Related Terms
Barbour’s Typology
The most influential typology of how to relate science and religion has been developed by Ian Barbour.
Barbour proposes a fourfold taxonomy (conflict, independence, dialogue, and integration) in order to give a systematic overview of the main options today. Advocates of Barbour’s first view, the conflict view, maintain that science and religion are rivals. They compete on the same turf, and in the end, one will emerge as the winner. His two paradigm examples of advocates of the conflict view are scientific materialists (or proponents of scientific naturalism or scientism) and religious literalists: “They both claim that science and theology make rival literal statements about the same domain, the history of nature, so that one must choose between them” (Barbour 1997: 79). Defenders of the independence view, on the other hand, maintain with regard to science and religion that each has its own distinctive...
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References
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Stenmark, M. (2013). Typologies in Science and Religion. In: Runehov, A.L.C., Oviedo, L. (eds) Encyclopedia of Sciences and Religions. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8265-8_1448
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