'Heretical…dangerous and potentially subversive': The problem of science and religion in Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World

This chapter presents an analysis of one of the best-known novels of the 20th century, Brave New World, arguing that its author, Aldous Huxley, provides an exploration of the relationship between science and religion in narrative terms. Contemporary readings of the novel often see it as a warning of what might be in store for our own society if certain kinds of individual liberty (especially religious liberty) were controlled or suppressed by the advances of science and technology (especially biotechnology). In this ‘standard reading’, it is assumed that Huxley is prophesying what may happen if secular society were to continue to encourage the free advance of science in the face of traditional moral and religious scruples. This chapter takes a contrasting view to the standard reading and argues that the novel may be read in quite the opposite direction, not as a prophecy but as a satire of the secularism thesis. Hence, this chapter suggests that Brave New World can be taken as a subversion of the myth of conflict between science and religion rather than as an illustration of the myth's fulfilment.