“Think Piece” Requirements
Your think piece must minimally:
review the main points, supporting arguments and evidence/illustrations offered by the author
offer a personal reaction to the work (how you feel about it and why) as a reasoned critique, with supporting argument
comment on how this work relates to other you have read, to material you have studied in other courses, or to something you learned outside of school
remark on how a better understanding of this topic can relate to “real life” and the production of new anthropological discourses
note particular items (statements, names, titles, situations, conflicts, ironies, anything of interest) that seem especially significant or puzzling to you 
generate three questions about these items to ask in class (“How” and “Why” questions are especially good)
Nonoverlapping Magisteria
by Stephen Jay Gould
ncongruous places often inspire anomalous stories. In early 1984, I spent several nights at the
Vatican housed in a hotel built for itinerant priests. While pondering over such puzzling issues as
the intended function of the bidets in each bathroom, and hungering for something other than
plum jam on my breakfast rolls (why did the basket only contain hundreds of identical plum
packets and not a one of, say, strawberry?), I encountered yet another among the innumerable
issues of contrasting cultures that can make life so interesting. Our crowd (present in Rome for a
meeting on nuclear winter sponsored by the Pontifical Academy of Sciences) shared the hotel
with a group of French and Italian Jesuit priests who were also professional scientists.
At lunch, the priests called me over to their table to pose a problem that had been troubling
them. What, they wanted to know, was going on in America with all this talk about “scientific
creationism”? One asked me: “Is evolution really in some kind of trouble. and if so, what could
such trouble be? I have always been taught that no doctrinal conflict exists between evolution
and Catholic faith, and the evidence for evolution seems both entirely satisfactory and utterly
overwhelming. Have I missed something?”
A lively pastiche of French, Italian, and English conversation then ensued for half an hour or so,
but the priests all seemed reassured by my general answer: Evolution has encountered no
intellectual trouble; no new arguments have been offered. Creationism is a homegrown
phenomenon of American sociocultural history—a splinter movement (unfortunately rather more
of a beam these days) of Protestant fundamentalists who believe that every word of the Bible
must be literally true, whatever such a claim might mean. We all left satisfied, but I certainly felt
bemused by the anomaly of my role as a Jewish agnostic, trying to reassure a group of Catholic
priests that evolution remained both true and entirely consistent with religious belief.
Another story in the same mold: I am often asked whether I ever encounter creationism as a live
issue among my Harvard undergraduate students. I reply that only once, in nearly thirty years of
teaching, did I experience such an incident. A very sincere and serious freshman student came
to my office hours with the following question that had clearly been troubling him deeply: “I am a
devout Christian and have never had any reason to doubt evolution, an idea that seems both
exciting and particularly well documented. But my roommate, a proselytizing Evangelical, has
been insisting with enormous vigor that I cannot be both a real Christian and an evolutionist. So
tell me, can a person believe both in God and evolution?” Again, I gulped hard, did my
intellectual duty, and reassured him that evolution was both true and entirely compatible with
Christian belief—a position I hold sincerely, but still an odd situation for a Jewish agnostic.
These two stories illustrate a cardinal point, frequently unrecognized but absolutely central to
any understanding of the status and impact of the politically potent, fundamentalist doctrine
known by its self-proclaimed oxymoron as “scientitic creationism”—the claim that the Bible is
literally true, that all organisms were created during six days of twenty-four hours, that the earth
is only a few thousand years old, and that evolution must therefore be false. Creationism does
not pit science against religion (as my opening stories indicate), for no such conflict exists.
Creationism does not raise any unsettled intellectual issues about the nature of biology or the
history of life. 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.
I do not doubt that one could find an occasional nun who would prefer to teach creationism in
her parochial school biology class or an occasional orthodox rabbi who does the same in his
yeshiva, but creationism based on biblical literalism makes little sense in either Catholicism or
Judaism for neither religion maintains any extensive tradition for reading the Bible as literal truth
rather than illuminating literature, based partly on metaphor and allegory (essential components
of all good writing) and demanding interpretation for proper understanding. Most Protestant
groups, of course, take the same position—the fundamentalist fringe notwithstanding.
The position that I have just outlined by personal stories and general statements represents the
standard attitude of all major Western religions (and of Western science) today. (I cannot,
through ignorance, speak of Eastern religions, although I suspect that the same position would
prevail in most cases.) 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. The attainment of wisdom in a full life requires extensive attention to both
domains—for a great book tells us that the truth can make us free and that we will live in optimal
harmony with our fellows when we learn to do justly, love mercy, and walk humbly.
In the context of this standard position, I was enormously puzzled by a statement issued by
Pope John Paul II on October 22, 1996, to the Pontifical Academy of Sciences, the same body
that had sponsored my earlier trip to the Vatican. In this document, entitled “Truth Cannot
Contradict Truth,” the pope defended both the evidence for evolution and the consistency of the
theory with Catholic religious doctrine. Newspapers throughout the world responded with
frontpage headlines, as in the New York Times for October 25:
“Pope Bolsters Church’s Support for Scientific View of Evolution.”
Now I know about “slow news days” and I do admit that nothing else was strongly competing for
headlines at that particular moment. (The Times could muster nothing more exciting for a lead
story than Ross Perot’s refusal to take Bob Dole’s advice and quit the presidential race.) Still, I
couldn’t help feeling immensely puzzled by all the attention paid to the pope’s statement (while
being wryly pleased, of course, for we need all the good press we can get, especially from
respected outside sources). The Catholic Church had never opposed evolution and had no
reason to do so. Why had the pope issued such a statement at all? And why had the press
responded with an orgy of worldwide, front-page coverage?
I could only conclude at first, and wrongly as I soon learned, that journalists throughout the
world must deeply misunderstand the relationship between science and religion, and must
therefore be elevating a minor papal comment to unwarranted notice. Perhaps most people
really do think that a war exists between science and religion, and that (to cite a particularly
newsworthy case) evolution must be intrinsically opposed to Christianity. In such a context, a
papal admission of evolution’s legitimate status might be regarded as major news indeed—a
sort of modern equivalent for a story that never happened, but would have made the biggest
journalistic splash of 1640: Pope Urban VIII releases his most famous prisoner from house
arrest and humbly apologizes, “Sorry, Signor Galileo… the sun, er, is central.”
But I then discovered that the prominent coverage of papal satisfaction with evolution had not
been an error of non-Catholic Anglophone journalists. The Vatican itself had issued the
statement as a major news release. And Italian newspapers had featured, if anything, even
bigger headlines and longer stories. The conservative Il Giornale, for example, shouted from its
masthead: “Pope Says We May Descend from Monkeys.”
Clearly, I was out to lunch. Something novel or surprising must lurk within the papal statement
but what could it be?—especially given the accuracy of my primary impression (as I later
verified) that the Catholic Church values scientific study, views science as no threat to religion in
general or Catholic doctrine in particular, and has long accepted both the legitimacy of evolution
as a field of study and the potential harmony of evolutionary conclusions with Catholic faith.
As a former constituent of Tip O’Neill’s, I certainly know that “all politics is local”—and that the
Vatican undoubtedly has its own internal reasons, quite opaque to me, for announcing papal
support of evolution in a major statement. Still, I knew that I was missing some important key,
and I felt frustrated. I then remembered the primary rule of intellectual life: when puzzled, it
never hurts to read the primary documents—a rather simple and self-evident principle that has,
nonetheless, completely disappeared from large sectors of the American experience.
I knew that Pope Pius XII (not one of my favorite figures in twentieth-century history, to say the
least) had made the primary statement in a 1950 encyclical entitled Humani Generis. I knew the
main thrust of his message: Catholics could believe whatever science determined about the
evolution of the human body, so long as they accepted that, at some time of his choosing, God
had infused the soul into such a creature. I also knew that I had no problem with this statement,
for whatever my private beliefs about souls, science cannot touch such a subject and therefore
cannot be threatened by any theological position on such a legitimately and intrinsically religious
issue. Pope Pius XII, in other words, had properly acknowledged and respected the separate
domains of science and theology. Thus, I found myself in total agreement with Humani
Generis—but I had never read the document in full (not much of an impediment to stating an
opinion these days).
I quickly got the relevant writings from, of all places, the Internet. (The pope is prominently online, but a Luddite like me is not. So I got a computer-literate associate to dredge up the
documents. I do love the fracture of stereotypes implied by finding religion so hep and a
scientist so square.) Having now read in full both Pope Pius’s Humani Generis of 1950 and
Pope John Paul’s proclamation of October 1996, I finally understand why the recent statement
seems so new, revealing, and worthy of all those headlines. And the message could not be
more welcome for evolutionists and friends of both science and religion.
The text of Humani Generis focuses on the magisterium (or teaching authority) of the Church—
a word derived not from any concept of majesty or awe but from the different notion of teaching,
for magister is Latin for “teacher.” We may, I think, adopt this word and concept to express the
central point of this essay and the principled resolution of supposed “conflict” or “warfare”
between science and religion. No such conflict should exist because each subject has a
legitimate magisterium, or domain of teaching authority—and these magisteria do not overlap
(the principle that I would like to designate as NOMA, or “nonoverlapping magisteria”).
The net of science covers the empirical universe: what is it made of (fact) and why does it work
this way (theory). The net of religion extends over questions of moral meaning and value. These
two magisteria do not overlap, nor do they encompass all inquiry (consider, for starters, the
magisterium of art and the meaning of beauty). To cite the arch cliches, we get the age of rocks,
and religion retains the rock of ages; we study how the heavens go, and they determine how to
go to heaven.
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. To
cite just two broad questions involving both evolutionary facts and moral arguments: Since
evolution made us the only earthly creatures with advanced consciousness, what
responsibilities are so entailed for our relations with other species? What do our genealogical
ties with other organisms imply about the meaning of human life?
Pius XII’s Humani Generis is a highly traditionalist document by a deeply conservative man
forced to face all the “isms” and cynicisms that rode the wake of World War II and informed the
struggle to rebuild human decency from the ashes of the Holocaust. The encyclical, subtitled
“Concerning some false opinions which threaten to undermine the foundations of Catholic
doctrine” begins with a statement of embattlement:
Disagreement and error among men on moral and religious matters have always been a cause
of profound sorrow to all good men, but above all to the true and loyal sons of the Church,
especially today, when we see the principles of Christian culture being attacked on all sides.
Pius lashes out, in turn, at various external enemies of the Church: pantheism, existentialism,
dialectical materialism, historicism. and of course and preeminently, communism. He then notes
with sadness that some well-meaning folks within the Church have fallen into a dangerous
relativism—”a theological pacifism and egalitarianism, in which all points of view become
equally valid”—in order to include people of wavering faith who yearn for the embrace of
Christian religion but do not wish to accept the particularly Catholic magisterium.
What is this world coming to when these noxious novelties can so discombobulate a revealed
and established order? Speaking as a conservative’s conservative, Pius laments:
Novelties of this kind have already borne their deadly fruit in almost all branches of
theology.…Some question whether angels are personal beings, and whether matter and spirit
differ essentially.…Some even say that the doctrine of Transubstantiation, based on an
antiquated philosophic notion of substance, should be so modified that the Real Presence of
Christ in the Holy Eucharist be reduced to a kind of symbolism.
Pius first mentions evolution to decry a misuse by overextension often promulgated by zealous
supporters of the anathematized “isms”:
Some imprudently and indiscreetly hold that evolution…explains the origin of all
things.…Communists gladly subscribe to this opinion so that, when the souls of men have been
deprived of every idea of a personal God, they may the more efficaciously defend and
propagate their dialectical materialism.
Pius’s major statement on evolution occurs near the end of the encyclical in paragraphs 35
through 37. He accepts the standard model of NOMA and begins by acknowledging that
evolution lies in a difficult area where the domains press hard against each other. “It remains for
US now to speak about those questions which. although they pertain to the positive sciences,
are nevertheless more or less connected with the truths of the Christian faith.” [Interestingly, the
main thrust of these paragraphs does not address evolution in general but lies in refuting a
doctrine that Pius calls “polygenism,” or the notion of human ancestry from multiple parents—for
he regards such an idea as incompatible with the doctrine of original sin, “which proceeds from
a sin actually committed by an individual Adam and which, through generation, is passed on to
all and is in everyone as his own.” In this one instance, Pius may be transgressing the NOMA
principle—but I cannot judge, for I do not understand the details of Catholic theology and
therefore do not know how symbolically such a statement may be read. If Pius is arguing that
we cannot entertain a theory about derivation of all modern humans from an ancestral
population rather than through an ancestral individual (a potential fact) because such an idea
would question the doctrine of original sin (a theological construct), then I would declare him out
of line for letting the magisterium of religion dictate a conclusion within the magisterium of
science.]
Pius then writes the well-known words that permit Catholics to entertain the evolution of the
human body (a factual issue under the magisterium of science), so long as they accept the
divine Creation and infusion of the soul (a theological notion under the magisterium of religion):
The Teaching Authority of the Church does not forbid that, in conformity with the present state
of human sciences and sacred theology, research and discussions, on the part of men
experienced in both fields, take place with regard to the doctrine of evolution, in as far as it
inquires into the origin of the human body as coming from pre-existent and living matter—for the
Catholic faith obliges us to hold that souls are immediately created by God.
I had, up to here, found nothing surprising in Humani Generis, and nothing to relieve my
puzzlement about the novelty of Pope John Paul’s recent statement. But I read further and
realized that Pope Pius had said more about evolution, something I had never seen quoted, and
that made John Paul’s statement most interesting indeed. 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. Continuing directly from the last quotation, Pius advises us
about the proper study of evolution:
However, this must be done in such a way that the reasons for both opinions, that is, those
favorable and those unfavorable to evolution, be weighed and judged with the necessary
seriousness, moderation and measure.… Some, however, rashly transgress this liberty of
discussion, when they act as if the origin of the human body from pre-existing and living matter
were already completely certain and proved by the facts which have been discovered up to now
and by reasoning on those facts, and as if there were nothing in the sources of divine revelation
which demands the greatest moderation and caution in this question.
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. One may read this second theme in two different ways: either as a gratuitous
incursion into a different magisterium or as a helpful perspective from an intelligent and
concerned outsider. As a man of good will, and in the interest of conciliation, I am happy to
embrace the latter reading.
In any case, this rarely quoted second claim (that evolution remains both unproven and a bit
dangerous)—and not the familiar first argument for the NOMA principle (that Catholics may
accept the evolution of the body so long as they embrace the creation of the soul)—defines the
novelty and the interest of John Paul’s recent statement.
John Paul begins by summarizing Pius’s older encyclical of 195O, and particularly by reaffirming
the NOMA principle—nothing new here, and no cause for extended publicity:
In his encyclical Humani Generis (1950), my predecessor Pius XII had already stated that there
was no opposition between evolution and the doctrine of the faith about man and his vocation.
To emphasize the power of NOMA, John Paul poses a potential problem and a sound
resolution: How can we reconcile science’s claim for physical continuity in human evolution with
Catholicism’s insistence that the soul must enter at a moment of divine infusion:
With man, then, we find ourselves in the presence of an ontological difference, an ontological
leap, one could say However, does not the posing of such ontological discontinuity run counter
to that physical continuity which seems to be the main thread of research into evolution in the
field of physics and chemistry? Consideration of the method used in the various branches of
knowledge makes it possible to reconcile two points of view which would seem irreconcilable.
The sciences of observation describe and measure the multiple manifestations of life with
increasing precision and correlate them with the time line. The moment of transition to the
spiritual cannot be the object of this kind of observation.
The novelty and news value of John Paul’s statement lies, rather, in his profound revision of
Pius’s second and rarely quoted claim that evolution, while conceivable in principle and
reconcilable with religion, can cite little persuasive evidence, and may well be false. 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:
Pius XII added . . . that this opinion [evolution] should not be adopted as though it were a
certain, proven doctrine. . . . Today, almost half a century after the publication of the encyclical,
new knowledge has led to the recognition of more than one hypothesis in the theory of
evolution. It is indeed remarkable that this theory has been progressively accepted by
researchers, following a series of discoveries in various fields of knowledge. The convergence,
neither sought nor fabricated, of the results of work that was conducted independently is in itself
a significant argument in favor of the theory.
In conclusion. Pius had grudgingly admitted evolution as a legitimate hypothesis that he
regarded as only tentatively supported and potentially (as I suspect he hoped) untrue. 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.” I happily endorse this turn of events as gospel—literally “good news.” I
may represent the magisterium of science, but I welcome the support of a primary leader from
the other major magisterium of our complex lives. And I recall the wisdom of King Solomon: “As
cold waters to a thirsty soul, so is good news from a far country (Prov. 25:25).
Just as religion must bear the cross of its hard-liners. I have some scientific colleagues,
including a few prominent enough to wield influence by their writings, who view this
rapprochement of the separate magisteria with dismay. To colleagues like me—agnostic
scientists who welcome and celebrate thc rapprochement, especially the pope’s latest
statement—they say: “C’mon, be honest; you know that religion is addle-pated, superstitious,
old-fashioned b.s.; you’re only making those welcoming noises because religion is so powerful,
and we need to be diplomatic in order to assure public support and funding for science.” I do not
think that this attitude is common among scientists, but such a position fills me with dismay—
and I therefore end this essay with a personal statement about religion, as a testimony to what I
regard as a virtual consensus among thoughtful scientists (who support the NOMA principle as
firmly as the pope does).
I am not, personally, a believer or a religious man in any sense of institutional commitment or
practice. But I have enormous respect for religion, and the subject has always fascinated me,
beyond almost all others (with a few exceptions, like evolution, paleontology, and baseball).
Much of this fascination lies in the historical paradox that throughout Western history organized
religion has fostered both the most unspeakable horrors and the most heart-rending examples
of human goodness in the face of personal danger. (The evil, I believe, lies in the occasional
confluence of religion with secular power. The Catholic Church has sponsored its share of
horrors, from Inquisitions to liquidations—but only because this institution held such secular
power during so much of Western history. When my folks held similar power more briefly in Old
Testament times, they committed just as many atrocities with many of the same rationales.)
I believe, with all my heart, in a respectful, even loving concordat between our magisteria—the
NOMA solution. NOMA represents a principled position on moral and intellectua] grounds, not a
mere diplomatic stance. NOMA also cuts both ways. If religion can no longer dictate the nature
of factual conclusions properly under the magisterium of science, then scientists cannot claim
higher insight into moral truth from any superior knowledge of the world’s empirical constitution.
This mutual humility has important practical consequences in a world of such diverse passions.
Religion is too important to too many people for any dismissal or denigration of the comfort still
sought by many folks from theology. I may, for example, privately suspect that papal insistence
on divine infusion of the soul represents a sop to our fears, a device for maintaining a belief in
human superiority within an evolutionary world offering no privileged position to any creature.
But I also know that souls represent a subject outside the magisterium of science. My world
cannot prove or disprove such a notion, and the concept of souls cannot threaten or impact my
domain. Moreover, while I cannot personally accept the Catholic view of souls, I surely honor
the metaphorical value of such a concept both for grounding moral discussion and for
expressing what we most value about human potentiality: our decency, care, and all the ethical
and intellectual struggles that the evolution of consciousness imposed upon us.
As a moral position (and therefore not as a deduction from my knowledge of nature’s factuality),
I prefer the “cold bath” theory that nature can be truly “cruel” and “indifferent”—in the utterly
inappropriate terms of our ethical discourse—because nature was not constructed as our
eventual abode, didn’t know we were coming (we are, after all, interlopers of the latest
geological microsecond), and doesn’t give a damn about us (speaking metaphorically). I regard
such a position as liberating, not depressing, because we then become free to conduct moral
discourse—and nothing could be more important—in our own terms, spared from the delusion
that we might read moral truth passively from nature’s factuality.
But I recognize that such a position frightens many people, and that a more spiritual view of
nature retains broad appeal (acknowledging the factuality of evolution and other phenomena,
but still seeking some intrinsic meaning in human terms, and from the magisterium of religion). I
do appreciate, for example, the struggles of a man who wrote to the New York Times on
November 3, 1996, to state both his pain and his endorsement ofJohn Paul’s statement:
Pope John Paul II’s acceptance of evolution touches the doubt in my heart. The problem of pain
and suffering in a world created by a God who is all love and light is hard enough to bear, even
if one is a creationist. But at least a creationist can say that the original creation, coming from
the hand of God was good, harmonious, innocent and gentle. What can one say about
evolution, even a spiritual theory of evolution? Pain and suffering, mindless cruelty and terror
are its means of creation. Evolution’s engine is the grinding of predatory teeth upon the
screaming, living flesh and bones of prey.… If evolution be true, my faith has rougher seas to
sail.
I don’t agree with this man, but we could have a wonderful argument. I would push the “cold
bath” theory: he would (presumably) advocate the theme of inherent spiritual meaning in nature,
however opaque the signal. But we would both be enlightened and filled with better
understanding of these deep and ultimately unanswerable issues. Here, I believe, lies the
greatest strength and necessity of NOMA, the nonoverlapping magisteria of science and
religion. NOMA permits—indeed enjoins—the prospect of respectful discourse, of constant input
from both magisteria toward the common goal of wisdom. If human beings are anything special,
we are the creatures that must ponder and talk. Pope John Paul II would surely point out to me
that his magisterium has always recognized this distinction, for “in principio, erat verbum”—”In
the beginning was the Word.”
Carl Sagan organized and attended the Vatican meeting that introduces this essay; he also
shared my concern for fruitful cooperation between the different but vital realms of science and
religion. Carl was also one of my dearest friends. I learned of his untimely death on the same
day that I read the proofs for this essay. I could only recall Nehru’s observations on Gandhi’s
death—that the light had gone out, and darkness reigned everywhere. But I then contemplated
what Carl had done in his short sixty-two years and remembered John Dryden’s ode for Henry
Purcell, a great musician who died even younger: “He long ere this had tuned the jarring
spheres, and left no hell below.”
The days I spent with Carl in Rome were the best of our friendship. We delighted in walking
around the Eternal City, feasting on its history and architecture—and its food! Carl took special
delight in the anonymity that he still enjoyed in a nation that had not yet aired Cosmos, the
greatest media work in popular science of all time.
I dedicate this essay to his memory. Carl also shared my personal suspicion about the
nonexistence of souls—but I cannot think of a better reason for hoping we are wrong than the
prospect of spending eternity roaming the cosmos in friendship and conversation with this
wonderful soul.
[ Stephen Jay Gould, “Nonoverlapping Magisteria,” Natural History 106 (March 1997): 16-22;
Reprinted here with permission from Leonardo’s Mountain of Clams and the Diet of Worms,
New York: Harmony Books, 1998, pp. 269-283. ]