An Essay: Non-Overlapping Magesteria

Stephen Jay Gould, 1941-2002

Magisterium: The teaching authority of the Roman Catholic Church, especially as exercised by bishops or the Pope

Stephen Jay Gould, a paleontologist and evolutionary biologist wrote an essay, Nonoverlapping Magesteria, in response to a statement by Pope John Paul II on October 22, 1996, to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences. The statement, entitled “Truth Cannot Contradict Truth”, defended both the evidence for evolution and the consistency of the theory with Catholic religious doctrine. Gould found the worldwide publicity the statement received puzzling because it did not appear to state anything new. As far as Gould knew, there was no conflict between church doctrine and evolution. The church valued science and there was no conflict with evidence about evolution as long as religious people believed that “at some time of his choosing, God had infused the soul into such a creature.”

That doctrine was fine with Gould, a Jewish agnostic, because “science cannot touch such a subject and therefore cannot be threatened by any theological position on such a legitimately and intrinsically religious issue.” To try to figure out what prompted such a widespread public response to the 1996 proclamation, Gould read two church pronouncements on evolution, Pope Pius's Humani Generis of 1950 and Pope John Paul's October 1996 proclamation. That made the basis for the uproar very clear. Once he understood the facts, Gould said the 1996 proclamation “could not be more welcome for evolutionists and friends of both science and religion.”



In Gould’s view, science and religion were nonoverlapping magesteria where knowledge and teaching from one area could not overlap into each other’s domain. He explained: “The lack of conflict between science and religion arises from a lack of overlap between their respective domains of professional expertise—science in the empirical constitution of the universe, and religion in the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives. . . . . This resolution might remain all neat and clean if the nonoverlapping magisteria (NOMA) of science and religion were separated by an extensive no man's land. But, in fact, the two magisteria bump right up against each other, interdigitating in wondrously complex ways along their joint border. Many of our deepest questions call upon aspects of both for different parts of a full answer—and the sorting of legitimate domains can become quite complex and difficult.”

Doctrine in 1950: Gould explained church doctrine in 1950 like this: “In short, Pius forcefully proclaimed that while evolution may be legitimate in principle, the theory, in fact, had not been proven and might well be entirely wrong. One gets the strong impression, moreover, that Pius was rooting pretty hard for a verdict of falsity. . . . . To summarize, Pius generally accepts the NOMA principle of nonoverlapping magisteria in permitting Catholics to entertain the hypothesis of evolution for the human body so long as they accept the divine infusion of the soul. But he then offers some (holy) fatherly advice to scientists about the status of evolution as a scientific concept: the idea is not yet proven, and you all need to be especially cautious because evolution raises many troubling issues right on the border of my magisterium.”

In 1950, evolution was ruffling the church magesterium’s skirts and that made the pope uneasy.

Doctrine in 1996: “John Paul—states and I can only say amen, and thanks for noticing—that the half century between Pius's surveying the ruins of World War II and his own pontificate heralding the dawn of a new millennium has witnessed such a growth of data, and such a refinement of theory, that evolution can no longer be doubted by people of good will . . . . . John Paul, nearly fifty years later, reaffirms the legitimacy of evolution under the NOMA principle—no news here—but then adds that additional data and theory have placed the factuality of evolution beyond reasonable doubt. Sincere Christians must now accept evolution not merely as a plausible possibility but also as an effectively proven fact. In other words, official Catholic opinion on evolution has moved from ‘say it ain't so, but we can deal with it if we have to’ (Pius's grudging view of 1950) to John Paul's entirely welcoming ‘it has been proven true; we always celebrate nature's factuality, and we look forward to interesting discussions of theological implications.’”

Hence, the Catholic church made a full declaration peace with evolution in 1996. Before then, it was just an uneasy truce of sorts.

Are the science and religious magesteria really nonoverlapping?: Gould argues that the Catholic magesterium or religion is where “the search for proper ethical values and the spiritual meaning of our lives” should occur. That assertion seems to say that human cognitive or social science have little or nothing to say about either spirituality or ethics/morals. Is that true?

His essay is explicit that he sees no overlap, but instead he sees “two magisteria [that] bump right up against each other, interdigitating in wondrously complex ways along their joint border.”

When he wrote Nonoverlapping Magesteria, presumably in the mid or late 1990s, cognitive and social science had generated at least some data on the biology of spirituality and ethics/morals, although those areas of inquiry have advanced significantly since then. Presumably, Gould believed the data he was aware of at that time did not lead him to think that science could, or maybe ever would, generate knowledge and insights about spirituality and ethics or morals.

It is worth noting that Gould seems to reject Creationism and a literal reading of the bible, which would seem to violate his view that the separation of church and science is inviolate. He dismisses ‘scientific creationism’, which he sees an an oxymoron like this: “Creationism is a local and parochial movement, powerful only in the United States among Western nations, and prevalent only among the few sectors of American Protestantism that choose to read the Bible as an inerrant document, literally true in every jot and tittle.”

From a 2018 point of view, cognitive and social science have generated a great deal of empirical data that are claimed to apply to spirituality and ethics or morals. S. Matthew Liao’s 2016 book, Moral Brains: The Neuroscience of Morality, summarizes the state of the art and it cites hundreds of references. That book discusses many experiments showing the morality of things such as life and death decisions and their sensitivity to both personal morals or mindset and social context. Brain scan data shows differential responses when one is in a ‘spiritual’ thinking mode compared to an ‘analytic’ thinking mode. When one of those thinking modes is in operation, it tends to suppress the other.

Could Gould have been mistaken that the magesteria do not overlap? Is it possible that the science magesterium can teach the religious magesterium, but not vice versa? One source states that, in regard to the nonoverlapping magesterium hyopthesis, “Gould put forward what he described as ‘a blessedly simple and entirely conventional resolution to . . . the supposed conflict between science and religion.’ . . . . If religion can no longer dictate the nature of factual conclusions residing properly within the magisterium of science, then scientists cannot claim higher insight into moral truth from any superior knowledge of the world's empirical constitution.”

Maybe scientists can claim insight at least into the biology of moral truth, but not ‘higher insight’. That raises the question of what is the difference between ‘higher insight’ and insight from science? That would appear to be a question for the church magesterium or magesteria to decide.

B&B orig: 9/198/18