146 cosmos
Walcott, who was influenced in his practice of science by (a) assuming, under
the spell of the prevailing scheme of the social theory of progress, the cogency
of “a view of life as a single progressive chain”^12 and (b) his belief that science
should serve “the altruistic, or, as some would call it, the spiritual nature of
man,” a claim that Gould connects with Walcott’s attempt to deal positively
with the Scopes trial of 1925.^13 The second provocation for Gould’s pronounce-
ment concerns the antievolutionists trials in 1925 and 1987. His statement
warrants quoting.^14
The canonical attitude of scientists then and now—and the argu-
ment that finally secured our [!] legal victory before the Supreme
Court in 1987—holds that science and religion operate in equally le-
gitimate but separate areas. This “separationist” claim allots the
mechanisms and phenomena of nature to scientists and the basis
for ethical decisions to theologians and humanists in general—the
age of rocks versus the rock of ages, or “how heaven goes” versus
“how to go to heaven” in the old one-liners. In exchange for free-
dom to follow nature down all her pathways, scientists relinquish
the temptation to base moral inferences and pronouncements upon
the physical state of the world—an excellent and proper arrange-
ment, since the facts of nature embody no moral claims in any case.While Gould’s legally driven “separationist” position protects both science
and religion from improper encroachments on one another, his reduction of
the realm of the religious to the “ethical” and “moral” will appall theologians,
who view religion as a rich symbolic world.^15
The Grounds for the Complementarity Thesis
No one can speak for the whole of science and religion, but I shall argue that
science, especially modern physics, and religion are converging on a relational
paradigm. My reason for highlighting “modern physics” is that relativity theory
and quantum theory, both of which emerged in the first years of the twentieth
century, displaced Newtonian physics and set physics on a course which is
decidedly “relational.” Relativity theory replaced the “substantives” of Newto-
nian physics—space, time, and matter—with spacetime events and merged
space and time into spacetime. The classical Newtonian theory of matter as
composed of substantial particles was displaced by the theory of matter as
matter-energy. Though the issues are more controversial, quantum physics
raised questions about what seems to be the paradox of particles and waves,
apparent in the fact that if one sets up an experiment to test for waves, one
finds waves, and conversely, if one sets up an experiment to test for particles,
one finds particles. This prompted Bohr to introduce the term “complemen-