A ‘Special Relationship’?Some of the ‘discoveries’ of the appropriate relation between science and religion proposed in recent years are reminiscent of the ‘special relationship’ ‘that has always existed between our two countries’ invented by Winston Churchill in his efforts to woo the U.S. into the war with Hitler. Indeed there had been all sorts of relationships between Britain and the States in the preceding 200 years: empire-colony, empire-rebellion, naval powers at war, distant economic power awaiting the result of civil war, belated allies against the Kaiser. And indeed there has always been a relationship of a special kind between the advance of different types of knowledge of the natural world on the one hand, and religious understandings on the other. But this ‘special relationship’ has been just as diverse and as ambiguous as the one Churchill invoked! Click here to consider the metaphor of the maps. Or see different sciences - different relationships.
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