The Present Reslations Of Science And Religion

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The Present Relations of Science and Religion

C. D. Broad


Published Philosophy 14 (1939): 131-54. Reprinted in Religion, Philosophy and Psychic Research (London: Routledge,
1953).


Fifty or sixty years ago anyone fluttering the pages of one of the the many magazines which then catered for the
cultivated and intelligent English reader would have been fairly certain to come upon an article bearing somewhat the same
title as that of the present paper. The author would probably be an eminent scientist, such as Huxley or Clifford; a
distinguished scholar, such as Frederic Harrison or Edmund Gurney; or a politician of cabinet rank, such as Gladstone or
Morley. Whichever side he might take, he would write with the moral fervour of which Englishmen at that time had an
inexhaustible supply. Nowadays the so-called 'conflict between Religion and Science', which was then appetizingly hot from
the oven, has acquired something of the repulsiveness of half-cold mutton in half-congealed gravy. There seems to be a
widespread opinion that Sir Arthur Eddington and Sir James Jeans, with some highly technical and not readily intelligible
assistance from Professor Whitehead, have enabled the lion to lie down with the lamb. Well, I have no wish to pipe a
discordant note in this scene of Messianic harmony. But I cannot help reflecting that psychology, anthropology, and
psychical research have made considerable advances as well as mathematical physics; and that they seem prima facie much
more likely to be relevant to religion. Even the ordinary common sense of the lawyer and the historian may still have
something useful to say on such topics. So, at the risk of being thought a profane disturber of the peace, I propose to raise
once more the old questions, a...