NOMA
We all remember this story found in childhood textbooks. Christopher Columbus tried to persuade reluctant Spanish monarchs to sponsor a trip west to find a new route to Asia. Retrograde clerical advisors adhering to an overly literal Biblical interpretation tried to dismiss Columbus' foolish notion of a spherical Earth as counter to Scripture. Columbus ultimately prevailed and discovered America. This paradigm for the triumph of rational science over mystical religion is often repeated, but is factually incorrect.
At the time of Columbus, there was little doubt that the Earth was round, only whether the distance to Asia going west as Columbus proposed was as short as Columbus hoped. From the Greeks to Thomas Aquinas and Francis Bacon, there was never any doubt among most serious thinkers and the religious leaders of the Roman Catholic Church that the Earth was round.
The apocryphal story gained credence in the 1880s after the 1874 book History of the Conflict Between Religion and Science by John William Draper. Draper explained with his characteristic anti-Catholicism, "Traditions and policies forbade [the papal authorities] to admit any other but the flat figure of the Earth, as revealed in the Scriptures." Draper declared an unnecessary war between religion when he went on to assert,
"...Roman Christianity and Science are recognized by their respective adherents as being absolutely incompatible; they cannot exist together; one must yield to the other; mankind must make its choice - it cannot have both."
Of course, there are many instances of unnecessary conflicts initiated from the religious side of the barricade. The silencing of Galileo by the Church for his heliocentric view of the universe, as well as the insistence on Scientific Creationism from a fairly narrow subset of Christians, who do not accept the allegorical nature of Genesis, are just two examples.
Naturalist and writer Stephen Jay Gould in his new book Rocks of Ages not only tries to declare a truce between religion and science but attempts to usher in an era of mutual respect and coexistence. Gould asserts the Principle of NOMA, Non-Overlapping Magisteria. Specifically:
"[the] magisterium of science covers the empirical realm: what the universe is made of (fact) and why does it work this way (theory). The magisterium of religion extends over questions of ultimate meaning and moral value."
There is not a single synthesis, Gould argues, that unites these different ways of understanding. The fact that science can be successfully conducted by people operating under radically different ethical premises is evidence that scientific knowledge does not bring with it superior ethical sensitivities. In laying the groundwork for peace between the magisteria, Gould does not claim originality. He does, however, re-articulate a paradigm for coexistence that most serious people and scientists in particular have already accepted.
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