The Idea of a University

One of the main tensions that Newman addresses throughout his book is the relationship between religion and science. There was a rising sense in British society in the mid-1800s that religion and science were opposed to one another. The Roman Catholic Church had already earned a reputation as a poor arbiter of that debate in the 17th century, as a result of some Catholic scholars’ repudiation of Galileo in preference for a faulty astronomical model that was not even properly rooted in their own theology. By the 19th century, many other assumptions of traditional Christian teaching were being questioned. Geologists were arguing for a far longer timespan of terrestrial history than had been assumed from conventional interpretations of biblical texts, and by the time Newman edited The Idea of a University into its final structure for the 1873 edition, the theories of Charles Darwin had been sending shockwaves through academic circles for over a decade. At the same time, the multiplication of religious opinions in the wake of the Protestant Reformation had slowly eroded European confidence in the religious doctrine. More and more, scholars regarded theology as a study of subjective opinions. In response, devoted believers in both the Catholic and Protestant churches grew more suspicious of scientific discourse and rationale.

Newman addressed this rising antagonism in several ways. First, he denied that religion and science have significant grounds for criticizing one another. Religion concerns supernatural reality and ultimate causes, which science does not and cannot study, as such matters are beyond empirical scrutiny. Likewise, while science concerns the physical reality that lies open to immediate experimentation, religion teaches nothing of empirical explanations of natural phenomena beyond those phenomena’s ultimate causation by God. The two circles of knowledge intersect, Newman says, but only insofar as to draw inferences from one to the other: “A person who has the fullest knowledge of one of these worlds, may be nevertheless, on the whole, as ignorant as the rest of mankind, as unequal to form a judgment, of the facts and truths of the other” (323).

Second, Newman observed that some of the perceived antagonism results from different methods of reasoning: “The elementary methods of reasoning and inquiring used in Theology and Physics are contrary the one to the other; each of them has a method of its own; and in this, I think, has lain the point of controversy between the two schools” (331). Theology derives from the starting premises given by divine revelation and operates by logical deduction from those premises, reasoning to the doctrines that follow. Science, on the other hand, begins with no such premises; it starts with observation and proceeds by inductive reasoning from the results of its experiments. Both methods are appropriate for their fields. If there is indeed a God who has revealed himself in intelligible ways, then deductive reasoning based on God’s revelations is the only appropriate method of theological study. So also for science: It would be inappropriate to begin with premises where none exist, so one must start with observation and work upward. The difficulty, however, is that the mental habits inculcated by each methodology tend to make one suspicious of the other, more unfamiliar methodology. If a scholar spends their whole life using one set of processes for discerning truth, they would naturally be skeptical of the conclusions reached through an entirely different set of processes. The antagonism in this case is merely apparent, and not real.

Newman’s solution to this perceived antagonism is twofold. First, he believes that the practice of uniting these often-clashing branches of knowledge in a single university will achieve some balance between them: If separated, each branch will tend to ignore the other, but when forced to work together in a university, their harmonies may emerge. Second, he advises patience to his Catholic audience. If they are convinced of the truth of Catholic dogma, then “[nothing] can be discovered by any other scientific method, which can contradict the dogmas of [their] religion” (351). It may turn out, as in the case of Copernican astronomy, that the prevailing Catholic opinions (which were not dogmatically defined) were based on inferior interpretations of biblical revelation. In that circumstance, the overall cause of truth was served, and both science and religion benefited from undergoing a corrective process. Science continually revises its own conclusions upon finding better evidence, and that evidence may serve the cause of religious truth as well as scientific truth. Therefore, patience and a respect for intellectual freedom are the primary virtues for navigating such disputes. Newman ultimately sees the antagonism between science and religion as, at best, a mirage—and, at worst, a case of both branches of knowledge overstepping their bounds. The answer, as throughout The Idea of a University, is to cultivate the sort of intellectual formation that can judge any such disputes with discernment, humility, and clarity of thought.