and the scienceitself. Clearly one embedded in a university can do basic or applied research, just as muchas the scientist employed in a pesticide factory, but a university-bound scientist is not likelyto engage in NTOS. In what follows, I will focus on the theory–not-theory-oriented distinc-tion, although I acknowledge that the basic–applied and academic–industrial distinctionsmay also be important as external context which may lead to different perceptions of scienceand scientists along the lines of the discussion in §2.3.1. For instance, academic science may35In Chin 2024, I spoke of this distinction as one between “research-oriented” and “non-research-oriented”sciences. However, I think the root differences between the kinds of sciences I wish to call our attention tohere centers on the role of theory and the goal of knowledge generation, not on the performance of research.108carry with it the politically liberal overtones associated with universities—at least in theUS—while I would expect industrial science to not. Such differential perceptions may havereal-world consequences for the RSR: perhaps we are more likely to find religious scientistsin industrial settings, and perhaps that is due to the public conception of academic science’sliberal leanings.In any case, what I wish to focus upon here is the fact that there exists a difference withinelite academic worldviews (though it is not acknowledged) between TOS and NTOS, suchthat the latter is generally left out of the conception of science (or sometimes “real science”).But, and this is the key point, there is no such division in the quotidian conception of science.Thus, if conceptual analyzers would like to address members of the public, they would dowell to recognize the importance of NTOS to lay conceptions of science—and incorporateconsiderations of such sciences into their analyses.This argument will require some unpacking, so let me begin with the banal observationthat almost all of the conceptual analytic accounts of science focus on academic, theoreticalscience–indeed that academic, basic science just is the elite conception of science. So wesaw with all of our exemplars above: no one considered aerospace engineering or marineconservation ecology or cosmetological chemistry. And this isn’t limited to just scholars inreligion-and-science; the trend is widespread throughout the philosophy of science (and, aswe will see in future chapters, most other disciplines which take science as their object ofstudy).There are, of course, social and historical reasons for this focus on basic science. Onemight point out rather trivially that philosophers are interested in basic metaphysical andepistemological questions—what’s out there and how do we know it—questions which thebasic sciences attempt to answer more so than the applied sciences. It may also be relevantthat, embedded as they are within academic spaces, philosophers do not have as ready accessto industrial science. On another tack, some even understand the philosophy of science as109an extension, or part, of science itself36—and that part is likely the theoretical, basic kind ofscience, as evidenced by journals like Theoretical Biology and Foundations of Physics whichregularly publish articles by academics employed as philosophers. On the historical side,there is also the fact that much analytic philosophy of science had its origins in reactionsto the theoretical physics of the early twentieth century, a historical accident which hasresulted in almost all subsequent philosophical models of science taking theoretical physicsas the base model for all other forms of inquiry. Only recently has there emerged push-back against this physics-first attitude. In Science without Laws: Model Systems, Cases,Exemplary Narratives, for instance, Angela Creager, Elizabeth Lunbeck, and M. NortonWise bring together a host of scholars to explore what happens when physics is replacedwith biology, geology, and the social sciences (Creager, Lunbeck, and Wise 2007). AdrianCurrie has similarly investigated the historical sciences more broadly (Currie 2018). Yet thisreplacement does not decenter basic science; conservation science and assay-development donot feature in these authors’ conceptions of science.Against these basic science-oriented approaches, Mark Wilson has advocated for the inclusionof the non-theory-oriented, or at least applied, sciences into general philosophical accountsof science. He has argued, compellingly if (admittedly) a bit opaquely, that Theory-T-stylephilosophy of science, whereby the philosopher claims that all natural phenomena will oneday be explicable in terms of some single Theory T, simply fails to capture the complexitiesof the world. His main case studies are drawn from engineering, where multi-scalar analysesare needed to solve specific practical problems. For example, when one is concerned withfractures in steel beams, one cannot restrict oneself to the molecular level, since the molecularworld cannot “see” the cracks and issues of alignment at the molecular level (Wilson 2017,see 208–12). But Wilson has been a lone voice in the wilderness, and few are those who heedhis call.36See e.g. e.g. Maddy 2007 and Maddy 2022, especially Essay 1, “A Plea for Natural Philosophy” (13–48).110As it is, then, scholars almost always assume that (a) science is (a) theoretical enterprise, onefocused on the production of knowledge, often in the form of theories: science is taken to betheory-oriented. But—and this is important—the vast majority of people classed as “scien-tists” do not engage in this kind of practice. According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics(BLS), as of May 2022, there were about 1.3 million individuals with “Life, Physical, andSocial Science Occupations.” Of these, only about 24% are found in research-oriented indus-tries (or about 305,910 individuals, combining those who work in “Scientific Research andDevelopment Services” and “Colleges, Universities, and Professional Schools”—assuming(problematically) that those in the latter do research). The remaining 76% majority do notengage in the first-order forms of research comprising what is known as “basic science.” In-stead, the vast majority of people identified, at least by the BLS, as “scientists” are engagedin more practical endeavours: the creation of (non-novel) assays, doing routine analysesof commercial products, assessing the soil composition of fields, determining the structuralintegrity of old buildings.Given this, when we enter the field of religion-and-science, the focus should not be exclusivelyon the theoretical aspects of science, for the RSR is understood to be something which goesbeyond the boundaries of the university: it affects, or is manifested in, everyday religiousfolk—and scientists.So the understanding of science here must be broadened: we care about the RSR in society,and so we must engage with science in society—and this must especially be true of scholarswho take themselves to be addressing a larger public audience, not just other academics.Considering national statistics on scientific occupations is one way of getting at the quotidianconception of science, what science is like in society. And media analysis can show that thenumbers are actually representative of quotidian experience.Academic, theory-oriented science is clearly a part of the popular conception of science; weneed only peruse Netflix or HBO Max to see this popular presentation of the scientist in111e.g. Stranger Things and The Big Bang Theory. But academia is not all of society—it isnot even an especially large part of it; according to the BLS, only 8.8% of scientists areemployed in academic contexts. So an analysis of science in society must take into accountapplied science as well; and we need only peruse Netflix to see such scientists as well in e.g.Breaking Bad and Jurassic Park. This kind of Netflix-based analysis also points to othernon-academic, non-industrial, more informal kinds of science as in e.g. The Martian’s call to“science the shit out of this,” by which the astronaut protagonist means applying principlesfrom chemistry and botany to produce water and grow potatoes (The Martian 2015). Formy purposes, however, I will stick to the BLS data and consider how we might incorporatethe non-theory-oriented sciences into an analysis of science.There are at least two different ways of taking NTOS seriously in our analyses of science insociety:1. discuss the two sciences separately or2. alter the general characterization of science.This is akin to the qualification provided in the definition of conceptual analysis in §1 that theobjects analyzed may be religion/science writ-large or particular religions/sciences (e.g. Bud-dhism and cognitive science or Islam and evolutionary biology). We might, in the first case,limit our discussions to particular sciences in their theory- or non-theory-oriented modes, oras in the second case, talk about a broader kind of science (or particular sciences) whichincorporates the basic and applied modes (e.g. we might think of physical chemistry as asingle activity done both in academic labs aimed at understanding new chemicals and inindustrial settings aimed at producing more of some chemical). I think that if scholars wishtheir objects of analysis to be more in line with popular conceptions of religion and science,then the second option is more desirable, for I don’t think most popular conceptions of sci-ence separate TOS and NTOS. Nonetheless, in what follows, I want to explore each of these112options, providing a sketch of how our analyses might change when incorporating NTOSinto our scholarly conception of science.Two “New” Sciences: the Separationist ApproachThe separationist approach discusses TOS and NTOS as entirely distinct entities. As men-tioned earlier, some scholars explicitly acknowledge that they will not talk about the latterform of science. For instance, Ian Barbour does so at the start of Issues in Science andReligion. What he says is informative: “we will deal with ‘pure science’ (scientific ideas,methods, theories, and ways of looking at the universe) rather than ‘applied science’ (prac-tical inventions, industrial processes, the instruments of war and peace). Applied scienceraises many important ethical and social issues, but these are not discussed here” (I. G.Barbour 1966, 9). Most authors, like Barbour, simply ignore applied science; they do nottake it seriously.This ignoration is in many ways similar to the ignoration of the non-belief-oriented aspects ofreligion which used to populate the religion-and-science literature, as discussed above. Andeven those authors who recognize that religion often has more to do with practice than belief,and so ground their definitions in practice, do no such thing with the sciences. Dawes, forinstance, very explicitly crafts his definition of religion in terms of practices—recall he gaveit as: “a communal tradition of ritual action that seeks to make contact with a hidden realmof metapersons and powers and whose goal is to bring this-worldly and/or other-worldlybenefits to the individuals or community in question” (Dawes 2021, 8–9). But his definitionof scientia is unambiguously knowledge-focused: “a communal tradition of inquiry whoseaim is to create a systematic account of the principles governing a set of regularly observablephenomena within the natural or human world” (ibid. 6). What would it look like, however,to explore the neglected, applied side of science?First, again, clearly the way in which NTOS is defined will be more focused on practice113than on belief in theory in general: while it is true that aerospace engineers at Boeingemploy theories, that is not the focus of their work. Second, insofar as knowledge is soughtin NTOS, it is particular, rather than general. The definitions of science generated byour exemplars all demand that the sciences aim at producing “systematic account[s] of theprinciples governing” natural phenomena, i.e. laws. But the engineer at Boeing is not in thebusiness of making—or discovering—laws,37 any more so than the chemists at the local watertreatment plant or the assay-producer at the biotech start-up. While all these scientists makeuse of natural laws, it is, again, the application of those laws to produce particular resultsin very particular contexts which governs their lifework.It should also be clear that NTOS is not by definition production science. NTOS mightoften be employed in production (e.g. of bridges, chemicals, glass), but not all NTOS isapplied in that way. Further, I want to fend off the idea that the NTOSs are in the businessof business; again, they should not be conflated with the industrial sciences. Yes, NTOSencompasses fields and scientists with commercial interests, but it also includes others. Forinstance, water treatment plants which employ chemists to test for lead content seem tohave public health rather than financial gain in mind, and it is hard for me to imagine a lesslucrative endeavour than condor preservation.38 So NTOS is not always in the business ofproduction; it is also sometimes in the business of testing, preservation, and other practices.A second distinguishing feature of NTOS is the distance between the research context andwhat we might provocatively call “matters of real concern.” The idea is that while both TOSand NTOS might have very local, tightly constrained research foci (e.g. particular spacetimemanifolds under particular theories of quantum field theory vs. particular desired overpassesabove particular residential structures), those working in the non-theory-oriented sciences are37Though, of course, engineers may contribute to basic, theoretical science research in the course of theirwork. This is especially well-illustrated in Bloor 2011’s Enigma of the Aerofoil.38That said, however, I think it is quite important to recognize the ways in which NTOS fits into moderneconomies, since, as discussed above, this way of being embedded in a broader socio-cultural context mayhave important bearings on how individuals relate applied science to other institutions and practices—likereligion. But this is different from taking commercial interests as essential to the notion of NTOS.114somehow closer to issues of everyday human flourishing. Indeed, the “non-theory-oriented”label is meant to have just that connotation: it is concerned with “real life” rather thantheory!So there are at least two aspects which differentiate TOS and NTOS: knowledge/practice-orientation and distance from “matters of real concern.” Any definition of NTOS should thusmake use of features. We might, then, venture a tentative definition:Non-theory-oriented science (in the “West” in the twenty-first century) is acommunal activity which aims to address particular problems of direct practicalimport within the natural or human world.Thus, our engineer at Boeing, the scientists at the local water treatment plant, and theconservation ecologist all fall squarely under this definition. On the other hand, the universityphysicist investigating QFT and the biologist studying dinosaur genomes do not.How might conceptual analytic investigations of the RSR change in light of this definitionof NTOS? In this separationist approach, the idea is that we have separate analyses of therelationship between religion (in general or in particular) and TOS/NTOS science.On the whole, I would expect conflict theses based in conceptual analysis to be harder tojustify for the non-theory-oriented sciences. It is hard to see how bridge-building mightconflict with religion in general. Of course, particular NTOS projects might indeed conflict:weapons research seems at odds with some religions’ desire for peace. On the other hand,some NTOS projects are clearly in harmony with many religions: medical drug productionappears in most cases to be in-line with religions which support care for the sick and needy.39However, I do not think a general harmony picture will be easy to build on this definition39Though of course there are some religions which take explicit issue with the medical sciences as currentlypracticed. Christian Scientists, for example, claim that current medical practice is fundamentally misguidedin its diagnosis of ills as originating in the body, whereas they believe physical ailments are due to spiritualsins.115of NTOS either. If anything, independence seems the most likely candidate for a generalcharacterization of the NTOS-religion relationship—if such a general characterization alongBarbour’s fourfold typology is even desired at all.All this said, I won’t attempt to offer a particular derivation of the NTOS-religion relation-ship; if others would like to do so, they may, and in fact I encourage future scholars to doso alongside derivations of the TOS-religion relationship. I believe that doing so will helpto highlight just what aspects of each kind of science are doing the work in generating theproposed relationship, and will thus bring more clarity and insight to the field.Further, keeping the theory- and non-theory-oriented sciences distinct, and being explicitabout whether one is dealing with one or the other, will be useful for consumers of theliterature who deal mostly with one form of science or the other. For instance, if a schooladministrator is concerned with education regarding a particular NTOS—like species or wa-ter conservation—then their time might be better spent focusing on accounts which concernreligious concerns with NTOS rather than having to think through whether the concernsraised with TOS (again, the focus of most current scholarly work) are actually applicable totheir case.A Single Science: the STEM ApproachThe singular approach, whereby we blend TOS and NTOS into a single, general conception ofscience, is perhaps already present in the conglomerative term with which the public so ofteninteracts: STEM. As it is, STEM stands for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math—aflurry of terms that, because they are separate letters of the acronym might belie a recognitionof their differences. But I think the unity of the acronym dominates the separateness of theletters: STEM is not discussed as a set of disparate disciplines; it is a single entity. Indeed,students talk of majoring in STEM, employers talk of the employability of STEM, public“science” policy focuses on making STEM more appealing and more accessible.116What exactly counts as STEM? Certainly the “traditional” theory-oriented sciences: bi-ology, chemistry, physics. But also engineering: aerospace, mechanical, chemical. Evencomputer science, botany, agricultural studies. In fact, in some college’s STEM advertise-ments, the basic, theory-oriented sciences are barely even mentioned. For instance, SouthernNew Hampshire University’s “What Nobody Told You about Being a STEM Major” liststhe following under the heading “What Are Some Examples of STEM Majors?”: cyber-security, data analytics, environmental science, game programming and development, geo-science, health information management, information technology, and mathematics (Mad-docks 2023). Interestingly, (pre-)medical students are also classed as STEM majors; doctorsare often employed in images of STEM—though the M is for maths, not medicine. Butone doesn’t need to obtain a STEM degree in order to participate in the STEM workforce.Indeed, according the NSF’s 2021 “STEM Labor Force of Today” report, “a little over halfof STEM workers do not have a bachelor’s degree and work primarily in health care (19%),construction trades (20%), installation, maintenance, and repair (21%), and production oc-cupations (14%)” (National Science Board and National Science Foundation 2021).STEM as a concept thus has the advantage of incorporating the non-theory-oriented sciencesalong with the theory-oriented sciences. Further, it is also a concept widely recognized andused by many publics as well as professional societies. So what would an analysis of sciencequa STEM look like, and how would it differ from the more traditional analyses of science?Well in the first place, it must be recognized that STEM is not always in the business ofknowledge production. That is, STEM does not always involve learning about the world,or even providing explanations. Structural engineering may certainly rely upon knowledgeabout the world—e.g. physics—but when it comes to building the local freeway overpass,the engineer is not even trying to learn about the world or explain the principles of trans-portation; there is a practical job that must be done, and no paper to be published asidefrom the news that the project is complete. Of course, there may well be cases of engineer-117ing in which new and interesting knowledge about the world is produced. Chandra Mukerjiprovides a nice illustration of this in her exploration of the construction of the Canal duMidi, a feat which was considered impossible by the lights of contemporary physics (Mukerji2009). But this is the exception, not the rule. Likewise, consider the vast number of medicalpractitioners who engage in patient care. Their focus, their goals, are patient health, notthe production of general theories of diseases and wellbeing. Again, some doctors may verywell contribute to research questions—perhaps they participate in studies or themselves testout new diagnostic techniques. But on the whole, one works in a medical space in order toapply the knowledge learned, not to produce novel investigations of human biology.What unifies STEM, I think, is simply the use of knowledge—sometimes theory—in theinvestigation of the world, though we can be a bit more particular than that. I do notthink there is an overarching, unifying goal, and there is certainly not a unifying, commonmethodology at least in any precise sense as in Frazer, or Dawes. But what one does seein all branches of STEM (in the “West” in the twenty-first century) is an application ofknowledge of the natural world to objects in that world.40 This, I think, is themessage spread by many STEM propagandists, academic and non-, and is the notion mostfolks encounter in their everyday life.Understanding STEM as unified in this very basic way is useful because while it decentersknowledge as the end of the activity, it preserves a place for it; it is just that application ofknowledge takes center stage, though what that application is, exactly, is left unspecified.Thus, both basic research in, say, quantum field theory, as well as applied work in, say, speciespreservation, fall quite comfortably under STEM-so-conceived; advances in QFT rely on theapplication of particular physical theories in particular contexts just as rehabilitating theCalifornia condors relies on the application of biological knowledge.40The “objects” here may be material entities in the world, like rocks, goats, and pipes; or theoreticalentities like theories, models (e.g. of climate change), and—if one is a provocative anti-realist—electrons.118Again, I want to emphasize that STEM does not carry with it any inherent goal, eitherexplicitly or implicitly. STEM is a practice, and that practice can be put to work in anynumber of ways. Likewise, STEM does not imply any particular social structure; STEM,in fact, belies a huge diversity in organization—think of comparing the labs at the localuniversity’s chemistry department with those at the local pesticide factory. And STEMcan operate—and operates quite differently—in different social contexts. Toxicology looksvery different in Senegal than in the US, for instance (Tousignant 2018). But it is STEMnonetheless, regardless of context, at least in part because in both cases we have the attemptto apply knowledge of the natural world to objects in the natural world (availability of fundingand technology notwithstanding).With this analysis of science qua STEM in mind, we can return to the RSR. As defined,STEM might very well differ from at least some religious practices insofar as those religiouspractices deal with objects/entities/knowledge/whathaveyous beyond the natural world. ButI think it is hard to see how tensions must be inevitable between them. I won’t lay downa particular characterization of the religion-STEM-relation here, but I do think indepen-dence claims like Ruse’s are easy to make when operating with STEM, while conflictual andintegrationist narratives focused on epistemic aspects, like Dawes’ and Plantinga’s, seemprima facie less plausible given the “diversity of practice” present throughout STEM. Howthe derivation of the religion-STEM-relation goes on the basis of my conception of STEM,however, I will leave to others.2.3 For Whom Is Conceptual Analysis Useful?Suppose that the method of conceptual analysis is “cleaned up.” That is, the insights ofthe critiques above are incorporated as recommendations into an analysis of religion and sci-ence, and their relationship. We employ multi-dimensional models relativized to particularly119salient times and locations, and pay close attention to the type of science (and religion) con-sidered by our audience, including non-academic perspectives when necessary. What publicswould find conceptual analysis useful?It should be clear that, even when it is augmented in the before-mentioned ways, conceptualanalysis will not be for everyone; not all folks are interested in the logical relation betweenparticular definitions of religion and science. For instance, it is hard to imagine that a poli-cymaker trying to secure public funding support for stem cell research among a traditionallyhostile Muslim community would be very interested in the fact that biology is in fact com-patible with particular Muslim views. But there are certainly other members of the public,people with other aims, values, interests in the RSR, that would find conceptual analysisuseful.In this section, I outline a handful of these cases, though I by no means attempt to beexhaustive.41 The hope is that this section can form a kind of guide to folks coming tothe religion-and-science literature: if you have these kinds of concerns, works employingconceptual analysis might be relevant for you. Likewise, this section can be used as a guidefor scholars: if you wish to reach this kind of audience, conceptual analysis might be especiallywell suited for addressing their concerns.Apologists: Conceptual analysis may be especially well suited to religious and non/anti-religious apologists. Showing that there is a fundamental compatibility between religionand science in general along some particular dimensions is an especially powerful way ofconvincing possible skeptics that religion and its practitioners ought not be dismissed outrighton the basis of the RSR. So perhaps folks interested in advocating general religious toleration(what we might call a “soft” apologetic context) would find this line of argument fruitful;41One group I do not address below are individuals who are interested in general philosophical claimsabout the relation between different ideas. This rather nebulous group will clearly be interested in conceptualanalytic approaches. I forgo their inclusion below, however, because they don’t form a clearly coherent groupwith unified aims/goals.120conceptual analysis can at least defuse one potential barrier to acceptance of religious folk.Indeed, we already see this at work on the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, andMedicine’s official statement on the RSR found on their website. Although the webpage ismostly focused on the compatibility of Darwinian evolution with various forms of religiousfaith, it offers a general analysis of science and religion according to their methods:42Science and religion are based on different aspects of human experience. In sci-ence, explanations must be based on evidence drawn from examining the naturalworld. Scientifically based observations or experiments that conflict with anexplanation eventually must lead to modification or even abandonment of thatexplanation. Religious faith, in contrast, does not depend only on empirical evi-dence, is not necessarily modified in the face of conflicting evidence, and typicallyinvolves supernatural forces or entities. Because they are not a part of nature, su-pernatural entities cannot be investigated by science. In this sense, science andreligion are separate and address aspects of human understanding in differentways. Attempts to pit science and religion against each other create controversywhere none needs to exist. (National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, andMedicine 2023; accessed 23 March 2023)Of course, conceptual analysis can also be used in the opposite direction by religious skeptics;Norman and Lucia Hall do just this in their “Is the War Between Science and Religion Over?”(N. F. Hall and L. K. B. Hall 1986), one of the recommended essay readings on the AmericanHumanist Association’s website (accessed 23 March 2023).43In the perhaps more familiar (“hard”) apologetic contexts in which the apologist is embedded42I should note that the National Academies also makes use of case studies in their argument that religionand science are compatible; the quote given is followed by lists of “statements” from both religious leadersand scientists, all of which promote a compatibilist picture.43I recognize, of course, that there are ways in which Humanism may be classed as a religion itself. TheHalls, however, clearly do not identify as religious individuals, even if they in some places qualify theircritique to Western, traditional, supernaturalist religions.121within a particular religious tradition, conceptual analysis is also likely useful. I’d expectthis to be especially so among those apologists who find themselves in what we might call“redemptive” contexts, i.e. where they feel compelled to defend their religion as reasonablein a largely hostile environment. This is the case especially when the apologist representsa religious minority against a hostile religious background. In those cases, both sides oftenagree that compatibility with science is a virtue, and so demonstrating that the minorityreligion is in fact compatible with science along such-and-such dimensions is a meaningfulargumentative move. Historically this has been a strategy employed by Christian missionariesin new colonial encounters (Stenhouse 2019) as well as by East Asian Buddhists against suchmissionaries in colonial Christian settings (see e.g. Lopez 2011).That said, it is not clear to me that conceptual analysis will be especially useful to apolo-gists in all contexts. For instance, many campus ministries targeting college students oftenhost religion-and-science talks in which they argue for some form of compatibility betweenparticular forms of religion and science in general. In these cases, however, it is not obviousthat these rather abstract arguments are adequately aligned with most student concerns. Ofcourse, it is definitely true that some students are interested in the abstract compatibilitybetween their religion and science in general, or some particular scientific theory (e.g. evolu-tion). This might especially be the case in religious traditions which emphasize individual,informed intellectual assent to accepted theologies—e.g. in some forms of Evangelical (Re-formed) Christianity. But for the most part, I would expect that students are more concernedwith more mundane ways in which their religion and science might be compatible: would itbe permissible for them to be a biologist? Will they face severe workplace discrimination?Suspicion in their religious community? Their worries, of course, might stem from a popularperception of abstract conflict between (their) religion and (some particular) science, but Iexpect that stories about successful religious scientists (the method of case studies) or dataabout religious folk in scientific contexts (fieldwork methods) would have more influence onsuch students because they get at the heart of those students’ concerns: whether they can122live a life relatively free of mistreatment.44So I expect conceptual analysis to be useful to at least some (non-trivial number of) apol-ogists, especially those who find themselves in redemptive contexts. And in these cases,performing analyses of the concepts of religion and science relevant to their opponents willbe most useful. Hence, scholars who wish their work to be employed in this way would bewell served to consider the kinds of apologetic contexts in which their works may feature.Legal Contexts: One might expect that the clearest place where conceptual analysis couldbe relevant would be in the courts. After all, conceptual clarity is especially relevant in thelegal arena, where the specificities of definitions often determine outcomes. And perhaps themost obvious cases of public religion–science interaction have taken place in the courthouse,in the famous series of US trials focused on textbooks and evolution in public schools.45 Butthe way conceptual analysis of the RSR enters into the judicial context is not obvious.It is important to note that most court cases concerning religion and science are not typicallyabout the RSR. Instead, they are about particular theories or books and whether theycount as scientific or religious. They do not deal with the compatibility, incompatibility,or otherwise of religion and science. It is true that courts deal in general with conceptualanalysis: they must define “religion” and define “science.” But the courts do not then, onthe basis of those definitions, derive general characterizations of the RSR—nor do they takeinterest in such characterizations. Instead they focus on classifying particular other objects(theories, books, practices) as “religion” or “science” and, to put it roughly, plugging it intothe law: if it’s “religion,” it can’t be in the classroom; if it’s “science,” it can be.In this sense, the kind of conceptual analysis I discuss in this chapter is not clearly appli-cable in the judicial context, or at least not in the judicial contexts which often dominate44I should note that campus religion-and-science talks often do feature religious scientists who talk abouttheir careers and how they personally found the religious and scientific spheres of their life compatible.45In this section, whenever I speak of “schools,” I mean public schools in the US.123the religion-and-science literature. The reason is almost trivial: courts are not typicallyconcerned with the RSR but instead with whether particular things/actions/theories arereligious or scientific. Thus, when Michael Ruse acted as an expert in McLean vs Arkansas(1981), his conclusion to Overton was not “therefore religion and science are entirely separateendeavours” but rather “by every mark of what constitutes science, creation-science fails”(Ruse 1982). There may, of course, theoretically be particular cases where the RSR mightbe the central point of contention—but these are certainly not representative.Where conceptual analysis of the RSR does enter the legal sphere is where that contextoverlaps with the apologetic context. Conceptual analysis may be an especially useful toolfor apologists who wish to argue, for instance, that their particular religion is science (or aparticular science). As mentioned, Buddhist apologists have used this as a tool of resistanceagainst their Christian opponents. And it is at least conceivable that an apologist couldtry to leverage a conceptual analytic characterization of the RSR to demonstrate that theirreligion is a science, and therefore should be afforded a place in the classroom. Noticehow this differs from the argumentative strategy discussed in the previous paragraph. Theapologetic argument has this general form:1. Science is X.2. (This) Religion is Y.3. But Y⊆X.4. Therefore (this) Religion is Science.5. Science should be taught in schools.C Therefore (this) Religion should be taught in schools. (And in particular this particularclaim, which is part of (this) Religion should be taught.)124The key difference is that the apologist’s argument does make reference to the RSR: it is akey component of the argument (step 4). In the typical cases mentioned above, however, therelationship is side-stepped; the argument occurs in the context of an un-argued assumptionthat religion (in particular or in general) and science are not identical. But, again, forapologists at work in the legal arena, the method of conceptual analysis—those which focuson particular religious traditions—may be a useful tool.Hiring/Funding Religious/Scientific Professionals/Projects: One group that might—perhaps controversially, perhaps problematically—find conceptual analyses of the RSR es-pecially useful are those looking to hire or fund religious/scientific professionals/activities.For instance, a grant committee deciding among many applicants might think it relevant ifsome particular religious tradition is fundamentally incompatible with the particular sciencebeing done. Likewise, a religious organization seeking to hire an advocate could reasonablythink it important to know if an individual trained in some particular science is thus primedby such training to be in tension with the organization’s beliefs and/or practices. Put moreconcretely, committees might worry whether, say, a team of Hare Krishnas should be givenfunding for their early cosmology project or an evolutionary biologist is well suited to bea Southern Baptist pastor. In these cases conceptual analyses, regardless of the resultantanalysis of the RSR, might be an appealing resource.Of course, committees (and individuals) ought to recognize that individuals may deviatefrom the dictates of conceptual analysis—the analysis is of concepts, not of people. Evenif the conceptual analysis is shored up in the ways recommended above—e.g. being carefulto specify cultural and temporal contexts, paying attention to practiced forms of religionand science, incorporating the non-theory-oriented sciences—conceptual analysis will alwaysbe an analysis of (purportedly) shared concepts, and individuals’ conceptions may (perhapsalways?) differ from that conception. This is no fault of conceptual analysis; to becomehyper-individualized would result in something more like biography rather than conceptual125analysis. And when faced with hundreds of applicants, committees may be well justifiedin making use of the kinds of generalizations created by conceptual analysis. They should,however, balance the efficiency of conceptual analysis’ broad declarations with individualuniqueness.When it comes to employers, we should also acknowledge the fact that, at least in the US,using conceptual analysis in this manner may be problematic given that employers (employ-ing 15 or more employees) are not legally allowed to discriminate based on religion. Thisrestriction places clear constraints on the relevancy of conceptual analysis: even if religion Xand science Y are related in such-and-such a way, employers may not—legally at least!—beable to use that information in their hiring decisions. The US Equal Employment Oppor-tunity Commission (EEOC), however, does leave some space for religious considerations inspecial situations. As the Compliance Manual on Religious Discrimination (2021)46 explainsin Section D, “Bona Fide Occupational Qualification,”Title VII permits employers to hire and employ employees on the basis of religionif religion is “a bona fide occupational qualification [“BFOQ”] reasonably neces-sary to the normal operation of that particular business or enterprise.” Religiousorganizations do not typically need to rely on this BFOQ defense because the“religious organization” exemption in Title VII permits them to prefer employeesof a particular religion. See supra §12-I-C-1. But for employers that are not re-ligious organizations and seek to rely on the BFOQ defense to justify a religiouspreference, the defense is a narrow one and rarely successfully invoked.Thus, it could theoretically be argued that if, on the basis of conceptual analysis, someparticular religion Y is eminently compatible with science X, i.e. such that having religious46It should be noted that the EEOC qualifies the force of the manual: “The contents of this document donot have the force and effect of law and are not meant to bind the public in any way. Any final documentis intended only to provide clarity to the public regarding existing requirements under the law or agencypolicies” (Equal Employment Opportunity Commission 2021, accessed 4 June 2023).126background Y “is a bona fide occupational qualification,” this could be actionable infor-mation for employers hiring scientists in X. Similarly, religious organizations could possiblydiscriminate against scientists of science X if they could show, perhaps via conceptual anal-ysis, that in being such a scientist, one could not in “good faith” (either to their professionor their religion) “personify [the organization’s] beliefs” or “minister to the faithful” (EqualEmployment Opportunity Commission 2021 Section C.2, accessed 4 June 2023).47To be perfectly clear, I am not advising that employers—religious or not—use conceptualanalysis as a means of arbitrating between potential employees, and I certainly make noclaims about whether, if challenged, such decisions would hold up in a court of law. I onlywish to point out that such individuals could see a possible use for conceptual analyticapproaches to the RSR. In such a case, the relevant kinds of conceptual analysis would needto be local, focusing on one particular religious tradition and a particular science.Religious Schools: One final group for whom which conceptual analyses of the RSR may berelevant are educators or administrators at religious schools. Perhaps a new religious schoolis working on establishing its curriculum and is thinking through what scientific topics toinclude—if any. Conceptual analysis may provide guidance: if some particular science is notcompatible with the school’s religious beliefs/practices, then that may be a reason to excludesuch a science from the curriculum. Of course, rather than excluding it entirely, the schoolmay instead decide to “teach the controversy” and outline the (supposed) incompatibilitybetween the school’s faith and this particular science.For this group, the most relevant kind of conceptual analysis would be a local one, focusingon a particular religious tradition and particular sciences. And presumably something likethis already occurs at least in some contemporary religious schools in the US. For instance,47This “ministerial exception” emerged from the Supreme Court’s ruling in Hosanna-Tabor EvangelicalLutheran Church and School v. EEOC (2012) that the establishment clause forbids at least some employmentdiscrimination claims brought against religious organizations.127Village Christian School—a non-denominational Protestant private K-12 school in Sun Val-ley, California—requires students entering their AP biology course to read works advocatingthe compatibility between evolution and their religious faith. Past works have included leadPI of the Human Genome Project and former head of the NIH Francis Collins’ The Lan-guage of God (2006) and the biochemist and influential intelligent design advocate MichaelBehe’s Darwin’s Black Box (1996). Both of these works employ conceptual analysis (Collinsalso makes appeal to personal biography) to make their points, and although they are bothscientists, presumably work by non-scientist public-facing academics could easily make theirway into such curricula using the same method.2.4 ConclusionIn this chapter, I have examined the use of conceptual analysis as a scholarly tool for char-acterizing the RSR. The method begins by defining the terms ‘religion’ and ‘science,’ andlogically derives the RSR on the basis of said definitions. I discussed a variety of critiquesof the method as often employed—scholarship tends to focus on only one aspect of reli-gion/science; the method improperly essentializes the concepts; and it fails to consider justwhose conceptions are to be analyzed. By considering the multifaceted nature of religionand science, or being careful not to extrapolate from particular aspects of these phenom-ena to wholesale generalizations about them; by locating the concepts in time and culturalplace; and by taking seriously non-elite and non-theory-oriented conceptions of science, themethod of conceptual analysis can be significantly improved. In so doing, scholars wouldmake a valuable resource available to a wider range of publics—from apologists to hiringcommittees. Contrary to some, the method of conceptual analysis need not be abandoned.It, like the other methods I will examine, has its time and place.128Chapter 3The Method of Case StudiesAs she reads the spines of the books, our undergraduate notices something. While someof the titles are grandly broad—Science and Religion, Christianity and Science—others areoddly specific. There’s a book about religion and science in Victorian England, another onreligion and science in America, specifically from 1800–1860. She notices one title carryinga phrase she recognizes and pulls it down, The Creationists by Ronald Numbers. She flipsthrough the hefty text, glancing at the timelines in the front and the names upon namesthat fill the pages—Rimmer, Price, Morris, Whitcomb... Scanning the titles again (for TheCreationists are quite heavy), she notices what look like biographies, featuring the likes ofBoyle, Newton, Faraday. What strikes her is the sheer amount of stories here, stories toldof people and times long dead.Is any of it useful? Are any of these historical accounts relevant to the present, relevant toher particular concerns?In this chapter, I’ll examine one of two broadly historical methods used for characterizing129the RSR, what I call the method of case studies.1 This method focuses on historical data—invarious forms—and, in its most basic form, performs an induction over historical cases toreach a conclusion about the RSR. In the first section, I will explain in more detail how Iunderstand this method and provide several exemplars—historical and modern—to illustratethe different ways the method can be implemented. I then move to a critique of the method,examining issues the contemporary exemplars face. In particular, I begin by consideringhow the inductive bases used by scholars are generated and how they may be generatedmore responsibly. I then address a question sometimes put forward by scholars using othermethods (especially the method of conceptual analysis), viz., how the past is relevant to theRSR. This then sets up a discussion of the proper level of analysis at which the method of casestudies should be performed—some operate, for example, at the level of individuals, othersat the level of institutions. I argue that no particular level of analysis should be privilegedin all cases, but that “the” “proper” level of analysis will depend on the particular reasonsscholars and their readers are interested in the RSR. I then explore the questions of “whosereligion” and “whose science” are included in the method of case studies. As in other chaptersof this dissertation, I argue that scholars over-focus on elite/academic versions of religionand science; by opening up the analysis to non-elite scientists, non-traditional religions, andnon-theory-oriented forms of science, scholarly work using the method of case studies canbe significantly enriched. After these critiques, I discuss a slightly different use of historicalcase studies which primarily aims not at characterizing the RSR, but instead at encouragingidentity formation in particular directions. The chapter closes with a consideration of whatparticular non-academic publics may find the method of case studies especially relevant totheir concerns and interests in the RSR.1The second historical method, the method of deconstruction, will be examined in the following chapter.1303.1 The Method of Case StudiesAt the start of their 1995–1996 Gifford Lectures, later published in book form as Reconstruct-ing Nature: The Engagement of Science and Religion (2000), John Brooke and GeoffreyCantor laid out five modern ways scholars could approach the subject of religion-and-sciencehistorically. There is the contextual approach—look beyond the merely intellectual featuresof past episodes to consider the influence of social, political, economic, etc. factors; thefunctional approach, whereby one looks to the role “the theology might be playing withinthe science and vice versa”; the rather different linguistic approach, in which the rhetoricalaspects of discussion of religion and science are highlighted; the biographical approach2—focus on particular individuals rather than events or more general periods; and finally, thepractical approach, where the focus is on the actions of practicing scientists/religious individ-uals and groups (J. H. Brooke and G. N. Cantor 2000, 22–34). These were not meant to beeither exhaustive of the ways in which religion-and-science could be approached historicallyor to be entirely distinct from one another. And of course, individual scholars—more oftenhistorians than not—might blend these different approaches, often to the enrichment of theoverall analysis.What unites these approaches under the heading “historical approaches” is their use of pastepisodes of religion–science interaction—case studies. To be clear, it is not simply that theseapproaches make use of the past, but instead the way in which they use the past whichdistinguishes these approaches from other approaches—or what I call methods. For eventhose that employ conceptual analysis make use, at times, of the past—Gregory Dawes,for instance, examines integrated cosmology (a species of scientia) in Warring States-eraChina (475–221 BCE; Dawes 2021). What distinguishes Brooke and Cantor’s historicalapproaches is the way in which they use their case studies. In fact, we can understand2Cantor, along with Chris Kenny would later advocate for this biographical approach as the most way ofinvestigating religion–science encounters (G. Cantor and Kenny 2001131their five approaches as species of a more general “method of (historical) case studies.” Thatmethod proceeds roughly as follows:Case Studies: 1) detail a number of (actual) historical episodes of religion–science interaction, then 2) employ those episodes as a basis for an induction tothe proper characterization of the RSR.This method is perhaps the most familiar and most commonly employed of the methodsanalyzed in this dissertation; the argument which refers to the Galileo Affair as the basis forconcluding that religion and science are constantly at odds is a classic example.At the outset, I must note that the “proper characterization” found in step 2 is to be under-stood in epistemic terms. That is, the method of case studies specifically aims at providing ahistorically accurate characterization of the RSR—the goal is descriptive. This is importantto keep in mind because not all scholars who make use of case studies in the religion-and-science literature share this aim. Rather than trying to provide a historically accuratecharacterization of the RSR, scholars may instead use case studies in more motivational,prescriptive ways: their case studies may be intended to present ways in which they hopethe RSR could be in the future, or involve cases that may inspire others to relate religion andscience in particular ways in their own lives. Indeed, the most powerful uses of case studiesmay fall into this latter category. The distinction between these two uses of case studiesin the literature—both academic and public-facing—has, to the best of my knowledge, notbeen noted. The default assumption seems to be that the case studies literature aims to bedescriptive. This is likely due to the fact that the seminal late nineteenth-century studies byJohn William Draper (1811–1882) and Andrew Dickson White (1832–1918) (which will bediscussed in more detail below) did aim to provide a general, historically accurate accountof the RSR. Their work set the initial discursive shape of religion-and-science as a discipline,and much subsequent work took—and to this day continues to take—itself to respond to132Draper and White’s Conflict Thesis. Thus, even scholars who may elsewhere indicate thatthey aim at a more prescriptive account of the RSR fall into the trap of assuming that theirwork is more or less descriptive, so as to rebut Draper and White. Paying attention tothe distinction between scholars with descriptive rather than prescriptive aims, however, isimportant because these differing goals shape the way in which the scholars use their casestudies: the former do use case studies in a way which follows the general form of an enumer-ative induction (as outlined in more detail below), while the latter may not. Indeed, thosewith more prescriptive aims need not use enumerative induction to reach their conclusions, afact which further shows that recongizing the difference between descriptive and prescriptiveaims should shape how we evaluate the scholars’ work.Thus, for most of this chapter, I will focus on the descriptive literature, that is, the scholarsand works which aim to provide historically accurate characterizations of the RSR. After all,this is the form of scholarship with which this dissertation as a whole is primarily concerned.However, in §3, I will discuss the use of case studies for purposes other than the epistemicallyproper characterization of the RSR. For now, though, we will focus on instances of the methodof case studies which aim at descriptive characterizations.Before turning to some concrete examples of this method in recent public-facing religion-and-science literature, there are a number of points to clarify. First, the parenthetical in step1 is important: the method of case studies is not counterfactual or fictional. The methoddoes not ask what historical actors would have, or could have done, in particular situations,but looks to what they did in fact do; the method works not by priming intuitions aboutpossibilities, but by referencing concrete, actual historical episodes. Of course, scholars usingthe method may get the details of their episodes wrong. But the intent of scholars employingthe method of case studies is to canvas those episodes correctly: the actual facts of the casesare meant to provide the justification for the inductive characterization arrived at in step 2.Second, the “episodes of religion–science interaction”—the cases being studied—can take a133variety of forms. They may be general fields over particular time periods—physics in theseventeenth century, Victorian Darwinism—or concrete events—the Huxley–Wilberforce de-bate (1860), John Tyndall’s (1820–1893) Belfast Address (1874), the Galileo Affair (roughly1616–1632)—or individuals or groups—the life of Isaac Newton (1643–1727), the CatholicChurch—or any of a number of other such temporally bounded subjects. These examplesalso illustrate the ways in which case studies can vary in generality. Some are expansive:how religion in general was approached by Tyndall in his lectures, or how physics in generalwas received by seventeenth-century religious folk. Others are more restricted: how evolu-tion in particular was received by Victorian elites (Lightman 2007), or how Pierre Duhem(1861–1916) understood his work in thermodynamics alongside his Catholic faith (Jaki 2004).Ultimately, however, many employers of the method of case studies, especially those writingpublic-facing works, seek to draw a more general conclusion about the RSR “in general”—that it is one of conflict or harmony or is simply too complex to be universally characterized.The fact that case studies come in a variety of forms, however, poses interesting questionsabout the scope and relevancy of particular instances of the method of case studies. That is,are studies of biographies more useful than studies of events in shedding light on the RSR?G. Cantor and Kenny 2001, for example, argue as much, while Yves Gingras argues that sucha focus on individuals is misleading and that the RSR is better understood by examininginteractions between institutions (Gingras 2017, 7). We’ll return to this discussion of the“proper level of analysis” in §3.2.3 below.Third, by “induction” in step 2 of the method, I mean simple enumerative induction. Enu-merative inductions have the following general, abstract argumentative form:1. All (or most of) the Fs observed so far are G.2. Many Fs have been observed.1343. Therefore, most Fs are G.3The first proposition asserts what is called the “inductive base” which provides justificationfor the conclusion. Sometimes the language of “populations” is also used when talking ofinductions. There are two types of populations: the target and the sample population. Thesample population is the inductive base, the group of Fs that have been observed. The targetpopulation, on the other hand, is the total collection of all Fs, the group about which wewant to make some conclusion.Enumerative inductions are widespread. Consider, for instance, this kind of everyday rea-soning:All the pygmy goats I’ve seen so far are under 6ft. tall. And, as a goatherd, I’veseen hundreds of pygmy goats. So I’m quite confident that pygmy goats are allunder 6ft. tall.Here, it should be clear why enumerative inductions are “enumerative”: the goatherd essen-tially counts up the pygmy goats she’s seen and then draws some wider conclusion about allpygmy goats. As the example shows, though, inductive arguments are generally understoodto be defeasible—the goatherd is confident that there are no pygmy goats over 6ft., but therecould be a 7ft.-tall pygmy goat; it just seems pretty unlikely (at least according to her). Andthese arguments are not only defeasible, but they are also quite prone to error. Considera case where the goatherd believes that all pygmy goats are brown (or the vast majorityare), since all the pygmy goats she’s seen are brown. Of course, there could be black pygmy3I should note that sometimes this kind of reasoning which I have called “enumerative induction” is calledinstead “abduction.” This is often done to differentiate the rather hand-wavy “some Fs are Gs, therefore allFs are Gs” kind of argument from more nuanced, and generally more well-respected, inductive argumentsbased on statistics and/or frequencies: “we have observed X% of all known Fs and they are all Gs, so we arewell justified in thinking that all Fs are Gs” (see e.g. Douven 2021). For our purposes, it does not matter ifwe call the inferential move made in step 3 of the method of case studies an (enumerative) induction or anabduction.135goats—and indeed there are—but the goatherd may never have seen one despite the hun-dreds of goats she’s bred: if she started with goats whose gene pool did not include genes forblack hair, then she could very well have simply never seen a black pygmy goat. This kindof stumbling block to enumerative inductions is called selection bias: the sample population(the goatherd’s pygmy goats) looked at is special in some way which biases the conclusionabout the target population (the collection of all pygmy goats). Another way of putting thisis that the sample population just isn’t representative of the target population. This issuewill be especially relevant for us later.For now, however, let’s return to the method of case studies. With this method, the “Fs”are particular religion–science interactions, and “G” is some particular characterization ofthe RSR. Hence, the inductive argument looks like this:3. All (or most of) the religion–science interactions observed so far are G.4. Many religion–science interactions have been observed.5. Therefore, all religion–science interactions are G.In the method of case studies (as previously defined), step 1 of the method is meant to warrantproposition 3, and proposition 4 is implicitly assumed. Together, these then provide theinductive base which is used in step 2 of the method to assert the scholar’s characterizationof the RSR—proposition 5.Of course, as just mentioned above, the particular scope of the conclusion may be constrained—perhaps some scholars only wish to speak about religion–science interactions at particulartimes, or in particular places, while perhaps some are only concerned with particular religionsor particular sciences. But the general form that such arguments take is that of enumerativeinduction: lay out a handful of cases, and generalize. We will explore a variety of critiquesof this kind of argument in §3.2.1.136Finally, I want to be clear that what Brooke and Cantor call the “historical approach,”and what I call the “method of case studies,” is not the only approach/method open tohistorians—either in the sense that it is used only by historians or that it is the only methodused by historians. And again, it is not even the only method that may make use of historicalcase studies. For instance, as we saw in our discussion of the method of conceptual anal-ysis (Chapter 2), one may arrive at definitions of religion/science empirically via historicalinvestigation—as James Frazer (1854–1941) does with religion. But this is not the same asusing a case study in an induction to the characterization of the RSR.Likewise, Dawes makes use of a historical case study—the Galileo Affair—in his Galileo andthe Conflict between Religion and Science (2016), but it is only to illustrate a conclusionthat he has already reached via conceptual analysis. In that sense, the case study is actuallyirrelevant to the characterization of the RSR Dawes provides. This is made clear by thefollowing statement from his Introduction:There is a deep divide between the world of science and that of faith, a fact thatis illustrated by the clash between Galileo and his ecclesiastical opponents. Thatdivide is not bridged by focusing on the doctrines of religion and science andobserving that the pronouncements of religious authorities and scientists some-times agree. ... Nor is the divide bridged by the observation that scientific andreligious communities overlap. Yes, there are, and have always been, scientistswho are themselves religious. But so what? The real divide is to be found on thelevel of epistemic norms: expectations regarding claims to knowledge.” (Dawes2016, 17)For Dawes, the history merely illustrates the epistemic norms typical of religion. Perhapsit was in researching this history that Dawes came to his conceptualization of religiousepistemic norms, but ultimately the historical details of the Galileo Affair—the identities of137the participants, its outcomes, its manner of proceeding—do not matter to Dawes’ argument.That argument proceeds as follows: religion employs epistemic norms X, science employsepistemic norms Y, X and Y are incompatible in many cases, therefore religion and scienceare always in potential conflict. This is straightforwardly conceptual analytic; there is noinduction in this argument, as there are in applications of the method of case studies.Further, as we will consider in the next chapter, there is another, quite distinct historicalmethodology—which I will term “deconstruction,” with historicism being a particular speciesof the genus—that historians, especially in the past thirty or so years, have employed (seee.g. Harrison 2015). Often this method is run together with the method of case studies,assumed to be more or less the same or at the very least to converge to similar conclusions(Lightman 2019). But the method of case studies and the method of deconstruction are infact not only different in execution but furthermore in tension with one another, and—insome rather famous implementations of the latter—even mutually inconsistent. Or so I shallargue in Chapter 4 §3. For now, we will focus our attention solely on the method of casestudies and return to this other historical method later.3.1.1 Some Exemplars Past and PresentThe method of case studies is perhaps the most widely employed method in the religion-and-science literature, both in its public-facing and more scholarly forms. As might be expected,it thus takes on a wide variety of forms. As seen above, Brooke and Cantor identify fivebroad forms of what I call the method of case studies: contextual, functional, linguistic,biographical, and practical. This five-fold typology is rather odd, for the categories it relies oncross-cut each other so often—though its authors are clear that the categories are not meantto be mutually exclusive. Biographical approaches—like Robert Iliffe’s recent investigationof Newton (Iliffe 2017, discussed in more detail below)—for instance, are often contextual,138functional, and linguistic all at the same time: to understand how Newton related religionand science, Iliffe examines his social station and political views, his unique theological views,and the ways in which he mobilized discussions of religion-and-science to confront irreligion.Likewise, contextual approaches, insofar as they are truly contextual, must treat extensivelywith the ways in which theology is used in science and vise versa, as well as with therhetorical aspects of religion–science discussions and the actions of the individuals involved.This “promiscuity” of the categories is due to the fact that Brooke and Cantor’s differentcategories focus on different methodological considerations. The biographical category is ageneral category concerning the scale of historical analysis: individual actors rather thanevents. On the other hand, the contextual “approach” concerns the types of features wetake to be relevant about the general object of analysis: think about social properties ratherthan “merely” intellectual ones. Finally, the functional, linguistic, and practical approachesconcern specific social properties. Thus, as we can see in Figure 3.1, the different approachescan be mutually embedding.Figure 3.1: A re-visualization of Brooke and Cantor’s typology of historical approaches to theRSR (J. H. Brooke and G. N. Cantor 2000), highlighting differences between the approaches.The approaches focus on different methodological considerations: the object of analysis, theproperties to be examined, and particular sub-properties. Items marked with a * are myown, provided for contrast with Brooke and Cantor’s.As an alternative to Brooke and Cantor’s typology, I’ll work with a different one focusedexclusively on the approaches by which scholars using the method of case studies populate139their inductive bases: they may consider a wide variety of religion–science encounters, focuson a particular encounter, or focus on biographical details. This typology is closely relatedto the scale of analysis category in Figure 3.1. The focus of my own division, however, isthe diversity and number of cases brought into the induction: many-cases brings together alarge number of cases from across scales; episode studies focus on particular religion–scienceencounters; biography focuses on individual lives. Like Brooke and Cantor’s divisions, mycategories are not meant to be either exhaustive or mutually exclusive; authors can generatetheir inductive bases using other approaches or even using a combination of these approaches,although mixing them may be rather awkward and artificial. These different approaches,however, are more distinct from one another than those collected together by Brooke andCantor, and will help to illustrate the variety of ways the method of case studies can beimplemented. This division will also help set the stage for a discussion of a contemporarydebate in the historical literature over the proper level of analysis at which the RSR shouldbe investigated.In what follows, I look at these three different forms of the (inductive, descriptive) methodof case studies and outline past and present examples of each.Many-CasesThe two works which set the stage for much contemporary scholarly—and popular—religion-and-science discourse employed the method of case studies in a form which appealed tomany different historical encounters between religion and science. These were the possiblymisleadingly titled History of the Conflict between Religion and Science (1874) and Historyof the Warfare of Science with Theology in Christendom (1896), by the chemist John WilliamDraper and the historian Andrew Dickson White, respectively. These voluminous tomes—Draper’s was over 400 pages in the first printing, while Warfare was almost 1,000—werewidely read by scholars and lay audiences alike. Draper’s work in particular was the product140of a request by Edward Youmans (1821–1887), founder of the magazine Popular Science,to write an entry for the “International Scientific Series,” and ultimately became the best-selling of the entries (Lightman 2019, 4). Together, Draper and White’s books laid thefoundations for what came to be known as the Conflict/Warfare thesis—that religion andscience are fundamentally incompatible—and for years their work served as the basis ofreligion-and-science discourse. Today, histories of and introductions to the discipline ofreligion-and-science still regularly cite Draper and White as the origin of the field, thoughmodern scholars tend to disagree with the Conflict/Warfare thesis they inspired.4Recent scholarship has in fact shown that Draper and White’s characterizations of the RSRwere more nuanced than simple declarations of perennial conflict, as their titles may haveled readers to believe. James Ungureanu, for instance, has shown that the forms of con-flict/warfare proposed by Draper and White were not meant to characterize a universalRSR. Instead, both are reacting against particular forms of Christianity—post-Vatican ICatholicism (which embraced papal infallibility) in the case of Draper and dogmatic the-ology in the case of White. Further, Draper even went so far as to say that Islam wasespecially friendly to science (Draper 1874, Ch. IV), and both authors in fact proposed re-formed versions of Christianity which they saw as compatible with science. Ultimately, then,Ungureanu concludes, Draper and White’s arguments are best understood as arguments notagainst religion but within Christianity (Ungureanu 2019).Regardless, Draper and White employ essentially the same method in making their casesabout the RSR: in true Baconian-scientific fashion, they mined the history of science for par-ticular instances of conflict/warfare between science and religion—familiar cases like Bruno’simmolation (White 1896, Ch. III.II) and Galileo’s trial (Draper 1874, Ch. VI), as well asless classic episodes like the opposition to the use of lightning rods (and the consequent1767 fatal destruction of San Nazaro at Brescia, in Venice (White 1896, Ch. XI.IV)) and the4See e.g. A. E. McGrath 2020, 23. Dixon 2008 is a surprising exception as he does not mention eitherDraper or White.141(supposed) suppression by the Catholic Church of the Florentine Accademia del Cimento(est. 1657), an early scientific society (Draper 1874, Ch. XI). Arranging these cases underheads ranging from “Geography” to “The Antiquity of Man: Egyptology and Assyriology”to “From Diabolism to Hysteria,”5 they then conclude that, on the basis of all these histori-cal cases, “the history of Science is not a mere record of isolated discoveries; it is a narrativeof the conflict of two contending powers, the expansive force of the human intellect on oneside, and the compression arising from traditionary faith and human interests on the other”(Draper 1874, Preface). This is the method of case studies in its “many-cases” form—a widearray of historical religion–science encounters are enumerated, and an induction to the RSRis performed.A more recent example of this version of the method can be found in Ronald Numbers’(1942–2023) recent collection, Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Religion andScience (2010). In this volume, each chapter examines a different “myth” about the historyof religion-and-science, focusing on particular historical episodes/encounters—for example,the medieval Catholic Church’s stance on human dissection (Ch. 5), deism and Newton’sclockwork universe (Ch. 13), and the Huxley–Wilberforce debate of 1860 (Ch. 17).Many of the cases examined in Numbers 2010a in fact appeared in the works of Draper andWhite, where they were used to reach a very different conclusion from that of the contributorsto Galileo Goes to Jail.6 The volume thus follows in the hugely prolific tradition of historical5These are the titles of Chs. 2, 6, and 16 of White 1896.6Other modern responses to Draper and White also show how some of their cases were in fact fabricated(e.g. Peterson 2021). As an example to my knowledge as-yet-unnoticed, in Ch. XI, Draper claims that “theAccademia del Cimento, established at Florence, 1657, held its meetings in the ducal palace. It lasted tenyears, and was then suppressed at the instance of the papal government. ... It numbered many great men,such as [Evangelista] Torricelli and [Benedetto] Castelli, among its members. The condition of admissioninto it was an abjuration of all faith, and a resolution to inquire into the truth” (Draper 1874). While theAccademia del Cimento was indeed founded in 1657 and survived for only ten years, almost everything elseDraper has said appears to be false. Torricelli (1608–1647) and Castelli (1578–1643) simply could not havebeen members of the Accademia: both died before the group was established. The two natural philosopherswere a significant influence on the Accademia, however (Boschiero 2007). But influence is not membership.Unfortunately, Draper’s statement has been widely accepted, and one can find popular sources includingTorricelli among the members of the Accademia. An online exhibition put on by the University of Sydney,for instance, states that “its most distinguished member was Evangelista Torricelli” (University of Sydney142scholarship which reexamines the cases canvased by Draper and White. While many suchstudies are isolated, however, Numbers’ collection brings many reanalyses together to formthe basis for an induction to an explicitly non-Conflict characterization of the RSR, as isclear from the very first sentence of the introduction (after two epigrams from White andDraper): “The greatest myth in the history of science and religion holds that they have beenin a state of constant conflict” (Numbers 2010a, 1).On the contrary, Yves Gingras’ rather polemical Science and Religion: An Impossible Di-alogue (2017) brings together a host of episodes to argue explicitly “against the currenttrend—dominant in history of science since the end of the 1980s—that tends to deny or min-imize the existence of significant conflicts between science and religions” (Gingras 2017, 4),and instead propose that conflict between religion and science is inevitable. He reaches thisconclusion by focusing on the ways in which a particular institution of religion—the CatholicChurch—fundamentally opposed the institution of science by restricting the freedoms of sci-accessed 8 October 2021). Perhaps the persistence of this error explains why Sturdy finds it necessary toexplicitly state that Torricelli was not a member of the Academia del Cimento (Sturdy 2009, 184).Moreover, there was almost certainly no “abjuration of all faith” required for membership. Prince Leopoldode’ Medici (1617–1675), for instance, often thought of as the founder of the society, was made a Cardinalin 1667, and regular member Nicolas Steno (1638–1686) converted from Lutheranism to Catholicism, alsoin 1667, eventually becoming a bishop and contributing—perhaps ironically in light of Draper’s gloss ofthe Accademia—to the censoring of Baruch Spinoza’s (1602–1677) work. The closest I can find to such anabjuration is the determined opposition of the Accademia to the use of speculation, and their dedication tothe process of repeatedly testing proposed ideas. But that is by no means an abjuration of all faith!To be fair, at times Draper and White were also victims of their sources. For instance, in Ch. XI.IV,“Franklin’s Lightning-Rod,” White discusses a case in which a Venetian Catholic church was destroyedby lightning, apparently because churchmen had resisted the installation of a lightning rod, which Whitemaintains was conceived as an tool for thwarting God’s will. The example is supposed to be particularlyinstructive because, as a result of the church’s obstinacy, “no rod having been placed upon [the church], itwas struck by lightning, the powder in the vaults was exploded, one sixth of the entire city destroyed, andover three thousand lives were lost.” White references an “article on Lightning in the Edinburgh Reviewfor October 1844”—notably almost eighty years after the lightning strike in 1767 (though see below). Thearticle is penned by one W. Snow Harris, F.R.S., (originally penned in 1843) who discusses “the Means ofProtecting Buildings and Shipping against the Destructive Effects of Lightning.” The episode of St. Navarois found almost word-for-word in Harris’ piece, and the statement of casualties is italicized: “About threethousand persons perished by this catastrophe” (Harris 1844). Interestingly, however, the official Breccianaccount from 1771 claims that not only did the explosion occur in 1769 (not 1767), but also that only about400 died (with perhaps 800 more injured (Garbelli 1771, Ch. IV)).In the case of Draper, it is harder to say whether the errors (or, less charitably, falsehoods) in the workare due to imperfect sources or his own mistakes/fantasies, for he wrote in a style (somewhat common forthe time) which omitted almost all references.For more on the errors in Draper and White’s seminal works, see Peterson 2021.143entists. Gingras thus draws his cases from the history of the Catholic Church, roughly from1620–1850, most of which deal with the censorship of particular scientific ideas/theories bythe Congregation of the Index. Included in his collection of cases are the famous Galileocase as well as the burning of Giordano Bruno (1548–1600), but also less well-known caseslike the banning of Il Newtonianismo per le dame (1737) (ibid., 106), a popular sciencebook by Francesco Algarotti (1712–1764), and the placement of François-Vincent Raspail’s(1794–1878) materialist work, Nouveau système de chimie organique fondé sur des méthodesnouvelles d’observation (1833), on the Index in 1834. In all of these cases, the censors citeconflict between particular scientific claims/methodologies and accepted Catholic doctrine.By collecting together this track history of censorship of scientific work by the CatholicChurch, Gingras argues that we see a clear history of conflict between religion and science.That conflict is due to “a conflict of authority between institutions with different aims”(ibid., 72). Though Gingras unfortunately does not explicitly specify what the aims of reli-gion are in contrast to those of science, it is apparent that in the cases Gingras examines,members of the Congregation of the Index at least did not share scientists’ aims of freelyinquiring about the world, and instead attempted to defend the authority of their institutionby banning works which seemed to contradict the Church’s teaching. This much, Gingrasargues, we can induct from his case studies.I should note, however, that Gingras nowhere makes an explicit claim about the RSR. Inplaces where it would seem natural for him to draw a general conclusion about the RSR, e.g.at the end of his chapters, he makes no such claim—in fact, his chapters do not end withgeneral conclusions based on the chapters’ contents. This style makes it rather difficult to pindown Gingras’ view of the RSR, and ultimately what he wishes to argue. To make mattersmore complicated, in the second half of the book, it becomes clear that one of Gingras’ aims isto critique not just the view that religion and science are not in conflict, but the scholarshipwhich, in his eyes, attempts to erase the fact that historical actors themselves perceivedconflict between religion and science. Scholars like Ronald Numbers, Gingras argues, try to144do so in order to argue that the RSR is not properly characterized by conflict. In this vein,Gingras claims that “the fact that there is a perception of conflict among many actors sinceat least the beginning of the nineteenth century is therefore indisputable, as the previouschapters have amply shown” (ibid., 132). He then goes on to explain, “In sum, and contraryto the now dominant trend in the historiography of the last twenty years, the study of thehistory of conflict between science and religion should not seek to partake in the debatesthat oppose the different factions in this disputed terrain, but should, more simply, followthe discussions and the actors in order to see who speaks of conflict and in what context”(ibid., 132). Thus, here it almost seems that Gingras argues that scholars of the RSR shouldapproach their subject only from what we might call a second-order perspective. That is,scholars should not try to characterize the RSR itself, but only lay out how historical actorsperceive the RSR and what reasons they may have had for their perception.In that sense, Gingras is careful (to put it positively) to not make any particular claimabout how the RSR should be characterized; he simply, in Gradgrindian fashion, presentsthe historical facts. However, given the very polemical tone of the work, and the constantframing of his work as going against the current of mainstream “ecumenical,” anti-ConflictThesis scholarship, it is clear that Gingras advocates a conflict characterization of the RSR.Although the induction may not be explicit, it is certainly implicit. Indeed, that this isobvious to his public readers is made clear by the blurb on the back of the cover: “Incontrast to the dominant trend among historians of science, Gingras argues that scienceand religion are social institutions that give rise to incompatible ways of knowing, rooted indifferent methodologies and forms of knowledge, and that there never was, and cannot be,a genuine dialogue between them.” I’ll return to Gingras’ arguments below, where we willexamine his innovative call to focus on institutions, rather than individuals, and assess hisuse of case studies in more detail.145Episode StudyWhile Draper, White, and Numbers brought a whole host of encounters together, someworks instead examine a particular encounter in extensive detail, and use that single case asa means of generalizing to a more wide-reaching characterization of the RSR. I’ll call suchapplications of the method of case studies “episode studies.” The Galileo Affair—that setof interactions between Italian natural philosopher Galileo Galilei and the Catholic Churchfrom roughly 1616 to 1632—is perhaps the most famous of the historical religion–scienceencounters which are routinely examined as representative of the RSR as a whole. This casehas occupied a large space in religion-and-science discourse, both scholarly and popular fora long time. Examples include Blackwell 1991, Heilbron 1999, Sobel 1999, and Finocchiaro2019, many of which aim to recast the traditional Conflict narrative of the Affair in morecomplex and typically more ecumenical terms.Another encounter which has more recently become the target of several episodic studieshappened about three centuries after and halfway around the world from the Galileo Affair:the so-called Scopes Monkey Trial. In 1925, the American Civil Liberties Union challengedTennessee’s Butler Act, which prohibited the teaching of human evolution in state-fundedschools, after John Thomas Scopes (1908–1970), a public high school teacher in the smalltown of Dayton, incriminated himself for doing just that. Handled by heavy-hitting lawyers—Clarence Darrow (1857–1938) for the defense and William Jennings Bryan (1860–1925) forthe prosecution—the case was widely publicized: it was the first court case to ever belive-broadcast on radio (Larson 2006) and formed the basis for the much-viewed screenplayInherit the Wind (1955). The decision of the trial—that Scopes was guilty of violatingthe law (though the verdict was later overturned by the Tennessee Supreme Court on atechnicality—is less important than the image of the RSR portrayed by coverage of the case:one of conflict fueled by ignorant religious conservatism.146Edward J. Larson’s Pulitzer Prize-winning Summer of the Gods (2006)7 is one of a handful ofrecent public-facing scholarly works which examine the Scopes Trial and seek to characterizethe RSR by exploring the sociocultural details of the case. Larson sees the Scopes trialas fitting into a long series of conflicts between fundamentalist Christianity and biologicalscience (Larson 2006, 247–248, 267–268). Those conflicts unfold across the US in the contextof legal cases centered on textbooks and public schools. The Scopes Trial, as the first major—and highly publicized—such case thus deserves special attention, for it reveals various facetscommon to other antagonistic encounters between Christian fundamentalism and evolution.In particular, Larson unpacks the economic interests of Dayton, a dying mining town; therural–urban political divide and worries that urban elites were using the law to impose theircultural norms on the countryside; the personal interests of Darrow and Bryan in the case;and the machinations of the media during and after the trial. All these contextual detailsgo to show the complexity beneath the apparent conflict between Christian fundamentalismand biology. But, Larson thinks, that complexity doesn’t defuse the existence of conflict—it is definitely there. What the details reveal are general patterns which can help explainthe shape—and persistence—of the very public, historically persistent religious (or at leastChristian) opposition to evolution in schools. For Larson, the Scopes Trial is simply onevery representative example of the broad tensions between Christian fundamentalism andbiology—tensions which he expects to persist into the future (ibid., 278).87Originally published in 1997, the book was republished in 2006 with a new Afterword in which Larsonreflects on the trajectory of anti-evolutionism in the 80 years since the Scopes Trial.8Most other modern treatments of the Scopes Trial set out to defend creationism by uncovering the poorpress of the trial as a kind of anti-religious conspiracy of the ACLU and secular media—see for instanceJarrett and Yaeger 2023, Bergman 2023, and Perry and Olasky 2005. Perhaps most interesting is Sanchez2023, which is designed for children, and offers a character study of Scopes as a composed voice “who stoodup for his students’ right to learn.” This characterization flies in the face of most scholarly accounts of Scopes,which instead present him as not even sure whether he had taught evolution.147BiographicalA final form of the method of case studies treats with details of particular individuals ratherthan with broader religion–science episodes—this is what Brooke and Cantor call the methodof biography. Biographical case studies may bring together a variety of biographies at vary-ing levels of detail or deal extensively with just one individual. An instance of the formercan be found in sociologist of religion Rodney Stark’s For the Glory of God (2003). WhileStark uses a variety of methods to argue that “religion and science not only were compatible;they were inseparable” and that in particular Christianity (as opposed to Islam or Chineseforms of religion) was essential for the emergence of modern science (Stark 2003, 3), he em-ploys biographical case studies as a substep in his larger argument. He does so by surveying“scientific stars” in the period 1543–1680 (the period often associated with the ScientificRevolution9) for religious identity. This list includes fifty-two individuals (including Galileo,Newton, and Boyle)10 selected because they were “active” and made “significant” contribu-tions to science.11 Although the reader does not get much specific information about theseindividuals, Stark does present two charts showing the scientists’ nationalities, field of study,degree of “personal piety” (devout, conventionally religious, or skeptic), and whether theyhad ecclesiastical careers (ibid., 161–162). The big upshot from the data is that only 3.8%of these “scientific stars” were “skeptics”—the rest were either devout or “conventionally9Though it should be noted that Stark is skeptical of the cogency of a particularly revolutionary “ScientificRevolution.” He takes himself to show “that there was no ‘scientific revolution’ that finally burst throughthe superstitious barriers of faith, but that the flowering of science that took place in the sixteenth centurywas the normal, gradual, and direct outgrowth of Scholasticism and the medieval universities” (Stark 2003,3).10A complete list is found in Stark 2003, 198–199.11As Stark was able to find by searching “books and articles on the history of science” and consulting “anumber of specialized encyclopedias and biographical dictionaries” (Stark 2003, 160–161). Unfortunately,Stark does not explain how he decided if a particular scientist’s contributions were “significant” or whatexactly he means by “active.” Nor is there an explanation or even list of the articles, books, and encyclopediashe consulted—though he does feel the need to “mention the several editions of Isaac Asimov’s BiographicalEncyclopedia of Science and Technology for its completeness and lack of obvious biases” (ibid.), and lampoonsthe Random House Webster’s Dictionary of Scientists (no publication year given) for including James Fixx(1932–1984), an American popularizer of exercise.148religious” Protestants or Catholics.12 Since these scientists were the big movers of the field,Stark explains, “[w]ere there any remaining doubt about it, these data make it entirely clearthat religion played a substantial role in the rise of science” (ibid., 163).Stark’s form of biographical case studies doesn’t deal with the details of his individuals’religiosity, their contributions to science, or their views on the RSR. Instead, by merely ana-lyzing religious self-identification, Stark performs an induction like the following: if so manyimportant scientists could be religious, then there can’t be a fundamental incompatibilitybetween religion and science.13 This form of reasoning might leave much to be desired, sincewe might suspect that the particular details of a past scientist’s religiosity may be relevantto how we understand the RSR.In that vein, most biographical case studies do in fact deal extensively with the detailsof particular individuals. Iliffe’s (supposedly) public-facing14 biography of Newton’s firstroughly fifty years (from his birth in 1642 to roughly 1694), for example, provides a detailedaccount of the natural philosopher’s life and thought (Iliffe 2017). By analyzing a widearray of letters, notes, and oft-ignored works, Iliffe explores how Newton himself relatedreligion and science and how he considered himself a “priest of nature”—a label which infact originated with Boyle.15 Doing so is (in part) meant to complicate the “pervasiveassumptions” both among the public and among academics that “religious belief is by itsvery nature separate from, or even opposed to the scientific method—and that theology is less12Beyond proving the religious roots of modern science, Stark is interested in countering the Merton-Stimson thesis that Puritanism was responsible for the Scientific Revolution (Stark 2003, 160). In particular,what he aims to show is that Catholics played a large role (in fact a numerically equal role to that ofProtestants) in the formation of science. Thus, it isn’t specifically Protestant (or Puritan) work ethic ortheology that spurred the birth of modern science, but something more general to Christianity.13We’ll return to this kind of claim in §2.2.14I say “supposedly” simply because the work is densely detailed in a way that does not clearly to appealto non-scholars (or an in particular non-historians!). However, as mentioned in the Appendix, Iliffe’s workwas reviewed by several popular outlets, for instance the New York Review (Duffy 2018) and The Wall StreetJournal (Davis 2017).15The idea of the “Scientist as Priest” appears first in Boyle’s early “Of the Study of the Booke of Nature,”which he began writing in 1649, though it appeared in print a decade later in Part 1 of his The Usefulnessof Natural Philosophy. The idea was that the “Naturalist” was “bound to returne Thankes & Prayses to hisMaker, not only for himselfe but for the while Creation” (quoted in Hunter 2010, 73–74).149intellectually rigorous than scientific research” (ibid., 12). In particular, what readers find isthat Newton spent much of his time working on theological topics, in particular attemptingto show that the doctrine of the Trinity was a farce, introduced by Athanasius of Alexandria(b. circa 296–298, d. 373) in the fourth century (ibid., Ch. 4). This theological work wascareful and methodical, in many ways parallel in rigour and execution to Newton’s methodsin natural philosophy—though with important differences regarding the forms of evidence hethought acceptable (faith in the case of religion and a kind of proof in natural philosophy).16Further, contrary to popular belief, Newton’s deep engagement with religion came not at theend of his illustrious career as his mental facilities declined, but at its height; and Newtonarguably dedicated the majority of his intellectual efforts to these projects—as evidencedby the fact that he wrote far more on biblical chronology and scriptural interpretation thanon optics and mechanics.17 As Iliffe reads him, Newton himself in fact viewed his work onreligious topics as far more important than his work in natural philosophy. The latter wasin fact more of a distraction; “Newton’s work on the Principia interrupted what he believedwas the most significant form of study that a learned Christian could undertake,” a viewwhich led Newton to complain to his colleagues of being “deprived of freedom to pursue his‘other studies’ by public disputes over his scientific work”—those other studies “referring asmuch to his historical and apocalyptic researches as to his chemical endeavors” (Iliffe 2017,219; see also 128–131).16Iliffe is clear that his point is not that Newton thought religion and science used the same methods,and plainly states that “the recent publication of [Newton’s] religious, historical, and chronological papershas provided no support for the notion that there is some simple conceptual or methodological coherence tohis work. This is not entirely surprising. Trained in the liberal arts, European scholars were conditioned tothink, write, and argue in modes that were appropriate to distinct disciplines. Indeed, a key characteristicof Newton’s own brilliance was his capacity to study at a level of exceptional technical competence in a widerange of intellectual fields. Moreover, in many places, he himself stipulated that separate forms of enquiry,argument, and demonstration were appropriate for specific subjects. In one passage, he maintained that theforce of the demonstrations in his theological writings rested on faith and that men should consider howopposed to God’s designs it was that religious truths should be as obvious as mathematical proofs” (Iliffe2017, 14).17Together, the Opticks (1718) and Principia (1726) comprise 204,381 words, as opposed to the 292,953words spread across Newton’s Treatise on Revelation (late 1680s), Chronology of Ancient Kingdoms (1728),and Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733). Word counts aretaken from the Newton Project and refer to English-language versions of the texts.150Like Iliffe’s account of Newton, James A. Connor’s very readable Kepler’s Witch (2004)traces how Johannes Kepler’s religious life greatly impacted his scientific work by payingattention to the intimate details of Kepler’s life beyond his astronomical work. In particu-lar, Connor focuses on Kepler’s central role in defending his mother from an accusation ofwitchcraft. By tracing Kepler’s professional and private life around Europe, partly throughunpacking Kepler’s journal entries and letters to friends, Connor seeks to reveal how Keplermanaged to integrate his religion with his science, finding “God in the hidden mathematicalharmonies of the universe in as deep a way as he found God in the revelations of Scripture”(Connor 2004, 3). Thus Kepler’s life is meant to stand in contrast to the culturally domi-nant Conflict narrative—which we might expect to capture Kepler’s experience of not onlybeing excommunicated from the Lutheran faith but also being the losing defendant in anInquisitorial case accusing his mother of witchcraft—and in particular to contrast with thepopular picture of Galileo, the “guy who fought with the pope” (ibid., 4).Having shown a variety of ways the method of case studies may be carried out, I’ll now turnto a critique of the method in general as used to provide a descriptive characterization ofthe RSR.3.2 A Critique of Case StudiesWhile the method of case studies is widely used in the religion-and-science literature, ageneral treatment of the method’s limits and virtues in regards to providing a descriptivecharacterization of the RSR has not—as far as I am aware—been offered. In this section,I’ll explore a number of issues the method faces as currently practiced and consider howemployers of the method of case studies can avoid them. Some of the issues—for example151the question of the proper level of analysis (§2.3)—are discussed to some extent within thehistorical literature itself. Others are classic issues with enumerative induction and theapplication of history to the present (§2.1 and §2.2) which are not discussed in the religion-and-science literature but are dealt with, for example, in history and philosophy of science.The section will conclude by revisiting the question of whose religion and whose scienceare featured in our case studies, and I identify several new areas into which case studiesscholarship can be expanded.3.2.1 Some Classic Problems with Enumerative InductionRecall that the method of case studies employs enumerative induction. That is, it beginsby establishing a body, or basis, of case studies of religion–science interaction which arebest characterized in some particular way, and then generalizes beyond that basis to all (orat least most) cases of religion–science interaction. Trivially, this type of argument is notlogically valid;18 just because some past interactions are best characterized in some way doesnot mean that all interactions are best characterized as such. Practitioners of the method ofcase studies certainly recognize this, and claims about the RSR made using the method arenot usually meant to be logically valid. Instead, the claims are supposed to entail a kind ofbest-generalization of the religion–science relationship, even when there may be particularcases which don’t fit the model. That said, there are obviously better and worse ways of doingan enumerative induction to arrive at a “best-generalization.” In this subsection, I’ll considera major stumbling block to carrying out enumerative inductions: ensuring a representativesample population.Since inductions extrapolate from a sample (the inductive basis) of a given population (the“target population”) to the population as a whole, the sample ought to be a good model of18In the technical sense that philosophers use this term. In philosophy, an argument is (logically) validjust in case, if its premises are true, its conclusion must be true.152the target population—at least if the induction is a good one. That is, properties/traits (rel-evant to the phenomena being studied) found in the target population should be adequatelyrepresented in the sample. In the social sciences, this often means that the frequencies ofrelevant traits within the target population should be reproduced/reflected in the sample.For instance, if a sociologist is interested in the “religiosity” of the American public (the tar-get population), measured, say, by attendance at religious services, then they should ensurethat their sample population has the same relative proportion of males to females as in theAmerican public (given that gender is already known to be relevant to religious activity; seee.g. Pew Research Center 2016).Translated to the context of case studies approaches to the RSR, the inductive basis/samplepopulation is the “historical episodes of religion–science interaction” enumerated in step 1 ofthe method, and the target population about which scholars wish to speak/generalize is thewhole body of historical episodes of religion–science interaction. If the induction in step 2 isto be a good one, then the collection of episodes enumerated in step 1 ought to reflect themajor, significant features of the total collection of all such episodes. In practice, however,scholars employing the method of case studies do not show, or even attempt to show, thattheir cases are representative of religion–science interactions in general.There are really two issues at play here. First, one worry is that not explaining how thesample of cases examined are representative of the target population as a whole may obfuscatethe uniqueness of the cases examined. That is, readers may suspect the authors of cherry-picking their cases, thus essentially simply assuming their conclusion at the outset ratherthan showing it via induction. On the other hand, we might worry that if the inductive basisis not representative of the target population, then the cases enumerated may not actuallybe relevant to the conclusion—perhaps they are only relevant to a very special subclass ofreligion–science interactions and not to religion–science interactions writ large. I’ll discussthis second worry in more detail in §2.3 and §2.4, which concern the proper level/unit of153analysis (event or institution or biography) and what forms of religion/science are featuredin the case studies. For now, I’ll just point out that although scholars, regardless of theconclusions they ultimately reach, tend to make claims about all religion–science interactions,their case studies are overwhelmingly drawn from interactions in the European context. Ifscholars want to make global claims about the RSR, then their inductive bases should includecases from around the globe, and not just as token references.In any case, I’ll focus here on the issue of cherry-picking. How can scholars avoid it? One wayis rather trivial: simply include the entire population of religion–science interactions. In somesense, this seems to be what Draper and White attempted to do in their extensive histories.But of course, determining what the entire population of religion–science interactions is is avery difficult, perhaps impossible, task—to say nothing of exhaustively examining each suchinteraction! One immediate issue (which we will consider in more detail in §2.1.3) concernswhat should be included in the target population: should we, like White, include particulartheories alongside theorists, books, court cases, and explosions (see fn. 6)?A way to avoid this worry is to narrow the scope of the target population, and thus ofthe inductive generalization the scholar wishes to make. Stark 2003 provides an interestingattempt at doing this by confining his analysis to “scientific stars” of the period 1543–1680.This provides a convenient set of boundaries within which to count up the total populationof relevant religion–science interactions: just look for the “scientific stars” from 1543–1680.The major problem with Stark’s argument is that although he has narrowed the scope of hisanalysis in order to provide a manageable target population, he does not similarly narrowthe scope of his conclusion. Instead, he still tries to claim that his analysis shows thatreligion (in particular Christianity) was a necessary condition for the emergence of science.Ideally, however, scholars should narrow the scope of their conclusion to match the scope ofthe populations they use.154Nonetheless, scholars would be well served in following Stark’s example of providing a cleardelineation of the target population. Such a delineation may narrow the target populationenough so that an exhaustive examination of every relevant religion–science interaction canactually be carried out. Of course, if scholars want to talk of a large range of cases, beyondjust the religiosity of scientists in a very confined time period, then taking the entire targetpopulation as the inductive basis will likely be impossible.But there is another, less trivial way in which representative samples can be generated:simply sample a large enough proportion of the target population. If we know the roughsize of the target population, then some simple statistics can tell us roughly how large oursample must be in order to be representative of the target population.19 The trick, then,is getting an estimate of the size of the population of religion–science interactions. Doingso, again, may seem like an insurmountable challenge. But limiting ourselves to particularkinds of interactions can make the difficulty more manageable. For example, as a kindof twist on Stark’s focus on scientists, we might use written works as a proxy for trackingreligion–science interactions and use text-mining methods to estimate the number of relevantsuch works. Jon Roberts has done something like this, using searches on a search on the19Although there exist a variety of ways for estimating how large a sample population should be (i.e. theideal sample size), a standard way involves calculating the following:ns =z2×p(1−p)e21 + z2×p(1−p)Ne2(3.1)where z is the z-value pulled from a z-score table; p is the standard deviation, or expected variance of eachmember of the population from the mean; e is the preferred margin of error; and N is the total populationsize. Importantly, this formula assumes that the sample population is selected randomly. The z-value ischosen based our preferred level of confidence in how accurate our conclusion will be; the standard for mostinvestigations is at least 95% (resulting in a z-score of 1.96), which seems fitting for running inductions overreligion–science interactions. Given that we do not know at the outset how our data will vary, we can takep to be 50%. It is also standard to accept a margin of error of 5%, which seems more than enough for ourpurposes. Using these values, we can then estimate our preferred sample size using the following:ns =3841 + 0.960.0025N. (3.2)Interestingly, as N gets larger and larger, ns approaches 384. What this means is that even if our targetpopulation is immense, randomly sampling “just” 384 cases will still give us a pretty good idea of thepopulation’s traits.155Online Catalogue for the Library of Congress, finding that there were a total of about 900books featuring the (English) expression “science and religion” from 1810–1995 (Roberts2011, 258–260). Given this estimate, a representative sample20 would comprise around 270works—not a small amount by any means, but perhaps manageable in a study the size ofDraper and White’s!21That said, size isn’t the only thing that matters, for one can clearly still have a biasedsample if specific examples are chosen even if, as in the case just outline, hundreds of suchcases are sampled. Importantly, the statistical conclusion that a sample of size X will berepresentative of a population of size Y only works with the additional assumption that thesample is chosen randomly—that is, each member of the target population is equally likelyto be included in the sample. To the best of my knowledge, however, no scholars choosetheir case studies randomly! But doing so would result in a far more representative inductivebasis for the kinds of inductions scholars wish to draw. And this holds even if the targetpopulation is so large that having a statistically representative sample is impracticable—selecting cases randomly can still help ameliorate some of the fears over cherry-picking casesand prejudicing the conclusion.Choosing cases randomly will look rather different for scholars engaged in more focusedepisode studies and biographies rather than many-cases versions of the method of case stud-ies. For these more targeted versions of the method, whose intention is for their work to fitinto a larger body of cases, the episode or figure chosen to study in detail would be chosen atrandom from the list of relevant cases. On the other hand, many-cases forms of case studieswork would simply feature a randomly selected collection of cases, preferably chosen beforedoing any significant analysis of any particular case.Ultimately, given the real constraints we face in processing the sheer number of religion–20With a 5% margin of error and a confidence level of 95%.21Gingras also engages in a similar quantitative investigation, using Google Books Ngram Viewer datafrom 1869–2005 (Gingras 2017, 133–141).156science interactions, ensuring truly representative inductive bases in case studies approachesto the RSR is likely impossible. However, narrowing the scope of the conclusion from ageneral characterization of the RSR to a more circumscribed characterization closely relatedto the cases studied, and randomly selecting one’s cases (from a relevant collection) can helpensure the inductive bases are at least reasonably representative—or doing so will at leastpartially ameliorate concerns about biased sampling.In many cases, public-facing scholars wish to provide broad characterizations of the RSR;they want to defuse social tensions due to what they consider misundertandings of the RSRor rally people to action by knocking them out of complacent misconceptions of the RSR.And for those kinds of socially oriented goals, gross generalizations about “The” RSR arepowerful. But from the scholar’s point of view, these global characterizations are simplynot warranted by the highly selective inductive bases often found in the extant literature. Ifpublic-facing scholars do wish to continue providing broad characterizations of the RSR, thenthey need to take steps to ensure that their bodies of case studies are in fact representativeof all religion–science interactions. As I have argued, doing so is difficult, but if the casesfeatured/studied are taken from a random sample then scholars are at least more likely todeal with a more representative population and avoid generalizing from a biased sample.Forgoing that difficulty, I have argued that scholars should at least be more clear about thelimited scope of the conclusions their inductions warrant.3.2.2 Is the Past Relevant?Works employing the method of case studies fundamentally assume that the historical casesdiscussed are in fact relevant to contemporary relations between religion and science. Afterall, no induction from historical cases to a characterization of an RSR relevant today couldbe possible without such an assumption. But recently, some scholars have criticized this as-157sumption. Joshua Reeves, for instance, expresses skepticism about the denial of the ConflictThesis which is common among case studies approaches: “Even if historians could show thatscience and religion have always been mutually supporting, it does not mean that presentday sciences and different religious traditions are not currently in conflict on some key areas”(J. A. Reeves 2023, 93). Generalizing, scholars employing the method of case studies havenot been clear in justifying their assumption that past episodes of religion–science interac-tion are relevant to characterizations of the RSR today. In this subsection, I will considertwo lines of argument challenging the relevancy of the past to the present and show that,while these objections are forceful and in need of direct engagement, they can be defused bycareful attention to the aims and scope of case studies approaches to the RSR.I’ll start with Reeves’ objection: even if the RSR in the past was one way, that does notmean it is so in the present. This seems almost trivially true. After all, contemporaryscience is quite different from science even just a hundred years ago, and is certainly fardifferent from the science featured in many of the early modern case studies appealed to bythe authors above. Likewise with religious traditions: not only have institutional traditionslike the Catholic and Anglican churches changed drastically over time, but less structuredtraditions—like Buddhism—have also undergone immense changes.22Beyond changes in the beliefs accepted as normal within particular religious traditions, therehave also been other changes which make the religious landscape of the twenty-first centuryquite different from that of the period from which scholars draw many of their case studies,roughly 1600–1900. For instance, religion was not understood in the individualistic, volun-tary, and inward-directed way in which most religious folk today think of it (see e.g. Noll1995 and Harrison 2006).23 It might also be pointed out that the place of religion and science22In the case of Buddhism, for instance, many of its “supernatural” elements—like belief in the Buddha’sability to fly and breathe fire—have been shed. Likewise, at least in some strands, reading Buddhist textsand meditating have been “democratized” and are now seen as a part of everyday Buddhist practice ratherthan, as in “classical” Buddhism, activities only performed by trained monks. For details on this history ofreligious change, and its deep ties to encounters with Western science, see Lopez 2008 and Lopez 2012.23John Evans even argues that there has been radical change in Americans’ understanding of religion in158in society have undergone important shifts which are deeply relevant to how they have beenand currently are related. Only in the mid-1800s, for example, was science professionalized(Turner 1978), and in many cases around the world, religion was seen as a part of generalculture, not something that could be individuated and “related” to something like science.24Further, many contemporary religious movements—like Scientology, Unificationism, and Ko-fuku no kagaku—simply did not exist prior to 1900.Given all these changes, it would in fact be surprising if relations between religion andscience have stayed the same. To repeat Reeves’ point, “even if historians could show thatscience and religion have always been mutually supporting, it does not mean that presentday sciences and different religious traditions are not currently in conflict on some key areas”(J. A. Reeves 2023, 93).A rather different kind of critique of the relevancy of historical case studies can be extractedfrom an observation made by Dawes in a rather different context, not about historical figuresbut contemporary ones. In his Galileo and the Conflict between Religion and Science (2016),Dawes argues that the epistemic norms of scriptural-based religions may differ from those ofscience. Near the start of this work, he writes:Take, for instance, a devout Christian lay preacher who is also a scientist. Therecould be a real conflict between the epistemic norms governing such a person’sscientific work and those governing her preparation of a sermon. But the indi-vidual may never notice the difference, since the two activities are exercised ondifferent occasions and in very different contexts. From that person’s point ofview, the two activities may seem quite compatible. We can see, once again, whythe observation that individual scientists are also believers is of little significance.It says nothing about the epistemic norms governing religious and scientific com-even just the past fifty years (J. H. Evans 2018, 63).24This “form” of religion is sometimes called “diffused religion.”159munities or about the modes of thought that characterise each set of practices.(Dawes 2016, 17)This observation can be generalized into a worry specifically about the biographical formsof the method of case studies. For if individuals may be wrong about the RSR, why shouldwe think they can provide evidence for any particular characterization of it? Put rathercrassly, why should we care about what past folks thought/did—they could be wrong! Evenif Newton was able to combine deep religiosity with scientific practice (see e.g. Iliffe 2017),perhaps he was simply misled; perhaps he just did not really understand religion and science,and so was mistaken. If that’s the case, then, the argument goes, we can’t use Newton toillustrate how religion and science are related. Using Newton and other historical figuresin that way would be like using past anthropologists to argue that anthropology today is aracist discipline; even if the majority of anthropologists from 1600–1900 were racist (in thesense that they believed in a value-ranking of racial groups based largely on surface-levelbiological traits), it would be illicit to use that fact to claim that anthropologists today areracist.The central objection in both Reeves’ and Dawes’ cases is that an inductive basis formed ofhistorical case studies does not warrant claims about the modern RSR. This may, as withReeves, be because the religious traditions and sciences examined in the past are differentfrom those today, and so conclusions about interactions in the past may not be relevantto present-day interactions. Or, as with Dawes, it could be because past figures may havesimply misunderstood the RSR, and so the way they viewed the RSR cannot be taken safelyas a sign of the way the RSR really is today.How should the advocate of the method of case studies respond?I am not quite sure if there is a sure way to defeat these objections entirely, but let mepropose some ways we might deflate their bite. First, as for Reevesian change arguments,160we might wonder how drastic the changes really have been, and if the changes themselvesare actually relevant to changes in the RSR. It may be, for instance, that some beliefs whichwere once central to a particular religious tradition have since been abandoned in the periodbetween the case studies and today. But that need not mean that there is not still somecentral core of beliefs which have remained. And if it could be shown that those beliefs arein fact still relevant to believers today, and that they played a significant role in the casestudies, then it would be relevant to use such case studies in the inductive basis. In fact, IanBarbour, in response to something like this critique from—perhaps ironically—the historiansCantor and Kenny, responds in this way: “Is it really the case that in Western history sinceGalileo (the topic of their writing and mine) neither science nor religion possesses ‘clearhistorical continuity’?” (I. Barbour 2002, 347) Something similar could be said to objectionsrelated to the changed social place of religion/science or to generalizations to new religiousmovements; as long as it can be shown that the significant elements of religion/science inthe historical case studies are still relevant to religion/science today, then the induction iswarranted. What employers of the method of case studies must do, however, is make clearhow their cases are indeed relevant to the present; the critics are right that this relevancy istoo often assumed and unargued.What of the Dawesian point about the fallibility of past actors? This objection is moredifficult to meet. It is surely true that historical actors may have been wrong about theRSR—there is no reason to assume they had a better grasp of the relation than modernscientists do. But we should note that not all forms of the method of case studies rely soheavily on the views of particular individuals. Some, of course, do—biography in particularoften relies explicitly on the view of individuals. One may also find quote-mining kinds ofarguments which rely essentially on the authority of the scientists quoted—e.g. in argumentswhich cite Einstein, Heisenberg, and other famous physicists. Since these forms of the methodof case studies take the beliefs of historical actors as normative, they are vulnerable to Dawes’objection: unless it is independently shown that these actors were correct about the RSR,161there is no reason to think they got it right—and if we did have independent arguments thatthey were right, then the case studies would be superfluous.But importantly, not all forms of case studies rely so heavily on the claims of particularhistorical actors. Further, not all forms of biography take the beliefs of the scientists studiedas normative. Instead, biography may focus on the lives of the scientists, and take theirlives—the fact that they could integrate religion and science or that they felt religion andscience to be in tension—as revealing of broader social structures which shape the RSR.Such forms of the method of case studies are immune to Dawes’ objection; it doesn’t matterif the actors were wrong.So neither the Reevesian nor Dawesian worries about the relevancy of the past need to deeplytrouble all practioners of the method of case studies. The past is relevant to the present—though the literature would be better if the particular way and the particular aspects of thepast which are relevant were more clearly specified.3.2.3 The Proper Level of AnalysisI now want to turn to a question which, though not so much an issue/problem with themethod of case studies in general, has been used as a way of critiquing particular ways ofperforming that method. The question is: is there a particular level of analysis which isbound to be more fruitful than others?At the start of his Science and Religion, Gingras provides a valuable insight into the kinds ofarguments scholars—often using the method of case studies—have used. In particular, Gin-gras highlights what he terms the “scale (or sometimes level) of analysis”25 at which authorslike Brooke, Numbers, and Lindberg have operated: the scale of the individual (Gingras2017, 8–9). Scholars working at the scale of the individual focus on the beliefs and actions of25As Gingras uses these terms—scale and level—interchangeably, so will I.162particular historical actors. This is contrasted with the scale at which Gingras operates: thescale of the institution. Analysis at this scale instead focuses on how institutional policies—formal and informal—shape the kinds of beliefs, actions, and commitments historical actorsmay have, thereby constraining the ways religion and science (or particular forms of them)can interact. According to Gingras, authors working at the scale of the individual miss vitalaspects of the RSR which can only be seen at the institutional level, which he deems theproper, or most informative, scale of analysis.Interestingly, the authors Gingras criticizes all argue for more-or-less ecumenical views of theRSR (though Numbers is clear that sometimes there really is conflict; see e.g. Numbers 2019,185), and Gingras argues that this is because they focus on the individual level. If thesescholars had instead considered the institutional level, then they would, like Gingras, see thatthere is real conflict between religion and science (ibid., 132). This association between levelof analysis and characterization of the RSR, however, is by no means necessary; one couldsurely have an individual-level analysis which leads to a more negative view of the RSR.And indeed some scholars have arrived at far more ecumenical conclusions about the RSRfrom institution-level analyses than Gingras has. For example, John Heilbron has pointedout that “[t]he Roman Catholic Church gave more financial and social support to the studyof astronomy for over six centuries, from the recovery of ancient learning during the lateMiddle Ages into the Enlightenment, than any other, and, probably, all other, institutions.”(Heilbron 1999, 3) And, as Gingras points out, scholars like Pierre Duhem have arguedthat institutional policies like the Catholic Church’s Condemnation of 1277, which forbidthe endorsement of a number of Aristotelian natural philosophical doctrines, have in factnurtured scientific achievements (Gingras 2017, 9). So while Gingras might be right inarguing that these other institution-level analyses are unconvincing, that only goes to showthat the scale of analysis used by a scholar does not fully determine the characterization ofthe RSR at which they arrive.163Gingras unfortunately does not explain exactly what is meant by a “scale of analysis” or whatthe exact difference is between the individual and institutional levels. As I’ve glossed it above,I think the intuitive idea is that a scale/level identifies the type of entities which form theunit of analysis for the scholar (akin to the “scale of analysis” I mentioned in §1.1)—thus atthe individual scale, one focuses on individuals and their beliefs; at the institutional level, onefocuses on institutions and their policies. Gingras’ intended meaning, however, becomes morecomplicated when we consider Gingras’ actual analysis. In some of his examples, the CatholicChurch operates as a monolithic force which interferes with the publication or translation ofbooks—and thereby ideas—thus stifling international scientific communications. Thus, theinstitution of the Catholic Church blocks the functioning of the institution of Science. Atother times, however, the institutional focus is unbalanced: the Catholic Church is presentedas a singular entity constraining the development of science—which itself is represented bya particular individual. Such is the case with Galileo. But in still other cases, even theinstitutional status of the Catholic Church seems to get lost. This is evident in Gingras’discussion of Buffon’s Natural History (1749). After receiving a letter from the Trustees ofthe Faculty of Theology of Paris warning him of the dangerous ideas contained in the book,Buffon was compelled to recast his claims about the creation of the planets from parts ofthe sun as (mere) hypotheses. Yet here the Trustees, though not named, are presented assomehow not quite part of the institution of the Catholic Church; Gingras explains: “Thetheologians had to find a way to accommodate the conservatives who were lobbying to putthe book on the Index and to work out a solution acceptable to the Court, the book havingbeen printed at the expense of the King [of France] and become a popular bestseller” (ibid.,107–108). Here, then, it seems that the role the institution of the Catholic Church plays is inproviding an explanation for the decisions made by individuals—affiliation with the CatholicChurch constrained the Trustees of the Faculty of Theology of Paris to censor Buffon. Butin this case, the Church qua institution is not the direct player in the drama.What makes all of these diverse cases examples of the institution-level of analysis? In some164cases, it seems that the “scale of analysis” specifies where one locates the explanation forthe beliefs and actions of individual historical actors. But this makes understanding whatis meant by “work at the scale of the individual” a bit murky: is the idea that such workexplains individual actions by nothing more than individual fancy?Perhaps the issue can be cleared up by considering Gingras’ argument for why scholars shouldwork at the level of institutions rather than individuals. The reason lies in a distinctionbetween what philosophers of science call the context of discovery—which Gingras prefersto term the “context of pursuit of research” (ibid, 73)—and the context of justification.The former refers to the context in which an individual scientist forms a belief about somenatural phenomenon, the latter to the context in which that scientist defends their belief ininteractions with the broader scientific community. The background beliefs of an individualmay play an important role in the context of discovery, but they (supposedly) have muchless of a place in the context of justification. Instead, Gingras points out, in the contextof justification, “it is indeed institutions that set the rules of the game, and that establishthe legitimacy of the arguments acceptable to the scientific community at any given time”(ibid., 7). Again, as he puts it, “individual religious beliefs do not constitute an institutionalcriterion of validity, even though they can obviously offer powerful motivation for somescholars” (ibid.). Thus, different scales of analysis highlight different aspects of scientificactivity: at the level of the individual, we learn about the context of discovery; at the levelof institutions, we learn about the context of justification.Is there a preferable level of analysis? That is, is one scale more informative about the RSRthan the other?26 In the context of the method of case studies, this question amounts towhether it would be best to draw cases from the context of discovery or from the contextof justification. This distinction cross-cuts the three broad types of case studies discussed26We might also ask if the two scales Gingras identifies—individual and institutional—are the only relevantscales. Given the correlation between these scales and the contexts of discovery and justification, we mightbe tempted to say that there are no other relevant scales. But I think this is an open question.165above; the question of the proper level of analysis can be however the inductive basis isformed. Consider, for instance, episode studies of the Galileo Affair. Gingras argues thatinstitutions are the proper level of analysis, and thus draws his examples from contexts ofjustification. But other studies, like that by Blackwell 1991, focus on individuals: what mat-ters in understanding the religion–science dynamics of the Galileo Affair are the preferences,beliefs, and actions of individuals in the context of discovery. Hence Blackwell’s analysisrelies on detailed study of particular documents—the different copies of Galileo’s 1616 letterfrom Cardinal Bellarmine (1542–1621) found among Galileo’s belongings and in the Vaticanvaults, the 1613 letter from Benedetto Castelli (1578–1643) about a breakfast conversationwith the Grand Duchess Christina (1565–1637) and Galileo’s 1615 response—and what theyshow about how individual actors grappled with understanding the RSR (Blackwell 1991).Is one way of studying the RSR better than the other?Some scholars certainly believe so. Georg Cantor and Chris Kenny, for example, are en-thusiastic advocates of biographical, individual-level studies. In the conclusion to a piececritiquing what they see as anachronistic assumptions about “the” RSR rampant in the lit-erature, Cantor and Kenny suggest “that the individual human life—i.e., biography—canprovide a major locus for studying science–religion interactions” far better than other meth-ods (G. Cantor and Kenny 2001, 779). Gingras likewise has a particularly strong view of thescale at which the RSR ought to be analyzed, completely opposite of Cantor and Kenny, asis obvious in this polemical passage:With the return of an ecumenical discourse on the relationship between scienceand religion since the 1980s, innumerable articles have been written by historiansof science that insist on the deep religious beliefs of the great scientists (Kepler,Newton, Faraday, Maxwell, Einstein, etc.), as if this somehow proved that theidea of conflict between science and religion was only a myth forged by “posi-tivists” during the last quarter of the nineteenth century. There is here, however,166a serious methodological confusion, because most of these studies are biograph-ical whereas the question of the conflict between science and religion is aboveall institutional. It is based on a conflict of authority between institutions withdifferent aims and not on the psychology of individuals and the reasons that mo-tivate them to undertake a scientific career and to reconcile—or not—their faithand their discoveries. (Gingras 2017, 72)These are strong words, on all sides. But what Cantor, Kenny, and Gingras all fail to see isthat the RSR is something which occurs at both scales: individual and institutional. Yes,there are religious institutions and scientific institutions, and they interact in particular ways.But there are also religious individuals and scientists, and they too interact in particularways.27 Further, there can be crossing between these different scales/levels—the personalbeliefs of individuals may significantly shape or be shaped by particular institutional policies.And besides, the context of discovery and the context of justification are both equally partsof science. Thus, when scholars talk of “the RSR,” they may legitimately talk of any ofthese levels or even of a mixing of the scales. In that sense, we might even say that the RSRtranscends the scales.Gingras might be right that the particular cases he considers shows that there is conflictbetween religion and science qua institutions. But, just as he claims that “to show that thepersonal beliefs or religious motivations of a given researcher positively influenced his or herresearch may be interesting from a biographical point of view, but it fails to enlighten usabout the way in which religious institutions have responded to a given scientific discovery ortheory” (ibid., 7), so too does Gingras’ institution-scale analysis fail to enlighten us about theRSR at the scale of the individual! It is undoubtedly the case that institution-level conflictcan have implications for individual-level experiences of the RSR. But the relation is two-way.Individual-level experiences can also shape the institution-level RSR; the particular contexts27And of course the same institution/individual could itself be both religious and scientific!167of discovery can impact the context of justification—as Gingras shows, individuals like PopeJohn Paul II (1920–2005) were able to change the Catholic Church’s policies concerningscience so as to rehabilitate Galileo. Even if Gingras sees this as superficial because posthoc, it is still an institutional change due to a collection of individual views of the RSR.What all this goes to show is that it is unlikely that analysis at any particular level willoffer the “best” characterization of the RSR in some inquiry-independent sense. Focusingon different scales will provide insight into different facets of the RSR. But since the RSRexists at and across all scales, no particular scale can fully inform us of the RSR; science isnot limited to the context of discovery or the context of justification. And what particularscholars and their readers—public and not—find most relevant will depend on their owninterests in the RSR. Thus, while Gingras is right to note a relative paucity of institutional-level analyses of the RSR, it would be wrong to think that only institutional-level analysesare useful or insightful in studying the RSR. Scholars can legitimately draw their cases fromacross the different scales of analysis.3.2.4 Whose Science? Whose Religion?In their chapter, “Whose Science, Whose Religion,” Brooke and Cantor argue that “theperceived relation between science and religion depends on how both of these terms aredefined, when and by whom” (J. H. Brooke and G. N. Cantor 2000, 45). Of course, Brookeand Cantor are not the only scholars who recognizes the way in which characterizations of theRSR depend on how religion and science are understood (see e.g. Livingstone 2011 for a verysimilarly titled chapter). There is a sense, in fact, in which this point is rather trivial: anyrelationship’s characterization is going to be constrained by how the relata are understood!The point, however, is even more pointed in reflecting on the method of case studies, forscholars must be careful in ensuring that the understandings of religion/science used to select168their cases are aligned with the understanding of religion/science which features in their moregeneral claims about the RSR. And in many cases, I think that this alignment is missing inthe extant public-facing scholarly literature. For in those cases, the target understanding isthe public understanding of religion/science, yet the cases generated focus almost exclusivelyon more scholarly forms of religion/science.This is evident in how Brooke and Cantor approach the questions of whose science andwhose religion scholars are analyzing. On the side of science, they suggest that “historian[s]must also be prepared to depart from currently-accepted notions of science and engagethose sciences and theories that do not feature in the modern pantheon, such as alchemy,scriptural geology, phlogistic chemistry and phrenology” (J. Brooke and G. Cantor 2000, 62).Yet clearly these kinds of sciences are not going to be relevant to most modern conversationsabout the RSR! On the other hand, when it comes to religion, Brooke and Cantor seemto offer better advice: religion plays out at different levels—the existential, intellectual,institutional, and ethical (borrowed from Eric Sharpe)—and historians should pay attentionto all these levels, and their differences. Clearly this would be relevant to those interested inthe RSR! But why not do the same with the sciences? Why not unpack the different levelsat which science is manifested?28Mikael Stenmark suggests that we do that unpacking—that is the whole point of his multi-dimensional approach to the RSR (Stenmark 2004). But Stenmark, like Brooke and Cantor,neglects to consider huge—and hugely important—swathes of scientific activity and thepopulation of scientists. Thus, in this subsection, I will explore several areas which thepublic-facing case studies literature generally ignores, but which would greatly enrich thatbody of scholarship—not only from a purely scholarly perspective, but also the perspectiveof those publics who are the intended audiences of the literature. In particular, I recommend28Brooke and Cantor’s focus on these esoteric forms of science becomes even more puzzling when onerealizes that the chapter (“Whose Science, Whose Religion) opens with the motivating question: “Whatshould we include in our undergraduate courses on the history of science and religion?” (J. H. Brooke andG. N. Cantor 2000, 44)169that scholars explore encounters involving non-elite scientists as well as scientific disciplinesbeyond theoretical biology and physics (including fields like chemistry, environmental science,and applied/industrial sciences). I will also consider whether public-facing scholars are calledupon to broaden the type of science examined to include non-Western forms, and will,perhaps surprisingly, suggest that, at least given current public conceptions and perceptionsof science, they are not.Non-ElitesFor now, though, let me turn to my first recommendation from above, namely that scholarsusing the method of case studies should pay more attention to non-elite scientists and reli-gious folk, and the religion–science encounters in which such individuals participate. Thisis a very different kind of diversity gap from that just discussed; the focus is not on thereligions or sciences as disciplines or bodies of knowledge, but instead on the practitioners.The absence of non-elites is particularly pronounced in the biographical literature, which fo-cuses almost entirely on individuals like Galileo, Newton, and Einstein. Draper and White’smore wide-ranging accounts likewise emphasize high-profile theologians like St. Augustine(354–430) and Cotton Mather (1663–1728). Stark’s broader analysis, too, explicitly focuseson “scientific stars,” which makes one wonder about what scientists are left out (Stark 2003,161).Neglecting non-elites and their interactions with religion and science is problematic for atleast two main reasons. The first is scholarly: elites are, by definition, not representativeof the wider population. Thus, insofar as scholars wish to talk about religion and sciencemore broadly, they should pay attention to non-elites. This call mirrors one which has beentaken up in the history of science to study not just the scientists who run labs, but also theirlaborers, or “technicians,” who are often unacknowledged. This is especially so of historicalsources, which tend to obfuscate the contributions of scientific workers, who were typically170working-class (Shapin 1989). Although there is now increasingly more historical literature onthese “invisible technicians,” there is little to no work which examines the religion-and-sciencedimensions of these workers’ contexts and contributions.29 Studying these non-elites wouldhave the benefits not only of providing more warrant for scholarly generalizations about theRSR, but would also make scholarly work more relevant to publics who may consume it.Those who read the public-facing religion-and-science literature are likely not elite scientistsor religious producers. Case studies which deal with more “ordinary” individuals and theirways of navigating religion-and-science encounters would thus be more relatable to the publicreadership.What would this focus on non-elites look like concretely? Perhaps biographies of run-of-the-mill scientists, people who did not win prestigious prizes, did not hold fancy universitypositions, did not publish landmark papers, in other words, did not feature prominently inany way. Or perhaps take cases of standard lab operations rather than major events—thiscould be done, perhaps, by analyzing lab journals. Even better if they are lab journals ofnon-prestigious/non-historically noteworthy labs. This kind of information certainly existsfor labs at least since the early twentieth century, though I profess that finding records priorto that may well prove more difficult than it is worth. On the other hand, scholars couldlook “beyond” the scientist, perhaps studying in more detail lab “technicians,” and perhapswhether the religiosity of their employers had any impact on who was hired. More or lessnon-elite sources could also be mined from more popular publications—like the literary andpopular science journals which emerged in the mid-nineteenth century. Likewise, studies ofthe emergence of the genre of science fiction and its reception among both scientific andreligious readerships would, I think, provide an especially insightful window into historicalreligion–science discourses which would be both relevant to understanding how contemporarydiscourse has been shaped and also highly relatable to contemporary public readers.29For a recent overview, see Morus 2016.171Some work in this direction has been done. For example, Bernard Lightman has pioneeredthe study of the percolation of Darwinian evolution through Victorian popular science media(see e.g. Lightman 2007). And Ronald Numbers has made a point of highlighting the workand contributions of non-elite scientists in his studies of the Creation Science movement, someof which has been public-facing.30 Further, work on the Scopes trial does in fact tend to focuson non-elite dimensions; indeed, Scopes himself was a simple small-town school teacher.31Larson’s seminal study, for instance, highlights the ways in which ordinary residents ofDayton capitalized on the religion–science discourse of the time, and in so doing helped toshape it. More work in this vein would greatly enrich the case studies literature.One might have reservations about the feasibility of this suggestion, however. In the firstplace, identifying non-elite views is often difficult particularly because they are non-elite. Asmentioned above, in many cases the contributions and views of technicians working in, say,early modern scientific spaces, were simply elided or else appropriated by the scientists forwhom they worked (Shapin 1989). Part of the difficulty also stems from the vagueness ofthe elite–non-elite distinction. As in Chapter 2, by an “elite,” I simply mean an individualwith outsized influence relative to their contemporaries (a view borrowed from J. H. Evans2018). This rather broad notion can be made at least slightly more tractable by usingsize of communication network as a means of measuring “influence.” Operationalizing inthis way may have the somewhat unintended result of classifying any historical figure whoproduced written work as an elite relative to those who did not, which would then explainwhy identifying non-elite views would be so difficult. I say “somewhat unintended,” however,because part of the point in insisting on non-elite dimensions is to encourage scholars topay attention to those elements of science—and religion—which may be missed in focusing30Much of that public-facing work is found in collected volumes, however. Numbers’ extensive monograph,The Creationists (1992), although an excellent piece of historical scholarship, is not meant for a generalreadership.31Although sometimes the trial’s main lawyers—William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow—receivemuch of the attention, not least because of their high profiles. Neither lawyers, however, were scientificelites—though Bryan was arguably a religious elite.172exclusively on written work, particularly large scholarly tracts. It may be difficult to unearththe views, interactions, and lifeways of those who did not write, or whose written work doesnot survive, but difficulty is not a sign of unworthiness. Indeed, it is not clear why we shouldprefer the views of Boyle over the views of his unnamed laboratory helpers if our aim is tounderstand the RSR; all these men (for his technicians were all male) were equally a part ofwhatever interactions there may have been at the time.One may also object that, for much of the period from which the case studies are drawn,science was itself an elite discourse, and so asking for non-elite perspectives is simply notsensible. To some degree this is may be true, though the use of uncredited labour in earlymodern laboratories at least shows that some historical scientific spaces featured non-elitesin essential ways. But this objection seems to be a double-edged sword, for if science was,for much of the relevant historical period, an exclusively elite discourse, we might wonderhow cases from that period are relevant to contemporary religion–science relations wherescience plays such a large role in even non-elite popular culture. Perhaps, we might worry,the views of the past were only applicable, only possible, when science was segregated fromwider culture, a hobby of the elite, not diffused among hoi polloi. But of course public-facingscholars, by virtue of being public-facing, would not want to maintain such a thing—at leastnot while employing the method of case studies.There is another kind of (traditional) non-elite in both scientific and religious circles that hasbeen left out of the discussion so far: women. The cases featured in the works canvased abovealmost entirely focus on men. The one case involving a female “scientist” is found in Draperand White’s discussion of the burning of Hypatia, which both authors take to demonstratethe incompatibility between Christianity and science—though Lindberg’s contribution toNumbers 2010a presents a different gloss (Numbers 2010b).173Truly interesting work remains to be done in this area, which could shed light on the waysin which women could use religion—or distance from it—to legitimate their status as scien-tists/natural philosophers. In particular, interesting work could be done on such scientificfigures as Margaret Cavendish (1623–1673) and Émilie DuChâtelet (1706–1749). This workcan thus inform us not just about women’ struggles in entering traditionally masculine spaces,but also about the rhetorical social role of religion and science, and the ways in which theRSR is beholden to other social structures—like gender.Further, this work would be particularly relevant to modern readerships because: 1) thosewho self-identify as women tend to be more religious than those who do not, and 2) womenare increasingly entering the scientific workforce. As briefly touched upon above, and as willbe discussed more below, for such readers cases focused on women and the RSR would beespecially relatable and therefore relevant.Just as women have been neglected by the religion-and-science literature, so have members ofminoritized races. Likewise, the cases appealed to by scholars almost always feature Westernscience; rarely is science as developed in other parts of the world considered (Dawes 2021being a welcome exception).32 While I will argue later (3.2.4) that contemporary schol-ars actually need not worry about the lack of non-European sciences, scholars should beworried about the lack of scientists and religious folk from racially minoritized groups andencounters involving such individuals. As in my suggestion to use cases involving women, in-vestigating encounters involving racially minoritized individuals would be especially relevantbecause members of such groups tend to be highly religious33 and are increasingly enteringthe scientific workforce, especially in the US.32There are other exceptions. For example, in Science and Religion around the World, Brooke and Numbersbring together pieces which focus on Ancient Chinese science and African medical traditions (J. H. Brookeand Numbers 2011).33At least according to traditional measures of religiosity; see e.g. PPRI 2021 and Pew Research Center2016.174The Other SciencesWhile the previous point centered on the particular people involved in religion–science en-counters, this point has to do with science itself. The issue is simply that much of thereligion-and-science literature focuses on just a small handful of sciences. Further, as I willargue, those sciences are not representative of the vast array of practices understood to be“scientific” by most public audiences. For the method of case studies, this is especiallyproblematic insofar as practitioners of the method seek to offer general characterizations ofthe RSR; moving from a non-representative sample to claims about the target population isclearly problematic. After arguing that the traditional sciences from which the religion-and-science literature draws are not representative, I’ll recommend several other sciences I thinkworth studying and suggest how scholars might go about choosing their cases.To start, I’d like to note an interesting asymmetry in the diversity of religions as comparedto sciences which are often explored in the religion-and-science literature in general—thecase studies literature not being exempt. There is extensive scholarship on Christianity-and-science, Judaism-and-science, Islam-and-science, Buddhism-and-science, and a growingbody of literature on Hinduism-and-science (Subramaniam 2019), “Asian religions”-and-science (Keul 2015), and New Religious Movements-and-science (e.g. Zeller 2010, Bigliardi2023). There is even a growing recognition that more attention must be paid to indige-nous forms of religion/spirituality, as evidenced by collected volumes on religion-and-science“around the world” (e.g. J. H. Brooke and Numbers 2011). So it seems, at least, that thereligion-and-science literature is rather religiously diverse.34 The same, however, cannot besaid about the science side of the literature, where there is a noticeable lack of diversitywhich has gone largely unnoticed. For the most part, discussions of religion-and-science arelimited to discussions of religion-and-physics and religion-and-biology. Occasionally psychol-34Though we should acknowledge that this diversity is rather new in the history of the discipline whichuntil quite recently was often said to really just be Christianity-and-science rather than religion-and-science(Kim 2015).175ogy appears, particularly when it intersects with evolution (as in the subfield of cognitive-science-of-religion (CSR)), and likewise with geology. But for the most part, the othersciences—chemistry, materials science, the social sciences, etc.—are ignored. Further, thekinds of physics and biology which are discussed are almost always of a theoretical bent—cosmology, quantum mechanics, evolution. There is an almost complete lack of discussionof non-basic, applied/industrial science, and especially of what I have previously called thenon-theory-oriented sciences.There are reasons for this neglect, of course, and it might be argued that the literature isin fact justified in focusing so much on astronomy, quantum mechanics, and evolution. Justas the diversity of the religion side of religion-and-science is likely due in large part to therather wide scope of religious studies—which has always been interested in the diversity ofreligious practice—the lack of diversity on the science side likely comes from the rather narrowfocus of history and especially philosophy of science. With its origins in reflections on theempirical success of early twentieth century physics, philosophy of science has largely focusedon theoretical physics. It is only recently that philosophers have turned their attentionbeyond physics, especially to biology and, very recently, psychology and the social sciences.35Notably, even with this turn to the other sciences, the focus is overwhelmingly on theoreticalbranches of those sciences. This focus on the theoretical science is likely simply due to thefact that philosophical analysis is itself theoretical, and also perhaps due to the fact thatsince its early days, analytic philosophy of science has taken theories as its unit of analysisin studying science.36 In drawing on the philosophy of science, then, contributors to thereligion-and-science literature simply reproduce the lack of topical diversity in philosophy ofscience.35Although the philosophy of chemistry exists as a subdiscipline, it is quite small, and has not grown largeenough to, for example, be a course offered to undergraduates at most institutions—which do regularly offercourses on philosophy of physics, biology, psychology, neuroscience, and the social sciences. Efforts have alsorecently been made to establish philosophy of the historical sciences—like geology and archaeology—as asubdiscipline; see e.g. Currie 2018.36Hence Russell, Popper, Kuhn, and Quine were all concerned with the development and justification oftheories.176But this lack of diversity among the sciences considered is highly problematic for those workswhich wish to offer general characterizations of the RSR—like those discussed in §1.2—fortheoretical physics and biology are not representative of science writ-large.37 I’ll start byexplaining how physics and biology in general are not representative of science in general,then turn to how theoretical science in general is not representative of science in general.One difference between physics and biology is that they operate at different scales. Physics,for instance, concerns the very large and the very small. Biology, on the other hand, concernsa quite particular class of medium-sized not-always-dry goods—the things we call livingbeings. Of course, there is overlap, and there are important ways in which physics bears onthe biological, perhaps by constraining the kinds of living beings that can exist. But physicsand biology are nevertheless quite different things, at least in terms of their subject matter.Likewise, they are quite different from the other sciences as well. In particular, think aboutthe scales of chemistry, sociology, and environmental science. Chemistry is standardly takento focus on a scale somewhere between physics and biology; sociology focuses on particularkinds of spatially distributed interactions between humans; and environmental science seemsto be a kind of cross-scale discipline between physics, chemistry, and biology but whichfocuses on very particular kinds of phenomena. On the basis of scale alone, then, physicsand biology don’t seem especially representative.And these differences in scale matter because they may result in differences in how thosesciences or their practitioners encounter/are encountered by various religions and their prac-titioners. I would expect, for instance, that chemistry, dealing at the scale of molecules, wouldlikely take on a quite different relationship with, say, Christianity, than biology would—my37By “science writ-large” or “science in general”, I mean a rather broad popular view of the scienceswhich encompass such things as chemistry, geology, sociology, cognitive science, and medicine—alongside, ofcourse, physics and biology. This is essentially the notion of STEM discussed in Ch. 2 §2.3.3. There is somedebate about whether or not some of the social sciences—psychology and economics in particular—countas “proper” sciences. But the fact that one can earn a Bachelors of Science in these fields at large publicuniversities like the University of California, Irvine, I think goes to show that these kinds of disciplines areat least popularly taken to be science, and are thought to be so by the general publics which the scholarshipunder discussion seeks to address.177bet would be that chemistry and Christianity are largely independent of one another, histor-ical debates over atomism notwithstanding. Likewise, I might expect environmental/climatescience to be in more-or-less harmony with various forms of Buddhism, though possibly insignificant tension with religions which place a higher emphasis on the perfection of natureor on the animation of natural forces. Whether or not cases drawn from these sciences wouldreally give a different picture of the RSR than would current studies focused on physics andbiology is an open question. Perhaps there are theoretical arguments to be made that the“important” aspects of “science” are adequately represented in physics and biology, andso really we should expect the same kinds of relations with religion to manifest when weturn to the other sciences. Perhaps—but scholars using the method of case studies need toprovide those arguments, and I am not aware of such things. One area they may look toare conceptual analytic treatments of science (and possibly of religion)—the literature onthe “Demarcation Problem” could provide a kind of through-line which would explain whyphysics and biology are representative enough to ignore the other sciences. Such analyses,however, tend to unsuccessfully navigate the Charybdis of over-inclusion (is comparativeliterature really science?) and the Scylla of over-exclusion (aren’t sociology and archaeologysciences too?).38 Ultimately, I think the most natural way for scholars using the method ofcase studies to argue for the representativeness of physics and biology is to simply comparecases from those two sciences with cases from the other sciences. If scholars could showthat cases drawn from chemistry and sociology and environmental science are best charac-terized in the same way as cases drawn from physics and biology, then future studies couldjustifiably rely on studies limited to the latter. And doing so would also help settle anylingering discomfort which critics may have about the theoretical arguments used to justifythe exclusive focus on physics and biology; presumably such critics would be more open to38Though the recent rise in the Philosophy of Pseudoscience has offered slightly more compelling, but Ithink ultimately misguided, attempts at resolving the Demarcation Problem; see e.g. Pigliucci and Boudry2013. On that note, it would be interesting to compare the RSR with what we might term the RPSR—thereligion-pseudoscience-relation. Such a study could shed light not only on the RSR, but also on the publicplace of pseudoscience and the various ways in which the epistemic status of science is used and abused.178the empirical historical work featured in the method of case studies.The case of environmental/climate science points to another kind of diversity often left outof discussions of the RSR: the non-theory-oriented sciences. As discussed in Ch. 2, these aresciences whose main goal is not the production of grand theories or even the application ofthose grand theories to particular cases. Instead, in this chapter, I have in mind those sci-ences which sometimes go by the name of “applied” sciences: those sciences most often doneby industry rather than academia. These sciences include such disciplines as environmentalscience and materials science, but I also intend to capture more broadly those uses of sciencewhich interact more directly with human concerns—especially engineering, agricultural sci-ence, and the health sciences. Arguably these other disciplines may fall under the heading ofphysics or biology. Indeed, those in materials science, and sometimes those in engineering,are often trained as physicists, or else receive very similar education. Likewise, at least inthe United States, those who wish to become medical doctors often must major in biology,and health sciences like cancer biology have “biology” in their very names. That being said,for the most part, extant literature on the RSR focuses on theoretical subdisciplines withinphysics and biology—think of astrophysics/cosmology and evolutionary biology. These areareas which we can describe as “theory-heavy,” in which researchers apply an overarchingtheory (e.g. general relativity or natural selection) to explain or predict particular phenom-ena. This differs quite dramatically from even other so-called “basic” science research, asin for example cancer biology, where these types of theories just do not come into play intheir day-to-day explanations. This absence is even more clear in the industrial/appliedsciences—think of the scientists at commercial gene sequencing labs or the chemists at fer-tilizer manufacturing plants.There are historical reasons for this focus on the theoretical sciences, of course. As previouslymentioned, insofar as the philosophers of science have taken theories as their fundamentalunits of analysis, it has made sense for them to focus on the theory-heavy sciences, a practice179which has been absorbed by philosophy-informed participants in the RSR discourse. But Ithink the issue goes further and deeper than the fact that philosophers like abstracta. Thevery histories of science which are often told by philosophers and historians alike providea narrative by which modern “science” evolved out of medieval and early modern “naturalphilosophy” (see e.g. Harrison 2015). As Harrison points out, little attention is paid to the“philosophy” aspect of “natural philosophy.” But whereas Harrison exploits this to highlightthe ways in which natural philosophy possessed a very different valence from modern science,I would instead like to highlight the institutional place that term denotes. Being a branchof “philosophy” meant that it was a part of a particular department within the universitysetting. Since their establishment throughout Europe in the eleventh and twelfth centuries,universities offered education and employment in four main departments: Theology, Philos-ophy, Medicine, and Law. Traditional students would take classes in the faculties of theologyand philosophy, with specialized schools dedicated to medicine and the law. This medievaldisciplinary division, when paired with modern histories tracing modern science back to nat-ural philosophy, has the consequence of excluding from typical historical and philosophicalanalyses those topics covered in the school of Medicine. Further, in focusing on natural phi-losophy, discussions have a tendency to focus overmuch on university-bound science ratherthan natural philosophical or natural philosophy–adjacent activity which took place outsidethe university walls.This is somewhat ironic given the prime place historians and philosophers often invest inscientists like Laplace, Boyle, Darwin, etc. who were not university-bound. But they do notlook beyond these figures to the more commercial, industrial spaces in which science producedreal impact on society. This is made even more ironic by the fact that some of the scientistswho figure centrally in religion–science narratives—like Galileo—interacted extensively withartisans.39 Likewise, insofar as medical topics feature in historical discussions of the RSR,it is almost always about cadavers being dissected in research spaces; scholarship does not39See, for instance, Zilsel 1942/2000, Long 2012a, and Long 2012b.180often go beyond the anatomist’s table to the hospitals themselves (though sometimes it doestouch upon public demonstrations; see e.g. Park 2010). However, as we saw in Ch. 2, it isin these spaces—industrial and medical contexts—where much of modern scientific activitytakes place. To that extent, science done in these spaces likely makes up a large componentof public understandings of science. Furthermore, science done especially in medical andengineering contexts typically has a much more direct connection to the lives of everydaymembers of the public. Thus, scholars ought to pay more attention to the ways in whichreligion and science interacted in these spaces; case studies drawn from these contexts wouldlikely resonate more with contemporary religion-and-science public readerships.So what kinds of cases, concretely, could scholars look at? Here are a number of suggestionswhich I expect would be quite fruitful to explore. First, consider the medical sciences. Wemight look at how medical students in different time periods—perhaps different geographiclocations—have related their medical knowledge to their religious identity, perhaps focusingon particular medical schools as our site of encounter. Or we could look at how doctorsand patients have used and/or avoided religion in their consultations. More broadly, casestudies could look to how religion has shaped the design of modern health care systems,either in general (e.g. regarding how death is treated in the hospital space) or in particular(e.g. in the funding and creation of particular hospitals). Comparative cases could beespecially illuminating, for instance comparing how Korean funerary customs are integratedinto hospital architecture—hospitals often have floors dedicated to funeral services—with therelatively segregated design of American hospitals, which do not typically have such floors.Some historical work has been done on medical science–religion interactions. Ronald Num-bers’ early work, for example, focused on the ways in which Ellen G. White (1827–1916), theprophetess of the Seventh Day Adventists, blended her religious knowledge/revelation withviews on health and healing (Numbers 1992).Second, I’d like to strongly encourage scholars to explore industrial spaces. Scholars might,181for instance, look at how religious individuals have participated in agricultural science. Howdid religious individuals participate in and respond to the discovery and use of chemicalfertilizers? Were there highly religious agriculturalists? For another example, I think itwould be particularly interesting to look at ways in which religion has interacted with sciencein the context of the oil industry, which at least in the twenty-first century is often seen asa highly socially conservative industry. Looking at the oil industry in particular could alsoshed light on the interplay between environmental science and various religions.Some interesting ethnographic work has already been done in industrial spaces. For instance,Aihwa Ong’s Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline (originally published 1987) ex-plores the experience of female, mostly Muslim workers in Japanese-owned microchip facto-ries in rural Malaysia. As Ong shows, both Islam and local indigenous forms of spiritualityaffect the ways in which the technological workspace is structured, how the women under-stand their work, and ultimately how the women are treated and understood by broaderMalaysian rural society. Cases like these could be used in broader case studies attempts tocharacterize the RSR.Finally, more interesting work could examine how religious ideals shaped the kinds of an-thropological and archaeological work done since the 1800s. Recently, Benjamin C. Pykleshas examined the ways in which, since the mid-1900s, the inner dynamics and desires ofthe Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints shaped the practice of sometimes-secularhistorical archaeology at large sites like Nauvoo in Illinois, which became, and still is, amajor tourist destination (Pykles 2010). Studying additional cases like these—restorationsof both secular and non-secular buildings—could shed more light on how religion interactswith science in places of large public relevance.4040I think it would be especially interesting to compare the ways in which restoration of religious/sacredspaces has been done around the world, for instance in the restoration of Korean temples destroyed duringJapanese colonialism to Greek temples in Sicily and the Hagia Sophia in Turkey.182Ultimately, if scholars wish to address the public in their works on the RSR, then they shoulddo so in ways which meaningfully engage with religion–science encounters relevant to thepublic. When applying this principle to the method of case studies, what scholars shouldaim to do is draw their cases from contexts meaningful to their public readerships. To doso, I argued in the previous subsection that scholars should consider non-elites, considering“ordinary” scientists and their interactions with science, as well as more or less everydayinteractions which are not the kinds of events to make headlines. In this subsection, I’veargued that scholars should also attend to sciences not only beyond physics and biology, butalso beyond the realms of theoretical science and outside the walls of universities. To thatend, I encourage scholars to investigate the medical and industrial sciences, as well as theirworkplaces. Not only do these kinds of science employ a large proportion of science work-ers/scientists, but they also often have direct connections with the everyday lived experienceof readers of the RSR. By drawing their cases from these other contexts, scholars using themethod of case studies can produce work which speaks much more directly to the RSR asexperienced and understood by their public readerships.Eurocentrism?There is another kind of diversity which has been largely ignored in the religion-and-scienceliterature: the cultural diversity of science. When it comes to the science side of the RSR,it goes almost without saying that the religion-and-science literature tends to be, like thephilosophy and history of science upon which it draws, quite Eurocentric. This, of course,is intimately related to the fact that the literature not only developed in the Western world,but has historically focused on Christianity, itself a traditionally European religion which,then, historically interacted mostly with European science. As noted above, however, thereligion side of the RSR is often quite wide-ranging, not bounded by Europe (again, perhapsdue to the rather international focus religious studies has had since its inception). But the183science these non-Europeans interact with is still almost always Western science; studies donot typically feature cases involving non-Western science—though, again, there are someexceptions.41Provocatively, I want to ask whether this lack of diversity in forms of science is really an issue.The standard response, I would expect, would be that it is—science is increasingly beingunderstood as a global phenomenon, in the sense that what has traditionally gone underthe title of “science” is really just one species of science (thus it is now sometimes calledan “ethno-science”): European/Western science. However, I want to propose a tentativebut provocative answer: it is not clear that the almost exclusive focus on Western scienceis really an issue, at least for the public-facing religion-and-science literature. This is soonly because the conception of science which dominates contemporary public discourse (inboth Western and non-Western contexts) is that of Western science. Of course, this canchange—and perhaps it should change to be more inclusive of what are sometimes ratherpatronizingly called “other ways of knowing.” But as things are now, it is not clear that thereligion-and-science literature needs to “decolonize” its case studies, at least when it comesto the science.The urge to consider non-Western forms of science comes from recent trends in especiallythe history of science and science-and-technology-studies, or STS (philosophers of scienceseem less willing to broaden the scope of “science”). Historians and science studies scholarshave become increasingly interested in various forms of “knowledge production” practiced bypeoples outside of Europe, for instance the metallurgical knowledge of indigenous Peruvians(Bigelow 2020) and the astronomical and nautical knowledges of Pacific Islanders (Nelson2023). Likewise, much work has been done on Chinese forms of nature-knowledge, in partdue to reactions against the Needham Thesis, which claimed that the reason why Europedeveloped science while China did not was that the former had Christianity, a religion41See, again, J. H. Brooke and Numbers 2011 and especially Sheldon, Ragab, and Keel 2023.184especially amenable to the law-like form of modern science (Hsia and Schäfer 2019). Whatthis burgeoning literature tries to show, at least in part, is that the kind of science whichdeveloped in Europe was just one of many different types of science, understood now asdifferent forms of world-oriented “knowledge production.”Given these trends in the study of science, I think it’s natural to try incorporating these othersciences into the religion-and-science literature. For if science looks different in these othernon-European contexts, then perhaps the RSR itself will look different. In fact, scholars ofreligion-and-science ought already to expect the RSR to seem different given the differentways religion manifests in non-Western cultures, where what the West terms religion is oftennot individuated from general culture—hence the saying, for instance, that “whether or notConfucianism is a religion is a question the West can never answer and the East could neverask.”42But the question for us is whether public-facing scholars should be interested in non-Westernforms of science. My claim is that they actually need not, and perhaps should not be.This is simply because the kind of science with which modern publics interact is Western,European science. While it is true that non-Western science is appearing increasingly insome areas of public discourse (e.g. around climate change, where non-European, indigenousforms of nature-knowledge are sometimes appealed to in order to show other, arguably moreresponsible ways humans may relate to the environment43), for the most part, discussionsof science are inevitably discussions of Western science. And to the extent that that is thecase, and scholarly authors of public-facing religion-and-science work wish to sway the viewsof their readers concerning the RSR, then it isn’t clear that they need to begin drawing theircases from encounters involving non-Western science.42See also, Masuzawa 2005 and Josephson 2012 for further accounts of the difficulties of isolating “religion”in non-European historical contexts.43See also the debates around incorporating Mātauranga Māori into public school science classrooms inNew Zealand. Here the goal is to both encourage indigenous Māori to participate in science and also showhow Māori ways of knowing can offer alternative ways of relating to the world which may be more climate-friendly. See e.g. Stewart 2020 and Parke and Hikuroa forthcoming.185I want to be very clear that I am not against the idea of opening up the religion-and-science literature to non-European forms of science. If scholars believe that science is broaderthan European science, then they must understand the RSR as going beyond religion-and-European-science, and so are in fact called upon to study cases which feature non-Westernscience. My point is simply that insofar as the public-facing literature aims to discuss anRSR familiar to the public, then it is not clear that it should discuss non-Western science,as that is the kind of science which dominates public discourse about the RSR. It is for thissame reason that I have argued scholars need to discuss non-elite scientists/encounters andthe non-theory-oriented sciences.That said, public-facing scholars may legitimately aim at changing public perceptions of theRSR by trying to change their perceptions of what science is—and likewise with religion.To that end, discussing cases drawn from non-Western science would indeed be called upon!But my focus has been on public-facing scholarship which wishes to offer characterizationsof the RSR as relevant to contemporary discourse, rather than problematize the RSR ingeneral. For these authors—of which I take the exemplars above to be representative—I donot think cases of religion-non-Western science interaction would be relevant.Cases Should Be Less ExcitingTo wrap up this long subsection, my overarching point is this: the issue with the way schol-ars have chosen their case studies to build their inductive bases is that they have almostalways sampled from high-profile, large-impact populations. They have chosen events whichfeatured prominent figures or which others—scholars and non-scholars—thought significant.And they have chosen individuals who were famous and interesting. As with news media,they have focused on exciting events and popular people. Of course, these events and peo-ple were thought to be significant because they made clear how religion and science wereinteracting—and in that sense they may be taken to be revealing about how religion and sci-186ence can interact. But by focusing on these large-impact events and high-profile individuals,scholars generate a false impression of how and when religion and science come into contact.That contact is not just limited to flash-points, big exciting controversies of seeming conflictor big stories of harmony in the lives of prominent figures. Instead, religion and sciencecontinuously interact. Their interaction is omnipresent throughout the lives and work ofindividual scientists, religious producers, scientific institutions, and ordinary members of thepublic (among others). Focusing on particular events or people because they are noticeableis misleading. In fact, it commits the gross fallacy of taking outliers as standard cases, ofsubstituting the tails for the whole; in order to make true generalizations about a population,you must look to the mundane, uninteresting middle.How could case studies featuring more “boring” cases of religion–science interaction befound? Perhaps, as discussed in §3.2.4, in the work diaries of arbitrarily selected scientistsor religious producers. Or perhaps scholars could look to smaller-scale events relating reli-gion and science; one might think of lectures and Bible studies put on by college ministries.Likewise, drawing from §3.2.4, cases could be found in the minutes of chemical factories, therecords of gentech companies, and the posters on hospital walls. Further, scholars can lookto non-textual media for their cases. Consider, for instance, the pro-science, anti-communist,pro-religious films produced by the US during the Cold War—and conversely the USSR’s pro-science, anti-capitalist, anti-religious films. This kind of propaganda can provide a valuableinsight into the ways discussions of religion-and-science play into larger political discourses,and act as a foil for contemporary discussions as well. Similar kinds of work could also bedone using popular films and TV shows.Scholars need to pay more attention to mundane, often local and low-impact encountersbetween religion and science simply because such encounters are far more common—almostby definition—than the widely discussed episodes which currently populate the literature.If scholars really want to offer general characterizations of the RSR, then they need to pay187attention to how religion and science get related in ordinary circumstances. This is so fornon-public-facing scholars, but especially pressing for public-facing ones since the audiencesthey aim to address are far more likely to encounter religion and science in boring, everydayways rather than in exciting, thrilling debates, courts, and Nobel Prize winners.3.3 The Motivational Use of Case StudiesAt the start of this chapter, I noted that not all uses of historical case studies in the religion-and-science literature conceived of that use along inductive lines. The more-or-less inductiveuse discussed above aimed at providing a descriptively accurate characterization of the RSR.But not all employers of case studies share that goal, especially in the public-facing literature.Instead of providing descriptively accurate characterizations of the RSR, scholars may seekto provide inspiration to their readers. Harrison, for instance, argues that one of the biggestvirtues of historical work is that “history can also show the potential of paths that werenot taken (or were taken by only by [sic] the few) by pointing to alternative models of therelationship” (Harrison 2022, 316).44 Likewise, this more motivational aim is evident inConnor’s biography of Kepler; as he says near the end of the introduction, “Perhaps if youread this book, knowing Kepler will make your own life work a little better” (Connor 2004,5). Better in what way? Perhaps by seeing the “suffering and triumphs” of a great scientificfigure who preserved his faith through trials and tribulations.Unfortunately, the literature does not distinguish between these different uses of case stud-ies. But the difference is important, for objections which may apply to scholars aiming atdescription may not apply to those aiming at motivation. For example, recall the Dawesianobjection regarding the relevancy of the past to the present. The objection seems directed44Harrison, to be clear, doesn’t use the method of case studies, and the paths that he discusses are possiblyunavailable due to the ways in which our modern notions of religion and science are shaped. As we will seein the next chapter, he uses a different historical method: the method of deconstruction.188at scholars who aim at providing a descriptive account of the RSR. That is, what he findsimportant in debates over the characterization of the RSR are what religion and science ac-tually are and how they are related. But scholars and some of their readers may instead bemore concerned with the personal dimensions of the debate over the RSR—that is, they maybe more concerned with identity. For example, one may be interested in the RSR becauseone wants to know whether it is possible for religious individuals to fruitfully engage in sci-ence, or, conversely, whether scientists can have rich religious lives. Here, what is importantin debates over the RSR are issues of lived/liveable experience rather than more “directly”about the nature of religion/science. For scholars and readers with this kind of interest,the fact that past actors may be wrong is beside the point—for in some sense what theseinterlocutors want is not truth but belonging.There are at least two ways in which scholars might aim to motivate or inspire their readers.The first aims simply at inspiration: showing that one can in fact understand the RSR insome particular way. The other involves identity formation: particular case studies mightbe understood as parts of a reader’s own past.On the first view, we might think that what the method of case studies is especially wellsuitedto do is show possible ways of being. Consider, again, the racist history of anthropology.While the existence of so many racist anthropologists in the past does not warrant a con-clusion about the racism of contemporary anthropologists, it does warrant the conclusionthat it is possible to be a racist anthropologist. And recognizing that can be deeply impor-tant. In the anthropology case, it might encourage more critical self-reflection on the partof anthropologists when investigating particular kinds of human variation. Or, perhaps lesspositively, it may lead folks with racist ideas to enter the field in order to provide symbolic“scientific” protection for their racist ideology.Returning to the case of religion-and-science, historical case studies can likewise warrantconclusions about possible ways of being. Biography in particular can be a powerful indi-189cation of ways in which individuals can be—in fact, one might think the whole appeal ofbiography is its ability to inspire. If we are shown that Newton, standardly considered agreat scientist, was able to balance his scientific work with his religious commitments, thenwe might think that, despite claims to the contrary in popular media, it is possible to bereligious and still a good scientist.That said, the Dawesian worry still remains. If one wishes to argue for some characterizationof the RSR based on claims figures have made in the past—a kind of quotation-miningargument—that seems like a bad kind of argument: perhaps they were wrong! All that wemay conclude is that rational individuals are able to claim that the RSR is such-and-such—but that does not tell us that in fact the RSR is such-and-such.45 Yet, for many of thoseinterested in the RSR, that may be enough.To a large extent, the actual induction performed in the method of case studies as outlined atthe very start of this chapter—step 2 of the method—is actually not relevant to this kind ofconcern about how one can understand the RSR. Instead, the construction of the inductivebase itself may be sufficient. If what are sought are role models, then merely arraying avariety of cases may be enough; no further argument is really needed to inspire readers.The same holds when we turn to the identity formation-oriented use of case studies. Whilesimple inspiration is in some sense forward-looking—it points to what one could become—work that seeks to promote the adoption of a particular social identity is more backwardlooking: it encourages the adoption of a particular past as one’s own. Biography can beparticularly powerful in this respect, as it presents individuals that one may conceive of asancestors whose failures are to be avoided and whose successes are to be emulated. Schol-ars writing in this vein generally write with apologetic motives, and write explicitly for a45On the contrary, one could embrace a rather deflationary view of the RSR: the proper characterizationof the RSR is simply whatever folks say about it; there is no further fact of the matter. This view of theRSR in fact underlies, I think, most social scientific studies of the RSR. These studies, employing what Icall the method of fieldwork, will be discussed in detail in Ch. 5.190readership that shares their religion. But of course readers themselves may read biographyfor the purposes of identify formation—even if the author did not have that intention in thefirst place. We can thus imagine a Christian physicist reading Iliffe’s biography of Newtonand coming away with a bolstered sense that she belongs to a strong tradition of Christianscientists—even if Iliffe himself did not have that intention.For scholars and readers focused on identity formation, the affinity between the cases andthe reader should matter more than it did for scholars (and readers) aiming for more generalinspiration. This is trivially due to the fact that identification with a particular social groupwill only be aided by work that concerns members of that particular group. For instance,Iliffe 2017 may not actually be relevant to most contemporary Christians because Newtonembraced a rather extreme form of Christian faith. Newton, after all, was passionately anti-trinitarian and wrote literally thousands of pages attempting to show how the doctrine of theTrinity was written into the Bible by corrupt priests. For most Christians today, such viewswould be anathema. What use, then, if Newton thought science and his form of Christianitywere compatible?Newton, however, can still be inspirational in a broad sense: even if he had rather hetero-dox religious views, he still demonstrates that religion and science can be brought together,perhaps even productively. Even a non-Christian may thus still find his life inspiring. Ulti-mately then, while scholars aiming at “mere” inspiration need not be overly concerned withthe relevancy of their cases to their particular readers, scholars aiming at something moremay need to take more care in selecting their figures. This discussion should also make clearanother difference in the kinds of issues faced by the inductive and motivational uses of casestudies. Whereas I’ve suggested that scholars working in the inductive mode of case studiesshould take care to examine more mundane scientists, scholars working in the motivationalmode are in fact likely better served by focusing exclusively on major figures.So far, I have only discussed the use of biography. But what of the episode-focused forms of191the method of case studies? Here it’s not clear how these may be motivational for readers.Perhaps one may read of William Jennings Bryan’s stand before the forces of secularism andbe inspired to fight in the local school board. Or perhaps in reading of Clarence Darrow’sskillful disarming of Bryan, one may be inspired to join that same fight—but on the otherside. In these cases, however, it’s not clear that what is providing inspiration in these casesgoes beyond the individuals: that is, in these episodes, it is the biographical elements thatseem to be doing the work.3.4 For Whom Are Case Studies Useful?As pointed out in the previous chapters, given the variety of reasons which draw non-scholarsto the religion-and-science literature, we might expect that work produced by a particularmethod might not be relevant to all readerships. So what of the method of case studies?What groups would find these kinds of investigations of the RSR most useful, interesting, ormeaningful? I actually believe that most readers have something to gain from the methodof case studies, although perhaps not all audiences will find the same form of case studiesuseful. That is, some readerships may find, say, biographical case studies to be more relevantthan, say, event case studies.Furthermore, different audiences may find the different flavours of the method—in its induc-tive or motivational key—more or less appealing. In general, I expect that more readers willfind the motivational form of case studies relevant than the inductive form—if they find themethod relevant at all. Indeed, I expect that the readers who find case studies scholarshipmost relevant will be those for whom group identity is important, who want to see them-selves as part of some larger tradition or line of scientists, co-religionists, or whathaveyou.These might be budding students and potential scientists. On the flipside, readers inter-ested in using such desires for group identity for some other purpose—perhaps apologetic or192political—will also be interested in the method of case studies too, though more as a toolthan as a means of self-conceptualization.In what follows, I’ll consider several groups for whom I expect the method of case studies tobe especially relevant, taking care to specify what forms of case studies such groups wouldlikely find most meaningful.Aspiring Religious Scientists Aspiring scientists come in all shapes and sizes—and haveall manner of concerns as well. They might be students—like our biology-curious undergrad—thinking of whether they’d like to take on a STEM major, graduates applying for grad schoolor jobs, or adults looking to change careers. For some religious aspiring scientists, besidesthe worries about training, pay, and general work–life balance facing all would-be scientists,there may be an additional concern about whether they will “fit in” as a scientist whilestill embracing their religious identity. This may be fueled by a broad cultural discourseabout tensions between religion and science or personal misgivings about their own partic-ular beliefs and practices. For these individuals, case studies approaches to the RSR couldprovide some help. In particular, for those looking for role models, figures with whom theycan identify and thus be reassured in their ability to be religious scientists, biographicalcase studies may be especially powerful. A Christian reading about Johannes Kepler, or aMuslim reading about Ibn al-Haytham (965–1040), may find inspiration—they too can bea scientist while adhering to their religion. The many-cases style of case studies may alsobe found useful when the cases themselves are biographical: reading the lives of eminentMuslim scientists could surely be encouraging for those having doubts about their faith andprofession.4646Although here I’ve assumed the readers would encounter work presenting a harmonious picture of theRSR, readers looking for role models could still be well served reading biographies offering a very differentcharacterization: if they found that there were no, say, respected Scientologist scientists, that could still beuseful for readers concerned about “fitting in.”193It is not clear, however, whether these same readers would benefit from episode studiesbeyond their value in highlighting individuals who were able to reconcile their religion andscience. One way they could still be relevant to these aspiring scientists is in debunkingcommon narratives taken to demonstrate tensions between religion and science. Perhapsepisode studies could also be useful for aspiring scientists when they focus on specific kindsof science. For instance, work examining religion–geology interactions in oil companies orencounters between archaeology and indigenous religions might be especially informative forindividuals aspiring to be industrial chemists or archaeologists.In any case, I do not think aspiring scientists concerned about fitting into the scientistmold would find much use in the inductive form of the method of case studies. While theconstruction of the inductive base may be inspiring for the reader—look how many Hindushave been scientists!—it is not clear that the inductive step itself, and the conclusion to somegeneral claim about the RSR, is really necessary. As discussed in §3, the mere existence ofthe cases is likely enough to satisfy the worries of these readers, scholarly concerns aboutrepresentativeness of the sample population aside.Apologists: As with the other methods, apologists—both for religion and non-religion—arelikely to find useful material among works employing the method of case studies. Playing intothe desire for role models, apologists for particular religions would surely find biographies ofeminent co-religionists useful. One can even imagine parents wishing to assure their childrenthat they can be scientists while retaining their religious identity giving such biographies asgifts (whether or not they are read!). Likewise, religious schools may do something similar—for instance requiring that students read a collection of biographical sketches of Christianscientists.Apologists on either side of the religion–non-religion divide may also find episode studies194useful for debunking purposes in both defensive and offensive modes. To counter opponents’claims that some particular religion is/isn’t compatible with science, they can refer to par-ticular historical examples showing this is or isn’t the case. In fact, this argument strategyis quite common in both high-profile televised debates and more low-brow forums. For thoseapologists seeking a constructive argument, the inductive form of case studies will likely beuseful: having a legitimate induction to a more or less cogent generalization about the RSRmay be quite powerful. However, for those seeking to attack an opponent’s position, it’snot clear that such inductions are needed—simply being able to pose counter-instances andchallenge the representativeness of the opponent’s sample population may be enough in themessy context of apologetic debates.Policymakers: For rather different reasons, I think policymakers may have much to gainfrom the case studies literature. By “policymakers,” I have in mind a broad class of in-dividuals involved in the design and passage of legislation—and if they are coming to thereligion-and-science literature, legislation likely revolving around science, or possibly religion.Like the apologists above, policymakers could have much to gain in playing into constituents’responsiveness to role models.Consider, for instance, a policymaker who wants to expand diversity within science, inparticular encouraging gender and ethnic/racial minorities to embrace STEM education.Campaigns in this vein already exist. One tactic used is to design and distribute motivationalposters with famous woman scientists and scientists of colour, the idea being that girls andchildren of colour will be more likely to enter STEM when they see and understand thatpeople like themselves can be successful in STEM. Now, it so happens that—at least in theUS and in Europe—these groups tend to have high rates of religiosity (PPRI 2021 and PewResearch Center 2016). Clearly, then, a policymaker may find it useful to seek out a religiousindividual who is also a woman or also a person of colour—in addition to being a scientist—to195use in their motivational posters. Biographical case studies—especially those which discussmany scientists—could be especially useful for providing the faces the policymaker seeks. Inthis case again, however, the inductive form of the method of case studies is not clearly usefulto the policymaker. The fact that the sample population of some particular study is notrepresentative is of little importance. All that matters is the existence of a handful of caseswhich can motivate others to follow in their footsteps. In fact, a lack of representativenessmay be exactly what the policymaker is interested in rectifying through their policy!Beyond educational contexts, policymakers may also work on areas where scientific practiceitself comes into contact with religion, perhaps proposing legislation which guides or restrictshow research is done. Such cases may be especially relevant in the context of anthropologyand archaeology. For instance, extant legislation such as the Native American Graves Pro-tection and Repatriation Act (NAGPRA) of 1990 already places certain restrictions on howscientists are allowed to study the remains of bodies and sacred objects unearthed in theUS—as a means of respecting the religious rites/rights of Native Americans.47 Similar kindsof legislation are not, however, in place for shaping the way historical archaeologists maystudy religious sites held sacred by groups other than the Native American Church. Thismay pose an issue when, for instance, national and cultural-historical interests in the periodor culture of the near past conflict with the interests of religious groups. In one telling casestudy, Benjamin C. Pykles shows how the competing interests of archaeologists associatedwith the National Park Service and members of the Church of Latter day Saints shapedand stalled the restoration of structures (including a Mormon Temple) at Nauvoo, a frontiercity in Illinois (Pykles 2010). Likewise, while NAGPRA deals with bodies and objects, itdoes not deal with land. That this may lead to issues around which legal action is desiredis evidenced by the controversy surrounding the construction of the Thirty Meter Telescope(TMT) on Mauna Kea in Hawai‘i. A long-dormant volcano, Mauna Kea is considered holy47See Mihesuah 1996 and Dumont 2003 for discussions of the intersections of religion and science in thecontext of NAGPRA.196and sacred land by many Native Hawaiians—in fact, Mauna Kea is viewed as an ancestor ofthe Hawaiian people. Due to the exceptionally dry climate and lack of light pollution nearthe peak of Mauna Kea (which is one of the tallest mountains in the world), astronomershave placed around a dozen telescopes on the mountain. In 2009, a coalition of Califor-nia astronomers at Caltech and UC Santa Barbara proposed building a large visible lighttelescope—with a diameter of 30m, the largest such telescope to date—on Mauna Kea. ButMauna Kea is viewed as sacred land to many Native Hawaiians (some of whom even see themountain as an ancestor). Thus, when in 2014 construction began in October, locals imme-diately protested, and construction came to a halt in early 2015—which has yet to resumeto this day. Although legislation is in place governing the use of land on Mauna Kea (which,for instance, is supposed to be protected by the state of Hawai‘i for its environmental andcultural significance), further legislation is currently in production to set further standardsfor how land considered sacred in Hawai‘i is to be handled (see e.g. Fernandez-Akamine 2024for a timeline of events).48Legislation pertaining to the use of sacred land by scientists outside of Hawai‘i, and eventhe US, could also greatly benefit from attention to case studies literature which featurescases such as the TMT. For instance, in Europe, questions about how sites like Stonehengeshould be protected and made available have recently been highlighted by neo-Pagans who,in treating the sites as ritual spaces, leave behind garbage and make irreversible changes tothe structures (e.g. by cutting away stone fragments). Archaeologists often see such use ofthese sites as damaging and thus undesirable as they may destroy evidence containing cluesas to the original creation and purpose of these sites. This then leads them to lobby for theprotection of these sites by limiting public access.49 How should these conflicting interestsbe weighed, and how should the sites be governed?48More on the interactions between religion and science in the context of the TMT can be found in Alegado2019 and Nelson 2023.49See Blain and Wallis 2007 for a discussion of these issues.197Understanding how scientists have interacted with religious individuals in the past can helpto shape future policy by revealing what went wrong and what went right. Case studiesliterature which detail these types of interactions can thus be valuable for policymakersworking in this area. Here, the inductive form of case studies may be more useful thanthe motivational use: that the sample population is in fact representative will be useful fordeciding what issues are actually worth addressing.Science Educators: A final group for whom I think case studies literature may be espe-cially relevant are science educators. For reasons similar to those discussed above with poli-cymakers, science educators may seek role models to inspire their students to enter STEM.For religious students who may be exposed to general cultural assumptions about the in-compatibility between religion and science—or their particular religion and some particularscience—biographical case studies can present educators with a range of figures they maypoint to to assure students that they could retain their faith and excel in science. This maybe especially important in the contemporary US, where the politicization of both religionand science may disincline students from religious backgrounds from entering into scientificfields. This should cause worry for science educators, not least because significant swathesof the American public identify as highly religious. Thus, being able to reference individualswho have successfully integrated religion and science can be of great value for their poten-tial to motivate STEM-disinclined individuals. Likewise, those same figures may be usefulin communicating to religion-skeptical students (and adults!) that their religious peers canalso successfully become STEM-educated—an important fact to realize given, again, thehigh percentage of Americans who identify as religious.1983.5 ConclusionIn this chapter, I offered a critique of the method of case studies. This method has twoflavours. The first, which occupied the majority of this chapter, saw individual historical casestudies as contributing to a broad base of cases, over which an enumerative induction couldbe performed to arrive at the correct, historically accurate characterization of the RSR. Thesecond flavour eschewed this more descriptive end of providing an accurate characterizationof the RSR and instead focused on arraying a variety of cases to inform or inspire readersabout possible, typically favourable, ways of relating religion and science.These different flavours of the method of case studies face different issues. In §2, I focused onthe first flavour, and discussed a number of more-or-less standard objections to enumerativeinductions. We then saw how the method of case studies, as currently used in the religion-and-science literature, could be improved: scholars should make clear that their inductivebases are representative of the class of religion–science encounters they wish to characterize.Scholars also need to go some way in explaining why the past cases they examine are relevantto contemporary religion–science relations. I also considered the issue of levels of analysis:what is the proper unit for composing the inductive basis—individuals or institutions? Iargued that there is no single answer and that different levels of analysis simply reveal differ-ent facets of the RSR. Finally, I explored the question of what kinds of religion and scienceshould be featured in their inductive bases. As in almost all other areas of the literature,employers of case studies tend to focus almost exclusively on elite scientists and religiousfolk, and also tend to draw their case studies only from a small handful of the sciences—particularly theoretical subdisciplines of physics and biology. These choices severely limitthe representativeness of the inductive bases, and so I recommended that scholars expandto included cases featuring non-elites and sciences beyond theoretical physics and biology,in particular the medical and industrial sciences.199I turned in §3 to the second, more motivational/prescription-oriented flavour of case studies.Although misalignment between inductive base and target population is not an issue for thisform of case studies since it simply does not aim at doing an enumerative induction, several ofthe recommendations I made for improving the first flavour still apply. In particular, scholarswho wish to outline possible ways contemporary religious individuals could understand theRSR in their own lives would do well to examine those sciences which employ the majorityof scientists—viz., not theoretical physics and biology.Finally, I concluded this chapter with a discussion (§4) of what publics might find the methodof case studies most relevant.200Chapter 4The Method of DeconstructionAs our undergrad stares up at the rows upon rows of books before her, a title catches her eye:The Territories of Science and Religion. “What does it mean for science and religion to haveterritories?” she wonders, skimming the first few pages. She gathers that these “territories”have changed over time, that what we think of as science today is not what science was in thepast—and so too with religion. Just as a nation’s territory has been constructed (perhapsby warfare), so too have the boundaries of religion and science been constructed.“Constructed.” That term stands out, and as the student resumes her search of the shelves,she finds it popping up now and then.These “constructive” accounts—or “deconstructions”—what exactly do they say about theRSR? How are they relevant to our student and her concerns—if they are at all?In this chapter, I analyze the method of deconstruction1 which has come into increasing use in1In previous work, I discussed this method under the heading of “relativism” (Chin 2023). However, asI will explain below, calling the method “relativizing” is potentially misleading—hence my shift to “decon-struction.”201investigating the RSR among religion-and-science scholars. This method is often run togetherwith the method of case studies. However, as I will demonstrate, they are in fact distinctmethods and, furthermore, are often in significant tension, at times even incompatible. I’llstart by specifying what I mean by “deconstruction” and highlight some recent exemplars.I then consider several issues deconstruction faces as it’s often employed: it can focus toomuch on words rather than meanings, seems self-defeating, tends to deny the causal efficacyof social kinds, and—like other methods—fails to consider whose concepts of religion/scienceare being deconstructed in a key respect especially relevant to non-scholarly audiences. Afterdiscussing these issues, I then turn to the presumed compatibility between the method ofcase studies and deconstruction which seems to dominate especially historically inclinedpockets of the religion-and-science literature. I argue that the method of deconstruction—aspracticed by some—in fact undermines the method of case studies. The chapter concludes byconsidering what public readerships may find deconstructivist scholarship especially relevant.4.1 Deconstructing DeconstructionBy “deconstruction” in religion-and-science, I mean the method which proceeds (roughly)as follows:Deconstruction: 1) demonstrate the contingency (of the formation) of the con-cepts ⟨religion⟩ (or some particular religion) and/or ⟨science⟩ (or some particularscience) at some place/time, then 2) on the basis of that contingency offer acharacterization of the RSR.A note on the term “deconstruction”: it has been used in a wide variety of ways in a widevariety of disciplines. I don’t mean to borrow the term from any particular sub-disciplinewhich takes itself to be “deconstructionist”—whether in the French literary or American202theological sense. My own use of the term is instead derived from the general account ofdeconstructive methods found in Jason Ānanda Josephson Storm’s Metamodernism (2021),in which Storm synthesizes a range of ways the term is used across disciplines, extracts a basiccommon core, and critiques it. Further, some scholars in religion-and-science refer to theirwork explicitly with the language of “construction” or “reconstruction,” which is done for thesake of deconstruction. Peter Harrison, for instance, titled one of his most influential articles“Science and Religion: Constructing the Boundaries” (2006), a work whose main thesis waslater developed in his Gifford lectures, published as Harrison 2015. Likewise, participants inthe “After Science and Religion” project spearheaded by Harrison (among others) explicitlydescribe parts of their work as deconstruction: John Milbank, for instance, labels one of hisentry’s sections “Disenchanted Transcendence: Genealogy and Deconstruction” (Milbank2022). To this extent, then, I take my use of the term “deconstruction” to be an adequatedescriptor of the method defined above.It is also important to clarify that the method of deconstruction, just like the other methodsdiscussed in this dissertation, can be used to argue for any particular characterization of theRSR. As we will see below, some use it to argue for (or perhaps it is better to say explain)the existence of conflict between religion and science, while others use it to argue that thereis no such conflict. Most often, however, deconstruction is employed in the service of a kindof relativism about the RSR in which the possibility of a general characterization of the RSRis called into question—a conclusion which is sometimes referred to as “(The) ComplexityThesis.” But relativism is only one conclusion deconstructive scholars may reach—and fur-thermore is a conclusion scholars may reach using any of a large number of methods; scholarsemploying case studies often reach such conclusions too (John Hedley Brooke and GeoffreyCantor give such approaches the special label of “contextual” (J. Brooke and G. Cantor2000, 23–25)). Hence, the method is termed “deconstruction” rather than “relativizing,”although in previous work (Chin 2023) I used the latter.203Now, there are several things to note in my definition of deconstruction. The first is simplythat, again, the parenthetical qualifications attached to ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are impor-tant: some scholars discuss religion as a whole, others particular religious traditions; and sotoo with science and particular sciences. For instance, Peter Harrison tries to tackle all ofreligion and all of science by analyzing the linguistic history of those terms (Harrison 2015).On the other hand, Elshakry 2013 traces the ways in which Darwinism in particular wasshaped and moulded in the Islamic world. Unlike what we saw with the method of con-ceptual analysis (Chapter 2), however, whether scholars speak of religion/science generallyor particularly does not seem to correlate well with apologetic intent. While Harrison mayultimately seek to defend Christianity, the same goes for James Ungureanu, who examinesDraper and White as specifically Protestant reformers of a sort (Ungureanu 2019). On theother hand, Donald Lopez Jr. does not seem to have any particular religious axe to grind inhis work on Buddhism (in particular) and science (in general; Lopez 2011); nor does JasonĀnanda Josephson in The Invention of Religion in Japan, which takes both religion andscience broadly (Josephson 2012). We’ll examine some of these in more detail in the nextsection.Second, the definition above features ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩, not just religion or science.These angled brackets are important, for they are meant to help clarify an ambiguity rampantin the literature as to what scholars mean when they speak of religion and science. I meanthis not just in the sense that scholars may differ in how they define (roughly or moreexactly) religion/science, but also, and for this chapter more importantly, in the sense thatscholars may speak of religion/science—and what is contingent about them—at differentlevels. To make this more clear, it will help to bring in a set of distinctions often used byphilosophers studying language and meaning: that between a term, its intension, and itsextension. I’ll briefly explain these distinctions, then introduce a typographical conventionI hope will introduce more clarity to the discussion in the rest of the chapter.204A term is simply a word, spoken, signed, written. Terms express concepts, or sometimeswe say that they have meaning or a particular sense—philosophers will call this the term’sintension. But terms also refer to things; they are supposed to point to particulars, orcollections of particulars, in the world. Those things to which terms refer are called theirreferents, and the collection of a term’s referents philosophers call the term’s extension—itsextension from the realm of language to the realm of our world. The distinction betweenintension and extension, between sense/meaning and reference, is subtle. In many cases,they overlap: the concept expressed by a term is deeply grounded in the things-in-the-worldpointed to by the term. But they can come apart. The classic example (from GottlobFrege (1848–1925)) involves ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus,’ Greek names for what in Englishare also known as the ‘evening star’ and the ‘morning star,’ respectively. ‘Hesperus’ and‘Phosphorus’ have different meanings; they express different concepts: one appears in theevening, the other in the morning. But in fact they refer to the same thing in the world:the planet Venus. So while ‘Hesperus’ and ‘Phosphorus’ have different intensions, they havethe same extension; while the concepts are different, their referents are the same. One canthus think of concepts as including other associations beyond the term’s worldly referents.Another way of putting the difference between the concept/intension expressed by a termand the term’s referents/extension is that the concept is that which groups particulars inthe world together to form the term’s extension—concepts are groupings ; referents are thethings grouped. Scholars sometimes also talk of concepts as categories, with the referentsbeing the things categorized. These latter two images will be especially relevant below whenwe discuss several arguments put forth by Harrison (§2.1 and 2.2).Coming back to religion-and-science, deconstructivists sometimes talk about religion/scienceas terms—other times as concepts expressed by terms—and still other times as the in-the-world things/beliefs/practices which our terms pick out. And unfortunately scholars arenot always clear about what exactly it is they are deconstructing, and as it turns out some205even slip between these different “levels” within one and the same work.2 The result is ageneral confusion both within the scholarship and among readers (real and potential). Inwhat follows, I will try to offer some clarity as to the structure of some deconstructionists’arguments and the implications of those arguments by keeping clear what they mean byreligion/science. As an aid, I’ll use the following typographical convention: When we speakof religion (or science) as• a term, I will enclose it in single quotes—‘religion’;• the concept expressed by the term ‘religion’, I will enclose it in angled brackets (as in,we should remind ourselves, the definition of deconstruction given above)—⟨religion⟩;and• the thing(s)-in-the-world picked out by the term ‘religion’, I will use boldface—religion.3To be clear, the confusion among and slippage between these different uses of religion/scienceis not unique to the religion-and-science literature. This confusion is also present in—andperhaps inherited from—deconstructionist work in religious studies. For instance, as someparticipants in the discussion of the origins of Hinduism point out, some self-proclaimeddeconstructionists simply unpack the term ‘Hinduism’, taking the fact that it was notwidespread until the 1800s to justify the claim that the concept ⟨Hinduism⟩ was an in-vention of British colonial scholars and administrators. Detractors from this position—likeLorenzen 1999 and Pennington 2005—instead argue that what really matters is the existence2This confusion is not unique to the method of deconstructuon, but it is particularly acute for the methodsince it often relies, as we shall see, on linguistic analyses to make further claims about concepts and evenwhat kinds of practices could exist in the world.3A few other typographical conventions I will use which are less directly relevant to the argumentsbelow but nonetheless worth noting: When I write religion or science in plain text, without any specialtypographical features, I mean religion/science in the “ordinary” sense, as the things which we, admittedlyrather unreflectively, tend to call religion/science. Sometimes I will also use italics, as in scientia, as anindication that the word is from a non-English language—in this case Latin—though sometimes italics willalso be used for emphasis; context should make it clear which is intended. Finally, when enclosed in double—as opposed to single—quotes, “religion” or “science” mean instances of the term ‘religion’ or ‘science’, asfound in sources I quote.206of on-the-ground beliefs, rituals, and otherings—Hinduism—and that since relevant suchthings existed before the British landed in the late 1500s, ⟨Hinduism⟩ was not merely aninvention of a colonial culture.4 Regardless of its origin, the confusion between a term, itsintension, and its extension is prevalent in the deconstructionist religion-and-science litera-ture. As we will unpack below, resolving the ambiguities present in much extant scholarshipwill not only help clarify the significance of the claims being made, but also, I hope, encour-age future deconstructive accounts to be more clear—and hence more readily understood byreaders of all backgrounds.Returning to the definition of the method of deconstruction, the third thing to note is thatthe demonstration in step 1) can be done in a number of ways. Often, scholars appeal tohistorical case studies. Importantly, however, no induction is then performed over those casestudies to a (direct) conclusion about the RSR—that would be the method of case studies.Instead, the case studies are taken to show (directly or perhaps via induction or abduc-tion) that the contours of ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are contingent. Furthermore, the casestudies used may differ in kind from those found in works using the method of case studies.Scholars engaged in deconstrutive projects will sometimes consider religion and science sep-arately rather than directly engaging with episodes of religion–science interaction—thoughdeconstructive accounts will also often consider such cases as well. So although particularreligion–science encounters are an essential feature of the method of case studies, they arenot essential to deconstruction as method: the deconstruction is ultimately more conceptualthan historical, hence the angled brackets, ⟨religion⟩/⟨science⟩, in our definition. In thatsense, the method occupies something of a middle ground between conceptual analysis andthe method of case studies: unlike conceptual analysis, deconstruction doesn’t aim for defi-nitions; and unlike the method of case studies, it doesn’t (always) focus on religion–scienceinteractions. But like conceptual analysis, the method concerns itself with concepts which,as with the method of case studies, are often unearthed from historical facts—although im-4I should note that the scholars referenced here do not use my typographic conventions.207portantly, again, it does not go directly from the historical facts to the characterization of theRSR: the historical facts are only used to demonstrate the contingency of ⟨religion⟩ and/or⟨science⟩. And that contingency can also be shown in other ways, for example by appeal tocontemporary sociological data or via (historical) linguistic analysis.Fourth, the contingency being demonstrated can vary in form. It might highlight the in-stability of the concepts (Harrison), or it might emphasize the artificiality of the currentdivision or of the consequent relation (Ungureanu). It might make use of the contingency ofour terms (‘religion’/‘science’) or their referents (religion/science) (Lopez). And it mightdo so by appeal to history or culture—by appeal to time or place. Appeals to history oftengo by the name “historicisim”; historicists offer historicist critiques of other methods andof what they take to be generally naive uses of the terms ‘religion’ and ‘science’. There isno similarly concise and widely used term for deconstructions which appeal to culture; I’llsimply use the term “cultural deconstructivist” to refer to scholars that use such a method.5The basis of the appeal actually leads scholars to two different kinds, or flavours, of conclu-sions. Historicists conclude something about the temporal scope of the RSR—perhaps thatthere can be no tenseless characterization of the RSR or that, although it is best character-ized by Conflict now, it was not always so. Cultural deconstructivists’ conclusions, on theother hand, concern spatial (in the widest sense) scope: maybe it doesn’t even make senseto ask about the RSR in particular cultures, let alone offer a global characterization of theRSR; or maybe there were certain forces at work within particular places which made ituniquely impossible for religion and science to come into conflict there. To be clear, thesedifferently flavoured conclusions are not mutually incompatible; very often they are in factcomplimentary, and often scholars will mix and conflate them. But they are distinct kindsof theses, and they by no means need to lead to the same conclusions.5This term—“cultural deconstructivist”—is especially fitting since cultural deconstructivists often seereligion as a facet of (some particular) culture, and so cultural deconstructions of religion are often alsodeconstructions of (some particular) culture.208Further, by contrast with the method of case studies, deconstruction does not typically em-ploy induction. Instead, the “offering” in step 2) usually proceeds by abduction, or inferenceto the best explanation: the best way to understand the RSR given the contingency of⟨religion⟩ and/or ⟨science⟩ is X. Of course, deconstructivists can use induction, or somethingsimilar to it; cultural deconstructivists in particular may do something like this by referringto a host of cultures and drawing their conclusion from them. Historicists, on the otherhand, often employ something more akin to the deduction found in conceptual analysis: bylooking at the historical trajectories of our concepts, we can see how the boundaries thoseconcepts erect force us to conceive of the RSR in some particular way (as in Ungureanu2019).Finally, what is offered in step 2) is sometimes twofold—and sometimes local, sometimesglobal, and sometimes both. One might, for example, claim that step 1) has shown why theRSR is properly characterized as, say, harmonious in a particular time/place, but also thatthe very instability demonstrated indicates that there can be no global characterization ofthe RSR—a both local and global conclusion. Others might say that the concepts have beencrafted in such a way that there can be a global characterization of the RSR, and in fact thatit is best characterized as one of conflict. On the other hand, some scholars may hesitate tomake a more general claim, and limit themselves to more modest conclusions about particulartimes and places. Regardless of the scope of the conclusion drawn, however, the process isthe same: demonstrate the contingency of the concepts, and draw some conclusion.Now that I have clarified what I mean by the method of deconstruction, I’ll turn to someexamples of the method drawn from the public-facing twenty-first-century literature.2094.1.1 ExemplarsPublic-facing examples of the method of deconstruction are admittedly relatively hard tofind compared to other approaches to the RSR. This is likely because the method itselfis at least intuitively more complicated than the others—the link between the contingencyof ⟨religion⟩/⟨science⟩ and the current RSR is much more opaque than direct deductionsof the relation from definitions or even inductions from a variety of case studies. Further,deconstructions in religion-and-science typically build on a vast body of scholarly, inward-facing literature, especially in religious studies where deconstructions of “religion” have beencentral to the discipline for at least the past thirty years (see e.g. J. Z. Smith 1992, Masuzawa2005, Nongbri 2013).6 Some of these accounts also draw on an (impressively) overwhelmingarray of sources from different disciplines, often from many languages, in ways which are noteasily digestible for public readers. Works in this vein include Jason Ānanda Josephson’sThe Invention of Religion in Japan (2011); James Ungureanu’s Science, Religion, and theProtestant Tradition (2019); and the “After Science and Religion” project, spearheaded byJohn Milbank and Peter Harrison in their collected volume by the same name (2022).There are, however, a handful of more public-facing examples, and we’ll turn now to two suchbooks: Donald Lopez Jr.’s Buddhism and Science (2008) and Harrison’s The Territories ofReligion and Science (2015).The relation between Buddhism and science occupies a well-trod space in public discourse,and Lopez has shown in a variety of works that this has been the case since the early1800s (Lopez 2008, Lopez 2011, Lopez 2012). In Buddhism and Science: A Guide for thePerplexed (2008), Lopez traces the rather tortuous history of that discourse through a seriesof historical episodes, from the nineteenth-century British “discovery” of Indian Buddhism6The following quote from Arnal is representative: “The academic future of religion as a concept willneed to focus on deconstructing the category and analyzing its function within popular discourse, ratherthan assuming that the category has content and seeking to specify what that content is” (quoted in King2013).210to the Dalai Lama’s twenty-first-century overtures to neuroscientists. Along the way, Lopeztries to show the ways in which the very conceptions of ‘Buddhism’ and ‘science’ morphedin ways which allowed supporters of Buddhism to maintain that Buddhism and science werecompatible—eminently so in fact.The story begins in colonial British India, with a group of language scholars who discovera set of Pali texts referring to an enlightened individual: Gotama Buddha (or ŚākyamuniBuddha). These scholars, riding on the waves of biblical higher criticism, were quick tomake analogies between these texts and the Bible, the Buddha and Jesus. An essentialdis-analogy their Enlightenment almost-post-Christian lights landed on, however, was theBuddha’s (supposed) emphasis on individual improvement through thought—and conve-niently the Buddha’s (linguistic-turned-racial) Aryan heritage. Dismissing contemporarypracticing East Asian Buddhists’ conceptions of a supernatural, often magical Buddha ascorruptions of these Pali texts, British scholars were able to claim the discovery of a religionwhich championed the rational, empirical study of the self and world. This Buddhism, thescholars claimed, was therefore eminently compatible with science, if not in fact scientificitself.This discourse was later picked up by practicing Asian Buddhists and used as a defenseagainst their Christian colonizers in a rather ironic reversal. Whereas many Christian mis-sionaries had tried to demonstrate the superiority of their faith by its compatibility with earlymodern science (see e.g. Stenhouse 2019), Buddhists could now turn the tables: Buddhismwas empirical, and thus embraced the scientific method. The ‘Buddhism’ these apologistsspoke of, however, was one shorn of various traditional beliefs—for instance in the existenceof Mount Meru (sometimes Sumeru), an enormous square mountain made of four miner-als (gold, silver, lapis lazuli, and crystal) said to occupy the center of the universe, withthe known world being a triangular island continent to the south of Mount Meru (Lopez2008, 42–43). By shaping ⟨Buddhism⟩ in this way, Buddhists could continue claiming that211Buddhism was compatible with science.By a similar token, over time, what exactly participants in Buddhism-and-science discoursesthought science was—a method, a set of ideas about the world, a series of inventions/technologies—shifted in the various apologetic contexts in which Buddhists around the world found them-selves. And the conception of Buddhism—a temple-tied worship of a magical, fire-shootingbeing; a dispassionate analysis of the human mind; a set of meditative practices to increasebody temperature—continued to change as well. By shifting the concepts in tandem with oneanother, Lopez argues, Buddhists over the centuries and around the world have been able toclaim that Buddhism and science are compatible with one another in some way (sometimesbecause ⟨Buddhism⟩ simply is a science, other times because ⟨Buddhism⟩ is science-like,sometimes because it anticipates or encompasses the conclusions of science). As he puts it,“Over the history of the Buddhism and Science discourse, Buddhism has been identified in avariety of ways. Yet it has generally been the case that, regardless of the differences amongthe various Buddhisms that have been paired with various Sciences, they share a rather sparerationality, with the vast imaginaire of Buddhism largely absent” (ibid., 215–216).In unpacking this dynamic history, the picture of Buddhism and science which Lopez paintsis one of complexity and chaos coated with a thin veneer of simple harmony. We can offera general characterization of the Buddhism–science relation only at the expense of ignoringthe ways in which time and place shaped what Buddhism and science were/are. To thatextent, although Lopez offers a picture of harmony, it is a limited kind of harmony, one madepossible only by significant changes in the concepts at play.Lopez’s method is not conceptual analytic—though he does unpack how people have var-iously defined ‘Buddhism’ and ‘science,’ and does show how people have conceived of theBuddhism-science relationship on the basis of those definitions. But Lopez’s conclusion isnot based on his definitions; the point is that there have been a wide variety of definitions,all constructed in such a way as to ensure a particular characterization of the relationship.212So although definitions are important to how Lopez ultimately characterizes the Buddhism–science relationship, it is the contingency of those definitions which plays the more fundamen-tal role. Likewise, Lopez does not use the method of case studies—even though he examinesa host of historical cases in which Buddhism and science are understood to interact. Thekey difference between Lopez’s actual method and the method of case studies is that Lopezdoes not talk of Buddhism and science per se, but about how other people (most of themhistorical) conceived them. His cases, therefore, are not interactions or episodes so much asparticular conceptualizations.Lopez’s method, then, is a clear example of historicizing: one looks at how the concepts⟨Buddhism⟩ and ⟨science⟩ have changed over time and concludes (not by induction) that thebest way to understand the historical trajectory is by saying that Buddhism and science arein harmony, but only because particular cultural forces have had an interest in it being so,and they have been willing to reformulate the concepts of Buddhism and science repeatedlyto achieve that characterization. A very nuanced kind of harmony!—one which we mightsuspect is lost on many readers. But some will find this kind of analysis useful—and we willconsider several such groups in §4 below.Harrison presents a similarly complex—and supposedly public-facing—account of the religion–science relationship—religion in the general, since he focuses especially on the particularEnglish-language term and its Latin origins. From 2010–2011, Harrison delivered the Edin-burgh Gifford Lectures, which he later condensed and edited into his 2015 The Territoriesof Religion and Science. The book traces the contorted histories of the terms ‘religion’ and‘science,’ and the different concepts they expressed, exposing how it came to be so naturalfor us in the twenty-first century to assume that there is some conflict between religion andscience.213Harrison’s work is, like Lopez’s, a case of historicizing: what is important for Harrison isthe process by which the concepts expressed by our modern terms ‘religion’ and ‘science’developed in Western European intellectual culture. To the extent that he focuses exclu-sively on Europe (and in particular on Christianity and Christian self-conceptualization asa religion), the account is culturally specific. But insofar as the contemporary use of theconceptual categories ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ is global, the account is more wide-ranging.Regardless, to reach his conclusion, Harrison pays close attention to linguistic shifts in thescope of ‘religion’ and ‘science,’ and their etymological ancestors. In their earliest uses, ‘re-ligio’ and ‘scientia’ (from which the English ‘religion’ and ‘science’ are derived) were usedin quite different ways. While ‘religio’ acted as something like what we would call today an“ethnic” marker, ‘scientia’ was conceived as a discrete body of knowledge (i.e. ⟨scientia⟩was a discrete body of knowledge). By the Middle Ages, however, a change had occurredwhereby both religio and scientia were, to use Harrison’s word, “interiorized.” Rather thanserving as markers to distinguish groups (of people or of ideas) from each other, the termscame to refer to inner qualities of individuals, or virtues. The guiding source for this newconception of religio and scientia is Thomas Aquinas, who describes them as mental habits(ibid., 11–16).As mental habits, religio and scientia could be cultivated, and could be possessed ingreater or lesser degree by particular individuals, who would often undergo specific training—meditation, study, etc.—to cultivate them. As virtues, they were not incompatible; in fact,it did not (according to Harrison) even make sense to speak of possible conflict or evenof possible harmony between them—as virtues, they were simply mental habits one haddeveloped to a greater or lesser extent.7 Moreover, they were not even both epistemicvirtues. While ⟨scientia⟩ concerned correctly producing knowledge (producing that whichwas also called “scientia”—though not as a virtue), ⟨religio⟩ was concerned with inner piety7It is not clear why Harrison thinks virtues cannot conflict; surely they sometimes do. For instance, thevirtues of kindness and honesty, or charity and moderation may frequently be in tension.214and proper practice/worship. In that sense, the two concepts occupied distinct realms, afact which Harrison illustrates with the example of medieval bestiaries in which scholarsaccompanied descriptions of creatures (real and, often unknown to the authors, imagined)with explanations of the creatures’ theological and moral significance. The pelican, forinstance, was sometimes described as a symbol of Christ since it (supposedly) would kill itsyoung, weep, then—on the third day—use its own blood to revive the chicks, just as Christrose on the third day after his crucifixion (Harrison 2015, 61–62). For Harrison, the lessonis that topics which we would nowadays classify as explicitly scientific (descriptions of therearing behaviours of pelicans) and religious (finding symbols of Christ) were mixed in waysunacknowledged and unseen by medieval actors; that they could even be in tension was nota conceptual possibility for them.However, in the 1500s, a conceptual change began whereby the boundaries of the conceptsshifted and the “territories”—Harrison’s term for the referents of a term—of ‘religion’ and‘science’ came to overlap. Through a complex mixture of socio-historical events—includinganti-Aristotelian backlash, the Protestant Reformation, and the usage of “religions” in theplural—⟨religio⟩ was broadened from a particular virtue into a set of beliefs, or knowledge,accompanied by practices. At the same time religio was reified, its referent, religio, shiftedfrom an ephemeral interior habit of mind to a full-fledged social entity. As Harrison explains,“From this time on religion and religions can be understood in terms of beliefs and practicesthat are empirically available for comparison and analysis. Religion now exists concretely assomething that can serve as an explanation for historical events and which in turn can be‘explained’ by various social sciences. ... it is religion thus conceived that subjects its beliefsto confirmation or disconfirmation by the modern disciplines of philosophy and science”(ibid. 116; emphasis original). Thus, these early modern shifts of meaning enabled possibleepistemic competition between religion and science—although for several centuries this wasnot widely seen as a live possibility; scientific knowledge was seen as in the service of religiousknowledge, as in the case of Paleyan natural theology.215But by the mid-1800s the possibility of conflict became plausible—and perhaps actual. While⟨religion⟩ underwent extensive changes as it lost status as an inner virtue, ‘science’ simplyshifted to refer to knowledge in general, as the concept it expressed also lost virtue-ness. Butin the latter half of the nineteenth century, given advances in theory and technology, andthe increasing professionalization of those contributing to such advances, science began tochange as it became linked to “a putatively unified set of practices (‘the scientific method’),associated with a distinct group of individuals (‘scientists’)” (ibid. 147). And at the behestof historial actors like Thomas Huxley (1825–1895) and Francis Galton (1822–1911), whohad ideological issues with religion and religious individuals, the concept of science wasfurther reworked to exclude theological and metaphysical elements that had previously beendeemed essential to ⟨science⟩. In so doing, ⟨science⟩ was reified into a concrete social objectwhich, like ⟨religion⟩, could now serve as an explanation for particular historical events, thusenabling science to be put into relation with other social objects/forces like politics and, ofcourse, religion. And influential scientists like Huxley ensured that conflict came to dominatediscussion of the relationship between religion and science.Hence, through a long, historical process of conceptual reimagination, religion and sciencecame to be in conflict. But that process was contingent: the current configuration of theRSR was not, and is not, necessary. Had ‘religion’ and ‘science’ had different pasts, theway we relate the two may have differed—if it were even possible to relate them. Harrison’sultimate conclusion is admittedly difficult to tease out. One conclusion is that that “scienceand religion are not natural kinds; they are neither universal propensities of human beings nornecessary features of human societies. Rather they are ways of conceptualizing certain humanactivities—ways that are peculiar to modern Western culture, and which have arisen as aconsequence of unique historical circumstances” (ibid., 194). What this means (accordingto Harrison) is that religion (and presumably science too, though Harrison does not talkexplicitly about it) can neither be explained outside of historico-linguistic studies like hisown, nor actually “serve as an explanation for anything, either” (ibid., 196). Likewise,216any attempt to characterize the RSR is misguided: all that such attempts do, regardlessof their conclusions, is reinforce the idea that religion and science are in conflict since allsuch attempts reify “the propositional nature of religion, and the idea of a neutral, rationalspace” in which religion and science can be compared (ibid., 197–198), despite the fact that(supposedly) ⟨religion⟩ is not essentially propositional. Thus, on the one hand, Harrisonhas provided an explanation of how the modern RSR is a relationship of conflict, whilealso arguing that such general characterizations are ultimately misleading, for there are noreligion or science out-there-in-the-world which can be so related.Other scholars have drawn a variety of other morals from Harrison’s work, however, andHarrison himself has subsequently highlighted a different consequence of his analysis. Evenwithin the collected volume After Science and Religion, written as a kind of continuation ofTerritories, the participants draw a variety of different morals. Soskice, for instance, findsa major takeaway to be that “many, probably most, scientists in Britain of the seventeenthto early nineteenth centuries were Anglican clergymen”—and so theology and science reallyare not in necessary conflict (Soskice 2022, 144). This more theology-oriented lesson isalso picked up on by Michael Hanby, who finds that Harrison’s analysis “makes it possible toreconceive of early modern science as the flawed expression of a genuinely religious and indeedliturgical impulse, and to reconstruct an alternative modernity prioritising a Romantic andvitalistic strand of modern science which has never completely gone away, with its various lifeprinciples, teleological processes, forms, and archetypes, over the mechanistic reductionismthat seems to have won the day” (Hanby 2022, 167). In a rather different key, D. C.Schindler’s takeaway is that “to speak of an ‘integration’ of these [religion and science] isnecessarily to have in mind something other than modern science” (Schindler 2022, 232).And in the same volume, Harrison explains that historical deconstructions like his “can alsoshow the potential of paths that were not taken (or were taken by only by [sic] the few)by pointing to alternative models of the relationship that were possible because the culturalterritory was differently divided in the past, but which nevertheless have some prospects217of success in the future” (Harrison 2022, 316). Unfortunately, this rather dense volume isexplicitly directed at scholars, and it is unlikely that other audiences will have seen this—surely more easily digested!—message.4.2 Some Problems with Deconstruction and Its UseSome advocates of the method of deconstruction exaggerate the consequences of the con-tingency of the concepts ⟨religion⟩/⟨science⟩ in the move from step 1) to step 2), and forthis they have been criticized. In this section, I first examine two variations on this generalcritique. These critiques unpack two guiding analogies which Harrison employs and focus onthe meaningfulness of local analyses (shifts in meaning/intension do not preclude meaningfullocal discussions) and the need to recognize the reality of social constructs (that ⟨religion⟩and ⟨science⟩ are not natural kinds does not mean they are not real). I then turn (§2.3) to adifferent kind of criticism of deconstruction based on the sources it consults, focusing on thefact that employers of the method almost always focus on elite conceptions of, and so elitesources concerning, religion and science. In pursuing these critiques, I aim to show the waysin which deconstruction should be limited and also expanded in order to make more useful,meaningful contributions to the study of the RSR.4.2.1 Erecting BordersFittingly, Harrison begins his The Territories of Science and Religion (2015) with a discus-sion of territories:If a historian were to contend that he or she had discovered evidence of a hithertounknown war that had broken out in the year 1600 between Israel and Egypt,218this claim would be treated with some skepticism. The refutation of this claimwould involve simply pointing out that the states of Israel and Egypt did notexist in the early modern period, and that whatever conflicts might have beenraging at this time could not on any reasonable interpretation be accuratelydescribed as involving a war between Israel and Egypt. ... At issue here wouldbe not whether the relevant geographical territory existed then, but whether therewere comparable boundaries and self-conscious national identities. Denial of theexistence of a sixteenth-century Israel does not entail a denial of the existence ofthe territory that currently comprises that nation, but rather a denial that theterritory was then viewed in a particular light, as something circumscribed by aset of boundaries and informed by particular ideals of nationhood. ...My suggestion is that something similar is true for the entities “science” and “reli-gion,” and more specifically, that many claims about putative historical relation-ships are confused for much the same reason as claims about a sixteenth-centuryconflict between Israel and Egypt: that is to say, they involve the distorting pro-jection of our present conceptual maps back onto the intellectual territories ofthe past. (Harrison 2015, 1–3)This is a classic application of the map–territory distinction discussed across the humansciences, for instance by Alfred Korzybski (1879–1950) and the great scholar of religionJZ Smith (1968–2017)—from whom Harrison draws the analogy (Harrison 2015, 2 fn. 3).The essential idea is seemingly simple: if our current concepts (the map) slice the world(the territory) in ways foreign to—perhaps even incompatible with—past ways of slicingthe world, then it is odd, illicit even, to describe historical actors using current terms ladenwith contemporary meanings. Terms like ‘religion’ and ‘science,’ Harrison argues, expressconcepts which cut up the modern world in ways totally different from how the world wascarved up in the past: whereas nowadays religion and science are seen as something akin219to collections of propositions regarding the nature and workings of the world, they did notalways exist in such a state. Thus, when we talk of the past using our terms ‘religion’and ‘science,’ and try to suss out their past relation, we use concepts overburdened withanachronistic assumptions, which we are called upon to discard in the interest of historicalaccuracy for such concepts did not exist in the past. Thus, even if it is the case that themodern concepts ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are in conflict, we should not assume that the RSRwas so characterized in the past—or if it would even be possible for it to be so configured,if at all.This kind of map-territory analogy lies behind many deconstructive accounts of the RSRtoday, possibly because of the huge influence Harrison’s work has had on the field. Mostemployers of deconstruction, in fact, take themselves to be building upon Harrison’s work, asin the After Religion and Science project. Yet, despite the seeming simplicity of the analogy’slesson, it is often understood in problematic ways and is prone to being stretched beyondits own proper borders. In this subsection, I will consider two issues which emerge fromless-than-careful readings of the map-territory analogy and its underlying logic as applied tothe RSR. First, some interpretations focus too much on our (admittedly changing) linguisticconventions rather than on real underlying forces—that is, some readings place too muchemphasis on the borders which constitute the map. Second, and far worse, some readings ofthe map-territory analogy are self-defeating for they are forced to acknowledge and comparethe concepts ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ in the past in exactly the way some deconstructionistswish to avoid.It is admittedly rather easy to overemphasize the importance of the terms ‘religion’ and‘science’ and their historical meanings in the map-territory analogy. Harrison’s descriptionof the analogy, after all, explicitly foregrounds the terms. But focusing too much on the termsthemselves—rather than on the terms’ referents—is liable to missing what is really of interest220in discussions of the RSR. Putting it rather flippantly, the issue is this: why should we careabout the ways in which the terms were used in the past? Isn’t the matter of real substancehow the underlying practices to which those terms now refer interacted? Why should itmatter if Galileo didn’t identify as a scientist, if medieval peasants would not have identifiedas religious, or if religio and scientia were conceived as virtues? To be clear, the objectionhere is not that the question we are interested in is a question about the modern RSR asopposed to a past RSR. Even those who wish to take the past seriously—employers of themethod of case studies, for instance—may worry that deconstructionists reading Harrison’sanalogy in this way focus too much on language and not enough on worldly phenomena;they place the map before the territory.To bring the issue into sharper focus, it may be helpful to visualize the analogy as in Figure4.1. Here, we have a particular term, say ‘religion,’ indexed to particular times (t1 and t2),where ‘religion’t1 is the term as used by historical actors at time t1 and ‘religion’t2 is theterm used by actors at time t2.8 Each of these terms expresses a concept, ⟨religiont1⟩ and⟨religiont2⟩, respectively, which, again, are the concepts expressed by the terms as used byhistorical actors at times t1 or t2. Each term likewise refers to part of a real-world “Territory”composed of various actual human practices, beliefs, etc.—religiont1 and religiont2 . Whenthe terms’ concepts are projected onto the real world, we get a set of borders encompassingportions of the world referred to by the terms; together those borders comprise what wemight call a map. Importantly, the map is not identical to the territory; the concepts arenot the referents.It’s important to be very clear about what is meant by these temporal subscripts. Supposethat t1 is the “present” and t2 is some time in the past, say the 1500s. Then ‘religion’15008Hence, Figure 4.1 represents the historicizing form of deconstruction, chosen as this is the form employedby Harrison. One could instead index by culture/location for a cultural deconstructivist. The relationsbetween culturally indexed concepts are not always structurally the same as those between temporallyindexed ones; for instance, while temporally indexed concepts tend to morph into one another, this may be,however, quite rare with culturally indexed concepts.221Figure 4.1: Visualization of the conceptual (historicist) map-territory analogy. Dots withinthe Territory represent distinct practices, beliefs, etc. The dotted ovals directly below theconcepts indicate the borders (which together form a map) generated by projecting theconcepts onto the Territory. In this case, there is partial overlap between these borders. Theshaded areas represent the referents of the corresponding terms.is the term as used by those living in the 1500s and ⟨religion1500⟩ is the concept expressedby that term. I should stress that ⟨religion1500⟩ is not the concept held by folks in the 1500swhich “most closely approximates” our own concept, ⟨religionpresent⟩. Likewise, the referentreligion1500 is the referent of the term ‘religion’1500, not that collection of practices, beliefs,etc. which “most closely approximates” the collection of such things to which we now referwith the term ‘religion’present.With that in mind, there are three logically possible ways the concepts expressed by tem-porally indexed terms may be related: the borders they establish may overlap completely,overlap only partially (as in Figure 4.1), or may be entirely separate. Deconstructioniststypically claim that the first of these possibilities does not accurately capture the history:the concepts being examined have changed over time, and so the borders have shifted.With this picture in mind, we are in a better position to tease out how we could responsiblyunderstand claims like Harrison’s that talking of religion and science and their relationship“involve[s] the distorting projection of our present conceptual maps back onto the intellectual222territories of the past.” For suppose that the historicist claims that the borders created byour modern concept only partially overlap with that of some past version’s, as in Figure 4.1.Then one might easily argue that really what we care about are the parts of the territorycaptured in the overlap between the borders. Perhaps ‘science’past did not always have theconnotation of being the highest epistemic good. But perhaps ⟨sciencepast⟩ still did concernthe natural world and its workings. Likewise, perhaps ‘religion’past did not always connotea defined set of static dogmas. But perhaps ⟨religionpast⟩ still did concern (at least some)beliefs about the workings of the world. If this were the case, then even if our modernconceptions are not identical to the categories of the past, we can still meaningfully talk ofthe past RSR—they were not in-co-relatable. We might even talk of the relation betweenthat past RSR and the modern RSR. So even if there is not perfect overlap, the overlapwhich does exist is what parties interested in the RSR are most often interested in.To illustrate the point, Josh Reeves employs a different kind of territorial analogy. Ratherthan imagining a claim about a sixteenth-century war between Israel and Egypt, imagineinstead a claim about the (very real) Hundred Years’ War between England and France. Theclaim this time, however, is that “there was no such thing as the Hundred Years’ War. ...The reason being that the meanings we associate with England and France—western liberaldemocracies with stable borders—were not present in the fourteenth century.” Clearly sucha claim is ridiculous, and would be dismissed out of hand. For what historians (and others)care about is not the particular collection of practices and properties picked out by thepast terms ‘England’1337−1453 and ‘France’1337−1453, but rather the overlap between thosecollections and those of our modern terms (J. A. Reeves 2023).Now we might interpret Harrison, in emphasizing the fact that religio and scientia werepreviously conceived as virtues, as trying to argue for the much stronger position that ourmodern concepts do not overlap at all with previous conceptions—the borders they projectcarve out non-overlapping parts of the conceptual territory. Many find this position doubtful.223Barbour, for instance, responds to a similarly strong point made by G. Cantor and Kenny2001 by asking rhetorically, “Is it really the case that in Western history since Galileo (thetopic of their writing and mine) neither science nor religion possesses ‘clear historical conti-nuity’?” (I. Barbour 2002, 347) But even if we accept this stronger position as plausible, it isultimately no help to the deconstructionist. For in order to make the subsequent claim thatthe projection of our modern categories is really distorting, then deconstructionists need toshow not just that the past categorical terms did not refer to the practices of interest, butthat those practices themselves did not exist. What matters, again, for many interested inthe RSR, is not the concepts that the terms ‘religion’ and ‘science’ express, but the things-in-the-world, the practices, beliefs, etc., to which they refer, religion and science; it is notthe borders and the map they establish but the actual territory which matters.To see this, consider the history of the term ‘planet.’ To the ancient Greeks with whomthat term originated, a planet was a “wandering star,” that is, a star which moved throughthe constellations rather than with them. Of course, different Greeks conceived of stars indifferent ways, but none of them conceived of them as we do today—as massive concentra-tions of light elements undergoing a continuous fusion reaction. Of course, we no longerthink of planets as “stars” in any formal sense. Instead, we think of planets as cooling (insome cases cooled) bodies of heavy elements (typically metals), of a particular size whichorbit a star (sometimes multiple). This modern conception overlaps (plausibly) not at allwith ancient Greek conceptions of planets. And yet, we can still meaningfully speak of theancient Greeks’ studies of the planets’ motions without committing any gross distortion ofthe history. This is because what matters is the fact that these particular bodies—planetsin our modern sense—really did exist even in the times of the ancient Greeks. And ancientGreeks really did observe those bodies, even if they did not conceive of them in even remotelythe same way. For that reason, we still include the Greeks in our histories of astronomy.Again, we care not about the term ‘planet’ but rather about the thing-in-the-world, planet,to which it refers.224So in reading the map-territory analogy, we should not fall into the trap of placing tooheavy an emphasis on the language we use. For if deconstructionists would like to use theanalogy to accuse others of being caught up in anachronistic language—as they often do—then they need to themselves avoid reproducing this kind of linguistic fallacy. It might beright that the terms we use now did not exist at certain times, or that the terms used inthe past are not in use today. But in many cases, scholars and others are not interestedin the terms themselves, but rather in the practices to which their terms refer. That is,what would be of more interest/relevance to participants in contemporary religion–sciencediscourses is how those things/acts/beliefs in the world which most closely align with thereferents of our contemporary terms ‘religion’present and ‘science’present were related. Thatis, our concern is not with the concepts expressed by and the things referred to by the terms‘religion/science’past, but with whatever things there were in the past which are most closelycorrelated with the things we think of now when we think of religion and science. Harrison,in fact, directly addresses this:Admittedly, there would have been another way of posing [the question about theRSR] in the Middle Ages. In focusing on religio and scientia I have consideredthe two concepts that are the closest linguistically to our modern “religion” and“science.” But there may be other ancient and medieval precedents of our modernnotions “religion” and “science,” that have less obvious linguistic connections.It might be argued, for example, that two other systematic activities lie moresquarely in the genealogical ancestry of our two objects of interest, and they aretheology and natural philosophy. A better way to frame the central question, itcould then be suggested, would be to inquire about theology (which looks verymuch like a body of religious knowledge expressed propositionally) and naturalphilosophy (which was the name given to the systematic study of nature up untilthe modern period) and their relationship. (Harrison 2015, 16–17)225So why not talk of theology and natural philosophy rather than religio and scientia? Insome sense, Harrison does go on to discuss them in the chapter immediately following theabove quote. There, we learn how in the Middle Ages theology was considered a science andnatural philosophy was truly a part of philosophy. Both of these facts are meant to give uspause because they so poorly align with our current conceptions of what religion and scienceare meant to be: thinking of religion as a science, or of science as a part of philosophy, runswildly counter to our understanding! For this reason, Harrison thinks that “moving ourattention to the alternative categories of theology and natural philosophy will not yield asubstantially different view of the kinds of historical transitions I am seeking to elucidate”(ibid.), i.e. the deconstruction of ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩.But we can see that if our concern is really with the closest correlates of the referents ofour modern terms ‘religion’now and ‘science’now (i.e. with religionnow and sciencenow), thenHarrison’s decision to stick with the closest linguistic correlates of our terms ‘religion’now and‘science’now is rather misleading. In the first place, whether or not the medievals thoughttheology was a science is immaterial, since they dealt, as Harrison points out, not with⟨sciencenow⟩, but with ⟨sciencemedieval⟩. The anti-linguistic will wholeheardedly accept thatmedievals operated with a different conception of science. But that does not change thefact that medieval theology rather closely resembles our modern practice of religion, andthat the referents of both terms, ‘religion’now and ‘theology’medieval, were quite similar: theyconcerned beliefs about the nature of God/gods. So while Harrison is right to say that weshould not take medieval claims about theology being a science as claims about a relationshipbetween modern theology and modern science, it is wrong to say that this warrants focusingon the linguistic—rather than referential or even conceptual—ancestors of ‘religion’now. Anda similar thing can be said about medieval natural philosophy being considered a part ofphilosophy. It may very well have been that insofar as medieval natural philosophy was apart of medieval philosophy, its ultimate goals were inculcating habits to improve one’s life.The anti-linguistic does not need, or even want, to claim that ⟨natural philosophymedieval⟩ was226identical to ⟨sciencenow⟩. All that is claimed is that there is significant overlap between thetwo concepts—the production of systematic knowledge claims about the natural world—andthat the phenomena contained within the conceptual borders (e.g. prediction of the motionsof the stars, the use of mathematics to describe their motion, cataloging of animals) canbe picked out and their relations with historical analogues of the referents of ‘religion’nowdiscussed. So for all the deconstruction that Harrison does, it is not clear how it forbids thiskind of investigation of the historical RSR—there is no need for an overly linguistic readingof the map-territory analogy.There is another possible issue with how we understand the map-territory analogy in decon-structionist accounts, and which we must be careful to avoid, for it is in a sense much worsethan the overemphasis on language. Recall how Harrison concludes his introduction of themap-territory analogy: “many claims about putative historical relationships [between sci-ence and religion] are confused for much the same reason as claims about a sixteenth-centuryconflict between Israel and Egypt: that is to say, they involve the distorting projection ofour present conceptual maps” (Harrison 2015, 3). How exactly are we to understand thisdistortion? One rather extreme way is to read it as the claim that it is not only illicitto ask about the concepts ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ in the past—such would be historically“distorting”—but it is also improper to ask about their relationship. Why? Because—andthis is the extreme reading—the concepts (somehow) did not exist in the past. Sometimesone gets the impression that this is how Harrison is read and understood, both within decon-structivist circles and by its critics. For instance, the whole idea of the After Religion andScience project is to forgo the use of our concepts ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩, in a kind of returnto a pre-modern conceptual landscape.9 And this is exactly what some take issue with—asDenis R. Alexander, founder of the Faraday Institute for Science and Religion, has recently9Attempts at demonstrating what a return to the “territories” of the past could look like can be foundin the six essays comprising Part II.227put it in a review of Harrison 2022 in Theology and Science, “Should we now re-name thisThe Faraday Institute After Science and Religion? Or perhaps this present journal shouldbe re-named ‘Beyond Theology and Science’? In both cases, I think not” (Alexander 2024).So deconstructivists are understood as advocating that the past does not contain the presentconcepts and that perhaps we should return to those times. And yet, simply by performingtheir deconstructions of religion and science, deconstructivists show the very existence ofthose concepts and the possibility of relating them not only to each other (in their historicalperiod) but also to our modern concepts. Thus, we should not understand deconstructivistcritiques as ruling out the possibility of discussing the RSRpast.This much becomes clear when we consider Harrison’s point that religio and scientia werepreviously virtues. If we can identify them as virtues, can we not also determine theirrelationship, and further, ask about how that RSR relates to the modern RSR? Harrisonhimself explicitly allows this, though rather circuitously, when he writes,It should be now be clear that the question of the relationship between science(scientia) and religion (religio) in the Middle Ages was very different from themodern question of the relationship between science and religion. Were the ques-tion put to Thomas Aquinas, he may have said something like this: Science isan intellectual habit; religion, like the other virtues, is a moral habit. Therewould then have been no question of conflict or agreement between science andreligion because they were not the kinds of things that admitted those sorts ofrelations. ... When the question is posed in our own era, very different answersare forthcoming, for the issue of science and religion is now generally assumed tobe about specific knowledge claims or, less often, about the respective processesby which knowledge is generated in these two enterprises. (Harrison 2015, 16)If we, with Harrison, are comfortable asking Aquinas (hypothetically) about the RSR and228even providing a hypothetical answer, then it seems we are is committed to there beingconceptions ⟨religion⟩/⟨science⟩ in the Middle Ages.So what is “confused” or “distorting” about asking of the past—in this case of Aquinas—about the relation between religion and science? Notably, in this particular passage, Harrisondoesn’t claim that our query is misguided: he simply says that the question of the RSR wasvery different when posed in the Middle Ages versus the modern period. How exactlywas it different? We might think it was different because Aquinas would have understood‘religion’ and ‘science’ very differently from how we would, and thus would have given ananswer presumably very different from what we would expect. Now, setting aside the factthat Aquinas’ answer seems to fit very nicely into something like Barbour’s Independencecategory, the fact that Aquinas provides a very different answer to our question is not thesame as the question being illegitimate and confused—that is not how we should understandHarrison. For, again, if Aquinas can provide an answer, then it doesn’t seem like askingabout the RSR is using concepts which “distort” the past; if it did, then we would expectAquinas to be unable to furnish an answer.The possible confusion in how we understand Harrison’s point lies, I think, in how he framesthe issue, in particular in his using the definite article when talking of “the question” regard-ing religion and science. When Harrison “asks” this question, he is really asking two distinctquestions; he is not posing a single question at one time and at another. Instead, the question“posed in our own era” features our modern concepts, ⟨religionnow⟩ and ⟨sciencenow⟩, whilethe question directed at Aquinas would have been about ⟨religion1200s⟩ and ⟨science1200s⟩.These questions might have different answers. But they are both perfectly legitimate ques-tions to ask—though they are very different questions. Again, Harrison recognizes the legit-imacy of the questions, and even implicitly acknowledges their difference—hence the paren-thetical clarification that we ask about religio and scientia in the Middle Ages. But whatallows potential readers to slip back into a feeling that something has been distorted, that229our question was really confused, is the definite article and the consequent lack of temporalindices. Once we properly index, we see that there is no distortion, no confusion. Aquinashas his answers, and we have ours; that’s what we should expect, after all, if the meaningsof terms shift over time.More extreme versions of deconstruction, of course, want to claim that answers to thesequestions cannot be compared because they are answers to different questions. Even ifAquinas’ answer looks suspiciously like Barbourian Independence, it’s illegitimate to classifyit as such, since Aquinas deals with ⟨religion1200s⟩ and ⟨science1200s⟩ while Barbour’s typologytrucks with ⟨religionnow⟩ and ⟨sciencenow⟩; to compare the answers would be, in Harrison’swords, to “distort” the historical territories, to slip illicitly between questions. But this isdangerous territory, for comparisons across conceptual differences abound—permissibly—incontemporary discourse about ⟨religionnow⟩ and ⟨sciencenow⟩. Consider, for instance, thedisagreements between, say, a Richard Dawkins and a Stephen Gould: the former conceivesof both as ways of understanding the way the world works; the latter thinks religion is abouthow to get to heaven while science is about how the heavens go. Surely different conceptionsof religion (and possibly of science) are at play here—but that does not mean Dawkins andGould’s positions on the RSR, fueled by their different conceptions, cannot be compared.So not only can we ask questions about religion, science, and the RSR of the past, but wecan also compare answers (and the concepts on which they rely) to our present-day answers(and concepts).Now there was one other way in which we might have thought interrogating the past withquestions about religion and science was problematic. Perhaps Harrison’s point was thatasking our own question, “What is the relation between ⟨religionnow⟩ and ⟨sciencenow⟩?”,would be illegitimate to ask of the past. And indeed, if Aquinas did not realize we wereasking a question framed around our concepts, and if we did not realize Aquinas’ answerwere framed around his concepts, then we might make illicit conclusions about the historical230relation between religion and science. Even stronger, perhaps one would claim that, if askedour question indexed to the now, Aquinas—and his medieval contemporaries—simply wouldnot have been able to answer, because they would not, and could not, have understood thequestion, our concepts ⟨religionnow⟩ and ⟨sciencenow⟩ being so foreign to their own. This isa very strong claim, and I don’t think a plausible one. Were Aquinas brought up to speedon how we use the terms ‘religion’ and ‘science,’ although he might find our usage strange,I don’t see why he would be unable to furnish an answer about the RSRnow. For, in thesame manner, when, via this process of historical deconstruction, we are brought to see howAquinas understood religion and science, we are also able to provide characterizations of theRSR1200s—or at least Harrison certainly believes he can! So this stronger point cannot, Ithink, be made unless we forfeit the ability to understand and discuss any concepts from thepast.In any case, Harrison, in acknowledging that Aquinas can offer a characterization of the RSR,demonstrates that we can interrogate the past using our own conceptual categories withoutdistorting the past. The key, of course, is acknowledging that there is not a simple equivalencybetween our modern concepts and those of the past, and that answers to questions about theRSR which were given in the past may not be directly applicable in the present. Generalizing,the issue which Harrison and other deconstructivists face is that their historical analysesfocus on deconstructing religion/science at some particular point in history. But doing sodemonstrates the possibility of analyzing past conceptions of religion/science. Furthermore,these analyses go on to show that the historical concepts are not identical to our modern ones,thus demonstrating the possibility of diachronic comparison between the concepts! So thedeconstructivist cannot consistently maintain either that these concepts did not meaningfullyexist in the past or that cross-temporal (or cross-cultural) comparisons are illicit—for theythemselves assume as much and make such comparisons!The lesson from deconstruction, I believe, is that we should not be so hasty in drawing231present-day morals from the past. The RSR is configured in particular ways today whichmay not match or align with how the RSR was configured in the past. The “religion” and“science” related today are different from the “religion” and “science” of the Middle Ages—that is true. But that does not mean we are forbidden from speaking of past RSRs or ofdrawing any kind of lesson about the contemporary RSR from the past. For, perhaps mostimportantly, although the maps may be different, the territories still exist; the underlyingprocess and practice are still there to be examined and compared, even if they are notreferred to by the same name. And deconstructionists themselves rely on the existence ofpast conceptions of religion and science so they can show that they are different from ourcontemporary conceptions. And if there are such historical conceptions, then we should beable to relate them to each other, indexed to their time, without distortion, and then comparethat RSR to the modern RSR. And comparing these different RSRs could be incrediblyuseful; it can reveal artificialities in contemporary discourse; point to more productive formsof dialogue; encourage more nuanced, more careful examinations of actual history.There is one other way we may interpret Harrison’s map analogy, however. Returning toFigure 4.1, deconstructivists might make the incredibly strong claim that at some point intime, or in some culture, the relevant territory referred to by term2 did/does not even exist.That is, the Territory of Figure 4.1 should itself be temporally or culturally indexed, asin Figure 4.2, and Territoryt1 need not be identical to Territoryt2. On this view, then, itwould be impermissibly distorting to use categories which apply to Territoryt2 to try to mapout Territoryt1. It would be, perhaps, like asking Aquinas which was better—MacOS orWindows. The key is that the underlying phenomena referred to by these terms, MacOSand Windows, simply did not exist, even in an approximate sense, in Aquinas’ time. Idoubt, however, that Harrison embraces this kind of view—indeed, he acknowledges thatwe can identify past actions which we would nowadays classify as “scientific,” though they232were understood as falling under the term “natural philosophy” by contemporaries (Harrison2015, 17).Figure 4.2: Visualization of a conceptual (historicist) map-territory analogy with temporallyindexed Territory. Here there is no overlap between the borders projected by the conceptsbecause some of the practices, beliefs, etc. extant in Territoryt2 do not exist in Territoryt1(and in particular none of the practices, beliefs, etc. encompassed by the borders projectedby ⟨religiont2⟩ exist in Territoryt1).Likewise, it is not clear if any deconstructivists actually embrace this strong of a position,though some come close. For instance, in his The Invention of Religion in Japan, Josephsonproposes that in Japan the concept of religion did not exist prior to the forceful “opening up”of the country by the American military at the end of the Tokugawa era (Josephson 2012, 1).When American diplomats demanded that US citizens (in particular Christian missionaries)living in Japan be granted freedom of religion, state officials had to scramble to figure outwhat exactly was being demanded of them. After several meetings, the statesmen discoveredthe truth: the “religion” found in the Americans’ documents was just “Christianity,” whichthey realized was simply a front for Western nationalism (or a demonic form of Buddhism;see esp. Josephson 2012, 78–93). Equipped with this knowledge, the early Meiji governmentsigned the Americans’ papers, and proceeded to demand that American missionaries, whilethey no longer needed to trample the fumie,10 still worship the Emperor, for the fact that the10A practice that had been demanded of those suspected of being Christians in which they would step onChristian images (typically of Jesus).233Emperor was a descendant of the sun goddess Amaterasu was not, in fact, part of religion butinstead a fact of “cosmic science”—itself a category recently invented by statesmen after be-ing introduced to Western “science.” Further, the Meiji government began to create what wenow call Shinto, collecting together disparate local practices and beliefs into a centrally ad-ministrated bureaucratic organization (ibid., 94–131). But prior to this process of invention,Josephson maintains, there were no such things as ⟨religionJapan⟩ and ⟨scienceJapan⟩; theseconcepts simply were not present in the Japanese conceptual landscape. This point is furtherbuttressed by a series of interviews performed by the Japanese scholar/“anthropologist” AraiHakuseki (1657–1725) of Giovanni Battista Sidotti (1668–1714), a captured Italian Catholicmissionary. After several days discussing Catholic doctrine, the differences between Catholi-cism and Lutheranism, and the nature of religion in Europe and Asia, Hakuseki concludes,“When I reflect on this, the Westerner’s explanation of this is incoherent and superficial,and therefore not worthy of further discussion” (Josephson 2012, 264).In this case, it does seem odd to speak of the RSR in pre-Meiji Japan—they just had nosuch concepts. But even so, there were certain practices which we might today gloss asreligious—spirit worship for instance. And there were also practices which we might callscientific—like the metallurgic arts used to create samurai swords and explanations of themotions of the stars. So one could presumably look at relations between these practices andtypes of knowledge to come to some conclusion about a pre-Meiji RSR. Of course, one wouldhave to be very careful in specifying what ⟨religionpre−Meiji Japan⟩ and ⟨sciencepre−Meiji Japan⟩are, but this kind of comparative work could be done. And in fact, something similar tothis has been done by some working on religion and science in Asia—including Dawes 2021,whom we encountered in Ch. 2 (see also Csikszentmihalyi 2011). Unfortunately, however,this kind of work is not always explicit about the notions of religion and science underlyingtheir analysis and how they may differ from our current conceptions, an elision which leavesthem prone to mis- and over-interpretation.234We should note that the problems with certain interpretations of the map-territory analogydiscussed above aren’t truly issues for the method of deconstruction so much as issues withsome of the conclusions often drawn from the analogy, especially by scholars who are investedin the method—like the participants in the After Science and Religion project. The methodof deconstruction can still be illuminating, even if it does not make such radical conclusions.Lopez, for instance, provides a nice example of a deconstructionist account which doesnot propose the impossibility of talking about Buddhism, science, or their relation(s). Yet,unpacking the historical contingency of the concepts ⟨Buddhism⟩ and ⟨science⟩ can still makeclear facets of the Buddhism–science relation which are of interest to both scholars and—aswe will see in §4—non-academics. As with the method of conceptual analysis, deconstructionought not be dismissed out of hand because of the extravagances of a few of its most vocalproponents.4.2.2 Discovering JadeHarrison employs another analogy at the start of Territories centered on jade and naturalkinds. Many of us, he points out, assume that jade is a “natural kind,” “a label... appliedto natural groupings of things, the identity of which is natural in the sense that it doesnot depend on human beings.” Now, when Harrison says that we think of “jade” (he usesdouble quotes) as a natural kind, he must mean the concept, ⟨jade⟩, for only conceptscan qualify as “kinds,” be they natural, social, or otherwise; concepts are, in Harrison’sterms, the “groupings” of things in the world, the “categories” (another of his terms) underwhich we group or place particulars. That being said, although we may think that ⟨jade⟩is a natural kind, it is in fact not: “there are two chemically distinct substances that arecalled “jade”11—jadeite and nephrite. One is a silicate of sodium and aluminum; the other asilicate of lime and magnesia.” But since for most human purposes this difference in chemical11Here we should note that Harrison uses double quotes to talk about the term ‘jade’.235composition is not relevant—the two types of jade look and feel identical—we mistakenlybelieve that ⟨jade⟩ is a natural kind. Harrison draws an analogy between our mistaken viewof ⟨jade⟩ and ⟨religion⟩/⟨science⟩: “My argument with regard to the categories “religion”and “science”12 is that to some degree we are mistaken in thinking that they are analogousto natural kinds, because despite the apparent similarities among those things that we callreligions and the things that we call sciences, in fact the concepts and the way we deploythem masks important empirical differences” (Harrison 2015, 4).There are at least two (compatible) ways of understanding why we make this “mistake.” Thefirst is historical: the categories of religion and science have changed drastically over time, asHarrison shows, from virtues to practices to sets of ideas and propositions. These diachronicshifts show (supposedly) that ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are not natural kinds: the very factthat we can meaningfully speak of temporally indexed ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ indicates thattheir grouping has depended deeply on human beings. The other way of understanding whywe are mistaken in thinking of ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ as natural kinds does not depend onchanges in the use of terms but instead on the diversity of things we now refer to with ourcontemporary terms. On this way of thinking, we find it overly artificial to group togethersuch diverse practices as, say, Christianity and Buddhism, or epidemiology and quantumphysics. It is admittedly not clear which of these Harrison takes to explain our mistake;at times, he seems to think the latter is more pressing, but Territories as a whole seemsdedicated to providing a historicist account in line with the first understanding.In any case, as Harrison sees it, the upshot is that if ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are not naturalkinds, then they are not good concepts, and we ought to dispense with them and ultimatelytry to refrain from even using the terms ‘religion’ and ‘science.’ Thus, the contingency ofthe concepts—step 1) of the method of deconstruction—is taken to entail their inabilityto be natural kinds, and so Harrison concludes that they—and their terms—aren’t useful12Here Harrison uses double quotes to talk of the concepts ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩.236to the scholar (ibid., 196). This all seems a bit hasty, and the critic may reasonably askwhy it matters if ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are natural kinds or not. What’s the issue if theboundaries of these concepts are dependent on human beings?One could be led on this path if one accepted the idea that natural kinds provide the onlyuseful way of dividing up the world for scholars. Indeed, Harrison seems to think this is thecase, and it is the central theme of the After Science and Religion project which emergedfrom Territories.But natural kinds are not the only kinds useful to scholars. Even if some concepts are de-pendent on the whims of human beings and so are fluid, their boundaries flexible, vagueeven, that doesn’t mean they are not useful concepts. Wittgenstein’s discussion of gamesis often brought up as the classic counter to deconstructionists’ over-emphasis on the (sup-posed) stability of natural kinds. In the Philosophical Investigations (1953), Wittgensteinexplains that we can’t provide a precise definition of ‘game’—any attempt is sure to leaveout examples we would like to include or capture ones we would like to leave out. Further,there is a great diversity among games; Wittgenstein notes how some involve particular ob-jects like balls, some are competitive, but not all games share these features. Despite allthis, Wittgenstein insists, the concept ⟨game⟩ is still useful; we can identify some class ofphenomena which are roughly similar to one another—they share a “family resemblance”—even if we cannot specify the particular traits which they share. Surely these kinds are notnatural kinds; they are eminently dependent on humans and what groupings we happen tofind relevant (Wittgenstein 1953/2009, PI §66–76). But they are groupings that can be madeand effectively exploited regardless.How are they useful? In his critique of Territories, Reeves (in addition to bringing up thisWittgensteinian objection) points out that these categories, even if they are not naturalkinds, are still useful for comparative analysis. Reeves, borrowing from Riesebrodt 2010,considers the example of ⟨economy⟩. Like ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩, its boundaries have shifted237over time—indeed, the Greek etymology of ‘economy,’ “law of the household,” no longeradequately captures the intent of the term as used today! However, abandoning the use ofthe concept ⟨economy⟩ because it thus fails to be a natural kind (its identity relies on humanbeings) “would be an intellectual loss, for it would make comparison between feudalism,substance economies, and other ways of ordering economic behavior more difficult. Usingthe word economy allows one to demarcate the boundaries about which one is speaking,allowing for specialization” (J. A. Reeves 2023, 85).Likewise with ‘religion’ and ‘science’; these terms can still be useful for scholars since theyallow us to compare different types of practices around the world. Indeed, religious studiesscholars still call themselves “religious studies scholars,” or “scholars of religion” for thisvery reason. In the late twentieth century, the discipline underwent a kind of identity crisisas work—from which Harrison draws!—showed the artificiality of the category ⟨religion⟩.If ⟨religion⟩ was not a natural kind, what exactly were “scholars of religion” studying? Inwhat sense could they be engaged in a scientific practice (as religious studies was oftenunderstood, and still is so today in comparison to theology (see e.g. King 2013, 153–157)) ifreligion were not a natural object? Ultimately, scholars decided to keep the term—we stillhave Departments of Religious Studies (rather than, say, fragmented area studies scholars)—because they recognized the virtues of comparative analysis.13The case is more complicated in the case of ‘science,’ at least when we consult historians ofscience. In response to a variety of criticisms concerning the cultural specificity of ⟨science⟩and the ways in which it has been used in colonial endeavours, historians (and scholars inScience Studies more broadly) have come to employ the term ‘knowledge production’ torefer to those ways in which people around the world come to know about the (natural)14world. ⟨Science⟩ is thus provincialized: it is a particular form of ⟨knowledge production⟩13See, for instance, Taves 2011 and King 2013.14I use the parentheses because what counts as “natural” also varies widely across cultures, and a natural–non/super-natural distinction is not always recognized (see e.g. Ryūhei 2021).238which emerged in the West roughly at the start of the Early Modern period or a bit before,coincidentally the same time that Harrison marks the emergence of a more modern conceptionof science. For these scholars, however, ‘science’ is not discarded or seen as a useless term:it is preserved because it can still be used to refer to a particular way of doing something(learning about the (natural) world) which can be compared to other ways of doing similarthings. By analogy (and echoing the point made in the previous subsection) we might askwhy Harrison can’t allow for the use of ‘religion’ and ‘science’ in this more circumscribedrespect: they and the concepts they express are useful for comparisons, though they mayonly be species of some more general category.Returning to the analogy with jade and natural kinds, we might ask what, in the first place,would motivate a deconstructivist like Harrison to accept the view that natural kind divisionsare the only scholarly useful ones. Presumably the motivation comes from some intuitionthat only “naturally” existing kinds/entities can have real effects in the world. Thus, if⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are artificial, merely social constructs, then they cannot be used asexplanations of real-world phenomena, since they are not themselves causally efficacious.This kind of thinking then allows Harrison to claim explicitly that “religion cannot serve asan explanation for anything, either,” in particular religious violence. It will be instructiveto quote him at length here:To take a single example—the association of religion and violence—it can besaid that while it might be possible to establish connections between violenceand elements that have been included in the category religion, there remains thequestion of whether these elements should be so categorized in the first place.This applies to any number of instances—conflict in Northern Ireland, the earlymodern “wars of religion,” the crusades. ... Hypotheses that link religion andviolence are unhelpful not simply because the categories are confused, but alsobecause they prevent us from understanding the true complexion of causes of239those ills for which a constructed “religion” is the convenient scapegoat. ... Whilewe persist with these false categories, we will be prevented from discerning thetrue causes of the difficulties that presently beset us. (Harrison 2015, 196)For Harrison, the Protean nature of concepts like ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ disqualifies them asexplanations. Further, using these categories obfuscates the real underlying causal structure.Harrison consequently suggests that we completely abandon the terms: they are not onlycausally inert, but are distracting.I think Harrison is partly right here. It is certainly the case that ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩as broad categories can serve—and have done so—as scapegoats for deeper, more complexsocial causes. But this is not due to ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ being causally inert becausetheir conceptual borders have changed. All that the contingency of ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩shows is that they are, in contrast to Harrison’s definition of natural kinds, dependent onhuman beings. They are social kinds, we might say, rather than natural kinds. And socialkinds are not causally inert.15One obvious example here is ⟨race⟩. As is widely recognized, racial boundaries have variedsignificantly across time and place. This is easily seen by looking at how the US census hasgathered data about race (or until 1890, “color”).16 While many US government forms todayemploy a five-race division (American Indian, Asian, Black or African American, Caucasian,Pacific Islander), the racial typologies found in the census have varied dramatically fromas few as three categories in 1850 (white, black, mulatto) to eight in 1890 (white, black,15I use the term ‘social kinds’ here to highlight the contrast with Harrison’s ‘natural kinds.’ Some mayprefer, or be more familiar with, the term ‘social construct.’ I avoid this latter term partly because of therather unsavory intellectual connotations it has as a possibly empty term due to its wide and varied use(see e.g. Hacking 1999), and partly because the most sophisticated accounts of so-called social constructsinstead use the term ‘social kind’ (as in e.g. Josephson Storm 2021, discussed below). Of course, I recognizethat the category of social kinds is larger than that of social constructs: any group-like behaviour fallsunder the category of social kinds, regardless of whether it is “constructed.” But given that the targetshere—deconstructionists—are already committed to the constructed-ness of the kinds discussed (religionand science), it makes more sense to use the broader term ‘social kinds.’16All information about the US census included here has been gathered from Barrett and TWO-N 2020,accessed 30 November 2023.240mulatto, quadroon, octoroon, Chinese, Japanese, Indian), to fourteen in 2020 (White, Blackor African American, American Indian or Alaska Native, Chinese, Filipino, Asian Indian,Vietnamese, Native Hawaiian, Korean, Samoan, Japanese, Chamorro, Other Asian, OtherPacific Islander, as well as Other).17In more scholarly circles, the racial boundaries were also fluid. The term ‘race’ came intoprominence as a descriptor of human sub-types (sometimes sub-species) in the late seven-teenth century (A. Smedley and B. D. Smedley 2005, 19). Quickly, such a wide variety ofracial typologies emerged that Darwin was able to remark in The Descent of Man (1871),“Man has been studied more carefully than any other organic being, and yet there is thegreatest possible diversity amongst capable judges whether he should be classed as a singlespecies or race, or as two (Virey), as three (Jacquinot), as four (Kant), five (Blumenbach),six (Buffon), seven (Hunter), eight (Agassiz), eleven (Pickering), fifteen (Bory St. Vincent),sixteen (Desmoulins), twenty-two (Morton), sixty (Crawfurd), or as sixty-three, accordingto Burke” (Darwin 1871, 226).The way in which racial boundaries have shifted even within just the Western cultural milieuis made quite clearly by the revisionist American history Joseph C. Hart provides in his TheRomance of Yachting: Voyage the First (1848) (infamously known as the first publisheddefense of the “Shakespeare authorship question”):I have shown by their (the English) own cotemporary [sic.] history, as well as byours, that New England and her Puritans were more than a full century behindNew-York and her people, in every thing that is of value in civil and religiousliberty and progressive civilization. ...Our race (of New Yorkers) is not one in common with theirs. We do not admit17We should note that “censuses problematically let the enumerator decide a person’s race by looking atthem” until 1980, when respondents were finally allowed provide their own answers (Barrett and TWO-N2020).241the English prefix of stupidity as belonging to our blood. While the root of therace must necessarily remain of Teutonic origin, the engraftments are of a betterand a higher species. We are Norman-Saxon, not Anglo-Saxon. (Hart 1948,41–42; emphasis original)If Hart could claim that Normans and Anglos were of different races, how far we have cometoday!Even within our contemporary time period, anthropologists have shown that racial categoriesdiffer cross-culturally. The classic examples of contrast with Western racial conceptions areBrazil and Japan. In Brazil, racial identity is fluid because it depends deeply on physicalappearance rather than ancestry; individuals of the same family may be thought of as dif-ferent races, and individuals may shift races from day to day based on skin tone (alterableby natural or synthetic tanning; Kottak 2013). Further, Brazilian racial identification maydepend on social context as well (Telles 2002). On the other hand, race in Japan is deeplytied to a complex mixture of language, citizenship, and cultural practices more so than phe-notype (though physical appearance does also matter; Yamashiro 2013). These present hugedifferences from the static, supposedly origins-based, supposedly genetic conceptions of racewhich dominate Western discourse.18Thus, ⟨race⟩ is clearly in the same position as ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩: its boundarieshave shifted immensely over time and is even understood in inconsistent ways in differ-ent cultures—it is a social kind, dependent in essential ways on the human beings thatemploy it. If Harrison were to treat ⟨race⟩ as he does ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩, he would beforced to conclude that “race cannot serve as an explanation for anything, either.”But surely this is false! Race has—in some cases—enormous influence on individual livesand more general life trajectories. Even when controlling for other variables—socio-economic18Presumably contemporary racial realists must conclude that these other cultures simply do not under-stand the concept of race, or else are talking about something else.242status, education, etc.—race emerges as a statistically significant causal factor in healthoutcomes, for example (see Kuzawa and Gravlee 2016). And if social kinds like ⟨race⟩ canbe causally efficacious, why not with ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩? After all, being categorized asa ‘religion’ has clear tax benefits, at least in certain countries, and work which is classifiedas ‘science’ is able to receive government funding which would otherwise be unavailable toit.Now perhaps Harrison or other deconstructionists worry about the causal mechanism(s) bywhich social kinds act in the world. But there are numerous sophisticated accounts of socialkinds which explain how they can act in the world—despite their not being natural kinds.One of the most sophisticated recent such accounts in fact comes from the deconstructionistliterature itself. In his grand critique of “Theory,” Metamodernism (2021), Josephson Stormprovides a new way of conceiving social kinds which is meant to ground a new approach—metamodernism—to the “human sciences.”19On Storm’s account, social kinds are process power-clusters anchored by various social pro-cesses. By this, he means that social kinds are not static: they are not defined by uniqueessences which persist diachronically and cross-culturally. Instead, social kinds are con-stantly in flux; they are by nature Protean. What exactly changes about a given social kindis the particular powers which get clustered together under the heading of the social kind bymembers of a social group in which that social kind exists. “Powers,” for Josephson Storm,include actual properties as well as capacities—properties instantiated in particular circum-stances, like my ability to jump even when I am not currently jumping. Social kinds arecomposed of collections of these powers, but no single power is essential to the social kind:particular instances of the kind could lack any given power in the cluster. In that sense,Josephson Storm’s account of social kinds is similar to Wittgenstein’s family resemblance19I should note that while here I speak of kinds as concepts, Josephson Storm actually differentiatesbetween the two. In his account, concepts are mental representations while kinds are understood as thatwhich concepts represent (Josephson Storm 2021, 111). For my purposes, however, this distinction is largelyirrelevant.243account.But where it differs from, or expands upon, the Wittgensteinian account is in the insistenceon some kind of causal anchoring shared by the various powers: what powers are clusteredtogether is the outcome of particular social processes. Working in complicated concert withone another, various social forces select for particular powers to be included in the cluster.These social forces, or “anchoring” mechanisms, can take many forms (see especially ibid.,118–129). For instance, role adoption as a “scientist” can begin a selective process forparticular powers to cluster together as ⟨science⟩ and others as ⟨religion⟩—a process whichHarrison explicitly documents (Harrison 2015, Ch. 6; see also Turner 1978). Likewise,feedback loops generated by individuals who want to mimic others who identify as “scientists”or “Christians” can further entrench particular powers and exclude others from the clusters.Less abstractly, anchoring processes are social forces which determine what is relevant tosomething being, say, a religion. Those forces can (perhaps must always) change over time,which can thus change the conditions for what counts as relevant to the category ⟨religion⟩.Thus, as Josephson Storm puts it, “while conditioned, the formation of religion is non-arbitrary” (Josephson Storm 2021, 145).On Josephson Storm’s account, concepts like ⟨religion⟩ can thus still be causally efficacious—“despite” being socially constructed and hence “dependent on humans”—because they aregrounded in real social forces. And thinking with such concepts can even be explanatorilypowerful. Thus, to address Harrison’s criticism of discourse around “religious violence”(Harrison 2015, 196), ⟨religion⟩ is relevant to religious violence insofar as perpetrators andvictims of that violence understand it through the lens of ⟨religion⟩. On Josephson Storm’saccount, what thinking with ⟨religion⟩ in such a case helps us to do is think about the matrixof social forces which make various actors think of such acts as religious—forces which willnecessarily tie in events and histories which go beyond isolated acts of violence. In that sense,contrary to Harrison, thinking with ⟨religion⟩ can help illuminate “the true complexion of244causes of” religious violence, which may not be visible were we to eliminate all instances ofthe term ‘religion.’ In Josephson Storm’s words, we should not “delete the term” ‘religion’from our scholarly work; “[w]e need rather simultaneously to recognize the contingency ofreligion and to track the causal processes that anchor its properties” (Josephson Storm 2021,62).So even if ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are, like ⟨jade⟩, not natural kinds but instead social kinds,advocates of deconstruction are not warranted in concluding that we cannot usefully employsuch concepts or their terms. The terms are useful; they point to important social realitieswhich have real consequences for many people. Deconstructionists like Harrison who claimwe ought to abandon the terms go too far. That said, there is nothing wrong with themethod of deconstruction in general or in showing the contingency of our concepts ⟨religion⟩and ⟨science⟩ in particular. Indeed, Lopez again seems to chart a way to have a produc-tive conversation about the relation between ⟨Buddhism⟩ and ⟨science⟩ while deconstructingthose categories and showing how they have been shaped and crafted by participants in aBuddhism–science dialogue. And as Lopez shows, Buddhism and science both have realcausal effects on people and policy. So long as deconstructionists understand their contin-gencies in a more circumscribed manner, as not leading to the total renunciation of the kindsanalyzed, deconstruction can proceed without issue.4.2.3 Whose Religion, Whose Science?I’ll now turn to a different kind of critique, one not motivated by the controlling analogieswhich frame some deconstructions, but instead one focused on the sources appealed to inshowing the contingency of the concepts ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩. As in previous chapters,the issue centers on whose concepts are being deconstructed and whether the concepts de-constructed are actually relevant to the various readers public-facing authors target. I’ll245consider two broad concerns in this vein: 1) the (possible) divide between scholarly andnon-academic conceptions of religion/science and 2) the sources scholars consult in con-structing the concepts they ultimately break down. In considering each of these issues, Irecommend that deconstructivists embrace the diversity of religion/science concepts presentacross societies—at particular times and in particular cultures—and that they likewise in-terrogate a much broader range of sources than book-length, elite-produced works.First, the question: Whose conceptions are being deconstructed? For the most part, scholarlyconceptions. Harrison, for instance, tackles propositional conceptions of religion and science.What he shows is that religion and science were not conceived of propositionally: they wereonce virtues, loose associations of practices, etc. But we should also ask, who conceives ofreligion/science today as sets of propositions? It’s not clear that those outside of academiathink of them as such. Perhaps, of course, they may nod along and agree—yes, doctrinalbeliefs are a part of religion and a part of science. But more likely, I would suspect, peoplein their day-to-day lives conceive of religion and even of science more along the lines ofpractices—loose associations of practices, rituals, ways of doing things. And if that is theconception they actually have, then it seems that those are the concepts which, for suchreaders, would be more relevant to deconstruct.That said, I willingly admit that it is an open question how exactly the various readers ofthe religion-and-science literature conceive of religion/science. They may very well be justas wedded to propositional notions as academics are. But this is an empirical question, andwe can’t assume from the outset, as Harrison and others seem wont to do, that this is indeedhow public readerships understand religion/science. The literature and its readerships wouldbe well served by at least some amount of justification on the part of deconstructionists inexplaining why the conceptions of religion/science being analyzed are relevant.And in fact, I think there is at least some empirical evidence that everyday, non-academicreaders operate with rather different conceptions of religion and science than do scholars.246The sociologist John Evans’ work, for instance, seems to show that there are very differentconceptions at play. In Morals Not Knowledge (2018), Evans argues that insofar as non-scholarly audiences—in the US—interested in religion–science relations perceive the RSR asone of conflict, they understand it in a moral, rather than epistemic, sense. Rather thanthinking that science is a knowledge-competitor with religion in claims about the naturalworld, what motivates belief in conflict (among non-academics) is thinking that those em-bedded in scientific contexts act in ways opposed to those embedded in religious contexts.This is because non-scholarly audiences, according to Evans, do not conceive of religion orscience mainly in terms of knowledge claims; instead, they place far more importance on thevalues these different facets of society endorse (J. H. Evans 2018, Ch. 7).Evans bases his analysis on a wide variety of sociological data—including interviews andlarge-scale survey analyses—which seem to show that non-academics really do think of reli-gion, science, and their relationship in very different ways from the scholars who contributeto the religion-and-science literature. For example, while knowledge-centering conceptionsof religion and science might incline us to believe that, say, taking more college-level classesin the natural sciences concerning evolution would cause a decrease in religious belief forreligious conservatives, this is not borne out in sociological studies. As Evans summarizeswork by sociologist Robert Wuthnow, “Having more education only leads to stronger beliefin evolution for nonbiblical literalists. For biblical literalists, more education does not changeone’s views” (ibid., 99). This is further supported by Evans’ own analysis of responses tothe 2012 General Social Survey, which showed that religious Americans were just as likelyas non-religious Americans to take classes in and major in the sciences (ibid., 123–125).Evans also appeals to media analysis, citing the popularity of shows like The Big Bang The-ory (watched by 6% of Americans in 2018, when Evans’ book was published) whose “basiccomedic premise ... is to play off of all of the available tropes in American culture abouthow scientists are unlike the rest of us” (ibid., 117). Science, as presented in these shows, isreally more about character—being nerdy or a “mad scientist”—than propositions—in some247sense, ironically, more akin to the way Harrison argues science was understood as a virtuein the medieval period. Deconstructions like Harrison’s, however, fail to engage with thisconception of science as it appears in the modern day.20The gap between academic and everyday conceptions is further illustrated by looking atthe only Amazon review of Lopez’s Buddhism and Science: A Guide to the Perplexed bysomeone who explicitly identifies as a Buddhist.21 Reviewer Lal titles their review “NeitherScience nor true Buddhism discussed...” and explains, “In my opinion, rather than being a‘guide to the perplexed’, this book provides an inaccurate impression of Buddhism. ... Itwas such a surprise to me (being a Theravada Buddhist) that a complete chapter (the firstchapter) is a discussion on a mythical Mount Meru, since I was not even aware of a MountMeru. Even though I was born a Buddhist, I must admit that had[sic] not spent muchtime seriously studying Buddhism until a year ago.” Lal then seems to imply that doctrineabout Mount Meru is a corruption introduced by “other religions and other national myths”from China, Japan, and Tibet, but that the “cornerstone principles” of Buddhism—the FourNoble Truths and the Eight Noble Paths—remain eminently compatible with science (Lal,13 June 2011; accessed 30 September 2023).Evidently, Lal, who we might term an “everyday, practicing Buddhist,” doesn’t have the sameconception of Buddhism as Lopez’s more scholarly take. While Lopez is willing to admitbeliefs like the existence of Mount Meru into the conception of Buddhism he ultimatelydeconstructs, Lal is not so willing. Ironically, though, Lal’s review itself illustrates the main20I should note that Evans’ work focuses explicitly on the US context and that Harrison may not have hada US audience in mind, or at least may have had other national audiences in mind as well. Harrison, afterall, is based in the UK, and the Gifford Lectures upon which the book is based were given in Edinburgh.And perhaps public audiences in the UK context do possess a more-or-less propositional understanding ofreligion/science. That said, however, the point still stands that Harrison should not simply assume thatmodern readers—wherever they are—will conceive of religion/science in the same way as scholars are wontto—Evans’ work in the US context should at the very least caution authors like Harrison from assuming theprevalence of scholarly conceptions beyond the walls of academia.21As of 30 September 2023, there are ten reviews total on Amazon. Only one of the reviewers publiclyidentifies as a Buddhist; the other reviewers do not discuss their religious background, except for one whosays they are “against scientism, i.e. the view that natural science has authority over all other interpretationsof life” (B. L. Cloud, 30 June 2009; accessed 30 September 2023).248point of Lopez’s deconstruction: what exactly ⟨Buddhism⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are has changed inorder to preserve the conclusion that they are compatible. Lal does just that by arguing—ina seeming mirror of apologetic moves which Lopez describes in the very first chapter of hisbook—that beliefs about Mount Meru are not essential to core Buddhist beliefs (and areperhaps even foreign corruptions!).22But the point still stands: readers may come away from deconstructive texts feeling as ifsome straw man or red herring has been dissected rather than the religion/science with whichthey are familiar. To paraphrase one (academic) review of Lopez’s book, they may comeaway not feeling guided, but rather perplexed (Lazenby 2010). In some cases, of course,this may be due to poor readings of the text—and such may be the case with Lal. Butsurely it would greatly help readers, regardless of academic stature, if deconstructivists weremore upfront and clear about whose concepts were being analyzed. What scholars need torecognize is the fact that there is not just one single concept of religion or of science floatingaround to be deconstructed; there are in fact many different conceptions held by audiences ofdifferent backgrounds. And if scholars—like Harrison and Lopez—wish to effectively reachaudiences beyond academia, then they need to pay careful attention to whose conceptionsthey are deconstructing and how they frame the conclusions of their deconstructions. Forit is not clear why someone who does not conceive of religion/science in the scholarly wayshould care about deconstructions of scholarly concepts.That said, particularly scholarly concepts—say of science and religion as sets of propositions—may be especially relevant to debates concerning the conflict between religion and science.Insofar as many Conflict Theses are motivated by propositional conceptions, it does makesense for scholars like Harrison to work at deconstructing those concepts. But, again, wemust ask whether those debates are actually relevant to most readers. As Evans shows,the Conflict Thesis as understood by scholars—as one based on propositional conceptions22Lopez himself has reported similar ironic misunderstandings arising during question periods after talkshe gave based on Buddhism and Science (Lopez Jr. 2010).249of religion and science—is not the same as the Conflict Thesis embraced by non-scholarlyaudiences who do think there is tension between religion and science.The issue ultimately lies in the assumption of universally shared conceptions of religion andof science in the present and likewise of universally shared conceptions in the past which canbe mobilized to argue for the contingency of “the” concepts today. This assumption, I argue,is not warranted, or at least needs extensive justification which has not, as far as I am aware,been provided—especially given the empirical evidence that different conceptions of religionand science coexist within particular societies, e.g. between scholarly and non-scholarlyconceptions.To be clear, this is not a problem for the method of deconstruction in general. It is, again, aproblem with how that method has been historically carried out. If it could be shown thatreally, say, the propositional conceptions of religion and science are widespread among readersof the religion-and-science literature, then this could actually bolster a deconstructionistargument. For if there were no such unified, widely shared conception in the past, yet thereis one today, then that is surely an indication of the historical contingency of the concept.Of course, if there were not widely shared conceptions of religion/science in the past—as wemight expect of, say the eighteenth century, where, as Harrison shows us, the contours ofthe scientific profession were being determined and contested (Harrison 2018, 159–164; seealso Turner 1978)—then this presents a problem for analyses which try to distill particularconceptions as representative of the time, as Harrison does with Aquinas’ virtue-conceptionsof religion and science.In a sense, we might say that the issue is that current deconstructionists do not go farenough. ⟨Religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are contingent not just in that their conceptual bordershave shifted over time, or differ across cultures, but also in that they differ and shift withinparticular societies-at-a-time. This isn’t, however, to say that we should always assumetotal conceptual anarchy: there are surely mid-level generalizations we can make about the250contours of ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ among specific groups/subcultures. And it may in factbe the case that ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩, or at least some conceptions of religion and science,were created in closed environments, by small groups of elite scholars for particular purposes.That, after all, is one of the points many deconstructionists try to make both within religion-and-science and in religious studies, science and technology studies, and history of sciencemore generally.Even then, however, disagreement over conceptual boundaries within those small groups isoften taken as the strongest proof of a concept’s historical contingency. For instance, Joseph-son takes the variety of competing views as to how to understand the English term ‘religion’as proof that there was no ⟨religion⟩ available to the Japanese, which in turn is meant toshow that the whole concept of religion is culturally contingent (Josephson 2012, 1, 71–78).Works in religion-and-science, however, often fail to make explicit the disagreements overhow to conceive of religion/science: we are told that there is some particular ⟨religion1200⟩,not that there was ⟨religion1200,a⟩ competing with ⟨religion1200,b⟩ and ⟨religion1200,c⟩. In asense, being more deconstructionist may serve the literature even better, not only by betterreflecting the history, but also in making the case for the concepts’ contingency more obvi-ous. Doing so would also better reflect the present state of affairs: there are many competingconceptions of religion and science even today. And that is something to be acknowledgedand dealt with—for, as discussed in Ch. 2, perhaps not all works which deal with particularconceptions of religion/science will be relevant to all readers potentially interested in theRSR.Again, the issue is this: scholars tend to deconstruct scholarly conceptions, but these maynot be relevant to their non-scholarly readers. And scholars tend to focus on scholarlyconceptions because they wrongly assume that there is a single conception of religion and asingle conception of science widely held today which are to be deconstructed. Scholars canavoid falling into this trap in a few ways. On the one hand, they could simply be more upfront251and clear about the particular conceptions of religion/science they are dealing with, and howthe conclusions they draw about “the” RSR must be contextualized and circumscribed bythose particular conceptions. On the other hand, deconstructions could instead revel in thediversity of conceptions in the present—as well as in the past. Traditionally, they have beenquite good at the latter. But there is very little investigation of modern-day diversity. Byfocusing on that diversity, I believe that deconstructionists could shine a great amount oflight on the state of “the” RSR and the discourses it inhabits today.In this vein, here are a few questions I think deconstructionists would be well suited toaddressing: How do disagreements about conceptions of religion/science impact disagree-ments about the RSR? What factors are relevant in what conceptions actors take up? Arecommitments to particular characterizations of the RSR tied to particular conceptions ofreligion/science? How are other identities—political, economic, racial, gender—tied to dif-fering conceptions? Deconstructing our concepts in this way can be deeply revealing of thestate of religion–science discourse, and the role that characterizations of “the” RSR playin various other discourses. This kind of analysis would be both relevant to a wider rangeof audiences and also simply better reflect the true state of “the” RSR in contemporarydiscourse.My second, much smaller, critique of and recommendation to deconstructionists, which stemsfrom questioning whose concepts are being deconstructed, centers on the sources used to buildthe deconstructive accounts. Essentially: when deconstructivists challenge the contingencyof ⟨religion⟩/⟨science⟩, what sources do they consult? In almost every case, it is book-lengthtracts produced by scholarly elites often for other scholars or highly educated elites. For ex-ample, Harrison draws almost exclusively from Aquinas to construct the medieval conceptionof science (or scientia) and from a handful of theologians and philosophers—like WilliamPaley (1713–1805), William Whewell (1794–1866), and John Herschel (1792–1871)—to con-252struct later conceptions. And the works which feature in Harrison’s innovative quantitativestudy of the frequency of terms related to more contemporary conceptions of science—e.g. “scientist,” “biology,” “scientific method”—focuses explicitly on books (Harrison 2018,159–171). Likewise, Lopez’s account focuses on a litany of scholars of religion publishingin venues like Asiatick Researches and Journal des Savants meant for the eyes of otherscholars—though Lopez does also make use of encyclopedia entries and works by e.g. theDalai Lama which are explicitly public-facing.My recommendation is that scholars expand their source base to include other forms ofmedia, especially those produced for—and sometimes by—non-elites. Doing so will not onlyallow scholars to generate more accurate representations of the conceptions of religion held byvarious historical communities, but also help them to engage with conceptions that are morelikely to resonate with non-scholarly audiences. This is especially the case with modernreaders, whose sources for religious/scientific concept formation are not often the sourcesexamined by scholars. Modern conceptions of religion and science should be explored asthey are presented in films, YouTube videos, and podcasts. Some of these, like movies inthe Disney Marvel franchise, reflect common views of religion, science, and their interaction(see especially Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)). Others, like videos producedby science education channels on YouTube, produce work explicitly designed to advertiseparticular conceptions of science. In a similar vein, scholars could be served by analyzingadvertisements and branding strategies which leverage conceptions of religion and/or science.And in their historical investigations, scholars could likewise look into the past correlatesof these sources—pamphlets, newspaper articles, popular science/religion magazines—andthe advertisements which appear therein. Harrison does this to some extent in Territories :Chapter 6 begins with a brief display of how science was conceived by contributors to theDublin Review in the late 1860s, but the letters in literary magazines quickly disappear inthe rest of the text, where one finds instead books and nothing more. A scholarly work whichexemplifies the kind of analysis I propose is Carolyn Merchant’s The Death of Nature (1980).253Although admittedly quite dense and, I would expect, rather inscrutable to the non-scholar,the work calls upon an immense variety of source types—from paintings to mining songs tolocal newspaper clippings to Shakespeare plays—to unpack the complex ways in which theEarth and “the” scientific process in general were understood (Merchant 1980).Work which takes these other, non-book sources seriously does exist in the religion-and-science literature. Bernard Lightman, for instance, has studied the ways in which Darwin andevolution were discussed in popular science journals (Lightman 2007). Franz Winter has alsoinvestigated how science and technology are conceived by particular religious communitieslike Kofuku no Kagaku (Happiness Science) by studying their video and print advertisementsas well as anime they produce, alongside their official book-length works (Winter 2015).And as discussed above, John Evans has fruitfully analyzed the ways science is presented inpopular TV shows like Star Trek and The Big Bang Theory (J. H. Evans 2018, 116–117).Deconstructivist accounts could benefit greatly from incorporating this kind of non-booksource analysis.4.3 A Conflict of MethodsIn this section, I will address an issue not with the method of deconstruction itself, but withhow that method—especially in its historicizing form—is discussed within the religion-and-science literature. In particular, historicism is often seen as complementary to the methodof case studies.23 However, as I will argue, this compatibility is tenuous: historicism is atbest in tension with the method of case studies, and at worst fundamentally undermines it.I am not the first to distinguish historicism and case studies as distinct methods—althoughI believe I am the first to use such language. Bernard Lightman, for instance, refers to them23In Ch. 3, I distinguish between two “flavours” of the method of case studies: inductive and motivational.Here, when I refer to the method of case studies, I mean only the inductive flavour.254as different “strategies for undermining the conflict thesis,” one of which “involves the ex-amination of a major episode, or development, in the history of science and religion in orderto show that the conflict thesis does not capture the historical reality”—my “method of casestudies”—and the second of which builds (admittedly rather vaguely) “an entirely new bigpicture for understanding the historical relationship between science and religion,” as doesHarrison 2015—my “deconstruction” (Lightman 2019, 5–6). Importantly, Lightman identi-fies a tight bond between the two “strategies.” Not only are they often deployed against theconflict thesis, but “the shared aim of both these strategies is to ... [embrace] the complex-ity embedded in [John Hedley] Brooke’s monumental Science and Religion.” As Lightmanexplains, “For Brooke there was no single thesis—whether one of conflict or harmony or inte-gration or separation—that explained the historical relationship over the centuries” (ibid.).That is, both the method of case studies and the method of deconstruction can be—andoften have been, at least recently—used to argue for the same conclusion, viz., the lack of ageneral characterization of the RSR.But although they point to the same conclusion, this does not mean that the methods arethemselves compatible. Recall how the method of case studies works: One first surveys somenumber of historical interactions between religion and science, then one uses that surveyas the basis for an induction to the characterization of the RSR. Importantly, the episodesincluded in the inductive basis must be related in some significant respects to religion–scienceinteractions today. That is, if a conclusion is supposed to be drawn about the RSRtoday, thenthe kinds of religion and science featured in the episodes comprising the inductive base mustbe representative of religiontoday and sciencetoday.But now recall how deconstruction works: 1) demonstrate the contingency [of the formation]of the concepts ⟨religion⟩ (or some ⟨particular religion⟩) and/or ⟨science⟩ (or some ⟨particularscience⟩) at some place/time, then 2) on the basis of that contingency offer a characteriza-tion of the RSR. In its historicizing form, step 1) proceeds by demonstrating the historical255instability of the concepts: their boundaries are not diachronically stable. But if it is the casethat neither religion nor science have diachronic conceptual anchors, then it is not clear howhistorical episodes of religion–science interactions can be representative of the RSR today.In this sense, historicism can fundamentally undermine the method of case studies: althoughthey may be used to reach similar conclusions, historicism—as sometimes practiced—couldpreclude the very possibility of induction over case studies.This conflict between methods is well illustrated by Harrison’s territories analogy which wetackled in §2.1 above. Remember how he put it:My suggestion is that something similar is true for the entities “science” and “reli-gion,” and more specifically, that many claims about putative historical relation-ships are confused for much the same reason as claims about a sixteenth-centuryconflict between Israel and Egypt: that is to say, they involve the distorting pro-jection of our present conceptual maps back onto the intellectual territories ofthe past. (Harrison 2015, 1)Those who wish to mine the past for cases of conflict or harmony or separation or evencomplexity are prone, in Harrison’s language, to “distortingly project present conceptualmaps back onto intellectual territories of the past.” Again, this is because in order to dothe induction in step 2 of the method of case studies, the cases in the basis need to berepresentative of contemporary cases. That is, if one would like to use, say, RSRt1 andRSRt2 to make an induction to the RSRnow, then it should be the case that the concepts⟨religiont1⟩ and ⟨religiont2⟩ are similar in significant respects to ⟨religionnow⟩—and so toowith ⟨sciencet1⟩, ⟨sciencet2⟩, and ⟨sciencenow⟩. Yet, historicizers like Harrison are wont todeny the possibility that ⟨religiont1⟩ and ⟨religiont2⟩ are similar enough to ⟨religionnow⟩ towarrant the inductions of the method of case studies. In this sense, the method of casestudies seems fundamentally incompatible with the method of deconstruction: Harrison-256esque historicizing denies the possibility of constructing the inductive base necessary for themethod of case studies.Of course, Harrison-style historicizing is not the only form of deconstruction, and in facta more moderate form of historicizing need not generate such a stark incompatibility withthe method of case studies. A milder form of deconstruction, like that advocated above andthroughout this chapter, can allow that ⟨religiont1⟩ and ⟨religiont2⟩ may not be equivalentwhile still holding that they are similar enough that they can together be used to say some-thing useful about a more general RSR. There is still a tension, however, because takingthe contingency of ⟨religion⟩/⟨science⟩ seriously places real constraints on the inductionsinherent to the method of case studies; not all collections of past RSRs can serve as per-missible inductive bases to inform us about the present RSR. With that said, however, itis still instructive to think with the more extreme form of historicizing—not only becauseit is the form which dominates (however unfortunately) the scholarly discourse, but moreimportantly because it is the form which informs the conclusions scholars currently makewhen thinking of the method.4.4 For Whom Is Deconstruction Useful?In the anthology After Science and Religion (2022), the contributors outline a few reasonswhy deconstruction is a useful way of approaching the RSR. Tyson provides four “pay-offs”worth quoting at length:When we abandon the attempt to impose our present concepts on the past, weare in a position to see how past actors entertained very different understandingsof how the formal study of nature (our ‘science’) was related to the fundamentalquestions of meaning and value (our ‘religion’). ... How we get to naturalistic,257value-free, modern science from this earlier, religiously inflected ‘natural philos-ophy’ is highly informative for our present thinking about how the realms ofmeaning and value should impinge upon the conduct and content of the naturalscience and about the possibility for the future reconnection of these domains.A second pay-off of close study of the emergence of the categories ‘science’ and‘religion,’ and indeed of simply attending more closely to the history of science,is that it reveals how the modern sciences, during their early modern incubation,drew strongly and explicitly on particular metaphysical and theological assump-tions while at the same time rejecting others. Once we become aware of these(now largely implicit) foundations, we can ponder the extent to which modernscience remains tacitly indebted to them. This, in turn, can inform our thinkingabout how different various sciences might look had they drawn upon alternativetheological and metaphysical positions, and indeed whether they might in futurebe reshaped and redirected in fruitful ways by such alternatives.Third, in addition to attending to the implicit philosophical commitments thatcontinue to inform scientific practices from within, we are now in a positionto see more clearly how and why a particular philosophical outlook – analyticphilosophy – has tended to dominate contemporary Anglophone science-religiondiscussion from without. ...Finally, awareness of the history of the categories ‘science’ and ‘religion’ shedscrucial light on their present power relations. (Tyson 2022 3–5)These are quite scholarly reasons, though some, I think, may appeal to non-scholars aswell. But, of course, not all audiences—scholarly or non-scholarly—will find these particularreasons appealing. Some may not be moved by intellectual shifts from hundreds of yearsago. Others might not see how the method is useful for whatever it is they wish to dowith the RSR. In fact, I think it is a common (though naive) complaint that deconstructive258accounts—of the RSR or of other objects—are too academic to be relevant to to publicdiscourses.I think, however, that deconstruction—when done properly, when not over exaggerated,when being careful to deal with concepts relevant to non-academics—can be quite usefulto at least some publics. In this section, I’ll examine two kinds of public audiences whichmight find the method of deconstruction useful: apologists and policymakers. The analysisgiven here, as in previous chapters, is not meant to be exhaustive. But I would suspectthe relevancy of this rather complicated and esoteric way of investigating the RSR to berather circumscribed. That said, the two groups I discuss do have something to gain fromdeconstructions of the RSR. Given the relative paucity of public-facing works using thismethodology, I would encourage scholars who employ deconstruction to try broadening theirreadership. There is, I believe, a market for the method.Apologists: Deconstruction may be useful to apologists both when arguing against hostileaudiences and when addressing sympathetic coreligionists. The way in which the contingencyof ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are exploited, however, will differ in those contexts.For contexts involving addressing hostile opponents, consider Lopez’s account of “the”Buddhism–science relation. In the history of these debates, what exactly ⟨Buddhism⟩ isand what exactly ⟨science⟩ is have changed, although the conclusion that they are eminentlycompatible has (generally) stayed the same. Lopez’s deconstruction proceeds by laying outthe various ways Buddhism and science have been conceived by different parties—Buddhistsand non-Buddhists alike—over the past 200 or so years. In a sense, Lopez’s history presentsa menu of possible ways of characterizing the concepts fit for different situations. Perhaps agiven opponent has a more technology-centric view of science: then the Buddhist apologistmay be well served to draw from Gendün Chopel’s (1903–1951) conception of Buddhism as(at least in part) a repository of anticipations of contemporary inventions—and then some259(Lopez 2008, 127–128).24 On the other hand, perhaps emphasizing the causal nature ofKarmic Law could defuse an opponent’s claim that Buddhism is not itself scientific. Apol-ogists can thus view deconstructions as illustrations of possible moves one could make (andwhat moves not to make) in particular situations to defend their religion as compatible withscience.Deconstruction may also offer a more general kind of aid to religious apologists as well.Christian apologists drawing on work like Harrison’s may, for instance, argue that since theonly reason Christianity and science are in conflict was a series of historical contingencies,the conflict is unstable: it can be altered, changed. The past, on this way of thinking,presents an array of potential ways of (re)conceiving religion and science from which we maydraw and which we may perhaps reinstate to influence the general shape of contemporarydiscourse about the RSR. As we saw above, participants in the After Science and Religionproject, themselves often Christian apologists, value the method for this reason, and it is easyto imagine less-scholarly individuals seeing a similar value in these deconstructive accounts.The aim, in this case, is to change the general way conversations about the RSR are carriedout, not just, as in the previous paragraph, to address a particular kind of opponent in aparticular situation.Notably, the way in which deconstruction—in any context—may be appealing to apologistsis different from the way in which case studies may appeal to the very same group. De-construction does not simply refer to prior times in which relations were cheery, times towhich we can return. Instead, deconstruction shows that a deeper change is possible: thevery concepts themselves could be altered such that they are in harmony—or are entirelyindependent.It is for this reason that I don’t believe non-religious apologists will find deconstruction as24Though such an apologist should heed Lopez’s warning that tying Buddhism too closely to any particularscientific innovation may cause trouble down the line when that innovation becomes outdated (Lopez 2008,128–129).260useful as they may find other methods. Conceivably, an atheist might leverage the contin-gency of just what ⟨religion⟩ is to try to make some argument about the general illegitimacyof claims to harmony between religion and science; one can hear the preamble to somethinglike a God-of-the-Gaps argument. But again, as discussed above, this would rely on themistaken inference that the fluidity of a concept’s borders is a sign that it fails to latch ontoanything at all which can be placed in real relation with other things—we can still rightfullysay that fish are aquatic animals, that they are part of a genetic lineage which shares acommon ancestor with the mammals which lived some 400 million years ago, even if theboundaries of ⟨fish⟩ have changed radically over the past 400 or so years. Further, at leastin most real-world scenarios, atheists of this stripe tend to embrace a more temporally fixedconception of science than deconstruction could permit—figures like Dawkins seem to advo-cate the existence of an ever-present, eternal Science. The clever religious opponent couldthen easily counter that, although what exactly counts as religion has changed, so too haswhat counts as science. And, furthermore, changes in the boundaries of ⟨science⟩ have oftenbeen crafted explicitly to exclude ⟨religion⟩—and so if the atheist believes there is somethingfishy with the shifting borders of ⟨religion⟩, there is certainly something suspect about theshifting borders of ⟨science⟩. Thus, perhaps surprisingly, while deconstruction may providefodder for apologists making pro-religious arguments, it doesn’t seem to provide grist for theatheists’ mill.The case is less clear for skeptics of particular religions who want to exploit that religion’srelation to science. Imagine, say, a Hindu skeptical of Buddhism. After reading a worklike Lopez’s, they might plausibly argue that the kind of harmony with science espousedby Buddhist apologists is only artificial, a consequence of cherry-picking definitions andconscientiously ad-hoc self-re-imagination. If Buddhism can be said to be in harmony withscience, our Hindu might say, then—by the same token—Hinduism can also be said to bein harmony with science. In this case, then, deconstruction is used to level the playingfield; if the definitions are up for grabs, then anyone can grab and craft them as they261please. Of course, perhaps the Hindu believes that while the Buddhism–science relationcan be deconstructed in this way, the Hinduism–science relation cannot be—an implausibleview from the scholar’s standpoint,25 but a possible one we could at least imagine someoneholding. In this sense, the method of deconstruction itself, rather than any fruits of its use,can be relevant to at least religious opponents of some religious apologists.Policymakers: Policymakers working on issues related to topics in the religion-and-sciencediscourse (e.g. evolution in public schools, government support for possibly controversial re-search/technology (like gene-editing), mandatory vaccination) may—perhaps surprisingly—find deconstructive accounts useful. Thinking about policymaking is especially relevant forscholars who work in countries—like the US—where popular discourse around religion-and-science is often politically infused.Policymakers pushing particular science-oriented legislation might be interested in better un-derstanding the RSR for a variety of reasons—perhaps they need to overcome resistance putforward by some particular religious bloc, or maybe they simply want to galvanize otherwisenon-enthusiastic potential voters. Consider, for instance, a politician who wishes to galvanizesupport for government-funded stem cell research in her area of jurisdiction, but who is be-ing opposed by a group of politically active and strong Jehovah’s Witnesses. Deconstructiveaccounts of the Jehovah’s Witnesses’ relation with medical science may help this politicianbetter understand where this group is coming from and how to best address their concerns.Perhaps she can draw on ways in which the group previously conceived of themselves or ofparticular medical practices—like vaccination, which Witnesses originally opposed but latercame to accept in 1952 (Grabenstein 2013)—in her advertisement/outreach. Thinking withthe actual history of these groups may be more effective than the current practice of simplybroadcasting the virtues of vaccines as understood by what opponents perceive (negatively)25See, for instance, the discussions of the invention of Hinduism as a category within Western scholarly“world religion studies” in Nongbri 2013 and Masuzawa 2005, though see Pennington 2005 for a more nuancedaccount in which Hindus themselves play a more active role in the construction of the category.262as an untrustworthy “medical establishment.” 26Something similar to this suggestion of playing into previous conceptualizations has in factbeen considered and recommended by scholars interested in politically-coloured religion-and-science discourses in the Muslim world, in particular those having to do with evolution. Ithas been noted (e.g. by Hameed 2010) that while “in the Muslim world Islam and modernscience are often seen as compatible,” evolution stands out as a prominent exception. AsHameed explains, “The situation is further complicated by the fact that many Muslim coun-tries are investing in biomedical fields that make use of evolutionary theory. Similarly wefind support for stem-cell research in several Muslim countries concurrently with widespreadopposition to biological evolution” (Hameed 2010, 132–133). In light of this, policymakersmay benefit from understanding not only the complex socio-historical background to thepresent popular views of science and Islam (including how nineteenth-century Europeanspromoted positive views of the Islam–science relationship to attack Christianity, and howthat narrative was then used by Muslims to resist Westernization),27 but also the ways inwhich evolution in particular has been conceived. Works which trace the history of thesekinds of claims and the often quite political contexts in which they emerged (e.g. as waysof resisting Western cultural imperialism) could provide policymakers in the Islamic worldwith a variety of conceptions of evolution to help encourage acceptance of the theory bytheir constituents. Of course, this strategy may ultimately prove problematic. As prominentscholar of Islam-and-science Shoaib Ahmed Malik writes, “The motivation behind this lineof thinking seems to be diminishing the highly charged polarity directed towards evolutionfound in the Muslim world. Though such a strategy might help reduce Muslims’ social anx-ieties, and thus potentially help them embrace evolution, it resorts to a false stimulus” forthe conceptions of evolution had by past thinkers differ significantly from evolution as under-stood in contemporary biology (Malik 2021, 159). That said, however, even if the particular26This parallels the recommendation Goldenberg 2021 makes against “knowledge-gap” strategies for ad-dressing vaccine hesitancy.27See e.g. Küçük 2010 and Yalcinkaya 2010.263conceptions of past thinkers should not be appealed to (due to worries of anachronism), thefact that evolution—and Islam—were conceived in such a way as to be compatible could atleast help show that there are ways in which Islam-and-science discourse could be shapedto be more evolution-friendly. This would be a close correlate to Harrison’s point that de-constructive accounts can help illuminate “the potential of paths that were not taken” inconceiving the RSR (Harrison 2022, 316).The relevancy of deconstruction to policymakers closely follows/mirrors the ways in whichthe method of case studies may also be relevant to them. The key difference, however, liesin the kind of motivation the different methods provide or recommend. The method ofcase studies essentially offers historical figures and events around which constituents mayrally because of a shared religious identity. If we were to imagine local governments creatingsignboard advertisements to support particular legislation, the method of case studies recom-mends slogans like “XXX supported it, so you can too!” On the other hand, deconstructionfocuses on concepts: it provides ways in which the policymaker can present or characterizethe science/scientific policy at hand. The recommended slogan from deconstruction wouldinstead look more like “ZZZ said Science is YYY—so what’s the problem?” Advertising inthis second way parallels successful programming in 2014 Australia to increase vaccinationrates among socially progressive communities which had a history of opposing vaccination.In the “I Immunise” campaign, run by the Immunisation Alliance of Western Australia,visuals depicting e.g. women breastfeeding instead of using baby formula—at the time aprogressive sign post—were accompanied by phrases like “I breastfeed, I use homeopathy,and I immunise” (reproduced in Goldenberg 2021, 62). Such advertisements made use oftheir audience’s self-conceptions to garner support for a particular medico-scientific inter-vention. Deconstructive accounts of particular religious identities and/or their relations withscience could help inform similar such programming.To be clear, the way in which the method of deconstruction may be useful to policymakers264is also different from how the method of fieldwork (discussed in Ch. 5) may be useful. Themethod of fieldwork, as will be discussed, focuses on self-reporting and direct appraisal of self-conception through surveys, interviews, and ethnography. While such information may beuseful, self-reflection may not illuminate larger structural features which may be relevant tothe ways in which religion–science discourse is shaped in particular communities. Historicaldeconstruction, by contrast, tends to highlight broader structural forces/constraints whichshape how particular communities understand science, religion, and their relationship.This leads to a final point about the method of deconstruction. Perhaps ironically, what isuseful in deconstruction to policymakers is not the conclusions drawn by deconstructionists.Instead, it is really only the first step of that method—the demonstration of contingencythrough the use of historical and/or cultural examples, which make the method relevant, atleast most of the time. The general conclusion—that Buddhism is compatible with scienceor that religion and science are ultimately at odds—is likely more or less irrelevant; for whatmatters to the policymaker is not so much the correct characterization of the RSR itself somuch as how people perceive the RSR and how that perception may shape their responsesto particular pieces of science policy—or to religion/religious individuals.4.5 ConclusionIn this chapter, I provided a critique of the method of deconstruction and offered severalrecommendations as to how that method could be better implemented in public-facing work.The method of deconstruction proceeds by first demonstrating the contingency—typicallyhistorical or cultural—of the concepts ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩, then arguing for some charac-terization of the RSR based on the demonstrated contingency. Scholars like Peter Harrisonand Donald Lopez Jr. have written public-facing works which employ this method, althoughit is relatively rare in the public-facing religion-and-science literature—though the method265is quite common in scholar-facing venues in religion-and-science and especially in religiousstudies.I considered three general issues with how deconstruction is currently practiced. The firsttwo derived from ambiguity in the language used in Harrison’s influential The Territoriesof Science and Religion (2015). Depending on how the deconstruction is read, one mightbe tempted to conclude that we should completely dispense with the terms ‘religion’ and‘science’ because they not only distort the past but are also simply incapable of explainingreal-world phenomena. I argued that while great care must be taken in drawing consequencesfor the modern RSR from past conceptions of science and religion, we need not dispense withthe terms entirely. Transhistorical comparison need not always distort the past as long aswe focus on the extent to which the practices, beliefs, etc. to which we take our currentterms ‘religion’now/‘science’now to refer did and did not exist in the past (§2.1). I also arguedeven if ⟨religion⟩ and ⟨science⟩ are not natural kinds, this does not rule out their utility asexplanatory categories. As social kinds, they may very well be useful to scholarly analysis(§2.2). In §2.3, I moved beyond Harrison’s work to suggest that deconstructivist accountspay more attention to which conceptions of religion/science they deconstruct so that theiranalysis is more relevant to their non-scholarly readers. In particular, I argued that scholarsshould be more open to the wide diversity of religion and science concepts which are present ina society at any given time, and make use of sources other than book-length tracts producedby scholarly elites.It has been claimed that the method of deconstruction and the method of case studiesmutually support the Complexity Thesis. In §3, I showed that even if both methods may beused to lend support to some particular characterization of the RSR, they are still in tensionwith one another—especially when it comes to more radical forms of deconstruction.Finally, I concluded with a look at what public audiences could benefit from public-facingscholarly work using the method of deconstruction. Although there is much room for im-266provement, the method is not, as a pessimist might have expected, irrelevant to non-scholars.267Chapter 5The Method of FieldworkOur freshman biologist-to-be pulls a book from the shelf and flips it to a random page.What she sees surprises her. Rather than the walls of text she expected, the book presentsa multi-page table filled with numbers. She pulls another book and finds, rather than anauthor’s musings, an interview transcript.What are these sources? What can they tell the student about the RSR? And are thesenumbers and transcripts useful? Are they relevant to her interests and concerns?In this chapter, I analyze the method of fieldwork. As with other chapters in this dissertation,I begin by specifying what I take this method to entail and summarizing a few exemplarsdrawn from the public-facing religion-and-science literature. I then move on to a discussion ofsome issues facing the method of fieldwork. In turning to the question of whose religion andwhose science is studied, I suggest several groups and spaces which have been understudiedin the literature, especially those involving what I have previously called the non-theory-oriented sciences. In developing these critiques, I aim to show how scholars using fieldwork268methods may strengthen their work as well as make it more relevant to a broader range ofreaders by highlighting fruitful areas for future investigation. I conclude the chapter with adiscussion of which public audiences may find the results of fieldwork most useful.5.1 The Method of FieldworkBy “the” “method of fieldwork,” I intend to capture a range of methods which have theirorigins in the social sciences. Thus, the definite article is a bit misleading. However, thegroup of methods which I place under the general heading “fieldwork” all share an empiricalbent. Hence, I’ll define “fieldwork” like so:Fieldwork: those methods which extract the characterization of the RSR fromthe results of an empirical study of a contemporary target population.The key here is that the characterization of the RSR is to be found in the population studiedrather than in the mind of the scholar—at least ideally. That is, the amount of theory throughwhich the empirical data is run is meant to be kept at a minimum. Put bluntly, accordingto the method of fieldwork, the way to understand the RSR is to find it in the voices of thepeople studied, not in the voice(s) of the scholar(s) studying them.Before I move to some examples illustrating the method, let me clarify some aspects of thisrough definition.First, as mentioned before, my category of “fieldwork” brings together an array of particu-lar empirical study methods. In the extant literature, the most common such methods aresurveys, interviews, and participant-observations or ethnography.1 For instance, the PewResearch Center has employed large-scale surveys and interviews (both one-on-one and in1Although “ethnography” and “participant-observation” sometimes come apart, for my purposes here Iwill treat them as the same and simply use the term “ethnography.”269groups) to study the RSR in Asia (Pew Research Foundation 2020), and Elaine HowardEcklund and Christopher P. Scheitle have embedded themselves in religious congregations tosee how the RSR is conceived there (e.g. Ecklund and Scheitle 2018). These are all empiricalmeans of studying groups—of scientists, religious individuals, or lay non-experts—and fore-front the views of those studied. As such, although surveys, interviews, and ethnography areall quite different ways of studying populations, I group them under the same heading. In-deed, these methods are often used in conjunction, in many cases because of their differences.Ecklund and Scheitle, for instance, pair their ethnographic work with analyses of survey andinterview data; the latter provide, in their words, “a bird’s-eye view” of the RSR which isinaccessible to necessarily local ethnography (Ecklund and Scheitle 2018, 4).Fieldwork may make use of other means of studying the RSR aside from using surveys,interviews, and ethnography. For instance, one could presumably also use studies of materialremains, as in archaeology, to study how religion and science interact in particular locations—perhaps by looking at waste in factories, churches, or university spaces (are there, say, fliers ordiscarded religious or scientific objects?). One might also study digital sources—like searchtrends or co-occurrent words in social media posts—to understand how contemporary actorsrelate religion and science. Most public-facing religion-and-science literature, however, doesnot make use of these other methods, and so for the purposes of this chapter, I’ll focus onfieldwork which makes use of surveys, interviews, and ethnography.Further, when I speak of empirical studies, I intend academic/formal studies which, in thecase of surveys and interviews at least, have been carefully planned and executed. Thesekinds of studies have almost always (when responsibly done!) undergone an IRB-approvalprocess to check that the methods used respect, for instance, the autonomy and privacyof those studied. This, then, excludes the kinds of one-off “interviews” one might havewith a stranger on a plane or the informal survey one might conduct of one’s friends bysending a question to the group chat. There is, of course, a continuum between these more270informal empirical “studies” and those which occur in academic studies—perhaps especiallyin the case of ethnography. However, for the purposes of this dissertation, which focuses onliterature produced by scholars, I exclude these more quotidian kinds of “empirical study.”The above definition also specifies that the empirical study is of a population. Most field-work studies indeed use a non-trivial population of more than one individual. This is notnecessary, although studies of single individuals are surely less informative. Nonetheless,some fieldwork may proceed by generalizing from a study of a particular individual—say aninterview of a leading scientist. Such work still falls under the umbrella of fieldwork becausethe structuring/overriding/guiding assumption is that the RSR is to be found in the view(s)expressed by the individual studied, not by extra theorizing by the interviewer.It is also important that the target population is contemporary with the study. That is,the individuals studied must exist alongside the one(s) doing the study. In this way, themethod of fieldwork is explicitly different from the method of case studies, which may studypast populations in ways roughly analogous to the ways social scientists study contemporarypopulations. As an example, Rodney Stark, himself a sociologist, “surveyed” what he tookto be a representative sample of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century scientists. He doesso by asking after their religious affiliation and level of religious commitment, the latteroperationalized by biographies of the scientists which presented “clear signs of especiallydeep religious concern” (Stark 2003, 160–162). Stark then reads off that data the (claimed)fact that deep religiosity (at least in the Catholic and Protestant traditions) and scienceare immanently compatible. Although this process mimics that of contemporary studies ofscientists (like Larson and Witham’s (1998), discussed below), I think it is better classified asan instance of (biographical) case studies rather than fieldwork, not only because it concernshistorical figures but also because the “participants” in the study do not really participate;their voices are in large part constructed by Stark.2 In that sense, fieldwork is inherently2The boundary between the method of biographical case studies and fieldwork is admittedly murky. Ifthe reader is not convinced that Stark’s analysis is more properly classified as an instance of fieldwork, they271present-focused: it is concerned with the RSRnow, although it may generalize from that to atemporally broader claim about the RSR.Finally, the way in which the characterization of the RSR is extracted from the empiricalstudy is importantly distinct from how it is arrived at in the other methods discussed in thisdissertation. As we saw in Chapter 2, the anthropologist James Frazer used semi-empiricalmeans to determine the definitions of “religion” and “science” in the Golden Bough (1890,1922). Frazer’s method of determining the RSR does not qualify as fieldwork because hethen uses those definitions to logically derive their relationship—a clear case of conceptualanalysis (as defined in Chapter 2). If Frazer had instead simply asserted that the RSR wasreflected in the reports and actions of the people he studied, his study would have fallenunder the category of fieldwork. Likewise, although the field of cognitive science of religion(CSR) uses explicitly empirical methods, it does not qualify as fieldwork in the sense I intend.Studies from CSR try to uncover the cognitive roots of religion, and such studies may bepaired with studies of the cognitive origins of science to produce general claims about theRSR (e.g. that they are in conflict because they stem from competing cognitive faculties).To that extent, we can understand this kind of method, perhaps surprisingly, like Frazer’s—as empirically informed conceptual analysis; the empirical work is done to show just whatreligion and science are before one moves to a conclusion about how they are related. Again,the essential feature of fieldwork is that it finds the proper characterization of the RSRamong the voices (not brains) of the contemporary people (not events) studied.This focus on “extraction,” as I’ve termed it, also highlights the fact that fieldwork studiesdo not aim at producing prescriptive accounts of the RSR. That is, the characterization ofthe RSR the method aims at producing is descriptive—it is just the one found among thestudied population. This is an important difference between the method of fieldwork andare welcome to think otherwise. All that matters is that there is a general distinction between the methodof case studies and fieldwork—which I take primarily to be a focus on the voices of those studied and,secondarily, on contemporary voices.272the other methods discussed in this dissertation: while conceptual analysis, case studies,and deconstruction could all be mobilized to assert how the RSR should be conceived, themethod of fieldwork only asserts how the RSR is conceived by a particular population, oftena population that does not include the scholar themselves (or does so only accidentally).With these clarifications made I’ll now turn to some exemplars past and present of themethod of fieldwork.5.1.1 Some ExemplarsThe use of fieldwork to study the RSR goes back to the very beginning of the modernsocial sciences and in particular the use of statistics to study social phenomena. FrancisGalton (1822–1911), widely recognized as one of the fathers of modern social science, was asignificant advocate of statistical investigations of social issues like crime and mental illness.Using statistics to study how these phenomena varied with physiological traits could beused to the benefit of society in general through, for instance, being able to identify would-be criminals based on facial traits (Daston and Galison 2007, 168–171); and, more broadly,through eugenics, a term which Galton himself coined in 1883. But Galton was also interestedin how particular sectors of society could be improved.As a member of the newly emergent class of professional scientists, Galton turned his at-tention to the production of better scientists in his English Men of Science: Their Natureand Nurture, published in 1872. Of particular interest to Galton was the impact of religios-ity on scientific character and success—an interest perhaps fueled by controversy over hishalf-cousin Charles Darwin’s evolutionary work. Galton’s methods were twofold. First, helooked at membership on the councils of British scientific societies from 1850–1870 and foundthat only 16 out of 660—or a mere 2.4%—of such members were clergymen. This statisticsupposedly pointed to the fact that clergymen could not be good proper scientists, a reflec-273tion of a deep-seated conflict between religion and science (Turner 1978, 365–367). But thelarger part of Galton’s data came from responses to surveys he sent directly to scientists—specifically “distinguished members” of scientific societies in London—which asked a varietyof questions ranging from height to birth place to number of siblings to views on religion.These responses were then used to construct the image of the “English Man of Science.” Interms of religion, that image was generally negative: religion was not looked upon favourablyby men of science. For Galton, this lent clear support to the counsel membership data, allof which spoke for the idea that religion and science were not compatible, or at least werein significant tension. Galton’s methods thus qualify as a case of fieldwork: his conclusionis reached by extracting it from the responses of his survey respondents.Likewise, using similar methods to Galton’s, the American psychologist James Leuba (1868–1946) also arrived at a rather negative characterization of the RSR. In 1916, Leuba performeda survey (or “questionnaire” as he called it, italics original) of scientists to learn about theirreligious beliefs. The results were published in Belief in God and Immortality (1916), whichalso looked at the beliefs of college students. In contrast to Galton’s study, Leuba’s scientistswere drawn not from the membership roles of British scientific societies but instead fromthe professional directory American Men of Science (first published in 1906 and updatedin 19103), and from the membership lists of the American Historical Association, AmericanSociological Association, and the American Psychological Association (Leuba 1916 219),providing in total somewhere around 5,500 possible participants. Leuba’s survey, send to1,000 scientists randomly sorted into two groups of 500, asked pointed questions concerningbelief in God and in the efficacy of prayer. For instance, participants were asked to selectone of the following options:1. I believe in a God in intellectual and affective communication with man, I mean a God3Although Leuba does not state which edition he used for the study, it must have been either the first orsecond; the third edition was not published until 1921. Subsequent editions of the directory continue to bepublished today—since 1977, under the new title American Men and Women of Science.274to whom one may pray in the expectation of receiving an answer. By “answer,” I donot mean the subjective, psychological effect of prayer.2. I do not believe in a God as defined above.3. I am an agnostic. (Leuba 1916, 224–225)By combining the respondents indicating 2 or 3 collectively under the heading “unbelievers,”Leuba found that while 41.8% expressed belief in God, the other 58.2% did not. Whenrestricting himself to the “greater men” of science (those marked “eminent” in AmericanMen of Science), Leuba found that only 31.6% expressed belief in a prayer-granting God(Leuba 1916, 249). On that basis, Leuba claimed to have uncovered a basic incompatibilitybetween religions featuring a personal God4 and science, as demonstrated by the fact thatbelief in such a God was less frequent among those more heavily embedded in the institutionof science.5 This way of characterizing the RSR falls clearly under the heading of fieldwork,for that characterization is drawn from the voices of the study’s participants—though exactlywhose voices are heard is indeed determined by Leuba.Since the early 1900s, Leuba-esque studies have been reproduced several times in the UnitedStates, e.g. by the Carnegie Commission (Trow 1969), Thalheimer 1973, Wuthnow 1985,Larson and Witham 1997, and more recently by the Pew Foundation in 2009. Despite somevariation, these surveys have generally found that around 30–50% of scientists believe inGod (or a higher power), although this number drops off sharply when restricted to “elite”scientists (Larson and Witham 1998). The typical conclusion by these studies’ authors: it ispossible to be both religious and a scientist—but perhaps not both religious and an “elite”4Leuba does not think, for example, that “original Buddhism, which denies the existence of a personalGod, and Comte’s Religion of Humanity, which includes among its articles of faith neither personal Godnor soul” are incompatible with scientific education and endeavours (Leuba 1916, x). See Lopez Jr. 2010 formore on what Leuba refers to here as “original Buddhism.”5Interestingly, Leuba found that belief in immortality was more frequent than belief in God among “lesser”scientists, though about the same for “greater” scientists (Leuba 1916, 251—253)275scientist.6While the preceding examples have all employed surveys, more recent public-facing work hasemployed other means of studying their populations, in particular interviews.The sociologist John Evans combines analysis of large-scale survey data with extensive in-terviews, mostly with religious laity. Evans’ main contention in his Morals Not Knowledge(2018) is that, insofar as there is conflict between religion and science, it is only proposi-tional conflict, rather than something larger (J. H. Evans 2018). This conclusion flies inthe face of a (supposedly) widespread assumption in popular scholarly religion-and-sciencediscourse that religious opposition to particular scientific claims is in fact a sign of moresystemic methodological incompatibility between religion (or some particular religion) andscience in general. While this might be true for religious scholarly elites, Evans argues thatthis is not at all the case with ordinary religious folk. For them, opposition to particularscientific claims—like the evolution of human beings or the age of the earth—is not part ofa larger opposition to scientific ways of thinking or even science in general. Instead, Evanscontends, religious opposition to particular claims is best explained by religiously motivatedmoral concerns.These conclusions are reached by identifying trends in survey and interview data on theAmerican “public.” The way Evans narrows his target population is important, and hemakes clear that his focus is on the RSR in the “public sphere,” as understood by non-elites.He is explicit in the elite–non-elite distinction:For my purposes, an elite is anyone who has a social role that allows themto influence the views of other people beyond their immediate acquaintances6It should be noted, however, that Thalheimer 1973 and Wuthnow 1985 take their work to show that thesecularization thesis—the claim that religiosity in a society with widespread scientific education will decreaseover time—is false: the statistics have remained roughly the same despite the passage of over half a century.Their conclusion seems compatible with, though possibly contrary to the spirit of, Larson and Witham’s(1998) conclusion.276and family members on the issue under debate. So, obviously all academics arepotentially elites, as are scientists, politicians, clergy, theologians, church officials,journalists, pundits, TV and movie producers, and leaders of social movements.The public, or citizens as I will often call them, are all of the other membersof the public who lack this power. Someone could be elite in one context butnot in another. For example, corporate executives are likely elites on the issueof worker pay, but are unlikely to be so for a debate about religion and science.The elites in the religion and science debate are largely academics, scientists, andreligious leaders, with a smattering of others we could call public intellectuals.(J. H. Evans 2018, 6; emphasis original)Again, the views of non-elites on the RSR are accessed via both survey and interview data.Evans begins with analyzing the results of the large-scale General Social Survey (GSS) of2012.7 Since the GSS did not ask questions specifically about the RSR, Evans insteadrelies on statistical means to identify trends in responses to religion-concerned and science-concerned questions.As he clarifies, in investigating this data, Evans is “primarily interested in the assumptionof systemic knowledge conflict, where believing a religious fact-claim about evolution, forexample, would lead to not believing other scientific fact claims for which there is no con-flicting religious version, like global warming. If there is systemic knowledge conflict, thenmembers of those religious groups that have propositional conflict with science—and con-servative Protestants in particular—should avoid exposure to all of science” (J. H. Evans2018, 125). To determine the extent of knowledge conflict between religious individuals andscience, Evans considered respondents’ answers to questions divided between two classes ofscientific claims: “contested facts” and “uncontested facts.” Two questions comprised the7Since 1994, the GSS has been conducted each even numbered year. The survey is funded by the NSFand administered to a randomly selected representative sample of US adults over the age of eighteen byNORC at the University of Chicago. The 2012 survey featured 1,974 respondents. The data (including forthe most recent iteration of the survey) is publicly available at https://gss.norc.org.277former category: “whether the universe began with a huge explosion; and whether humanbeings, as we know them today, developed from earlier species of animals” (ibid., 121–122).The “uncontested fact” questions included questions about the relative size of electrons andatoms, plate tectonics, and the heat of the Earth’s core (ibid., 122). The results were in-teresting: while religious individuals in general (and conservative Protestants in particular)“scored” lower than non-religious individuals with respect to the contested facts (i.e. theiranswers did not align with the scientific mainstream), religious individuals scored roughly thesame as their non-religious peers when asked about uncontested facts (ibid., 123–125). Theseresults are clearly inconsistent with the expectation we might have if there were systematicknowledge conflict: disagreement with science in one area does not predict disagreementwith science in toto.Thus, what Evans claims to find is that insofar as religious individuals are in conflict withscience, it is over particular propositions. Evans therefore concludes, if there is conflictbetween religion and science, it is local—confined to concerns over particular claims madeby the sciences, not about the overall scientific endeavour itself. But why particular religiousor scientific propositions come to be understood as in conflict with each other is a complicatedmatter (ibid., 130–136).Evans proposes that (religiously inflected) moral concerns drive the selection of particularpropositions as epicenters for perceived conflict, and tries to show that this is the case viainterviews (ibid., Ch. 7). Conducted by Evans and his team of researchers, the small-scale interviews featured questions directly probing how and why interviewees felt aboutparticular scientific claims and the RSR in general. What he found was that intervieweesalmost always cited moral concerns as their reason for opposing or worrying about particularscientific advances, technologies, or claims. Assuming Evans’ samples are representative,then it seems like moral concerns do have a large impact on what scientific propositionscome to be epicenters of conflict-discourse. Thus Evans’ title: Morals Not Knowledge.278In all of this, it is clear how Evans’ methods fall under the umbrella of fieldwork: he usesempirical methods to extract the voices of a particular contemporary target population—theAmerican public.Like Evans, much of Elaine Howard Ecklund’s work also employs both survey data andinterviews.8 However, in a series of monumental studies of both scientists and ordinaryreligious folk, Ecklund (along with Christopher Schietle and a large team of researchers)also incorporates on-the-ground participant observation of religious groups. This involvedembedding for hundreds of hours in “largely white evangelical churches, historically blackchurches, and largely immigrant mosques and historic synagogues in both Houston andChicago” (Ecklund and Scheitle 2018, 4).In the course of their studies, Ecklund and her collaborators determined that, despite publicperceptions to the contrary, most academic scientists (drawn from R1 institutions) are notanti-religious; “what the scientists really think” is that religion just isn’t relevant (Ecklund2010, esp. Ch. 9), and so one can be a good scientist while being religious (even if it’s unlikelyfor a religious person to enter science). Further, despite academic perceptions to the contrary,religious people are not anti-science; “what religious people really think” is that science isa net good (Ecklund and Scheitle 2018, esp. Ch. 2). The conclusions about scientists weremostly drawn from dozens of in-person interviews, while the conclusions about religious folkwere drawn from a combination of survey data, group interviews, and ethnography. In bothcases, Ecklund uses the methods she does to extract the voices of those studied, and herconclusions are meant to simply be general summaries of the patterns established by thosevoices—a clear case of the method of case studies.Ecklund and her collaborators notwithstanding, ethnography is admittedly less common inthe public-facing, scholar-produced literature than is survey- or interview-based fieldwork.This is not due to the lack of ethnographies by scholars, whether in the particular field8Evans in fact draws extensively on Ecklund’s work.279of religion-and-science or not.9 But interestingly, public-facing work in this vein is ratherscarce.Some work on new religious movements (NRMs) may also fall into the category of scholarlyproduced, public-facing ethnography. However, the sub-field of NRMs-and-science is ratherunderdeveloped, though growing (Bigliardi 2023), and public-facing work tends to only dis-cuss the science angle incidentally. This is the case, for instance, with Hugh Urban’s studiesof Scientology (Urban 2011) and E. Burke Rochford’s work on Hare Kr.s.n. a/ISKCON (theInternational Society for Kr.s.n. a Consciousness; Rochford 2007). In both of these cases, theauthors’ ethnographic work shows how scientific discourse is interwoven with the religiousdiscourse of the NRMs studied. However, Urban and Rochford’s goals are not to highlightor unpack the RSR in each group; instead, they aim to uncover the social growth of themovements.5.2 A Critique of FieldworkIn this section, I turn to a variety of critiques that may be offered of the method of fieldwork,especially as currently employed. Critiques of the use of interviews and surveys are com-monplace in the social sciences themselves, and it is widely acknowledged that they are notperfect methods. These kinds of critiques typically take the form of assessing whether par-ticular kinds of questions predispose respondents to answer in particular ways or whether theparticular statistical methods used to sort through the data systematically bias the results.Likewise, anthropologists regularly discuss the merits and demerits of ethnography, and ofparticular styles of ethnography, by pointing to limitations in how the observed phenomenamay generalize or be part of larger cultural patterns.This is all especially the case when it comes to social scientific studies of religion. Schol-9See for instance Thomas 2022.280ars are in general agreement that religion is difficult to operationalize in a way that notonly captures scholarly intuitions about what religion is but doesn’t bias the respondents’answers/behaviour. This is, in large part, due to the wide variance in forms of religiouspractice and identity, and underlying ambiguity or artificiality in scholarly conceptions of re-ligion.10 Studying religion is even more difficult in non-Western and multi-cultural societiesfeaturing large non-Western populations, for the scholarly notion of religion as developed inWestern scholarly spheres may not cleanly map on to any particular non-Western practice.Even public-facing studies are often quick to acknowledge the difficulties involved in studyingreligion. For instance, in a recent report on “Religion Among Asian Americans,” the authorsinclude an inset box on “the meaning of ‘religion’ in East Asia” in which they explain that“in many East Asian languages, there is no single, literal equivalent of the English word‘religion’” (Pew Research Center 2023). The box continues by pointing out that althoughmost East Asian languages do have words which are used to translate “religion,” “thosewords ... refer primarily to organized forms of religion... [and] do not typically refer to sometraditional religious beliefs and practices that are common in these countries.” This situationis important for the study because “[t]hese differences might lead Americans of East Asianorigin to say they do not identify with any religion or that religion is not very importantin their lives, because they do not consider their traditional spiritual practices—or culturalcustoms that have a spiritual underpinning—to be ’religious’ in nature”—while presumablythe study’s authors do consider such practices to fall under the heading of “religion” asunderstood in the study.Given the extensive literature critiquing the methods I capture under the heading of field-work, I will consider a different set of issues. The first is more philosophical: why thinkthat the correct characterization of the RSR is to be found among scientists or religiousfolk? In a sense, this is to ask what the method of fieldwork could contribute to an under-10See Finke and Bader 2017 for a wide variety of critiques of social scientific measures of religiosity alongwith interesting innovations.281standing of the RSR. The second issue concerns the question of whose religion and whosescience is being studied. Most public-facing fieldwork studies of the RSR which study sci-entists study academic scientists embedded in research universities. Yet, as we have seenbefore, universities employ only a small slice of the total population of scientists, at leastin the US. Conclusions about “What Scientists Really Think”—to borrow one of Ecklund’ssubtitles—then seem on rather unstable grounds. I therefore recommend that the literaturestudy non-elite, non-academic contexts—including industrial and medical spaces—to betterunderstand what “scientists” really think.5.2.1 Perhaps the People Are WrongThe method of fieldwork proceeds by directly consulting some contemporary target population—typically scientists or religious folk—and taking their views as a description of the RSR. Thisleaves the method open to the obvious rebuttal: what if the target population is wrong? Morefacetiously, we might ask why anyone—scholarly or not—should care about the views of thepopulations studied. Couldn’t they just be wrong about the RSR? Especially when thetarget populations are not experts, it isn’t clear why we should think the population shouldhave a good grasp of the truth concerning the RSR.This objection is parallel to an objection we encountered in Chapter 3. There the focuswas on the method of case studies, and the question, inspired by comments from Reevesand Dawes, was whether history was relevant to the RSR. I argued that the employer ofthe method of case studies could specify how their inductive basis was relevant to presentunderstandings of religion and science, or retreat from offering direct characterizations ofthe RSR to providing inspiration for ways of being. Employers of the method of fieldworkcan employ similar tactics.Consider what it takes to bring up the objection in the first place. What kinds of assumptions282are being made in asking why we should care about the views of the populations studiedsince they could be wrong? One of the basic assumptions made here is that the samplepopulation(s) can be wrong. That is, the RSR is such that the folks studied could be wrongabout how religion and science are related. And this is a point on which proponents offieldwork could push back.There are different ways they could do so—not all of them equal. One way to resist thechallenge would be to embrace a deflationary account according to which the RSR is nothingbut what those studied take it to be. This might be approached in a number of ways. Onecould argue for a deflationary account of the RSR on the basis of deflationary accounts ofreligion and of science according to which, again, religion and science are nothing beyondwhat they are understood to be by the relevant populations. Depending on who thosepopulations happen to be, and whether they appear in the fieldwork, this approach may bemore or less convincing. For instance, we might think that scientists’ own views of scienceshould be taken as the “correct” account of what science is. We might then think thatscientists’ views of the RSR should be taken seriously since the scientists at least correctlyunderstand the nature of science. But of course, scientists may well be wrong about religion,and so even if we have a deflationary view, the question still remains: Why think thatthe scientists are correct about the RSR? A parallel situation could arise for samples ofreligious experts/elites: Why think they are correct about the RSR when they might bewrong about the nature of science? Perhaps then the only admissible sample population onthis view would be those who are both scientists and religious elites—or perhaps philosophersof science and religious studies scholars! This seems, however, less than convincing.Being deflationary about the RSR, however, doesn’t necessitate deflationism about religionand science. One could instead just be deflationary about the relation between religion andscience. Perhaps one could think this because they understand questions about the RSR toreally be questions about how people relate religion and science. That is, if one understands283questions about the RSR as second-order questions—questions about what people think—rather than as first-order questions—questions about religion and science as things-in-the-world—then one could be open to (in fact may be forced to commit to) a deflationary accountof the RSR on which there is nothing more to say than what those studied say. I suspectthat many who use fieldwork are in fact far more interested in second-order accounts of theRSR. Ecklund, after all, uses the subtitles “What Scientists Really Think” (Ecklund 2010)and “What Religious People Really Think” (Ecklund and Scheitle 2018). This second-orderfocus, however, is not always made clear.A different, less deflationary, response one might have is to argue that questions of the RSRmust always be asked relative to a particular context. As a thoroughly social phenomenon,we shouldn’t expect there to be a single way in which the RSR looks and which we cancharacterize independent of some particular population. It is true, one might argue, that thepopulations studied could be wrong about the RSR in some particular context. But the pop-ulations studied are likely very well informed about the RSR in their own particular context.And so fieldwork is especially well suited to studying the RSR in various contexts becauseit is, at least ideally, explicitly sensitive to the limits of the particular sample populationinvestigated.Finally, a public-facing scholar invested in the method of fieldwork might resist the chargeby emphasizing the ultimate purpose of their studies: engagement with issues of publicrelevance. Both Ecklund and Evans make their public-facing concerns very clear. At thestart of Science vs. Religion, Ecklund writes, “At its core, [this book is] about the scientistswhose voices have been thus far overlooked in the science-and-religion debates and who mighthave powerful contributions to add to the cause of translating science to a broader publicaudience, especially a religious audience” (Ecklund 2010, x). Likewise, the very first sentenceof Morals Not Knowledge reads, “If you are going to disagree with your adversary in a debatein the public sphere, I want you to disagree with them for the right reason” (J. H. Evans2842018, 1). If the goal of the scholar in investigating the RSR is to provide guidelines forintervening on public religion–science encounters, then it seems clear that we should have agrasp on how different publics understand religion, science, and their relationship. In thiscase, those publics studied can’t be “wrong”: what we are interested in just is what thosepublics think. And, in fact, accessing this kind of information is exactly what fieldwork isdesigned to do.So the objection that the populations studied by fieldwork methods may be wrong about theRSR, and so are not a good source for understanding the RSR, need not be persuasive. Theadvocate of fieldwork can acknowledge that some populations may not be representative,but insist that since religion–science relations look different in different contexts, consultingpopulations in those particular contexts is necessary. On the other hand, they may push backby asserting that since the goal of investigating the RSR is to intervene on public discourse,consulting various publics for their views is exactly what is needed.5.2.2 Whose Religion? Whose Science?In this subsection, I return to the question—by now familiar—of whose notions of reli-gion/science are being discussed when characterizing the RSR. This is particularly salient inthe case of fieldwork, for the method relies explicitly on the views of the target populationsstudied and ideally relies solely on those views. Thus, the choice of the target population hasimmense influence on the characterization of the RSR reached, and exactly who is chosen tobe the target population will clearly limit the scope of that characterization. In most cases,however, scholars—both in public-facing and more academic modes—neglect to acknowledgethis limitation and speak as if they have identified a general characterization of the RSR,perhaps not to be universalized across the world, but at least universalized across, for in-stance, the US or UK. This could be warranted if the target populations found in most of285the literature were in fact representative of religious individuals or scientists more broadly.However, as I will argue, this is not the case.In what follows, I’ll first examine an asymmetry between the kinds of religious individualson the one hand and scientific individuals (or scientists) on the other hand who are oftenfeatured in fieldwork studies. I’ll then suggest that scholars should take seriously thosescientists working outside of academia as well as those working in non-theory-oriented andscience-adjacent occupations. By focusing on these other populations of “scientific” indi-viduals, fieldwork can contribute a much richer picture of the RSR as conceived by a morerepresentative portion of, for instance, the US. Finally, I suggest a number of heretoforeneglected spaces of potential religion–science interaction which scholars would be well servedin investigating.An AsymmetryIn Ch. 2, I discussed an asymmetry between how religion and science are studied by scholarsusing the method of conceptual analysis. There, I showed that scholars tend to focus oncomparing elite conceptions of science with non-elite/popular conceptions of religion. Thiskind of asymmetry is also present among fieldwork literature. On the religion side, most workfocuses on religious laity rather than religious elites, i.e. those with religious occupations.11On the science side, by contrast, the scientific laity—that is, those with general familiaritywith the sciences, who might identify as science-minded, but are not scientists themselves—isalmost never studied. That said, some general studies do try to get at non-elite views on thescience side: the Pew Research Center, for instance, produces work which draws on broaderpopulations (e.g. in the US) irrespective of their careers and backgrounds in either religionor science (see e.g. Pew Research Foundation 2020 and Funk 2015). But in general, the11I use the term “religious elite” instead of the term “clergy” to avoid the largely Christian connotations“clergy” has. Most religious groups have religious elites whom it may be awkward to describe as clergy—forinstance, Buddhist monks.286public-facing scholarship (as well as non-public-facing) tends to overfocus on elite scientistsand religious laity while neglecting religious elites and scientific laity.The asymmetry is well illustrated in Ecklund’s otherwise-excellent pair of monographs: Sci-ence vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think (2010) and Religion vs. Science: WhatReligious People Really Think (2018). In the first study, the sample population is composedof scientists working at “elite research universities.”12 In the second study, the sample popu-lations for interviews are drawn from congregationalists at a variety of religious institutions,while the sample population for a more general survey was drawn from Americans in general(Ecklund and Scheitle 2018, 4). The contrast, then, is rather stark: we have professionalscientists compared with religious “amateurs.” In this light, the fact that Ecklund’s surveyin Religion vs. Science features “an oversample of adults in science occupations (computerand mathematics; architecture and engineering; life, physical, and social sciences; medicaldoctors)” (ibid., 53) seems rather odd. Why are those individuals considered “religiouspeople” rather than “scientists”? As we’ll see below, I’ll argue that surveys of those withnon-academic science occupations will actually give us a better idea of “what scientists reallythink” than restricting ourselves to elite scientists at R1 institutions.But is this asymmetry actually problematic? Yes. Science is not just the purview of elitescientists. And religion is not just the purview of the religious laity. In particular, under-standing the scientific laity’s perspectives of religion may help produce a better understandingof widespread everyday religion–science discourse. Knowing the contours of that everydaydiscourse better would help scholars know how to intervene to produce the results they wishto see. It would also help the publics scholars wish to reach understand where the general12Ecklund samples the scientists from twenty one universities featured in a 2009 University of Florida“Top American Research Universities” report. This consisted of the following: Columbia University; CornellUniversity; Duke University; Harvard University; Johns Hopkins University; Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology; Princeton University; Stanford University; University of Pennsylvania; University of Californiaat Berkeley; University of California, Los Angeles; University of Chicago; University of Illinois, UrbanaChampaign; University of Michigan, Ann Arbor; University of Minnesota, Twin Cities; University of NorthCarolina, Chapel Hill; University of Washington, Seattle; University of Wisconsin, Madison; University ofSouthern California; Washington University; and Yale University (Ecklund 2010, 157–158).287zeitgeist lies—if, for instance, scientific-minded but non-religious folk in general don’t seea conflict between religion and science, then this may be comforting for science-hesitantreligious folk and may even help them develop a more ecumenical view of science.There are reasons, of course, for the asymmetry between what religious and scientific popula-tions are studied. Work focused on religious elites often tends toward the study of theology,and so is perhaps better suited to the historical or philosophical methods rather than field-work. On the other hand, we might expect elite scientists to pose the “hardest” cases (ifwe assume, as Ecklund does, an expectation to find hostility between academic science andreligion), and so they receive the most attention. Ecklund is also trying to engage with alarge religious public which sees scientific academia as a bastion of secular anti-religiosity(Ecklund 2010, 10).But if we think scientific elites form a “hard case” worth studying, why not think the samefor religious elites? Indeed, popular reporting seems to make a big deal of high-profilepreachers, imams, rabbis, etc. who are opposed to various aspects of modern scientificthought. Why not study these religious elites as a body in the way that we study theviews of elite scientists?13 The reasons for the asymmetry in how religious and scientificpopulations are studied thus seem easily defeasible.The “Scientists” and Further Spaces of EncounterWho exactly are the “scientists” in fieldwork studies? Unsurprisingly, as in other parts of thereligion-and-science literature, these scientists are almost always academic scientists engagedin research-oriented endeavours. As discussed in the other chapters of this dissertation, as13One complication with studies of religious producers comes from the fact that the producer–lay distinc-tion is not present in all religions. While perhaps most traditions do have a hierarchical structure whichmakes a rather clear distinction between religious producers and the laity (think of most forms of Buddhism,Hinduism, and the Abrahamic religions), not all do. For instance, the Society of Friends arguably doesn’thave a clear lay–elite distinction as all members are expected and considered to contribute equally to theproduction of the same set (or equally valued sets) of religious goods and services.288of May 2023, only about 24% of those with “science occupations” in the US are employed inresearch-oriented sectors. Of that 24%, only 8.6% are employed at “Colleges, Universities,and Professional Schools” (Bureau of Labor Statistics 2023). The issue these statisticspresent is especially sharp for fieldwork studies which wish to characterize the views ofscientists in general. If the target population is scientists in general, then making use ofa sample population drawn from a non-representative group—i.e. academic scientists—is clearly problematic. The picture of “what scientists really think” drawn from such asmall sample can only present a very small part of the total picture—and potentially a verydistorted one at that.I propose, then, that scholars employing fieldwork turn from academia to a number of muchbroader, more representative worlds of scientific employment. In what follows, I detail anumber of spaces which should receive more attention. Although I focus on the scientificindividuals found in these spaces, scholars would be well–served studying the non-scientistsin many of these spaces as well.Industrial Spaces: The industrial sciences are understudied in academic studies of science,and this is no exception among the social studies of science in general. This is surprisingbecause arguably it is the industrial sciences which have the most direct connections withother aspects of society which are of interest to social scientists. Obviously, religion and sci-ence do not encounter one another in a vacuum, and no one’s view of the RSR is constructedindependent of the varied contexts in which they encounter religion and science. Unpackingreligion–science interactions in industrial spaces can, then, unveil the complex ways in whichreligion and science are intertwined along with other controlling, often economic, influences.By the “industrial sciences” here, I mean a range of contexts including chemical manufac-turing plants, microchip factories, biotech firms, and oil refineries. In some of these cases,religion and science might come directly into contact—one can imagine questions about fos-289sil fuels having interesting implications for various forms of creationism. In other cases,the connections might be less direct—say how the religious commitments of geneticists at“ancestry” testing companies shape how they understand their work.There are a wide range of questions and topics one could investigate in these spaces. Howdo scientists in different kinds of industrial science spaces conceive of science? Do, say,physicists designing computer chips think of science in the same way as does a biotech in amedical devices firm? One might imagine that in certain industries whose content is far re-moved from religious doctrines—say cosmetics—religious scientists might comfortably thinkof science in propositional terms. On the other hand, in industries with a more clear con-nection to religious doctrines—say commercial genome sequencing labs—religious scientistsmay conceive of science more as a set of values. How do these different understandings ofscience—if there are differences—impact the way the scientists view the RSR?Perhaps surprisingly, there are also specifically religious industrial scientific labs—for in-stance Scantibodies Laboratory, Inc., based in Santee, California. Created in 1976 by TomCantor, a Jew turned young earth creationist Evangelical Christian, Scantibodies Labora-tory, Inc. manufactures antibodies, blockers, controls, and plasmas/serums for commercialenterprises. The company logo (see Figure 5.1), found at the top of each of their web-pages, reads, “Harnessing God’s Elegant Antibody Creation,” and their About page plainlystates that the proceeds of the company are used to support the Creation and Earth HistoryMuseum (discussed below), a radio program called “Friendship with God,” and “Jewish Peo-ple.”14 These are the official views of the company, but we might wonder how the scientistsemployed there understand their own work and its relation to religion: do all the chemistsbelieve they are working with “God’s Elegant Creation”?14An explainer provides the following details: “When Tom was 19, he had a life changing experience bydiscovering the great happiness and joy the Bible can bring. Because of that experience, he offers hopeand security by reaching out to Jewish people. He is driven to help people find that very same peace andsecurity by creating a gift that includes a one hour DVD of his story, that he seeks to give free of charge”(https://scantibodies.com/about/, accessed 23 April 2024).290Figure 5.1: The logo of Scantibodies Laboratory, Inc., as found on their homepage, accessed23 April 2024.It is not clear how widespread these religious industrial scientific labs are; further researchneeds to be done on the population of these types if institutions. Perhaps ScantibodiesLaboratory, Inc. is a pariah. If, however, these religiously grounded scientific spaces are notjust needles in a haystack, then work investigating them would provide a fuller picture ofhow non-elite scientists understand the RSR.On the flip side, some fieldwork research has already been done on secular industrial scientificspaces. For instance, Aiwha Ong has studied the confluence of religious and technologicalinfluences in the operations of Japanese microchip factories in Malaysia. Her ethnographicwork, published in Spirits of Resistance and Capitalist Discipline (originally published 1987),showed how the Muslim identities of the factories’ many female workers shaped the workplaceenvironment, and how local spiritual traditions structured how local populations understoodworker conflict and constrained how the factory operators could discipline their workers (Ong2010). Ong’s study demonstrates how religion and science are often deeply implicated inother power dynamics—like gendered and international economic relations. Ong’s audience,however, is other academics—Spirits is at times highly technical. However, public-facingwork can learn much from the complexity of her analysis and would do well to take her leadin analyzing less-academic spaces.291Medical Spaces: Medical spaces receive little attention in the religion-and-science litera-ture. Yet, one might think that hospitals are sites of great encounter between religion andscience, for healing is often a concern of both religious and scientific practice. Further, manymedical institutions are owned by explicitly religious institutions. It is even more surprisingthat the fieldwork literature in particular does not investigate medical spaces as contexts ofreligion–science interaction given that such spaces are widely investigated by social scientistsoutside the discipline of religion-and-science (see e.g. Mol 2003).It is true that John Evans’ work often engages with questions related to the medical. Buthe tends to focus on patients rather than providers, and often considers patients’ ideasabout various medical interventions in the abstract, when they are already removed from themedical space (J. H. Evans 2018, 145–158).15 Studying the views of medical practitioners aswell as interactions between practitioners and patients could unveil interesting and importantdimensions of the RSR.The importance of understanding the intersection of religion and science in medical spaces,and the ways in which practitioners approach this subject with patients, is already recog-nized by medical professionals. Most recently, the importance of religious factors to medicaltreatment was seen during the COVID-19 pandemic, when vocal sectors of Western so-cieties petitioned for specifically religious exemption from COVID vaccinations. Prior toCOVID-19, vaccine hesitancy was also prevalent among particular religious communities,for instance among Seventh-day Adventists before 2015 (General Conference of Seventh-dayAdventists 2015) and also among New Age spiritual groups in the “industrialized North”(especially Australia; Goldenberg 2021, 59–65). How have these kinds of encounters shapedhow medical professionals approach the relation between their work and religion both intheir interactions with patients and in their own private lives?Beyond vaccines, however, it is clear that at least some practitioners are interested in un-15See also J. H. Evans 2002; J. H. Evans 2010; J. H. Evans 2020.292derstanding how patients’ religious views may or ought to shape other kinds of treatmentstheir doctors recommend. For instance, there is already a body of literature focused on howpatients’ religious beliefs may constrain the kinds of implants they agree to (see e.g. East-erbrook and Maddern 2008, Jenkins et al. 2010, Eriksson, Burcharth, and Rosenberg 2013,and D. Goyal, A. Goyal, and Brittberg 2013). This is an important topic especially in thecontext of patient consent: in the ideal, patients are fully informed about the implicationsof their treatment(s) in order to provide true consent. Goyal et al.’s study of knee implantsis representative. Since some knee implants feature components derived from animal prod-ucts, especially from pigs, and since some religions specifically prohibit the consumption ofpigs (e.g. Islam and Judaism), Goyal et al. ask how doctors should approach discussions ofthese implants. Their study proceeds by surveying elite literature (e.g. sacred texts) andinterviewing “religious scholars”—like rabbis and imams—for details concerning what kindsof animal products members of their religions are permitted to use and consume. On thebasis of these elite views, Goyal et al. then make recommendations to practitioners for whatkinds of implants they should recommend to their patients of various faith backgrounds.This is important, for it shows how some medical practioners understand the stakes ofmedical treatment: It is not just a matter of making their patients’ bodies “work” again.Patients’ bodies are not just objects of study and repair, as they may be treated from a“purely scientific” lense. They are also religious bodies, and it is an important principleof modern health care that patients’ rights to religious understandings of their bodies berespected, and part of that discourse plays out in the context of informed consent.Studies like Goyal et al.’s, however, can be read in another way for another methodologicalrecommendation. Goyal et al. are, in a sense, studying the RSR through fieldwork methods:they interview their “religious scholars” and take the views of these elites as authoritativedescriptions of how particular religions relate with particular sciences. As I’ve suggestedabove, religious elites are often neglected in the fieldwork literature, and so Goyal et al.’s293contribution is welcome.However, the kind of information gleaned from texts and elite interviewees is limited in itsuse. It is certainly useful in informing us how adherents to particular faith groups mightideally act: religious elites establish ideal norms. But these studies do not tell us about howthe adherents actually navigate the interactions and choices: Are patients willing to forgoparticular kinds of implants, possibly incurring significant economic debt, in order to respecttheir religious ideals? Are patients likely to take on risky procedures even if they violatetheir ideal religious commitments? Studying how patients themselves make their decisionscan shed significant light on how religion and science are understood and related by medicalpatients. But this does not mean we should neglect the elites. Finding contrasts betweenhow patients and religious/scientific elites navigate the intersection of healing, religion, andscience could help everyone: the elites could shape their recommendations accordingly, whilepatients might alter their priors. Understanding how coreligionists in similar medical situa-tions made their decisions could also help non-elites make their own decisions.In the above, I have mainly had in mind medical spaces practicing Western medicine. Theseare by far the most common kinds of medical spaces in the West, but recent decades haveseen a growing number of alternative/integrative medical spaces, i.e. those which featuresuch practices as homeopathy and acupuncture.16 And in Asia, Western medical practicesexist alongside, sometimes even in the same space as, non-Western medicine. For example, inSouth Korea, the same individuals regularly visit both Western and Asian medical facilitiesfor treatment of the same conditions.What Western alternative medicine and Asian medicine have in common is an association16Chiropractic is another form of Western alternative medicine which may prove a fruitful area of inves-tigation given its origins in faith and magical healing (hence the term ‘chiropractic,’ literally “healing withhands”). How do chiropractors view their work and its relation to religion? What about their patients?294with non-institutionalized spirituality which, especially in the case of Asian medicine, issometimes understood as religious.17 Scholars thus might investigate how practitioners ofthese healing forms understand the relationship between their work and religion, or how theyview the relation between medical science in general and religion. Mei Zhan has recentlystudied the ways in which Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners blend their“traditional” methods with modern technology. By embedding herself among practition-ers in Shanghai and San Francisco, Zhan unpacks their “worlding” process, by which theyseamlessly integrate spiritually based healing practices with technologies developed based onprinciples anathema to the ontologies undergirding those same practices (Zhan 2009). Morework, particularly public-facing work, could be done on this front.Museums: Museums are an under-explored space of religion–science interaction. In par-ticular, here I focus on science and natural history museums, and also include under thisheading similar spaces like zoos and aquariums. The curators of these kinds of museums playa significant role in how the public encounters science, perhaps especially among youngeraudiences. How do the expert scientists at these institutions approach the presentation oftheir exhibits? Does religion enter the picture? How and in what ways? For instance, howdo public discourses surrounding evolution shape the presentation of pre-Pleistocene natu-ral history? Working directly at the intersection between institutional science and publiceducation, scientists in museum spaces can provide much insight into how issues of publicconcern—like religion—shape the image(s) of science presented to the public.Museums also make use of scientific experts even when they are not employed directly. Forinstance, an interactive children’s science museum may purchase third-party software andprograms for their exhibits. The scientists behind these programs may thus shape howreligion and science are encountered in the museum space.17Several historical facts contribute to this religionization of Asian medicine in the West, including Orien-talist perceptions of “Eastern Wisdom” which originated in nineteenth-century exchanges with China (andIndia) and which persist today. See e.g. Barnes 2007 and Venit-Shelton 2020.295Furthermore, museums present an interesting space for investigation because they oftenemploy a large number of individuals who are somewhere between scientific experts andnon-experts. Many of the day-to-day employees with whom a patron may interact, forinstance, are not trained scientists. Instead, they have simply been trained to work in themuseum space either as paid employees or as volunteers. Of course, their training mayhave featured some amount of scientific background (e.g. learning about the habitats, diets,and mating behaviours of the animals on exhibit), but in most cases a degree or researchexperience in the relevant science is not required or expected of museum workers. Yet, Iexpect that visitors to a museum will often perceive the museum staff as scientific expertsof a kind—or the staff are at least taken to be representatives of science. It would thus bevery interesting to study this liminal population—not quite scientists, not quite scientificlaity. How do they understand the RSR? Do their religious beliefs—if any—shape how theyunderstand their work at the museum? Does it shape how they interact with patrons andpresent their scientific information?18Finally, beyond the scientific experts, more fieldwork could be done examining museumpatrons themselves. How do visitors to science museums understand the RSR? Do they evensee religion and science interacting at all in the museum space?In the above, I have assumed that the museums were more-or-less secular spaces. However,there are also religiously affiliated science museums. These are museums owned and operatedby members of particular faiths. Often, they are sponsored by particular institutions andbacked by religious elites. There is a wide range in how much religion and how much scienceis present in these museums.18These same kinds of questions could also be asked of employees of national park services, where parkrangers may often encounter visitors whose religious background prime them to characterize the park spacein a very different way from how the rangers are trained to present them. For instance, rangers at the GrandCanyon may come into contact with Christian young-earth creationist tourist groups coming from aroundthe world. Likewise, curators of sites like Stonehenge may interact with neo-pagans who view the site assacred (Blain and Wallis 2007, Ch. 3).296For instance, in Southern California, one can find the Creation and Earth History Museumin Santee, just outside of San Diego. The museum is currently owned by the Life & LightFoundation Ministries, a nonprofit created by Tom and Cheryl Cantor, although it wasfounded by the Institute for Creation Research—a major player in global creation sciencediscourses. The museum itself occupies a lot owned by the biotech company ScantibodiesLaboratory, Inc. (owned by the Cantors themselves), the profits of which partly supportthe museum (https://scantibodies.com/about/, accessed 23 April 2024).19 The exhibitspresent a walk-through of earth’s history from a literal Christian biblical perspective, startingwith God’s creation of light, through the creation of the second law of thermodynamics viaAdam’s fall, to dinosaurs on Noah’s ark, to the construction of the pyramids, to the modernera with the use of Darwinian evolutionary theory to support the Nazis’ Final Solution. Inthe last ten years, new wings have been added to hold a life-sized Tabernacle model and anextensive exhibit on human anatomy.20 At the Creation and Earth History Museum, boththe science and the religion are quite clearly present and, in Barbour’s parlance, thoroughlyintegrated.Alternatively, some 100 miles up the coast in West Los Angeles, one can find the BhagavadGita Museum. Attached to a temple on the right and a vegetarian restaurant on the left,one enters the museum by walking through an alleyway whose walls are lined with colourfulposters telling the story of A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada (1896–1977), the founderof the International Society for Kr.s.n. a Consciousness (ISKCON). On the left are biographicaldetails—Prabhupada’s arrival in New York in 1965 with $7 in his pocket and hundreds ofcopies of his translation of the Bhagavad Gita, the formal creation of ISKCON in 1966, andhis fateful move to Haight-Ashbury in 1967. On the right are details about the worldviewof the Hare Kr.s.n. as; here the language is especially instructive: several posters mention the“science of Krishna consciousness.” Inside the museum, one walks through a dark hallway on19See above for more details on Scantibodies Laboratory, Inc.20One can take a digital tour of the museum on their website. The descriptions I give here are from visitsmade in 2018 and 2019.297either side of which are glass-encased dioramas (featuring handmade and often quite realisticfigures) depicting scenes from the Bhagavad Gita and more “everyday” human interactions.These dioramas light up as one progresses through the museum and a recording narrateshow the scenes relate to the moral and metaphysical nature of the world—for instance theorigins of the universe and the fundamental status of the soul.21 The relation with science ismade quite explicit: modern Western science fails to capture the true nature of reality—thatcan only be accessed via the “spiritual science” of Hare Kr.s.n. a.22At both of these museums, we might ask the same questions we would ask at secular mu-seums: how do the scientific advisors of the museums (perhaps serving on the educationteam) conceive the RSR? How do the museum’s public-facing staff, those tasked with inter-facing between the material and the patrons, understand the RSR? And how do the patronsunderstand religion, science, and their interaction in the museum space?To this point, although the museum studies literature is alive and well, little work has beendone specifically on the intersection between such spaces—whether secular or religiouslyaffiliated—and religion and science. One significant exception is Kathleen Oberlin’s recentmonograph on the Creation Museum in Petersburg, Kentucky. This museum, built in 2007,is owned and operated by the hugely influential Christian Fundamentalist group Answers inGenesis (AiG), which itself is run by Ken Ham, a prominent global voice in creation science.Why study a museum, let alone a religiously affiliated one? Oberlin explains:The case of the Creation Museum provides an opportunity to examine an attemptby a social movement not only to foster social change but also to investigate theplaces where that social change occurs, and how the locations they create matter.I explore how the Creation Museum is an unexpected social movement site, but21The descriptions I give here are based on a visit made in 2022.22Incidentally, this description fits quite well with Zeller’s characterization, based on the group’s theologicalwork, of the Hare Kr.s.n. as’ approach to science as one of “replacement”—they believe that their religion shouldbe read as a science to replace mainstream science (Zeller 2010, esp. Part II).298one that becomes understandable if we analyze how creationists used it to phys-ically ground their claims, better positioning them to secure cultural authorityover time. My focus is on AiG and the Creation Museum because they reflect anattempt to target a public mouthpiece of the scientific establishment: the natu-ral history museum, one of science’s premier long-standing cultural institutions...linking scientific practices to religious and sociocultural political claims basedon the literal interpretation of the Bible, AiG attempts to inculcate creationscience to families and communities that feel as though they had been forcedunnecessarily to reject mainstream science due to its secularity. Sites such as theCreation Museum seek to solidify supporters’ commitments while reaching a leeryyet primed broader audience who feel their perspectives are often marginalized.By empirically unpacking AiG’s efforts, we gain insight into why some religiousmembers of the public feel sidelined in society and how a group like AiG mayoffer alternative solutions that resonate with the disenchanted members of thepublic even if they do not fully support that group. (Oberlin 2020, 4)Comparative studies with secular museums could also prove fruitful for better understandingthe contemporary dynamics of RSR discourse.5.3 For Whom Is Fieldwork Useful?Studies of the RSR via fieldwork methods have the potential to be useful to a wide range ofpublic audiences. In what follows, I briefly outline several groups I think would find fieldworkespecially useful and why.In general, who would find fieldwork studies useful? A wide range of readers with a relativelywide range of interests in the RSR. Religious folk who care about how they will be treated299in scientific workspaces—perhaps especially students. But also educators who are interestedin increasing STEM participation: understanding how publics perceive science, and howreligious groups in particular perceive science, is of clear import, especially in a nation likethe US where the majority of citizens identify as part of a religious group and even thinkof religion as important in their lives (Gallup 2023). Unpacking those understandings andthe reasons behind them can help with STEM messaging. It can also help folks be morerealistic/well informed; a talking point in STEM-positive political discourse is that religiousconservatives are anti-science. Is this the case? It doesn’t actually seem like it. Instead,as Evans’ work has tried to show, they are against particular kinds of science, or particularclaims which they feel challenge the dignity of human life. If we take that seriously, this canchange how we talk about science and lead us to not isolate a large swathe of the Americanpublic from inclusion in what is taken by many, especially by many intellectuals, to be ourhighest epistemic good. In an era of high political polarization, in which religion and scienceare politicized and pitted against each other, a clear understanding of how sectors of thepublic really understand religion, science, and their relation could not be more important.Apologists: As with all other methods, apologists may find fieldwork useful in defendingtheir particular religious (or non-religious) tradition. Apologists would surely be interestedif studies of scientists can show that a majority see no tension between science and theapologist’s religion. Likewise, studies of adherents to their particular religions may alsobe relevant, as such studies may show the apologist where their coreligionists might “fail”(according to the apologist), and therefore what kinds of arguments are needed. For instance,an apologist who believes their religion to be compatible with science may be helped byknowing that a significant portion of their coreligionists do not think the same—and may beespecially helped by knowing other demographic features of that population (e.g. whetherthey are best reached through the pulpit or radio or social media).Of course, fieldwork-derived results can also be useful for apologists in a more offensive300mode: showing that an opponent’s religious elites take issue with core claims in science maybe a way to delegitimize the opponent. And conversely, showing that one’s own religion hascomparatively high representation among practicing scientists could lend credibility to one’sown tradition.This said, how fieldwork data is interpreted and used will depend on broader valuations ofscience. In much of contemporary American culture, science is accepted as an overall positivething: it is typically good to be associated or compatible with science. But in some circles,this may not be the case: perhaps science is overly associated with materialistic and immoralnorms. This could be the case among certain non-Western populations where the culturalconception of science, or particular sciences, may be tinged with a negative—sometimescolonial—past. In these cases, fieldwork showing non-affiliation between one’s religion andscience could instead be understood as a boon for one’s religion.Science Policymakers: Policymakers have much to gain from fieldwork studies of theRSR, for fieldwork involves the most direct study of a policymaker’s constituents. For thosewishing to push forward science-related policy, understanding how particular publics conceiveof the RSR will clearly be important. For instance, suppose a lawmaker would like to passlegislation to provide additional funding for stem cell research. Understanding what, say,local Muslim communities think is at stake in doing such research can help inform the kind ofmessaging used and also guide how conversations with local elites play out. Fieldwork mightuncover, say, that local opposition to stem cell research is motivated by misconceptions abouthow that research is done—perhaps by harvesting embryos from unwilling patients. In thatcase, messaging focused on resolving those misconceptions may be the most effective meansto garner support. On the other hand, fieldwork might instead show that moral concernabout stem cell research has to do with the implications of such work rather than with theprocess by which it’s done. In that case, messaging focused on sharing facts will likely beless effective; instead, highlighting Muslim scientists involved in the research (if there are301any) may prove more useful.As said before, in a time when science and religion are themselves highly politicized (atleast in the US), having a firm grasp on just how populations understand the RSR is surelyespecially valuable for policymakers. Finding common ground with constituents of variousreligious and scientific backgrounds, and understanding where opposition and support comesfrom are clearly desirable for those who wish to enact political change around science—or,for that matter, religion.Religious Students/Aspiring Scientists: While not all aspiring scientists are students,many of them are. Regardless, religious individuals who are contemplating entering a sci-entific field may wonder how members of their religious backgrounds may be treated in thescientific community. Will I be accepted in the workplace? Will I be mistreated because ofmy religious beliefs or practices? Scholars in the religion-and-science literature often notethat undergraduate students have these kinds of concerns (see e.g. Ecklund and Scheitle2018, 2).For these students, fieldwork on graduate student experiences could be invaluable. A legiti-mate concern a possible graduate student may have, for instance, is whether their advisor(s)will allow them to observe religious holidays which might forbid working on experiments atparticular times: for instance, an Orthodox Jew may have a religious obligation not to workor use laboratory equipment on Saturdays. Negative stories about experiences in graduateschool are not uncommon (see e.g. Ecklund, Mehta, and Bolger 2019, 46–49). But thesenegative experiences may also be amplified simply because they are negative, and positiveexperiences tend not to be reported as often. More studies on the frequency and contextsof these negative encounters would be incredibly helpful to aspiring academic scientists,whether they are thinking about applying for graduate school or are already enrolled in aprogram.302However, not all students who go on to become scientists, or work in scientific spaces, gothrough graduate school; others simply go directly into industrial or other spaces. Suchindividuals will have the same kinds of questions: will I be accepted in the workplace? WillI be mistreated because of my religious beliefs or practices? These concerns can range fromsocial misgivings concerning how colleagues may talk about particular religious beliefs tomore structural worries concerning how a workplace’s rules may exclude particular rituals.For instance, a devout Muslim may wonder if their obligation to pray five times per day willgenerate tension in the workplace and/or conflict with workplace regulations. Of course,workplaces may be required by law (in some countries) to respect these kinds of religiousrites. However, there is a clear difference between required accommodation and respectfulacceptance, and potential workers may be interested in how these tensions are dealt withgenerally in particular industries as well as how they are navigated by particular coreligion-ists.5.4 ConclusionIn this chapter, I have examined the method of fieldwork as used to characterize the RSR.Broadly construed, the method of fieldwork extracts the characterization of the RSR fromempirical studies of a contemporary target population, often scientists or religious folk. Theparticular way in which these groups are studied can vary: the main forms in the literatureare surveys, interviews, and ethnographies. Although much of the literature using fieldworkis scholar-oriented, some authors—like Elaine Howard Ecklund and John Evans—do producepublic-facing work presenting their empirical studies.I discussed two issues, or possible critiques, facing this public-facing use of fieldwork. First,I examined an objection which challenged the relevancy of consulting scientists or religiousfolk about the RSR: why expect these groups to have special insight into the way religion303and science are related? I argued that the employer of fieldwork could respond by offer-ing deflationary accounts of religion, science, and/or the RSR according to which they arenothing more than what those populations studied make of them. However, if this kind ofdeflationary approach is unpalatable, I suggested that the public-facing employer of field-work could instead argue that the whole point of public-facing accounts of the RSR is toengage with real-world contexts where how the populations studied understand religion, sci-ence, and their relationship is of central importance—and thus fieldwork methods are in facteminently relevant to this kind of public-facing work.The second issue I discussed centered around what populations extant fieldwork literaturehas studied. In most cases, the literature has focused upon elite scientists embedded in R1research institutions and lay religious folk. I argued that there were no in-principle reasonsfor this focus and that in fact the literature would be better served by expanding beyondthese populations—to include both non-elite scientists and religious experts. On the scienceside in particular, I recommended several spaces whose scientific experts should receive moreattention from fieldwork scholars: industrial science, medical science, and (science) museums.Attending to scientists working in these other contexts and their views on the RSR willproduce a more complete picture of how what “scientists really think” about religion—andperhaps also what “religious people really think” about science.This chapter concluded with a brief discussion of what kinds of public audiences may findfieldwork studies especially relevant. In particular, I suggested that those concerned withthe social aspects of the RSR and how they may fit into the social world structured (at leastin part) by public conceptions of the RSR would find fieldwork studies eminently relevant.Examples of these groups are religious undergraduates interested in becoming professionalscientists, and science policymakers who want to push particular kinds of science legislationamong publics who may be hostile to particular forms of scientific activity.304Chapter 6ConclusionAs she searches the shelves, our undergrad pauses for a moment. “Just what am I lookingfor here? What do I want to learn from these books?”When we met her in the introduction, our biologist-to-be was worried: could she be religious—perhaps devoutly religious—and a biologist? Perhaps she had heard of some kind of generalconflict between religion and science, or maybe of some particular tension between her reli-gion and biology. But what exactly is she worried about?Understanding what in particular worries our undergraduate is the first step in helping herunderstand what books there in the library will be helpful. Perhaps she is worried aboutworkplace discrimination: will her colleagues make fun of her? Will her PI support her?Or maybe her worry is more theoretical—how can she respond to skeptical friends or thinkthrough claims she sees on social media? Or maybe she wants to know how she can convinceher parents to let her major in biology. Perhaps it’s some combination of all these concerns.Or perhaps she isn’t even quite sure from where exactly her worry stems.But she is there in the library all the same, and there are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of305books on the bookshelves. And she only has so much time. So where should she start? Someof those books will be relevant to her concerns—or so she hopes. But not all of them willbe—or at least some will be less relevant than others.Of course, our undergraduate is not the only person who might visit the shelves. In theIntroduction we met future versions of our undergrad—as a graduate student and as a distin-guished biologist—and others she encountered—a professor on a graduate school admissionscommittee, a potential employer. And throughout this dissertation we have encounteredother members of the public who may also be interested in the books on the shelves, fromschool board members to apologists to policymakers. Each group, each person, has their owninterests in visiting the library, in seeing what scholars have to say about the RSR. Whereshould they begin?In this dissertation, I have suggested that answers to that question will depend on whoexactly is standing before the shelves. It will depend on the practical reasons why the readeris seeking guidance. And this dissertation has tried to provide a framework and guide to helpthose readers determine where to start in exploring the vast religion-and-science literature.Of course, public consumers of the literature were not the only, in fact, not even the primary,readers I had in mind. This is a dissertation after all. What, then, do I hope scholars to havegained in reading this work? There are three main takeaways. And although the dissertationhas centered the aims and work of public-facing scholars, these lessons are equally relevantfor scholars without such public aims.The first takeaway is that it is useful to reflect on the methods used in religion-and-science. InChapter 1, I developed a typology of the religion-and-science literature based on the methodsused by scholars to characterize the RSR. This kind of methods-oriented typology has notbeen explored before in the literature, where one only finds conclusion-oriented typologies.306But focusing on methods rather than conclusions can be deeply informative. By callingattention directly to the arguments used to support particular conclusions—whatever theymay be—we can focus on the quality of those arguments rather than on whether we primafacie agree or disagree with the conclusion. Doing so can better enable contributors to theliterature to effectively engage with one another, rather than simply talk past each other byproposing alternative conclusions. Further, thinking through a methods-oriented lens canhelp scholars better understand how their own work fits into the broader literature.Although there may be other methods in the literature, or other ways of typologizing themethodologies at work in attempts to characterize the RSR, I have focused on four methodswhich I understand to dominate the literature: conceptual analysis, case studies, deconstruc-tion, and fieldwork. After laying out the typology in Chapter 1, each subsequent chapteranalyzed one of the four methods, offering critiques of the methods as found in contemporarytwenty-first century public-facing scholarship, and proposing ways in which their applicationcould be improved.The analysis found in Chapters 2-5 encompasses the second major takeaway: that scholarswill have a sense of the issues each method faces and how they might be avoided and themethods improved. The methods are quite different from each other. They thus face ratherdifferent kinds of objections. The method of conceptual analysis, for instance, often slipsinto essentializing religion and science beyond proper warrant. The method of case studies,however, does not run into this issue—but many scholars using this historical method fallinto a parallel danger of fallacious synecdoche, taking a part of religion or science for thewhole.Each chapter has considered issues that have already surfaced in the literature as well asnovel ones. Ultimately, each method can overcome the challenges it faces. And no singlemethod emerges as dominant, better than all other methods in all circumstances. Instead, Ihave tried to illustrate how the different methods may be more or less relevant to different307readers based on those readers’ interests in the RSR.The third takeaway comes from a critique I offered of each method. Scholars, I have argued,have failed to adequately address the questions, “Whose religion?” and “Whose science?” Ihave focused especially on the latter question and, in particular, have argued that instancesof each method have largely neglected lay perspectives of science. This is especially strangegiven that the scholarship examined in this dissertation is public-facing—why would it nottake seriously the publics’ views on science?But even for non-public-facing scholars, it is important to pay attention to the notion(s)of science being employed when building an argument about the RSR. Scholars across theboard, I have argued, have ignored what I have called non-theory-oriented science (NTOS).NTOS includes such disciplines as cosmetic chemistry, electrical engineering, food science,and medicine. These sciences tend to focus on production, on testing the efficacy of particularsystems, and on practical application, rather than on testing or developing theories abouthow the world works. Further, these are the kinds of sciences practiced by the vast majorityof working scientists. When scholars wish to make grand claims about religion and science,and they ignore the NTOSs, then they are very likely to fall short, for they consider only asmall minority of actual science.Finally, returning to the lay-vs-elite issue, I have suggested that scholars across the boardconsider non-manuscript, non-elite sources. These include works written by lay membersof particular religious traditions, notebooks from non-elite scientists, movies, blogs, TikTokposts, fliers, newspaper columns, and campus sermons. Such media are perhaps the mostwidely consumed sources of religion–science interaction, and thus are excellent sites for un-derstanding public conceptions of religion and of science. Yet scholarship has, for the mostpart, neglected these other forms of media. In unpacking the questions, “Whose religion?”and “Whose science?”, I have thus argued that scholars would be well served turning theirattention to these non-book sources.308This dissertation joins a small, but growing, literature of what one might call the philosophyof religion-and-science. Rather than offering first-order contributions on the nature of reli-gion and science, the state of the RSR, theological views of scientific theories, scientifically-informed theologies, or other such things, philosophy of religion-and-science offers assess-ments of those contributions. That is, just as the philosophy of science looks to the scopeand limits of the sciences, in general or in particular, the philosophy of religion-and-sciencedeals with the bounds and nature of religion-and-science.Work which we might clarify as“philosophy of religion-and-science” is not new per se. How-ever, it has not, to my knowledge, been identified or pursued as a discipline in itself. Instead,work discussing the limits of theorizing about and within religion-and-science often appearsin the introductions of larger works, or as brief asides. J. H. Brooke and G. N. Cantor 2000’schapter on the use of the historical approach, for instance, can be understood as a piece ofphilosophy of religion-and-science. There are, however a handful of more extended studiesin this vein. Reeves’ Against Methods in Science and Religion (2019) is a good example.I should clarify that although his project and mine sound similar, they are quite different.Reeves’ argument is that scholars of religion and science should stop thinking of religion andscience in terms of methodology: developments in philosophy of science, he argues, havedemonstrated the futility of reducing science to a particular scientific method. My focus onmethodology, however, is different: I have been concerned not with what scholars say aboutmethods but rather with scholars’ own methods. That is, while Reeves is concerned withmethods as they appear in scholars’ theories of religion-and-science, I have focused on thescholars’ methodology.Much future work is to be done in the philosophy of religion-and-science. Given the greatsize of the literature and the grand scope of many of its contributions, it is high time thatmore extensive studies of the discipline itself be undertaken.309My own particular project has been quite limited and scope in thus can be expanded in anumber of ways. For instance, I have only looked at that part of the religion-and-scienceliterature which tries to characterize the RSR. But not all scholars in the discipline aim todo such a thing, either in the grand terms of Religion and Science writ-large, or even onthe smaller terms of specific religions and specific sciences. There is other scholarship whichconsiders how the sciences might inform particular theologies, or how particular theologiesmight inform the sciences. There is literature applying the sciences to the study of religion—cognitive science of religion and anthropology of religion. And there is also a massive amountof literature produced by natural scientists, theologians, and non-academics with which Ihave not engaged almost at all. Beyond all this, there is also the glaring omission in thisdissertation of non-manuscript sources. There is an immense amount of religion-and-scienceliterature to be analyzed in the form of movies, blog posts, newspaper articles, Tweets,advertisements, YouTube videos, and a wide array of other media.I expect that my own typology of methods can be applied with similar fruits to these otherliteratures—but that is something that is further work must show. It would be interesting ifnatural scientists employed different kinds of methods, or if non-academics did. Likewise, itwould be interesting to explore whether certain of the methods in my fourfold typology arepreferred by members of particular disciplines. While it is expected that philosophers willlikely use conceptual analysis, historians case studies or deconstruction, and social scientistsfieldwork, what of natural scientists? Is there a difference in method preference betweenbiologists and physicists? Likewise, do certain media formats lend themselves better orworse to particular methods? And are these other literatures more or less likely to discussthe non-theory-oriented sciences?Further, while I have advocated that scholars expand their notion of science to includethe non-theory-oriented sciences, I have not discussed a similar expansion of the notion ofreligion. This is not because scholars conceive of religion in as expansive a manner as they310might. As I have argued, scholars need to pay more attention to religion from the perspectiveof lay practitioners rather than from elite perspectives—just as they should pay attentionto both normal-achieving scientists and scientifically-educated publics. But scholars shouldalso pay attention to new religious movements (NRMs). NRMs, in virtue of being new,emerge in a context that all but demands that they address science. The deep interactionbetween NRMs and science can be seen in the history and sometimes even name of manyNRMs: think of the Latter Day Saints and Egyptology, Scientology and psychoanalysis, theUnification Church (which aims to unify science and religion), or Happy Science (Kōfukuno kagaku). Scholars in the mainstream of religion-and-science almost never discuss NRMs,although there has been some work in this area in religious studies (e.g. Zeller 2010). Yet,NRMs may shed significant light not only on how religion and science can relate in themodern world but also on how contemporary publics conceive of their relation. 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Alper (2010). “Science as an Ally of Religion: a Muslim Appropriation of‘The Conflict Thesis’”. In: British Journal for the History of Science 44.2, pp. 161–181.Yamashiro, Jane H. (2013). “The Social Construction of Race and Minorities in Japan”. In:Sociology Compass 7.2.Zehnder, David J. (2011). “A Theologian’s Typology for Science and Religion”. In: Zygon:Journal of Religion and Science 45.Zeller, Benjamin E. (2010). Prophets and Protons: New Religious Movememnts and Sciencein Late Twentieth-Century America. NYU Press.Zhan, Mei (2009). Other-Worldly: Making Chinese Medicine through Transnational Frames.Duke University Press.Zilsel, Edgar (1942/2000). “The Sociological Roots of Science”. In: Social Studies of Science30.6, pp. 935–949.330Appendix AThe ExemplarsIn this Appendix, I list the works treated as exemplars of twenty-first century public-facingscholarship in this dissertation. For each source, I briefly explain how it qualifies as public-facing. Sources are listed alphabetically by author.Science vs. Religion: What Scientists Really Think (2010), by Elaine Howard Ecklund. Thefirst chapter indicates that the target audience includes non-academic “Americans of faith”(10). The book was also featured in Publishers Weekly and reviewed in popular outlets suchas The Washington Post and the New York Journal of Books.Religion vs. Science: What Religious People Really Think (2018), by Elaine Howard Ecklundand Christopher P. Scheitle. The first chapter explains, “Our message to people of faith isthis: Myths are a problem for faith communities” (3). The book was also featured inPublishers Weekly.Morals Not Knowledge (2018), by John Evans. Evans’ public-facing goals are explicit rightfrom the start; the book opens with, “If you are going to disagree with your adversary in a331debate in the public sphere, I want you to disagree with them for the right reason” (1).Science and Religion: An Impossible Dialogue (2016), by Yves Gingras (trans. Peter Keat-ing). Gingras’ language and the way that he positions himself in contrast to existing scholar-ship seems to be to indicate that he has a more general audience in mind than just scholars.The Territories of Science and Religion (2010), by Peter Harrison. This book is based onHarrison’s 2011 Gifford lectures, which are themselves aimed at a public audience. Further,the book is reviewed in popular media such as the Los Angeles Review of Books and theTimes Literary Supplement, blurbs from which are found on the back cover of the book.Priest of Nature: The Religious Worlds of Isaac Newton (2017), by Rob Iliffe. The bookwas reviewed in several popular venues including Choice and the Wall Street Journal, andalso featured in the Publishers Weekly.Summer of the Gods: The Scopes Trial and America’s Continuing Debate Over Science andReligion (2006) by Edward J. Larson. The book is written for non-scholars and won thePulitzer Prize in History in 1998 (it was originally published in 1997, but was republishedwith a new afterward in 2006). It was widely reviewed in popular venues like the BostonGlobe and the New York Times.Buddhism and Science: A Guide for the Perplexed (2008) by Donald Lopez Jr. This book ismeant to be, as its subtitle indicates, “a guide for the perplexed.” From Lopez’s language,the “perplexed” seem to include non-academics, especially Buddhists—thus the Preface con-cludes by explaining that the book aims “to understand why we yearn for the teachings ofan itinerant mendicant in Iron Age India, even one of such profound insight, to somehowanticipate the formulae of Einstein” (xiii).Galileo Goes to Jail and Other Myths about Science and Religion (2010), edited by RonaldNumbers. This volume is explicitly public-facing, intended for non-scholars (especially stu-332dents). It is widely reviewed in popular venues like the Daily Telegraph and the VancouverSun.Kepler’s Witch (2004) by James A. Connor. The general informal, conversational styleindicate that Connor is writing at least in part for non-academics. The Forward and Intro-duction also make clear that Connor has non-academic audiences in mind. For instance, inthe Introduction, he explains his decision to use letters to tell the story of Kepler’s life: “Thebest part about studying letters is that you find that great people in history are no longerlegendary figures, but ordinary human beings caught in mundane torments” (6).Where the Conflict Really Lies () by Alvin Plantinga. Plantinga writes for both a publicand scholarly audience, as made clear in the Introduction where he states, “This book is notintended merely for specialists in philosophy. I hope that students with a course or two inphilosophy or for that matter anyone with an interest in the subject will find it intelligibleand interesting” (xv).Michael Ruse’s entry in Three Views on Christianity and Science (2021) edited by PaulCoplan and Christopher Reese. The book is published by Zondervan Press as part of itsCounterpoints: Bible and Theology series, which is aimed at Christian non-scholars.For the Glory of God: How Monotheism Led to Reformations, Science, Witch-Hunts, andthe End of Slavery (2004) by Rodney Stark. The language and style make it clear that Starkis writing with a non-academic audience in mind; he explains, for instance that “it is nowconvention to use B.C.E. (Before the Common Era) rather than B.C.” (5). The book wasalso reviewed in popular outlets like Christianity Today Magazine and the National Review.333

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