We are all aware of the advice that in gatherings of family and friends, two topics that should be avoided are politics and religion. I was under the impression that this was a fairly recent development but in reading the book The Scientific Revolution by Steven Shapin (1996), I learned that it dates at least as far back as the 17th century and that such prohibitions were even included in the constitutions of scientific societies.
[T[he constitution of the Royal Society of London explicitly prohibited its fellows from speaking of religion or politics during the course of its scientific meetings, and similar prohibitions were inscribed in the charters of a number of Continental societies. A precursor to the French Academie Royale des Sciences, for example, announced its intention that “in the meetings, there will never be a discussion of the mysteries of religion or the affairs of state.” Such subjects, it was thought, could only divide people, and by the 1660s there were already some bitter experience with philosophical societies that split apart along grand metaphysical fault lines. Chapter 2 noted that many such matters were deemed inherently subjective, not amenable to rational treatment and rational agreement. The reformed natural philosophy was to offer its participants a quiet and orderly space from which an objective account of nature might credibly emerge and in which practitioners could civilly disagree without bringing down the whole house of knowledge
…In practice, these prohibitions amounted only to a ban only on controversial items of theology and politics. In societies whose members all took the existence of a creator God for granted, references, for example, to the divine origins of the world would not count as religious discussion, but allusion to the scope of human free will, or to the physical reality of transubstantiation, or to the proper relations between church and state might well be treated as controversial and divisive. (p. 135)
Interesting.
When I first heard of this prohibition, it entailed “sex, politics, and religion.”
Apparently “society” has become less polite in the last [mumble] decades…
This sounds like a very sensible idea for the 17th C & 18th C. I believe gentlemen often carried swords as part of normal garb and duels were common in many part of Europe and the Americas. The dueling passages in The Three Musketeers were not much of an exaggeration.
Keeping those topics out of meetings probably helped keep up the membership.
I was brought up with money, religion and politics, discussing sex was just not done.
In those days the Big Issue was Reformation. Catholics vs. Anglicans (Britain), Calvinists (Netherlands), Huguenots (France), Lutherans (Germany) etc. Lots of blood, and emigration to colonies.
When swords went out of fashion, gentlemen started buying canes. With heavy silver knobs.
I grew up in Israel, where we talk about politics all the time, including with strangers at the bus stop. Religion is mostly discussed only as part of politics (people don’t talk much about what they believe and why, but do talk about where politicians are seeking to impose a religious lifestyle on the public or where secular politicians publicly go against religious norms).