The Social Origins of Religion and Science

Social scientists who have attempted to "explain" religion have typically regarded it as a system of ideas or beliefs, of which the rites are an external, material expression; and this has naturally led to a concern for whether these ideas and beliefs may or may not be reconciled with those of modern science. The difficulty for this approach, Durkheim argued, is that it does not correspond to the religious believer's own account of the nature of his experience, which is less one of thought than of action: "The believer who has communicated with his god," Durkheim observed, "is not merely a man who sees new truths of which the unbeliever is ignorant; he is a man who is stronger. He feels within him more force, either to endure the trials of existence, or to conquer them."The mere ideas of the individual are clearly insufficient to this purpose; and, in this sociological version of the principle extra ecclesia nulla salus, Durkheim thus insisted that it is the repeated acts of the cult which give rise to "impressions of joy, of interior peace, of serenity, of enthusiasm which are, for the believer, an experimental proof of his beliefs."
Durkheim thus agreed with William James, who, in The Varieties of Religious Experience (1902), had argued that religious beliefs rest upon real experiences whose demonstrative value, though different, is in no way inferior to that of scientific experiments. As with such experiments, Durkheim added, it does not follow that the reality which gives rise to these experiences precisely corresponds to the ideas that believers (or scientists) form of it; but it is a reality just the same, and for Durkheim, the reality was society. This, indeed, explained why the cult rather than the idea is so important in religion -- "society cannot make its influence felt unless it is in action, and it is not in action unless individuals who compose it are assembled together and act in common."But Durkheim also felt that all societies need such periodic reaffirmations of their collective sentiments, and that there is thus something "eternal" in religion, destined to outlive the particular symbols -- totemic, Christian, or otherwise -- in which it had been previously embodied. The difficulty for a society living through the period of "transition" and "moral mediocrity" described in The Division of Labor and Suicide was in imagining what form its future symbols might assume.
But if religion is thus a mode of action, it is also a mode of thought -- one not different in kind from that exercised by science. Like science, for example, religion reflects on nature, man, and society, attempts to classify things, relates them to one another, and explains them; and as we have seen, even the most essential categories of scientific thought are religious in origin. Scientific thought, in short, is but a more perfect form of religious thought; and Durkheim thus felt that the latter would gradually give way before the inexorable advances of the former, including those advances in the social sciences extending to the scientific study of religion itself. In so far as it remains a mode of action, however, religion will endure, albeit under yet unforeseen forms.
Science is thus religious in its origins; but if religion is itself only the apotheosis of society, then all logical, scientific thought originates in society. How is this possible? All logical thought, Durkheim explained, is made up of concepts -- generalized ideas which are distinguished from sensations by two important characteristics. First, they are relatively stable -- unlike our sensations, which succeed one another in a never-ending flux and cannot repeat themselves, our concepts remain the same for long periods of time. Second, they are impersonal -- again unlike our sensations, which are held privately and cannot be communicated, our concepts are not only communicable but provide the necessary means by which all communication becomes possible. These two characteristics in turn reveal the origin of conceptual thought. Since concepts are held in common and bear the mark of no individual mind, they are clearly the products of the collective mind; and if they have greater permanence and stability than our individual sensations, it is because they are collective representations, which respond much more slowly to environmental conditions. It is only through society, therefore, that men become capable of logical thought -- indeed, of stable, impersonal "truth" altogether; and this explains why the "correct" manipulation of such concepts carries a moral authority unknown to mere personal opinion and private experience.
In one sense, the "categories of the understanding" are simply concepts so stable and impersonal that they have come to be seen as immutable and universal; but in another sense, the social explanation of the categories is more complex, for they not only have social causes but also express social things:

the category of class was at first indistinct from the concept of the human group; it is the rhythm of social life which is at the basis of the category of time; the territory occupied by the society furnished the material for the category of space; it is the collective force which was the prototype of the concept of efficient force, an essential element in the category of causality.

How is it that these categories, the pre-eminent concepts by which all of our knowledge is constructed, have been modeled upon and express social things? Durkheim's answer was that, precisely because the categories must perform this permanent, pre-eminent function, they must be based upon a reality of equally permanent, pre-eminent status -- a function for which our shifting, private sensations are clearly inadequate.
It might be argued, of course, that society is also inadequate for this function, that there can be no guarantee, for example, that categories modeled on social things will provide an accurate representation of nature; but this would be to deprive society of those attributes which Durkheim had laboriously attached to it throughout his productive and distinguished career. Society, for example, is itself a part of nature, and since "nature cannot contradict itself" we can expect that categories modeled on its realities will correspond to those of the physical world; and, in so far as the concepts founded in any particular group reflect the peculiarities of its special situation, we can expect that the increasing "internationalization" of social life will purge such concepts of their subjective, personal elements, so that we come closer and closer to truth, not in spite of the influence of society, but because of it.
Like Kant, therefore, Durkheim denied any conflict between science, on the one hand, and morality and religion, on the other; for, also like Kant, he felt that both were directed toward universal principles, and that both thus implied that, in thought as in action, man can lift himself above the limitations of his private, individual nature to live a rational, impersonal life. What Kant could not explain (indeed, he refused to do so) is the cause of this dual existence that we are forced to lead, torn between the sensible and intelligible worlds which, even as they seem to contradict each other, seem to presume and even require each other as well. But to Durkheim the explanation was clear -- we lead an existence which is simultaneously both individual and social, and as individuals we can live without society no more than society can live without us.