1: The Territories of Science and Religion
Professor Peter Harrison lectures on the only relatively recent separation of 'religion' from the secular aspects of society and particularly from the natural sciences
Lecture abstract
So familiar are the concepts ‘science’ and ‘religion’, and so central to Western culture have been the activities and achievements that are usually labelled ‘religious’ and ‘scientific’, that it is natural to assume that they have been enduring features of the cultural landscape of the West. However, this view is misleading.
Only in the past few hundred years have religious beliefs and activities been bounded by a common notion ‘religion’ and set apart from the ‘non-religious’ or secular domains of human existence. The idea of natural sciences as discrete activities conducted in isolation from religious and moral concerns is even more recent, dating from the nineteenth century. Both categories, ‘religion’ and ‘science’, distort what they claim to represent.