For almost 150 years our understanding of the historical relations between science and religion has been dominated by one particular “lumping” strategy—the division of the cultural landscape of the West into the two categories of “science” and “religion. Given this way of dividing the territory, the historian’s task is to give an account of the relations between them...In this chapter I want to directly address the fundamental question of this collection and evaluate the utility of the complexity thesis in past, present, and future scholarship. I will set out three kinds of response to the complexity thesis. First, I propose that the complexity thesis is not really a thesis at all, but rather a reaction to a thesis. Further I argue that while highlighting historical complexity is entirely appropriate as a first step, historians of science and religion need to do more than simply identify historical episodes that falsify unpalatable narratives...Second, I will suggest that while suspicion of metanarratives remains high among historians, to some degree they are both unavoidable and indispensable...Third, and returning to the opening metaphor of lumping and splitting, I will suggest that while lumping aspects of Western culture into the two categories “science” and “religion” was a mistake, setting out the history of how this particular lumping strategy evolved can be deeply revealing of the source of apparent historical complexity, and can in itself give rise to a new kind of narrative about science and religion.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/j.ctvqc6h4s?turn_away=true&refreqid=excelsior%3A7d8e3cb6d0a981aab0df6a9e83ad116a&seq=1#metadata_info_tab_contents (Link to page. Drop me an email if you cannot access the paper)