regshoe

I think I will digitise For the White Rose, but it might not be for a while, as I have several current possibilities for the next ebook after Chantemerle! If you'd like to read it sooner, do go ahead, but of course it'd be lovely to have you proofread if you want. :)

Yeah, I agree about deliberate and sensible modifications to history (which I'm also making in my current WIP, sending Pickle to Edinburgh when he was really in London!). I don't think it can have been out of ignorance/lack of sources—the details of Lord Nithsdale's escape would seem to be a much more obscure historical matter than James's (non-)participation in the '15, and how could she have known the name of the Nithsdales' house without knowing where it was?—but it's a bit odd.

I'm pretty sure it would also be possible to come up with an example of science impinging on the moral sphere which I would approve of. Perhaps climate scientists urging societal change? Or the discovery that drinking lots of alcohol during pregnancy has bad consequences for the child, and doctors thus urging pregnant people not to drink?

I think the difference there is that you're—legitimately!—pulling in both scientific fact and moral judgement to come to a conclusion: scientific evidence shows that if we keep using fossil fuels, climate change will happen with XYZ consequences, ethics says that XYZ consequences will hurt people and that would be bad, therefore we should stop using fossil fuels. Gould regards the eugenics example as an overreach because the scientists involved tried to get to the moral conclusion from the scientific one (scientific evidence shows that evolution happens through 'survival of the fittest' (also misinterpreting what that means, of course!), therefore it's right that only the fittest survive and we should help the process along). An unjustified leap from 'is' to 'ought'.

But then, I suppose I don't think morality exclusively belongs to the sphere of religion, regardless of whether science is involved or not--atheists can have a moral system just as well as religious people.

Absolutely, as Gould acknowledges! Some former borrower of the library copy I read had written in the front, 'NOMA was built on a false premise. The magisteria are Science and Ethics', which does seem to be a fairly accurate judgement, and that's another way I thought the book's arguments were kind of unsatisfactory.