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James K.A. Smith in LA Review of Books: Who benefits from the “conflict” between Science and Religion?

July 19, 2015

In his recent review of The Territories of Science and Religion by Peter Harrison, Comment Editor-in-Chief James K.A. Smith points out how the "cartography" of paradigms can hold us captive. Case in point: why have religion and science been perennially situated at odds with one another? ... who stands to benefit from this reconfiguration of religio as "religion" and scientia as "science"? And who benefits from the endurance of the conflict myth? This is where Harrison's nuanced attention to contingency is perhaps most illuminating. As he persuasively points out, in 17th-century England we see Christianity sowing the seeds of its own destruction.