Knowledge, Religion and Belief
Chapter 15  Summary

This chapter introduces one of the major debates concerning the emergence of modern social life: does the rise of rationalism, represented by scientific thinking and practices, mean that modern human beings have adopted a way of thinking and knowledge base that is superior to any other kind?

Or should science be seen as just one more human endeavour, with knowledge claims are no better or worse than other kinds? This debate is sometimes described as being about a Great Divide between forms of knowledge. On one side of the divide are the Rationalists, who claim that humans can know the way things are for certain, and acquire truth, but only if they if they use scientific thinking and scientific methods.On the other side of the debate are Relativists. For relativism, no human, whether living in pre-modernity or modernity, can ever know anything for certain: objective knowledge is unattainable because every kind of human knowledge - scientific knowledge included - is always a cultural product, constructed by the social activity of particular people living in particular times and places.

After introducing this debate, we explore the story of the rise to intellectual supremacy of scientific thinking in modern societies and the reaction of various sociological perspectives to the dominance of science. The remainder of the chapter examines the impact of science on religious thinking and practice, looking at both those who argue for a decline in the importance of religion in modern society and those who see it as a vital component of all societies. We return to the idea of science towards the end of the chapter and show how science itself can be seen as a cultural product.