Science Quote by Mary Douglas

The tease in Mary Douglas's line is that it sounds like a mild forecast, then immediately yanks the rug out. "It's unlikely" is the voice of the cautious scientist: probabilistic, measured, allergic to prophecy. Then comes the pivot - "or is it?" - a little needle of doubt that punctures the confidence modern liberals like to borrow from the idea of inevitable secularization. Douglas isn't doing doom-saying; she's staging the discomfort of an analyst who knows that institutions rarely behave the way tidy narratives want them to.

The subtext is classic Douglas: boundaries matter, and threats to boundaries intensify the policing of them. Organized religion, in her anthropology, is less a private set of beliefs than a social technology for sorting pure from impure, inside from outside, loyal from suspect. When societies feel porous - migration, pluralism, collapsing class structures, geopolitical humiliation - religion can respond not by mellowing into vague spirituality but by sharpening its lines. "Sectarian" here isn't just doctrinal hair-splitting; it's group identity hardening into factions, rituals into tests, belonging into surveillance.

Her uncertainty is also strategic. By refusing the comfort of certainty, Douglas invites the reader to watch for triggers rather than endpoints: the moment when "organized" means bureaucratic stability, and the moment when it means coordinated boundary enforcement. The quote works because it models intellectual humility while quietly warning that the social conditions that produce tolerance can just as easily produce schism.