“Charles Taylor has spoken in A Secular Age about ‘new conditions for belief’ in the modern age. Specifically, he speaks of ‘a new shape to the experience which prompts to and is defined by belief; in a new context in which all search and questioning about the moral and the spiritual must proceed.’ This is the ‘social imaginary’ that underlies our conception of the role of belief. Part of that context is the appearance of a new and distinctive understanding of belief, and the appearance of a neutral epistemic space, identified with a universal reason. This is further related to the emergence of modern liberalism, which posits existence of a neutral public sphere. Both Taylor and [Alasdair] MacIntyre have questioned the putative neutrality of this public space where no single religious tradition is favored, suggesting that modern liberalism might be thought of more along the lines of a competing ideology or religion, asserting its own supremacy at the cost of other traditions.

“My account suggests a parallel development in the idea of an Archimedean epistemic space, in which supposedly neutral rational considerations trump all others. The creation of such a space was partly motivated by the need to adjudicate between competing truth claims of the ‘religions,’ themselves the product of the new conception of religion. It is no exaggeration to say that this was the chief epistemic concern of the immediate post-Reformation period. Advocates of a religion of reason, insofar as they supported the alliance of natural theology and natural philosophy (and thus a natural theology that was constructed upon ‘neutral’ rational grounds) were complicit in this development. The possibility of offering this kind of rational support for religion, where the latter is understood propositionally, necessitates the creation of a supposedly neutral space. Initially, that neutral space was occupied by natural theology and natural philosophy with their shared physico-theological mission. Over the course of the nineteenth century, however, that territory was gradually seated to a coalescing ‘science.’ This ultimately resulted in the assimilation of all cognitive claims to scientific ones. The high-water mark of this development was the twentieth-century positivist critique of religious, moral, and aesthetic language. This positivist ethos still lingers, and the insistence that science sets the standards for what counts as genuine knowledge remains a characteristic feature of the modern Western epistemological discourse. Arguably, the epistemic imperialism of science was inherited from the supposedly neutral grounds of eighteenth-century natural theology from which it emerged.”

—from Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (University of Chicago Press, 2015)

Related reading and listening

  • The recovery of true authority for societal flourishing — Michael Hanby addresses a confusion at the heart of our current cultural crisis: a conflation of the concepts of authority and power. (52 minutes)
  • Touch’d with a coal from heav’n — Daniel Ritchie finds in the poetry of William Cowper (1731–1800) an anticipation of Michael Polanyi’s epistemology
  • How we know the world — Daniel Ritchie argues that poet and hymnodist William Cowper was ahead of his time in critiquing the Enlightenment’s reductionist view of knowledge. (16 minutes)
  • William Cowper: Reconciling the Heart with the Head — Daniel E. Ritchie discusses the life and work of poet William Cowper (1731–1800), comparing his commitment to understanding reality through personal knowledge, intuition, and rigorous contemplation with the thought of Michael Polanyi. (43 minutes)
  • Approaches to knowing —
    FROM VOL. 104
    Daniel Ritchie describes how many of the figures he studies in his new book emphasize the significance of human experience, enculturation, and contingency to human knowledge. (21 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 162 — FEATURED GUESTS: Mark Noll, R. Jared Staudt, Paul Weston, William C. Hackett, Hans Boersma, and David Paul Baird
  • The integration of theoretical and mythic intelligence —
    FROM VOL. 156
    William C. Hackett discusses the relationships between philosophy and theology, and of both to the meaning embedded in myth. (29 minutes)
  • Theological realism — Kevin J. Vanhoozer discusses theologian T. F. Torrance’s understanding of the positive relation between science and theology. (52 minutes)
  • The historian’s communal role as storyteller —
    FROM VOL. 127
    Historian Christopher Shannon discusses how American academic historical writing presents a grand narrative of progressivism, which it defends by subscribing to an orthodoxy of objective Reason. (21 minutes)
  • Universities as the hosts of reciprocating speech — Robert Jenson on how the Christian understanding of Truth in a personal Word shaped the Western university
  • The ecstasy of the act of knowing — Theologian Paul Griffiths situates our creaturely knowing within the framework of the relation between God and Creation
  • On The Abolition of Man —
    FROM VOL. 154
    Michael Ward explains why The Abolition of Man is one of Lewis’s most important but also most difficult books. (36 minutes)
  • Seeking control, in white magic and The Green Book — Alan Jacobs on C. S. Lewis’s critique of the modern pursuit of god-like control
  • Freedom from the nature of things? — Leon Kass on the pressure exerted by the authority of science to embrace reductionistic materialism
  • Life, liberty, and the defense of dignity — In a 2003 interview, Leon Kass discussed his book Life, Liberty, and the Defense of Dignity: The Challenge for Bioethics. The unifying theme in the book’s essays is the threat of dehumanization in one form or another. (36 minutes)
  • Among Oppenheimer’s company — James L. Nolan, Jr., the author of Atomic Doctors: Conscience and Complicity at the Dawn of the Nuclear Age, discusses the Manhattan Project as a case study in the dangers of technological enthusiasm outpacing wisdom and caution. (27 minutes)
  • A.I., power, control, & knowledge — Ken Myers shares some paragraphs from Langdon Winner‘s seminal book, Autonomous Technology: Technics-out-of-Control as a Theme in Political Thought (1977) and from Roger Shattuck‘s Forbidden Knowledge: From Prometheus to Pornography (1996). An interview with Shattuck is also presented. (31 minutes)
  • Deconstructing the myths of modernity — In order to counter modernity’s fragmentation, Paul Tyson argues that we must recover a foundation of reality based on meaning and being. (35 minutes)
  • Resituating discussion of “science” and “religion” — Peter Harrison argues that modern Western culture’s partitioning of ‘science’ and ‘religion’ into distinct spheres is a novel categorical conception in history. (58 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 156 — FEATURED GUESTS: Kimbell Kornu, Paul Tyson, Mark Noll, David Ney, William C. Hackett, and Marian Schwartz
  • Science, the only reliable leader (but to where?) — Stephen Gaukroger on the replacement of political, social, and cultural goals with scientific, technological, and economic ones
  • Recovering natural philosophy — Science teacher Ravi Scott Jain discusses natural philosophy, the “love of wisdom in the realm of nature,” as the overarching discipline in the sciences. (21 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 155 — FEATURED GUESTS: Donald Kraybill, Thaddeus Kozinski, David Bentley Hart, Nigel Biggar, Ravi Scott Jain, and Jason Baxter
  • “Christianity” is gnostic — Peter Leithart on why what the Church is and practices is not a “religion”
  • The evolving connotation of “Christianity” — William Cantwell Smith on how the abstraction known as “Christianity” displaced the concrete reality of “Christian living”
  • The birth of “religion” — Brent Nongbri on how Christian disunity led to the privatization of God and the gods
  • Knowledge transformed by love — David K. Naugle on the reordered thinking of the redeemed
  • The novelty of “science” and “religion” — Peter Harrison on the contingency of the boundaries that divide our lives
  • Cosmology without God — Modern science is practiced in the context of beliefs that are intrinsically metaphysical and theological, even though practitioners of science claim (and usually genuinely believe) that their disciplines are philosophically neutral. David Alcalde challenges such claims within a sub-field of astrophysics. (21 minutes)
  • The scantily clad public square — Reinhard Hütter on the necessity of the virtue of religion
  • Dallas Willard on discipleship — Dallas Willard talks about how pastors should understand their vocation as one of making disciples — apprentices of Jesus — and that the training of pastors must include a commitment to pursue spiritual wisdom and faithfulness. (21 minutes)
  • Diagnosing our political conflicts — Michael Hanby explains why the modern pursuit of freedom — obeying its founding logic — has taken such a destructive turn. (36 minutes)
  • The loss of awe, the idolatry of partial thinking — Thaddeus J. Kozinski on reading modernity’s symptoms wisely (and wonder-fully)
  • Carelessly invoking “science” in the pandemic — Historian of science Steven Shapin talks about about how the authority of “science” has been invoked by many political authorities during the pandemic, yet how scientific pursuits are deeply human endeavors. (18 minutes)
  • Plagues and technocratic politics — Philosopher Michael Hanby insists that responses to COVID-19 were distorted by the widespread belief that science is a monolithic source of infallible knowledge, the only reliable source of knowledge about how we should live. (38 minutes)
  • When “follow the science” doesn’t work — Peter Leithart reflects on the all-too-human nature of science and the effects of quarantine on the Church’s embodied mission. (32 minutes)
  • The reality that science cannot see — Philosopher Paul Tyson illustrates features of daily life that science cannot “see,” such as love, friendship, justice, and hope, and argues that such things are nonetheless real. (20 minutes)
  • Why “Creation” is more than “origins” — In this archive interview from Volume 121 of the Journal, Michael Hanby talks about why we shouldn’t assume that science can ever be philosophically and theologically neutral. (32 minutes)
  • Mary Midgley, R.I.P. — Philosopher Mary Midgley (1919–2018) was a tireless critic of the reductionist, atomistic claims of modern science. (16 minutes)
  • Rediscovering the Organism: Science and Its Contexts — Philosophers, theologians, historians, and research scientists are interviewed in an effort to describe the interaction of science with other disciplines and with the settings in which science is practiced and exerts its influence. (107 minutes)
  • The inevitability of escalating public animosity — With excerpts from books and lectures by Alasdair MacIntyre, Oliver O’Donovan, and Wendell Berry, Ken Myers argues that modern political theory has guaranteed increasing levels of public conflict. (19 minutes)
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 139 — FEATURED GUESTS: W. Bradford Littlejohn, Simon Oliver, Matthew Levering, Esther Lightcap Meek, Paul Tyson, and David Fagerberg
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 131 — FEATURED GUESTS: John Durham Peters, Paul Heintzman, Richard Lints, Peter Harrison, Francis J. Beckwith, David L. Schindler, and Nicholas J. Healy, Jr.
  • Not just other-worldly concerns — William Cavanaugh on the “religionization” of Christianity
  • Is religion just moralistic therapy after all? — Alexander Schmemann on the secularization of religion
  • Shedding epistemic modesty — Peter Harrison on the rise of confidence in scientific progress
  • The problem with patriotism in secular democracies — Alasdair MacIntyre on the systematic rejection of the tradition of the virtues in modern political institutions
  • The Church as a public reality — William Cavanaugh on how we must be disciples in public, not just citizens
  • Principles have to be discovered, not chosen — Alasdair MacIntyre on the problem of natural law and contemporary culture
  • Mars Hill Audio Journal, Volume 123 — FEATURED GUESTS: Nicholas M. Healy, Christian Smith, James K. A. Smith, Esther Lightcap Meek, Richard Viladesau, and Jeremy Begbie
Tags: