Question
From a historical perspective, how do the accomplishments of science compare to those of religion?
Answer
I recently learned the terms appreciative knowledge vs. manipulative knowledge (due to John Friedmann: http://books.google.com/books?id...).
One allows you to form mental models of the world ("appreciate" it), the other allows you to act on it ("manipulate" it).
Both religion and science contain a lot of appreciative knowledge, but religion does not really contain any consequential manipulative knowledge. Sure it structures the activities of daily life through ritual and the constraints it imposes on anything you might want to do, but it does not actually equip you to do those things.
Both science and religion offer appreciative-knowledge input on whether to kill somebody (one based on utility theory say, the other on an absolute morality), but only science provides you with the means and knowledge to carry out your decision (e.g., swords, poisons, guns ...). Both have things to say about saving human lives, but only one actually allows you to do so (via medicine). Science butts heads with religion precisely where appreciative knowledge (the idea of a benevolent god for instance) is applied in unjustified, manipulative ways (e.g., faith healing, miracles ...)
More precisely, technology is the manipulative end of science, which (Friedmann notes) used to be primarily appreciative a couple of centuries back, but is now primarily "pre-manipulative" so to speak (i.e. appreciative knowledge valued for its ability to lead on to manipulative knowledge rather than its own sake).
Due to this difference, religion actually cannot cause any net change in the world. It can only tell you how to act if you've acquired the means to act from other sources. "Source," rather; in the singular. There really is only one other source: science (in the informal sense of falsifiability and trial-and-error experimentation-driven engagement of the world, not a bureaucratic notion of the scientific "method.")
It is revealing that the word for unidirectional change (as opposed to period oscillations or stable, timeless situations) is "secular." It originally had very negative connotations and was the antonym of "progress" in a sense, when the primary appreciative stance with which one viewed the change wrought by science, was a religious one. Today we are able to look on what science does to the world via a secular metaphysics and are about as likely (50-50) to conclude that it is good or bad.
One allows you to form mental models of the world ("appreciate" it), the other allows you to act on it ("manipulate" it).
Both religion and science contain a lot of appreciative knowledge, but religion does not really contain any consequential manipulative knowledge. Sure it structures the activities of daily life through ritual and the constraints it imposes on anything you might want to do, but it does not actually equip you to do those things.
Both science and religion offer appreciative-knowledge input on whether to kill somebody (one based on utility theory say, the other on an absolute morality), but only science provides you with the means and knowledge to carry out your decision (e.g., swords, poisons, guns ...). Both have things to say about saving human lives, but only one actually allows you to do so (via medicine). Science butts heads with religion precisely where appreciative knowledge (the idea of a benevolent god for instance) is applied in unjustified, manipulative ways (e.g., faith healing, miracles ...)
More precisely, technology is the manipulative end of science, which (Friedmann notes) used to be primarily appreciative a couple of centuries back, but is now primarily "pre-manipulative" so to speak (i.e. appreciative knowledge valued for its ability to lead on to manipulative knowledge rather than its own sake).
Due to this difference, religion actually cannot cause any net change in the world. It can only tell you how to act if you've acquired the means to act from other sources. "Source," rather; in the singular. There really is only one other source: science (in the informal sense of falsifiability and trial-and-error experimentation-driven engagement of the world, not a bureaucratic notion of the scientific "method.")
It is revealing that the word for unidirectional change (as opposed to period oscillations or stable, timeless situations) is "secular." It originally had very negative connotations and was the antonym of "progress" in a sense, when the primary appreciative stance with which one viewed the change wrought by science, was a religious one. Today we are able to look on what science does to the world via a secular metaphysics and are about as likely (50-50) to conclude that it is good or bad.