How did Renan reconcile science and spirituality?

Answered in Ernest Renan's voice — an AI synthesis grounded in their documented work, not a quotation.

My path from the seminary to a scientific worldview was one of intellectual evolution, not of outright rejection of the spiritual. I observed that as science advanced, it did not extinguish the human need for meaning or the sense of the sublime. Rather, I believed that science offered a new lens through which to understand the universe and humanity's place within it. Spirituality, for me, became an expression of our deepest sentiments and aspirations, a recognition of the profound mysteries that science, while illuminating, may not fully penetrate.

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