---
title: "Conflict thesis"
chunk: 2/5
source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conflict_thesis"
category: "reference"
tags: "science, encyclopedia"
date_saved: "2026-05-05T04:31:06.685537+00:00"
instance: "kb-cron"
---

[T]he story of the supposed opposition of the Church and the Popes and the ecclesiastical authorities to science in any of its branches, is founded entirely on mistaken notions. Most of it is quite imaginary. Much of it is due to the exaggeration of the significance of the Galileo incident. Only those who know nothing  about the history of medicine and of science continue to harbor it. That Dr. White's book, contradicted as it is so directly by all serious histories of medicine and of science, should have been read by so many thousands in this country, and should have been taken seriously by educated men, physicians, teachers, and even professors of science who want to know the history of their own sciences, only shows how easily even supposedly educated men may be led to follow their prejudices rather than their mental faculties, and emphasizes the fact that the tradition that there is no good that can possibly come out of the Nazareth of the times before the reformation, still dominates the intellects of many educated people who think that they are far from prejudice and have minds perfectly open to conviction.
In God and Nature (1986), David Lindberg and Ronald Numbers report that "White's Warfare apparently did not sell as briskly as Draper's Conflict, but in the end it proved more influential, partly, it seems, because Draper's work was soon dated, and because White's impressive documentation gave the appearance of sound scholarship". During the 20th century, historians' acceptance of the conflict thesis declined until fully rejected in the 1970s. David B. Wilson notes:

Despite the growing number of scholarly modifications and rejections of the conflict model from the 1950s [...] in the 1970s leading historians of the nineteenth century still felt required to attack it. [...] Whatever the reason for the continued survival of the conflict thesis, two other books on the nineteenth century that were published in the 1970s hastened its final demise among historians of science [...] 1974 [...] Frank Turner [...] Between Science and Religion [...] Even more decisive was the penetrating critique "Historians and Historiography" [...] [by] James Moore [...] at the beginning of his Post-Darwinian Controversies (1979).
In his course on science and religion, historian Lawrence Principe summarizes Draper's and White's works by saying:

While we can look today with astonishment upon the shoddy character of Draper and White's writings, their books have had enormous impact, and we can't deny that. Much of this is due to their great success in their creating a myth for science as a religion. Their myth of science as a religion is replete with battles, and martyrdoms, and saints, and creeds. And as we know, or should know, myths are often much more powerful than historical realities.
In the coursebook, Principe writes:

No serious historians of science or of the science–religion issue today maintain the warfare thesis [...] The origins of the warfare thesis lie in the late 19th century, specifically in the work of two men – John William Draper and Andrew Dickson White. These men had specific political purposes in mind when arguing their case, and the historical foundations of their work are unreliable.
Regarding the scholarship of Draper's work, Principe says:

How does he [John William Draper] support his contention of conflict? Well, unfortunately, with some of the worst historical writing you are ever likely to come across. Historical facts are confected, causes and chronologies twisted to the author's purpose. We find interpretations made merely by declaration. We find quotations violently taken out of context. And instances, quite a few of them where Draper claims a historical writer said something in fact 180 degrees away from what he actually claimed...Much of Draper's book is so ridiculous, so malodramatic, so rabid, it's hard for a knowledgeable person actually to read it without a wry smirk...Let's start with a simple and a notorious example: the idea that before Columbus people thought that the world was flat. Well, in fact, it is Draper and White, specifically, both of them, who bear most of the blame for popularizing this baseless view to the extent that nowadays, 80 percent of school teachers still foist this upon poor innocent school children. The fact is that of course the sphericity of the Earth was well established by the fifth century BC by the Greeks, and a good measure of its circumference made by the third century BC. And these facts were never forgotten in learned Western Culture.
Principe's summary comment on Draper's work at the end of his coursebook reads: "The book that started the conflict myth. Take a sense of humor and/or a stiff drink with this dated bit of melodrama."
However, according to historian of science and religion James C. Ungureanu, Draper and White actually hoped their narratives would preserve religious belief, not remove it. For them, science was ultimately a scapegoat for a much older argument that dated back to the Protestant Reformation, where progressive and liberal theologies had their conflict with traditional and orthodox theologies. This would place the notion of "conflict" within the history of theological ideas.

== Modern views ==