Professionalization of American Scientists: Public Science in the Creation/ Evolution Trials

Abstract

The boundary between and religion has long been a site for cultural and professional conflict. We examine the testimony of scientists at the Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 and at the McLean Creation-Science trial in 1981-82. The two trials were public occasions for scientists to present ideologies of .that legitimated their professional claims to cognitive authority, public financing and control over part of the public school curriculum. The rhetoric of scientists at each trial was directed toward a separate professional goal: at Scopes, scientists differentiated scientific knowledge from religious belief in a way that presented them as distinctively useful but complementary; at McLean, the boundary between and religion was drawn to exclude creation scientists from the profession. Both goals-41) differentiation of a valued commodity uniquely provided by science, and (2) exclusion of pseudoscientists-are important for scientists' establishment of a professional monopoly over the market for knowledge about nature. Each goal, however, required different descriptions of science at the two trials, and we conclude that this ideological flexibility has contributed to the successful professionalization of scientists in American society.