The historians’ settlement: no timeless essences, only particular people, institutions, and disputes, whose relations must be told case by case. This site’s baseline.
The complexity model is a historian’s verdict before it is a philosophy. In John Hedley Brooke’s formulation, serious scholarship refuses the essentialism of both the conflict story and its sentimental opposite: there is no timeless ‘science’ and no timeless ‘religion’ whose relations could be stated once for all. There are only particular people, institutions, texts, and disputes, and the relations change with every change of patronage, politics, and personality.
Complexity is this section’s baseline. It does not forbid judgment about particular episodes — Galileo was tried, Lysenko did wreck Soviet genetics, monasteries did preserve the manuscripts. It forbids turning an episode into an essence.
References
- John Hedley Brooke, Science and Religion: Some Historical Perspectives (1991)
- Peter Harrison, The Territories of Science and Religion (2015)